Slashdot Mirror
If Windows Came to PPC, Would You Switch?
An anonymous reader asks: "This question was posted on Ask Slashdot about a week ago: 'If Mac OS X Came to x86, Would You Switch?' This makes me ask why not have Windows run on PowerPC? Windows/PPC would not necessarily have to run on Apple hardware, or at least not exclusively on it. I'm sure their friends at IBM and Motorola would be happy to provide chips to anyone that wanted to make computers to run this new OS. Microsoft could dust off the code from NT4/PPC, add some code from Virtual PC to get Windows/x86 compatibility, and have it up and running in about the same amount of time it would take Apple to get Mac OS X running on common Intel hardware." An additional question comes to mind, however: If Microsoft made this move, how would Intel react?
"You can't polish a turd"
No
Personally, if I was going to buy a mac, I would use the mac stuff with it.. I mean you are paying extra for the look and feel of being on a mac. If you are just gunna use windows, why not just buy a PC--if I'm not mistaken they are a fair bit cheaper.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
Oh, you're serious.
Sorry!
sig mind freed
... if I want to run a crappy system on PPC architecture, I can simply fire up System 7. Windows not needed - Historical Mac software gives me all the crappy I need - peddle that filth elsewhere ...
The quality of Microsoft software combined with the cost-effective PPC hardware! Not to mention the compatibility!
Mac OS X is 90% of the reason I have PPC.
If Mac OS X was on x86 I'd have a x86.
Intel would have to sit there and bear it, since Microsoft has more command of its market than Intel would. If you recall back around '98 Intel had been developing graphics software to encourage people to use more processor power, and Microsoft basically told them to stop since it wasn't Intel's place to write software... Microsoft basically threatened to stop developing for Intel, and since at that time AMD was starting to gain market share, this scared the shit out of them. Suffice it to say, Microsoft is the dominant player in the WinTel relationship.
yours,
kbs
I am in disbelief. Was the poster actually serious? Who would give a fuck?
I mean, those that use PPC (mostly Mac and PPC Linux users) use it becasue they don't want to use Windows. What conceivable reason would they have to switch to Windows? Hell, what reason would M$ have to port Windows to a platform where they know that no one will buy there product.
This is just dumb. Nothing to see here, move along.
No. OS X is a great OS and I choose to run it in my PPC hardware (Powerbook). It fits my needs perfectly. I choose to run Windows on my gaming system (AMD CPU) and Linux on my servers. I don't see any advantage to running Windows on PPC hardware. I think the performance gain would be minimal to nonexistant over x86 with Windows, and the initial invest in hardware would be much more costly. I choose my OS based on my needs for that particular system. The platform it runs on is incidental.
It works. Don't do games on it, and don't run it with low memory. There are a few gotchas, but they're minimal. It's not as slow as you would want to believe, and it occasionally gets bogged down but it's tennable. It's like running on a 900mhz box when run on a ppc32/PowerBookG4. It costs a few bucks, and you still have to buy Norton or McAfee, etc. But it's otherwise as useful and harmless as XP. Oh, except you need to buy an XP license for it, too.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
MacOS is already superior ro Windows IMHO. And powerful x86 hardware is already much cheaper if you insist on running Windows. I don't see any incentive here... Didn't Microsft use to have an old version of NT that ran on the Alpha before?
I think most Windows users (myself included) don't care what hardware they use, as long as it's fast+cheap and all their apps/games run on it. I doubt that a PPC platform would be much faster/cheaper than x86 (even if you did magically manage to port Windows to it at full efficiency), and if it was, Intel/AMD would change so that it wasn't.
To sum up: I'd switch if there was a point. However there doesn't seem to be too many points.
The reason the OSX on x86 discussion came up is because people want the OS they think they want on the hardware they know they like. Asking a bunch of Linux nerds if they want to run the OS they don't like on the hardware they aren't entirely familiar with isn't going to provoke a huge discussion.
There was NT for the MIPS, Alpha and PPC, and they all failed miserably in the market. Windows users see no value in running on anything other than the volume-leading processor architecture. There's no value in it.
When I was in college (I'm a second-year grad student now) was right about when Apple starting producing the G4s and I thought, Wow, those machines rock. They look nice and they are super powerful. It's too bad I don't like the MacOS. When I got to grad school, I bought a Powerbook laptop and it was the best computer-buying decision I ever made. Once I actually sat down and spent some time with OS X, I realized that I liked it much better than any flavor of Windows. So, no, I wouldn't switch, and I'm glad I spend the time to learn OS X instead.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
I am assuming that if a Mac user needs a Windows application to run on their machine they use something like Virtual PC. Otherwise, I wonder what the point would be of running Windows on a Mac or PowerPC machine when the folks that own those probably have a strong preference for a non-Windows OS.
http://www.busyweather.com/
This might just be the most dangerous Ask Slashdot post ever. It plays RIGHT into the anti-windowsism here :)
Once more, people are overlooking an oft ignored market base:
Masochists.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
So I can run Windows, on a Mac, running Virtual Machine, which in turn will emulate OSX! Genius I tell you!
We all live in a #FFFF00 submarine...
People are going to switch to Windows from OS X. Oh sure. They'll probably line up around the Best Buy at midnight. Yeah. Uh huh.
Dell makes an iPod. Sony makes an iPod. Windows is trying to be OS X. Microsoft has a music store. HP licenses the iPod. Hmmm.
Yep. Everybody wants to be Apple.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Big Endian which makes a huge difference depending on what you're doing. For example most multimedia applications.
would you root for them?
You probably don't.
The biggest thing Windows has going for it is the massive number of existing applications. But a different processor architecture would require porting. But unless the platform catches on, noone is going to port.
So why would anyone switch? This is pretty much the fate of the old Windows-Alpha port. Very few apps got ported (PuTTY is one of the few I know). Besides, most people were using Alphas as server machines, for which the software they needed was already available on the competing Unixes.
So.. no.. I don't think Windows could ever haul itself off the x86 platform. Too many legacy apps which are x86-specific.
Otherwise the processors are going to cost more than x86 chips and there'll be no point. We don't run windows because we have the superior architecture you know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
this is like asking if you would like dogshit any better if it were spread on a ritz cracker instead of a graham cracker.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
But it would be cool to dual-boot OSX and a WinOS, perhaps for gaming or whatever...
Who doesn't like free music?
Ok, so in 1996, NT4 came out on x86, which was the first step that Microsoft really took into making Windows a real OS.
It ran on PPC, Intel, Alpha and MIPS. That's a lot of architectures. Now, think about it: One of the things about Microsoft is, generally speaking, they have no soul. If they make money selling a product, they'll sell it. Now, that's not to say they won't STOP selling any product that's not making money (*cough*XBOX*cough*) just to drag their competition to the ground, but they also won't turn down cash for ideological reasons.
The fact that when Windows 2000 came out reflects that no one really used NT 4 on anything other than Intel hardware. Now, this might be because the hardware developers never really were 100% behind MS, or it might be because someone that was shelling out cash for an Alpha or a MIPS workstation (but I do remember there being a drop-in MIPS chip that would work in a socket.... 5? Pentium board?) wanted a better OS, or any other reason.
The fact is, you can say that PPC might be a faster processor platform today, with a higher bus speed and better performance per clock, but its close. Very close. I don't think MS would be able to polish a PPC version of Windows as much as they have the Intel version, meaning you might take a relative performance penalty... and there isn't a price advantage in PPC over x86.
So yeah, the previous failure, combined with the pitfalls of a new version listed above make a pretty strong case for "no."
The only advantage that I see is the possibility of dual booting. This would solve the age old problem of "not having enough games on the mac". That being said, you can see why microsoft would NOT want to port it to the PPC, as it would only give them a paltry increase in sales, while making the mac platform that much more enticing. And let's face it, microsoft has ZERO control over the devlopment over apple's hardware.
I know there are other PPC vendors than apple, but it's the one we all think about when discussing these "port this OS to that architecture" questions.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
You are obviously aware that they tried to make a go of NT on several other hardware platforms already. In addition to PowerPC there was also MIPS and Alpha. If I remember correctly, MS was dropped by one vendor and the other two were dropped by MS. There just wasn't enough of a demand for NT on workstations to pay for the development even with the cash cow of Windows on x86 PC's. So I guess my question to you is if they failed before what makes you think they could do well now?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Windows users would enjoy big a big boost in security because most of the exploits for holes in the OS wouldn't run on the new architecture.
The bad news:
None of their apps or device drivers would run either.
(OK, maybe most of the apps would run under emulation, but that's never going to be particularly fast or trouble-free.)
The NT4 disks came with Windows for x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PPC.
It didn't succeed then, it sure wouldn't now.
OTOH, I wouldn't mind if I could get a commodity PPC platform to run, say, Yellow Dog Linux on. The x86 architecture um, how to put this delicately, leaves something to be desired.
-- Alastair
Why?
Really, why was this story even posted? The barrier for entry to Windows is already lower on Intel than PPC. 99% of people buy PPC to get MacOS and have made a decision to stay away from Windows. Maybe for some obscure server configuration or something - I don't know. Ewww. I think I just felt my PowerBook shudder.
It's like going to church and asking the congregation if, next week, they would like to hold a Satanic mass and worship the devil rather than the usual Sunday drill.
A wise Finn once wrote:
"The memory maagement on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children."
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
Umm, basic economics my friend. If the demand is there, the production capacity will rise with it. It isn't like PPC chips are a scarce, natural resource, IBM certainly has the ability to boost production.
"Sir, we cannot keep up with the damand, we need to find more PPC mines"
That would be kinda cool actually.
"Eureka! We have struck Altivic!"
Finkployd
NT4 ran on PPC, up until SP3 (the last install discs with PPC support were SP3 based).
Nobody switched, and that was in the days of the gratuitously unstable System 7.5 and Mac OS 7.6, which tended to crash if you looked at them wrong.
I suspect that BeOS has more users than NT for PPC, at least for Macs. And neither OS ran on G3's or later CPU's.
Now, with OS X and VPC, why the hell would I want to run Windows of all things on a Mac? other way 'round I can see, especially with WINE support or something similar (like Mac-on-Linux) to get Windows software compatibility. But even then, I'd probably stick to PPC, as the hardware is generally better quality and definitely better designed.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
If Microsoft made this move, how would Intel react?
They would panic, of course ! The whole x86 architecture is ugly as hell, and the IBM PC architecture even more so, so low level programmers would propably open a bottle or two and party if we could ditch our x86's for PPC's :-)
The 8086/8088 (to which even the Pentium 4 tries to be backwards compatible with to some degree) was a hack at Intel to get a 16 bit processor to market fast and was meant to have a very short lifespan. Intel was developing a way better processor then (can't remember its number, could anyone fill it in ?). So they took the Z80 processor and extended it. You see the relation even today in the register namings.
I wasn't aware how much the x86 really sucks until I began programming the Motorolla M68000 in the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis as a hobby a few weeks ago. That processor is about as old as the 8086/8088 but has so many cool and useful features that the x86's doesn't have even today (like the eight address registers and the postincrement/predecrement features which make it trivial to set up eight stacks at once, just to name two features).
And then IBM came along. They wanted to get a "cheap" computer to market fast, and used Intels 8086/8088. And like the processor, the whole IBM PC was meant to have a short lifespan.
Unfortunately the PC became a success, and so its lifespan had to be expanded artificially and backward compability had to be put in. This is true for the Intel processors as well as the whole PC architecture. As time passed by more and more things were added without really fixing the underlying problems.
I think computers could be cheaper and more powerful if we'd had a better mainstream processor and computer architecture, one that was meant to live long and thus was better designed. But this is just a dream, I'm afraid...
Why would I leave my Amiga 3000 [m68030] with Workbench to go to a PPC with windows?
Seriously!
The Amiga will never die.
Video Production Support
I'm sure their friends at IBM and Motorola would be happy to provide chips to anyone that wanted to make computers to run this new OS.
You're making it sound like IBM is really eager for someone to ask for their PPC processors. Well, guess what? Apple has been practically begging IBM for enough PPC processors for their computers, and the processors were in such short supply that they had to repeatedly delay critical product launches for many months. It happened with the new G5 Imac, and it happened with the bigger G5s.
You have no understanding of Apple's relationship to PowerPC.
Apple originally switched to PowerPC because they thought it was going to become a popular "PC" chip outside of the Mac world. They wanted larger economies of scale than the old 68K line had, and they thought that Windows NT and OS/2 was going to bring that. They were wrong of course, and PPC became mainly an embedded chip.
Larger customer base for PPC => More investment in the architecture => Apple not falling years behind in hardware specs like with the G4.
Besides, if Microsoft and IBM decided to bring out Windows for PowerPC again, there probably is very little Apple can do to stop it.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There was a port of Windows NT to the PPC platform, as well of the Alpha. It was such a miserable failure that WinNT Alpha looked like a roaring success by comparisson.
So, no, no one did care when Windows came to the PPC last time, so I doubt they'd give a flying fuck now, either.
And after I start running Windows on my Mac, I think I'll outfit my Fiat with chrome wheels, spoiler, and a fart pipe!
You can't polish a turd
Oh yes you can! See?
And I remember on the old Ripley's show (circa 80's) a farmer that made jewelry out of chicken droppings.
R(k)
and have it up and running in about the same amount of time it would take Apple to get Mac OS X running on common Intel hardware
Apple has regular builds of it's code OS, Darwin, on both Intel and PPC hardware. This is available to anyone here.
It's been said that Apple still build all of their apps on Intel-based Darwin, therefore keeping an eye on portability, while giving them a chance to see where optimisation could break other platforms.
Apple had to change processor in the past and wants to keep it's options open, this time around. Besides, don't forget Mac OS X is basically a souped-up OpenStep, wich ran on both 68K, PPC and Intel hardware. (Oh yeah... Sun hardware too for a while).
Are you sure? Both IBM and Motorola manufacture Power PC chips - I'm sure they could meet demand.
In any case, the demand won't suddenly jump to equal that of the Wintel market so they'd have time to ramp up.
The fact that the PPC production isn't the equal of x86 doesn't mean that it isn't feasible. How long did it take AMD to gain a foothold. Or the clone manufacturers, back in the early days of the x86 PC?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Microsoft could dust off the code from NT4/PPC, add some code from Virtual PC to get Windows/x86 compatibility, and have it up and running in about the same amount of time it would take Apple to get Mac OS X running on common Intel hardware."
.NET has been created to solve? Same OS & Apps running on different platforms?
Isn't this what
Doh!
NT 3.00+ (at least) came for i386[+], MIPS, PPC and Alpha. MIPS and PPC didn't have enough interested buyers to maintain the platform. Alpha held out a bit longer and actually had some followers. Microsoft wasn't stupid, they lost money on the platforms, saw no way to recover it and cancelled non x86 NT. Consider that Microsoft's Xbox2 developer systems are Macintosh G5s with customized NT kernels. It's not like that was hard.
According to rumor, the AIM alliance was formed because Motorola wanted to learn from IBM how to better serve Apple. Apple wanted to have a hand in their next architecture and wanted to get some of the performance from IBM. IBM, everybody understood, was going to take over the world with OS/2 beige boxen running PPC -- this plan changed to NT beige boxen running PPC. But in the 1992/1993 timeframe, when x86 was weakest (just before Pentium), even IBM couldn't muster the market to ditch backwards compatibility. The PowerPC 615 was behind schedule, power hungry and had some legal problems (fundamentally, I don't think it was strategic -- Apple learned how hard it was to get programmers to program native PPC code when they could stick with 68k and have it emulated well enough).
To answer your question: Nobody would buy PPC Windows, because they didn't. There's no backwards compatibility, no program base, and these days nobody actually knows what system they're running on anyway. If you want compute cycles, you either need an Athlon (faster than hell memory access), Itanic (faster than hell double precision float) or Power (8-32 CPUs in one system). If you want a Windows interface, you don't care what you have because the processor wastes too much time waiting for you.
And the quality and polish of Apple's hardware is the other 10%. The processor architecture is of zero concern, except maybe as it pertains to battery life and heat.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The main question is, switching to Windows from what?
If I have a PPC and I have to run Linux, I might switch. I REALLY like Linux, but the fact is that Windows "just works" a little bit more, and while I do most of my gaming on consoles, if the games appeared, I would seriously look at buying a copy. For all our complaining, Windows does have a lot going for it. I could always dual boot anyways. A true copy of Office could come in handy.
If I have a PPC and it's a Mac with OS X... I don't see why ANYONE would. It's got the great design of the Mac and stability and CLI goodness of Unix. And OS X already HAS Office, so that point is moot. The only thing that I could think of would be the games, and Apple could push more on that (better hardware (GFX cards not 6-12 months behind x86) would help). Dual boot, MAYBE.
From Linux, decent chance. From OS X, nope.
That's how I see it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
No, I don't think so. The reason OSX does so well now, is because its stability is quite good. In Anandtech's review (and my own experience), OSX and Windows had about the same amount of crashes and lockups, but OSX could recover from most where Windows sometimes could not.
That said... Windows runs on THOUSANDS of configurations. OSX is designed to work with specific hardware. If OSX started supporting multiple chipsets, RAM, video cards, etc... it would not be NEARLY as stable as it is today -- that's just a simple fact. And I'm not saying it can't be done... but Apple simply doesn't have the resources to do it. They don't have the manpower nor the capital to start supporting drivers for each piece of hardware on the market, like Microsoft does.
However, if a way was found around the budget and human constraints for Apple (perhaps other capital, more investment, etc), then this could be feasible in the future. And to that end, would be great for the end-users because it would cause both companies to innovate and develop software APIs that are friendly to developers of all kinds. For me, a Mac is useless because I am a heavy gamer and not much else -- and for that, the Mac lags behind in both variety and support of games. If however, Apple's OSX API was better to develop for than say, Direct X, and allowed more functionality and less code -- developers could make it happen.
And that's what I'd LOVE to see. I don't care about it being Mac or Windows -- if it doesn't play my games, it isn't worth shit. Period.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Well. Generally, the PPC architecture is a much cleaner design inside and out. Just ask an assembly programmer that programmed for both PPC and x86. The system is also much more powerful per MHz AND per watt than an intel-based system.
:)
Also, as it stands, hardware manufacturers HAVE to buy their hardware from either Intel or AMD (and a few other home-baked clones; not always 100% compatible). But each CPU is different.
In the PPC world, not only is all the hardware open (IBM will let anyone use their cores: Power Everywhere I believe they call it; and the PPC specs are open for anyone to create their own CPU) but so is the firmware (OpenFirmware, an ieee standard), so no BIOS-vendor DRM lockout in the near future. Basically, the PPC platform is all about openness. Anybody can make a PPC motherboard. IBM even has a sample circuit diagram for one on their site. Problem is, to date, there hasn't been so much demand for such boards.
That said, the Windows on PPC question is pointless. They'd have to port everything PERFECTLY to get a system designed for an x86 (+asm tweaks) to work decently. And you'd still have to recompile all 3rd party software to get decent speed. Just my 2 cents worth
What kind a of a sick sonofabitch roots for the Yankees?
-Waldo Jaquith
Sorry
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"Sure, sure... BUT WHAT IF?!"
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
The processor architecture is of zero concern, except maybe as it pertains to battery life and heat.
Does this really mean the chorus of 'RISC is better' ignorance from Macheads is over??
Come on, let's have a RISC vs. CISC fight for good old times.
I'll champion the Microchip PIC processor (RISC).
You champion the Motorola 68HC11 processor (CISC).
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Mips: MIPS IV Instruction Set Section A.2.1
Alpha: Cannot find an authoritative resource for proof, but the way I understand it is that NT was IMPOSSIBLE to run on a big-endian-only CPU, hence the #1 reason it never made it beyond rumor stage on Sparc.
Solaris and Endianness.
I remember back in '96-'97 timeframe hearing from a number of Sun vendors about experiments with NT on Ultrasparc, but could never get a demo (and we had Sun workstation vendors falling all over us to give us hardware at the time).
I run PPC, and let me tell you... If M$ started allowing fat binaries out of .NET for PPC and a significant number of programs started appearing for PPC, and they made a version of Windows that could be used inside OS X much like OS 9 or X11 are, I'd actually give money to the beast for the first time in a long while.
Now for why it won't happen... Companies would stop programming for the Mac. They'd only program for Windows, saying, "well, it runs on Windows for PPC, so get that!", and then the entire Apple platform would die out. Then Microsoft would be a near-total monopoly again (except for Linux being there, of course...) and then they might actually lose in an anti-trust case. Microsoft would then be broken up and slowly die against Linux. Well, slowly, but less slowly than they already are. This situation alone will prevent NT for PPC from ever coming back.
No, I coded up a stack of PPC assembly on my mac last weekend, and damn, it felt good to have all those extra registers and nice, simple instructions.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
You know, this question really doesn't have anything to do with Apple. It's a hypothetical question based on a processor architecture, and not necessarily Macintosh-based computers. Both IBM and Freescale sell Power PC microprocessors, and technically any motherboard manufacturer can design a board for a PowerPC, and buy the CPUs from either manufacturer, much as how they currently design boards for either Intel or AMD processors.
Why? Well, because the Power PC architecture doesn't have all of the nasty cruft that Intel-based systems have. Like IRQ nastiness that people keep designing around. Or the fact that they boot up in real mode, and need to be switched into protected mode as part of the boot process. Or all of the various BIOS limitations, like the fact you can't address beyond the first 1023 cylinders of a hard drive during IPL. Of the . Or the x86 instruction set and registers.
The cost of this cruft is both cost and power. As cheap as Intel-based hardware is (due to the economies of scale), it could be cheaper if it didn't have to contain hardware and code to work around the many limitations of the architecture. It would also be quite a bit faster than it currently is.
Windows on Power PC would be a boon for users, if either (or both) IBM and Freescale could ramp up production sufficiently, and if every Intel Windows user were willing to give up their current software investments (or if such a Windows system run Intel binaries).
Of course, Windows itself would still suck :).
The things keeping people from making such a move aren't technical -- they're economic and social.
Myself, I'm composing this on a PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X. I have little or no desire to run Windows on any architecture. I doubt if you'd find too many existing Power PC users who wish they could run Windows as their core OS -- it's Windows users who should want to run to run their OS of choice on an affordable Power PC architecture.
Yaz.
I believe that the one solid merit of Windows is its compatibility, just like the customizability of Linux and BSD, and the user interface of Mac. If it was not avaliable, I see no reason to use Windows at all over Mac OS.
Duh, that's why I run FreeBSD.
Seriously, when the KDE is "industrial strength", there would be no need to move OS X. And that should be soon (please?)...
downloading nine critical security updates every month! No other OS gives me my money's worth of software like Windows. It's like getting a whole new OS every lunar cycle!
Most likely because of economies of scale. In the current state of affairs, a PPC board w/ CPU will cost you more than the equivalent x86 system, simply because there are more of them being sold. :( :)
:) Mind you, it's against the EULA... But that hasn't stopped anyone before ;)
That, and it's hard for a manufacturer to get into building some Desktop PPC motherboards when the market is so small. People who want PPC either want it to run MacOSX, in which case they'll get a Mac, or they want to run Linux, in which case they might as well get a Mac or PC. Back in the day, there was the BeOS which ran on PPC hardware as well, but we all know how that ended
As for Amiga, well, I haven't heard from them in a while... I wish them the best! We really need a new player here
PS: In theory, OSX will run on pretty much any PPC hardware with the proper hacks... It can currently be done using MacOnLinux, but it'd be nice to get around that
The XBox2, which is based on the G5 PPC, uses G5 PowerMacs with a specially modifed WinNT (XP Kernel maybe?) for game development.
I don't know why Microsoft decided to go with PPC, although I suppose it has to do with the Altivec vector unit and the fact that the G5 is a damn fine CPU, better for graphics, but it means that PPC G5's might very well become cheaper in the near future (at least the older one in the XBox2) and it means that MS would not have that much difficulty to port the rest of Windows to the PPC and it also means that game developers would have slightly less hassle and more experience developing for Mac OSX.
But would Microsoft actually port and sell the whole Windows over to PPC? I don't think so. Who would buy it? People who use PPC now use it because that's what Macs come with and what Mac OSX runs on. If they wanted to use Windows, they would buy a PC. I doubt that the entire software market would suddenly jump at this, given that the major thrust is in x86 Windows software.
In any case, I am fantastically happy with OSX on my PowerBook, so Microsoft can do what it wants.
Again, did anyone think about binaries? Windows/x86 binaries wouldn't run on Windows/PPC. Now, they could add on an emulation layer, and since the entire OS and API's wouldn't be emulated, it'd be a heckuvalot faster than Virtual PC.
If they could make it fast enough and use the graphics card...fast enough that a 2 GHz G4 can emulate at LEAST a 1 GHz P3, or a dual 2.5 G5 can at least outrun a 3 GHz Pentium 4, and can use the graphics card, it might be worth switching, since you could play most Windows games and run most programs (even ones that use the graphics card).
Additionally, it'd have to be able to dual boot with OS X without a ton of work.
Windows at present is mostly based on the 32-bit Intel architecture. Microsoft did its worst dirty tricks in the last dying days of the segmented 16-bit architecture, using DOS dominance to get market share for its 32-bit attempt. It's going to have to chose between AMD-64 and Intel-64 anyway, or support both, and binary application developers will need to make the same choice, so I guess the submitter would argue that PPC-64 (which has been around longer) is a viable option. However, there's a big movement away from software that's tied down to one platform or another, which is good for Linux, Java, and all the other OS, hardware and software vendors, programmers, and users.
The limited adoption and big troubles implementing Wine suggests to me that there would be little interest in a Microsoft port of Windows to yet another architecture. Windows 95 was probably the most-memorable MS-Windows version ever, and yet Microsoft has had to fragment even that identity to keep up its sales, starting with that crazy desktop in XP. The claim that Windows has excellent backward compatibility is bogus, too; for instance, the copy of TeraTerm that I carry around on a floppy has never worked on any NT2k or later system I've touched, and the default installation of Microsoft Word can't read files created by any version of Microsoft Works. I could contiue this rant...
Did anyone forget the Xbox developement Kit..
Which is basically a dual g5 powermac with a
custome XP version on it. Plus windows WILL run
on the PPC... The Xbox will be PPC, so there
will be a version, which actually a lot of titles...
Hrmmm. I wonder if the next Gen of Xbox ModChips
wont be add on cards to your favorite powermac.. hehe
Aren't there laws in the U.S. against purposfully spreading a virus?
NMG
...Since you really can't run the current Mac Os X on that G3...
We run the latest version of OSX 10.3.5 on an upgraded (RAM and HD) old purple G3 iMac. We don't do games, graphics or video, but it works great for browsing the web, the kid's homework and as an iTunes server for our home network.
All theory is gray
They are except, ironically, the PPC970 (aka "G5").
Okay, get off the OS idealogy wagon for a second, and entirely off which hardware is better. Now start thinking about barrier to entry and business models.
Name the OSes that run on x86. Now name the OSes that run on PPC.
Any low level geek can name three, and lots of computer users these days can name three as well, and even more can name two, even if they have contempt for it, be it for reasons they don't understand.
1) Windows
2) Mac OS
3) Linux
Now linux is intimidating for the average user. Most people won't bother to install it. It runs on both, but the cost to entry is too high for the average user. It costs no money, but way too much time.
Now look at the remaining two. One only runs x86, one only runs PPC. For 90% of the populace, the only choice is windows on x86. Most people don't think they have a choice. I'm dealing with more and more people that have problems with computers and bring them to me to fix. I have a way of making windows a little more secure, but that's only because I know and use features and free software which most people don't even know exist. Most require a complete wipe and reinstall.
Now think about a hardware switch to PPC. Intel dies but Dell and the others adapt over 5-10 years. Windows chugs along.
Then there are people like me continuing to reinstall windows in that time.
"Hey, yanno this is the third time you sent this to me. Maybe you should think about another OS. I got a copy of Mac OS X here if you'd like to try it. In my professional opinion its more secure and will save you money and time." No need to buy any new hardware"
And maybe this action won't kill microsoft over night, but it will erode markets share, and microsoft cannot abide eroding market share of any amount.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
They haven't got the x86 port right yet.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Lately? Maybe that's a matter of perspective. Apple has been making machines with ATA/IDE hard drives for over a decade, and PCI machines for almost as long.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What could possibly be an advantage to doing this?
I've used NT 3.51 on MIPS/ARc, and I must say, it's a lot like using NT 3.51 on a 486. Whoopdedoo. I doubt there would be any difference today with XP on PPC. Other than the vital, unrelenting clueless of a large percentage of Microsoft's userbase. Can you imaging how many store returns, support calls, and other costs would be incurred every time a comsumer bought product X for the PPC and tried to load it on their PC.
And emulation. Fah! Emulation, bintrans, dynamic recompilation. Neat shit. Not a consumer grade item.
There is absolutely no economic advantage to a Microsoft PPC move. If Apple ever starts the long-rumored downward spiral, they may try to bail out with full commoditization. And may have ported the OSX gui to x86 + Darwin waiting in the wings. That is to their advantage.
Evidence that Microsoft would never consider this move. The XBox. For reasons of time and monetary constraint, Microsoft chose to hack together an x86-based gaming console instead of porting to a custom CPU. Likewise with the embedded market. I don't know if anyone thinks XP embedded is worthwhile (esp. with VXworks, Lynx, and QNX to compete with), but Microsoft didn't trouble to port a Windows subset to any other BSP's either.
MacOS X's core is already available as an x86 version. All they'd need to really do, since a very sizeable portion of the Aqua interface system is written in Objective C, would be to account for endianness and call it done. It'd take all of a 6-12 month project, I'd suspect, to put it into an alpha class release stage.
Microsoft, on the other hand, would probably have a nightmare on their hands as I suspect they've not taken any consideration for endianness, 64 bits (No, they still don't have it out in the hands of the public- it's been months now and they knew about amd64, etc. for some time now...)- it's probably all nasty, crufty x86-32 code and using some aborted NT 3.51 code wouldn't help out much...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
http://downloads.activestate.com/unsupported/Perl
It is actually a desktop case (not tower) and makes a nice monitor stand! Not good for much else.
Take a buggy insecure OS and replace my stable, fast, easy to use OS? Sure!
And while you're at it why not replace my regular coffee with decafe.
Oh hell, why not kick me in the balls too. Because if I were stupid enough to do such a moronic thing I shouldn't enjoy my morning coffee or ever have kids.
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
linux is available in serveral flavors for both ppc and x86. so, the answer is simple, who prefers to run linux on mac hardware over generic x86 boxes? i think the answer is that most people prefer cheap hardware.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
I don't think Intel's reaction would be Microsoft's biggest problem, the legal issues relating to an attempted extension of their monopoly would be more likely to cause problems, of course probably not in the US ...
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
It makes a huge difference if your code (or more likely your compiler) was written by an incompetant monkey.
Otherwise it's a total non-issue. Data is loaded by cache lines that are 64 or 128 bytes in size in pretty much all modern processors. If there ever was any difference in performance from big endian vs. little endian (there wasn't except for above-mentioned incompetant-monkey code) then this completely erases it.
Really, this article is the techno-geek equivalent of some guy laying on the roof his car at night, stoned, and wondering if the trees have people in them.
Interesting question, yes. A little 'speculative' though.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
I remember back in '96-'97 timeframe hearing from a number of Sun vendors about experiments with NT on Ultrasparc, but could never get a demo (and we had Sun workstation vendors falling all over us to give us hardware at the time).
:-)
That's because Sun played Microsoft for a bunch of fools. Microsoft realized that Sparc was *the* platform to support at the time. As a result, they were falling over themselves when Sun offered to sign an exclusive contract to develop NT for the UltraSparc.
After the papers were signed, McNealy laughed as he happily sat on the port of NT and used his newfound legal authority to prevent Microsoft from bringing it. That's why there was a port for MIPS, Alpha, and PPC, but no port for Sparc.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
running OS X on x86 hardware can benefit you thusly: killer OS, inexpensive hardware.
On the other hand, there is no benefit at all (none, zero) to running any version of Windows on an Apple chip. Windows would be equally as bad running on an expensive G5 as it would on any other chip.
This is like asking "Would people buy a Jaguar designed and built in Detroit even though they remain as expensive as ever?". The answer is no, not many will, and fewer will like it.
TallGreen CMS hosting
NT4's PPC port ran on RS/6000 workstations, not plastic cased consumer hardware. I ran it, on a lark, on an RS/6000 Box for a short period, before reinstalling AIX.
NT4 ran on consumer PPC hardware. Around the mid '90s I recall ads for dual 604-120 Windows NT boxes. Byte magazine had reviews and pointed out that the dual 604s scaled much better than dual Pentiums.
I recently worked at a school where the science department was using a ten-year-old chemistry application, designed for Windows 3.1, which requires QuickTime 2 and will not recognize later versions. This application, as well as QuickTime 2 (which fortunately was distributed with it) installed with no problems on brand new Dell PCs running Windows XP SP1 (SP2 wasn't out yet). We're talking about an application requiring a media library created before the Registry existed. No problems.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
It's amazing that no one has mentioned this or alluded to the fact that Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft have all adopted special versions of the G5 for their next consoles.
;+)
x -2 -Inside-and-Out-Part-I/p3#memory
x -2 -Inside-and-Out-Part-II/p1#intro
More importantly... no one has mentioned that the XBOX 2 deployment box is running on Apple's Power Mac G5 with mod version of XP for XBOX2 development.
Now lets reopen the discussion flood gates...
http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/858/The-Xbo
http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/860/The-Xbo
Follow the following algorithm to experience a moment of intense joy:
;)
1. Acquire Windows for PPC.
2. Put Windows on your beautiful, pristine, PPC machine.
3. Experience the joys of Windows on PPC for one full week. You MUST use ONLY IE and Outlook Express for the full week. Your feeling at the end of the week should be similar to the expereience of waking up after a week-long bender in Tijuana, only to realize you've been having unprotected sex with an 80-year old Tijuana hooker with no teeth and a hygeine problem. NOTE: I have not experienced this... Ahem.
4. Re-install Mac OS/X on your machine, run it through a full update, set your wallpapers and so forth, then go to bed.
5. The next morning, find a sunny, beautiful spot in your apartment, power your PPC machine up, and check your email. Browse the web for a while using Mozilla. See how much better the system is now, how wonderfully it works, and realize your ordeal is over.
Relish the moment... Every now and then, if you need a pick-me-up, you can repeat it...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Microsoft has a minimalist port of Windows right now for the G5 Mac as a development environment for the new X Box. This is because IBM and Microsoft are developing a processor for the new XBox based on the POWER architecture which will be similar to the G5 used in the 64-bit Macs.
XBOX2 is based on Power5 and runs a modified version of XP.
I guess it does work?
anyone seen anything other than the screenshots?
The moniker "New Technology" was retrofitted onto Windows NT long after the product had been shipped. Originally the code was developped on the Intel i860 CPU, which was called N10 (N-Ten). The "NT" derived from this CPU. Windows 2000 says it is being "build on NT technology", which is utter nonsense, if you look at it as "New Technology technology".
The same goes with Windows CE, with CE standing for nothing. Some Microsoft guys just thought it sounded cool.
What about the X-Box 2/Next SDK? The development kits are apparently Apple G5 towers running a modified Windows environment. With Virtual PC running on PowerPC (and now in Microsoft's hands) it's entirely possible they are adapting it to run on the new X-Box development platform. This would at least allow them to investigate the feasibility in providing backwards compatability with X-Box games on a platform with a core architecture radically different from the current console.
I really look forward to seeing what is going to happen with the next generation X-Box hardware and software.
Personally; I happily use a powerbook running OS X, and would rather not have Windows computers in my life. However, if there were a PowerPC version that would run natively on my Powerbook, there may be scenarios where I might consider dual-booting, depending on the software that became available to me by doing so.
"It's going to have to chose between AMD-64 and Intel-64..."Computer manufacturers such as IBM and HP are discontinuing IA64:
:-)
HP knifes Itanium, cans IA-64 workstations 09/24/2004 Although I can't back this one up for obvious reasons, I've seen an internal IBM roadmap for xSeries and IBM BladeCenter (there is btw a PPC blade, the JS20) which was hammered out with Intel to concentrate a while on IA32 Xeon until Intel finishes switching over to the AMD-64 model. In addition to this IBM uses AMD Opteron processors on certain blades.
The AMD-64 is a much better choice for the X86 world because it simply expands on the existing model by making registers 64 bits wide much in the same way the 16-bit 8086/80186/80286 registers ax-dx were expanded to 32-bit registers in the 80386 eax-edx. IA64 "Itanium" never really caught on in the X86 world because it did not really relate to the X86 model and in order to get any significant performance out of the chip Intel compilers and toolkits were needed.
You still however have to choose between AMD-64 and PPC, though
IF and ONLY IF you want precisely that set of "stuff". I don't want a built-in monitor on my desktop Mac, and I don't want a huge dual-capable tower with multiple cooling zones either. I already have a better monitor than Apple ships on the eMac or most of the G4 iMacs, and I can't afford a flat panel.
So to buy a new Mac to replace my Beige G3 (the last Mac Apple made that had the kind of tradeoffs I'm looking for) I would have to pay a huge premium for "stuff" I don't want.
for laptops, Apple actually seems to have the advantage these days
I can get a new 15" 1024x768 Windows laptop for under $1000. I can get one with a 15" screen that can display 1280x1024 for the same price as a 14" iBook with a 1024x768 screen. If you look at the 15" Powerbook I can get an IBM Thinkpad with the best keyboard on the market that'll display 1400x1050.
The advantage to Apple, and what keeps me using my upgraded Beige G3 (G4/466 + Radeon 7000) instead of the 1.7 GHz P4 Intel box I "downgraded" from (and that cost less than this pre-iMac Mac and its upgrades) is the OS. I can't imagine why anyone would want to run Windows on anything but an x86: the whole point to Windows is the applications, and even the best just-in-time recompilers aren't going to make anything but a real x86 cost-effective.
Trust me on this, I've still got an ARC-console Alpha in the lab at work. DEC's recompilation technology was insanely great, and the Alpha is a wonderful target for recompilation because of its low overhead instruction set and massive register bank, and it wasn't enough to make an Alpha run x86 code competitively.
I can't imagine buying a PPC-based machine to run a Windows desktop (the XboX 2 is a different story, of course, again because of the applications). Mac OS X makes the price premium (the very real premium) worth it, but spending more to run Windows slower? I don't think so.
IIRC motorola had some CHRP boxes designed and almost ready to ship, about the same times jobs came back and pulled the plug on cloning altogether.
With no MACos motorola never released the CHRP (although it was rumored Beos would run on it)
Sorry, I mean "Windows has come to Itanium, who's switched"?
Think about it. Intel has spent YEARS pushing the Itanium architecture harder than anyone could possibly afford to spend pushing PPC. HP's Itanium boxes are finally getting to the point where the idea of them taking over from Alpha and Precision Architecture on UNIX servers isn't actually insane. How much impact are they making on the desktop, after all those years of aggressive promotion?
They've been so unsuccessful even getting people to think seriously about it that AMD's been able to steal a march on intel with a 64-bit extension to the x86 architecture.
Windows and the x86 are siamese twins. The only way to get people to switch from the x86 is if you can get an OS, chip, and emulation architecture that lets you run x86 code faster than the real x86, cheaper than the real x86, and cooler than the real x86... and if you do that, you'll sell it as a new implementation of the x86, as Intel, AMD, and everyone else who's built an x86 on a RISC/VLIW core has already done.
I already have Linux on PPC if I want it, so why would I want to downgrade to MS Windows? It's the *hardware* that offers little choice in PPC-land: every PPC motherboard comes with a Macintosh wrapped around it.
The problem with this idea is that the people who are interested in Thinking Outside the Intel Box are also, by and large, the people who are interested in thinking outside of the Microsoft box. And they already have a choice of solutions. One more is no big deal.
Microsoft would also have to overcome the ill will they generated for themselves with their last foray into PPC territory, which ended with many customers left twisting slowly in the wind. How long will we be supported *this* time, will be the question of the hour.
Have you ever developed software for Mac OS X? Have you ever written an IOKit device driver?
n tation/DeviceDri vers/devicedrivers.html
You write with such confidence... and yet you are so wrong.
First, Apple's G5 workstations are price competitive ($0-$1000 cheaper) as compared to dual Xeon or Opteron workstations - so the PowerPC does have cheap and powerful solutions.
Second, you don't have infinite combination of hardware on the x86 side... and any driver written for Windows can be written for Mac OS X. Where do you get off saying that Mac OS X can't "even handle adapting to all that hardware" ??? First of all, Microsoft doesn't write all those device drivers. 3rd parties do and give it to Microsoft for inclusion (in some cases) or provide CD/downloads of the drivers.
Then you go off on the "void your warranty if you open your box" crap. Absolute BS on the Mac. "only the ones that Apple approves" is more crap. Where do you get this crap?
Here is the starting point for Apple's documentation for hardware developers: http://developer.apple.com/hardware/
Here is the starting point for Apple's Mac OS X I/O Kit documentation:
http://developer.apple.com/docume
Here is a partial list of the hardware available for the Mac (over 4,500 items) most of which did not require "approval" in any way from Apple:
http://guide.apple.com/ushardware.lasso
...for the exact same reason that I'd buy a Ferrari and run it on sump oil.
There is one good reason why Microsoft might want to make windows for PPC: .NET. If they made windows for PPC (or any other cpu for that matter) the only way to make windows applications that ran on both x86 and PPC would be to write them in .NET exclusively. And since MS wants everybody to use .NET, this would be one way to do it.
.NET applications.
And I'm sure it bugs them that Apple is still around, an albeit small thorn in their side. What if MS made a slick looking stylish PC running windows on a PPC? Something to compete on the same level with iMacs? They're already doing hardware with the XBox. Aside from the DRM issues, what if they made an "X-PC" that was a suped-up XBOX with PPC (isnt the new xbox using PPC already?) but meant as home media / pc combo? Put it in a pretty box, make it play xbox games, and run Windows and
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Well, come to think of it, if it came down to Lich Nixon or Dubya Bush....
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
The only kind of abstraction layer I know of that lets you compile into a cpu independent format is a VM...
"The machine survives because the Hardware abstraction layer of its microcode (called TIMI for "Technology Independent Machine Interface" by IBM) allows the operating system and application programs to take advantage of advances in hardware and software without recompilation. This means that a program written and compiled on a S/38 can be run as a native 64 bit program. The HAL allows a system that costs $9000 to run the exact same operating system and software as a $2 million system."
From
this site
so, no I dont think a recompile is needed. As I mentioned in a previous post, a company I worked for upgraded from the old CPU style to a PowerPC based CPU. Different machine languages. The HAL was updated, the machine ran ( faster ), and we did not recompile any of the applications we had written on it.
There is nothing that you could DO with it in user mode...
I dont mean user mode. I understand that. I meant that if the same kind of architecture was in place on a PC as in the AS/400, the user mode applications would not need recompiled due to a change in the underlying CPU ( Intel, Alpha, MIPS, PPC, etc ). The HAL would change, and that would be it.
Upshot would be that you *could* have one "binary" format that would run on any processor architechure that a HAL was available for.
So you DO understand that the NT HAL doesn't provide CPU portability alone?
That was my intial point, that it does not.
If MS had gone the AS/400 route, then many binaries ( those not involved in the HAL ) *would* be interchangable across platforms.
OTOH, the HAL and part of the kernel do provide CPU portability on a source code level...
And I am not talking about at a source code level, but at a deeper level. A completely abstracted machine.
emt 377 emt 4
I wonder how the TIMI works. It does mention that
- Many customers needed merely to save their programs off their CISC machines and restore them on their new RISC machines, and the programs ran as fully 64-bit programs.
This saving and restoring-- I wonder if the files are changed by this process; converted from CISC machine code to PPC RISC. If this is true, then it would be like the dynamic recompilation (albeit with the dynamic part somewhat unnecessary) used by some emulators and VMs. Either that, or the code was never in native machine language; it was just interpreted on demand like Java bytecode. I guess if the CPU had support to natively execute different instruction sets (I think the Alpha can do this to some extent, IDK about PPC), that would work (although it wouldn't be portable to CPUs without this capability). I may be ignorant, but I'm not aware of a fourth way to make this happen.It also mentions that
- An iSeries program has no knowledge of the underlying hardware; this knowledge remains entirely within the SLIC. This means that when the processor technology changes, IBM can rewrite the SLIC components that are aware of those technology changes and thus preserve the integrity of the machine interface.
This implies that much of the operating system (more than four million lines) is not so hardware-indepenent if parts of it need to be rewritten due to 'technology changes'. Perhaps the SLIC code has only source-level portability?If you compile programs to a portable code that has no knowledge of the hardware it runs on, it sounds an aweful lot like Java bytecode, or
Heh, I wonder if the code format is openly available: it would make a third-party AS/400 program environment possible, even easy, thanks to the portibility.
- That was my intial point, that it does not.
OK I guess I misundestood; I thought you were saying that the NT HAL could do that. Maybe you were referring to the '400 TIMI, and something like it that could have been for NT?If MS had gone the AS/400 route, then many binaries ( those not involved in the HAL ) *would* be interchangable across platforms.
I guess Microsoft used only source level portibility since that was the state of the art for PCs at the time and not enough people on the dev team wanted to do it any other way.
I had an AS/400 and two RPG IV classes at college last year; that's the extent of my expierence. Really, I'm quite impressed with IBM's backwards compatibility and ability to move to new platforms with zero problems. Part of this is due to good planning in the first place, like designing the TIMI.
I can undestand that it is hard to get details on the inner workings of some of these things since IBM is even more protective of its operating system secrets than Microsoft is.
Right now, the only PPC machines shipping in serious quantities are from Apple, and they already have a better OS, so why would they preload Windows? It just doesn't make sense.
So what PPC machines are there that would/could come with Windows preloaded? No big producers that I can think of, just fringe stuff like AmigaOne, etc.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I have a friend who had been scouting for laptops recently. She looked through several X86 brands but found that with the recent models there were heat issues. If the laptop itself wasn't getting hot, it was running the fan a lot.
Being that the laptop was intended for use in class, the loud fan could be rather distracting/embarrasing. So instead she switched over entirely and got an Apple. It surprised me that she was so willing to switch to a different OS (and one-button mouse etc), but she's doing rather well. Still, I'd imagine that if windows were available for mac she would have gone with that for familiarity, as would many others in a similar situation.
Still, this gives me hope for alternate desktop OSs. If a student is willing to swap architecture and OS just because of noisy fans, perhaps with improvements the alternatives (Linux,BSD, etc etc) may gain more support. Certainly though, many would regard a switch to OSX as an improvement from XP - regardless of the change in design/use.
Yes, but as I have stated - x86 has become more RISCy since all those extra complex instructions, long unused by any compilers (and that are vestigial remants of the CISC 8086), are a) deprecated, for backwards compatibility only b) actually take longer to execute (i.e. that performance increase that made sense using them back in 8086 days isn't there anymore since the chip developers have LONG changed the internal design and maintain these instructions for compatibility only...
The CISC versus RISC battles are largely a non-issue... Today, CISC processors are based on hybrid CISC-RISC architecture. These designs use a decoder to convert CISC instructions into RISC instructions before execution. They are then processed by a RISC core, which performs a few basic instructions very quickly. An example of this would be the AMD Athlon chips, and I suppose Intel does the same as well. RISC processors too are becoming CISCy. Heck, AltiVec added 162 instructions to the G4.
RISC processors generally have more registers, and they are truly GENERAL PURPOSE as opposed to the crap one encounters with IA-32... I still say though that Sparc is the best with its register windows...
But as you might have noted, technical and design superiority is a non-issue when it comes to marketing *sigh*. If it wasn't, then my beloved Alpha AXP wouldn't be dead, ARM wouldn't be confined to the embedded/handheld market and we would all be playing Counter-Strike on our ubiquitous Power boxen.