Apple to Use Intel Chips?

Stack_13 writes "Wall Street Journal reports that Apple will agree to use Intel chips. Neither Apple or Intel confirm this. Interestingly, PCMag's John C. Dvorak predicted this for 2004-2005. Are even cheaper Mac Minis coming?"

Comments

Dvorak

[Anonymous Coward]

"John C. Dvorak predicted this for 2004-2005."

Yes but he predicts so much crap of course he'll be right eventually.

Dvorak

[taskforce]

If what Dvorak has predicted is about to come true, I fear the space time continuum will rupture spewing forth a hoard of evil flesh eating time daemons.

Nope

[fr0dicus]

ARM for iPods maybe, but otherwise, absolutely no chance. Only a fool would even think this was likely.

O really?

[yurigoul]

Stuff like this keeps coming up. Seems to be part of the Apple rumour cycle. Can we trust the source??? Using the G5 is par to of the advantage in marketing terms, as a far as i can see: think different!

Re:Does this mean -

[southpolesammy]

More likely it will mean that you'll see better pricing on PowerPC-based Macs in the future.

Why move now?

[JabrTheHut]

Why move now? Everyone's been hearing about the dual-core PowerPC chips for months, PS 3 and Xbox 180 will be running 3-core versions of this chip, so why go Intel?

Here we go again...

[tliet]

For the n-th time, what would Apple have to gain? Who would buy a Mac when they could buy a Dell. Does anyone seriously believe Microsoft would release Office for Mac OS X for Intel?

The Mac would die the day the CPU would be the same as in a generic PC. Not from a architectural standpoint, I think they could make it happen, but marketingwise.

Re:Here we go again...

[poot_rootbeer]

Well for one thing, anyone considering using OS X would only need to buy just the OS, not a whole bunch of expensive hardware as well.

You'd have to buy OS X and all the software you'd run under OS X.

C'mon, dude. The Mac mini is only $500. Apple has put out a product that seems to address your complaints about "a whole bunch of expensive hardware" as a barrier to checking OS X out, and yet you still complain about the barrier that's no longer there.

Why cheaper!?

[jerde]

And why, now, would Intel CPUs be any cheaper?

Currently all of Intel's stuff runs hotter, so Apple would have to work significantly harder at heat dissipation issues in all but their tower designs.

And what, pray tell, do you expect them to do with little-endian issues, backwards compatibility, and all those little details?

Unless Apple thinks that neither IBM or Motorola are ever going to catch up, I just can't see them justifying the huge cost of a major architecture change like this.

- Peter

Re:Does this mean -

[/ASCII]

Apple may be planning on using Intel network cards. Or maybe one of intels hardware raid chips. Flash memories, Cellular processors, wireless chips are al possible. But processors? I doubt it.

Predicting the future ain't what it used to be

[NMerriam]

Well, I suppose since Dvorak predicted it every year since 1988, he might well be right sooner or later. I guess that would be about the third or fourth thing he's gotten right in all that time.

Re:Does this mean -

[garcia]

This has been discussed before. Apple uses their x86 kernel as leverage against MSFT so that there is still Office for OS X.

The second that Apple moves into the market with OS X for x86, MSFT is going to pull Office and render OS X basically useless compared to Windows. Yeah, there are open alternatives that sorta work but in the real world people want to use what they are comfortable with. Unfortunately that's Office.

MSFT knows that if they pulled Office for OS X that Apple could easily release OS X for x86 and enter a new competitor into the OS market.

Re:Does this mean -

[/ASCII]

Yeah that really sets Apple apart from other companies like Sun, IBM and HP... NOT. All the Unix providers have exactly the same control.

You got it backwards. There are many closed architectures with one company dictating hardware and software. It is in fact the x86 that is unique in that multiple companies provide each part of the computer in an open architecture. And though this solution has it's problems, I think it has shown itself to be vastly superior to a closed system like the Mac.

Also keep in mind that if Apple where the dominating computer provider, they could probably had squished open source efforts like Linux in the cradle by closing specs and making new hardware incompatbile. The X86 may not be pretty, but I'd prefer it over a closed architecture any day.

Apple Already Uses Intel-Intel Uses What Was Apple

[adzoox]

Apple no longer owns a stake in ARM (sold it all to Intel), but they do have experience and could easily hire/rehire programmers that worked on Apple/ARM devices (read as Newton)

My guess is that this will be for a new ARM processor for the iPod - the custom chip is probably too weak for advanced features.

Intel has been wanting to move to RISC chips for some time - maybe they want to become a CELL/PowerPC production partner to catch on the wave - 100% of the gaming world will be using PowerPC or PowerPC deritives in the next year - year and a half -

Intel now owns the largest stake in ARM (bought from Apple) - this is the processor in the majority of PocketPCs, Palms, and GPS units. So - this Intel processor is most likely for a new device or even the iPod.

Also take into account that USB2.0 chipsets are currently made by Intel (and others) and that Apple uses Intel chips in the XServe line for RAID I/O.

Re:Intel make chips other than CPUs

[TylerL82]

I mean, honestly, what about this graphic says "fairly cool" to you?

The fact that those are large fans that aren't spinning at full speed.
They keep the computer as cool as it needs to be while being much quieter than the 2-3 fan PCs with fans spinning their lil' hearts (motors?) out.

Re:Does this mean -

[Shisha]

Valid point. They won't of course. I've been assuming that the major players would release appropriate versions sometime in the future. I know there are problems with this:
- Quark Xpress might take ages (again, remember how long OS X version took).
- Microsoft might actually not want to release office at all.

(actually maybe they could convert things on the fly and then cache the results, sort of a better emulation process... there is some mention of something along those lines on macrumors.com. It'll be a bit like running Java bytecode. They could then profile the things on the fly and optimize the most used parts of the program... JVM do all sorts of clever trickery nowdays.)

Anyway this is all purely hypothetical. Apple's not moving to x86 CPUs. As other people said, it's probably some random chip they might want from Intel.

Re:Intel make chips other than CPUs

[imroy]

Intel bought the StrongARM processor design from Digital a number of years ago. They now produce them under the Xscale brand. They've been used in heaps of devices, including the Compaq iPAQ, and lots of small embedded boards. Apple has previously used AMD's MIPS-based processors in some of their Airport AP's. Given the Xscale's low power/heat and relative processing power, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple use the Xscale in another funky little portable device.

Re:Does this mean -

[Anonymous Coward]

Going out on a limb here: yes.

Keeping my feet on the ground here: No.

We will see Windows on PowerPC long before we ever see the full OS X on x86. There's absolutely no advantage to changing platforms at this point.

Sure, the Intel/AMD world looked very attractive when Apple was relying on Motorola and lagging way behind in CPU speeds, but current PowerPC technologies from IBM are outstanding. The G5 is a terrific chip. Multi-core PowerPC chips offer a great deal of promise in the very near future.

If Apple does move away from the G5 archetecture, it will be to go to Cell chips, not Intel-64.

Re:Does this mean -

[lokedhs]

If you could buy the parts and build your own Mac they'd be alot more appealing to people...

In so many words: No, they wouldn't.

Very few people build their own computers. Most buy a box from their local computer store, or order it online from a company like Dell.

Also, no one would run OSX on a standard PC. Just like no one runs BeOS, or ran OS/2. An x86 Apple would probably be a proprietary Apple with an x86 in, and no one would care. Just like no one cares that there is a PowerPC in them today.

Re:unbelievable

[AKAImBatman]

It is amazing how many people still believe that PPC is vastly superior to x86.

I'm amazed at how many people still think that any performance gap (real or perceived) actually matters. The majority of your PC's performance now comes from the size of the bus, the transfer rate of your disks, and how much memory you have. No one really *needs* a 5GHz processor to run a wordprocessor, email client, MP3 player, or even something more intensive like a graphics editor, video editor, or sound studio. Even games now rely far more heavily on the GPU than they do the CPU.

Re:Does this mean -

[arloguthrie]

Most notably, the XServe Raid runs on an Intel processor. There are tons of reasons Apple would be meeting with Intel. One day, perhaps "the news" will actually be news and not gossip based on "a friend-of-a-friend told me..."

Re:Does this mean -

[Austerity Empowers]

No I think he meant to say their architecture. The PPC is a pretty well defined processor, I've used it on a number of designs way outside that of a traditional computer, but it's just a processor. You can string it to just about any impossible chain of stuff imaginable, trust me, I have. None of them were compatible with Apple's Macintosh however.

PCs and Apple's have an "architecture" defining how the chips are strung together, how expansion is expected to work, how the interrupt controller works (and yes, which interrupt certain hardwired devices are on), etc. Unlike Apples, for the PC it's not one but many standards defining their function, not one of which defines how the processor should work. Worse still, it's essentially defined as "Be backwards compatible with an PC AT from 20 years ago". No single company really owns it, although many would like to. Even the evil empire has relegated itself to "putting up with cooperation" in this regard.

I find it more likely that Apple will define their own computer architecture using Intel chips. Maybe they will do their own north bridge, in fact much of the traditional PC architecture is emulated in this device, and changing it with something else would make an incompatible system. Let's not forget that much of PC legacy crap is software as well as hardware. If Apple throws all that out the window, they may as well have defined a new Intel based system. You aren't going to install windows on it, nor will you get a regular x86 build of linux to come close to working.

Oh, for Pete's sake..

[jcr]

This same rumor has popped up just about every year since 1984. Dvorak has been predicting that Apple will go x86 every time he wanted to troll for ad hits.

Apple buys a bunch of parts from many companies, including Intel. If Apple execs are meeting with intel execs, its' just as likely to be about ethernet controllers or wi-fi transceivers.

-jcr

Punditry

[hey!]

The chief measure of successful punditry is not accuracy, but credibility. Credibility is not based on any particular insight on the part of the public, but on three factors:

(1) Telling people what they already know or are being told by other credible sources.
(2) Being considered a credible source.
(3) Thinking of arguments that sound good suporting what everyone thinks is going to happen.

If there is a bit of recursion going on here, it's simply because the basis of credibility is so flimsy. It also means that credibility is self-reinforcing, which means the hardest thing about being credible is getting on the credibilty gravy train. Which is good, because there are limited spots avaiable.

Mr. Dvorak used a time honored method for obtaining credibility of getting in early, on the ground floor.

From a technical perspective he's a bit late on the Mac/x86 speculation though, which has been rife for nearly twenty years now. However, this is actually a highly sophisticated bit of punditry timing. Apple had been off the punditry radar screen for nearly a decade at the time. You simly cannot excercise punditry on something nobody else is thinking about -- novel ideas have no basis for sounding credibile (see above).

However, by 2004, it was apparent that Apple was no longer irrelevant, that it had not only stopped the bleeding but had built a successful business, established valuable and powerful brand identity, and had reasserted its influence as a design leader, not only in the computer field, but beyond. So people started thinking about Apple again. And, in the same way that old English roads still bear the ruts of Roman chariots, their thoughts naturally fell into the grassy ruts of the MaxOS x86 idea.

Mr. Dvorak's 2004 prediction bears the hallmarks of expert punditry. First the conclusion is public property so well broken-in that nobody is apt to mind if it takes a bit of additional abuse. Secondly , of course, is the exquisite timing that only an ear planted firmly on the ground of public opinion can execute, falling on the heels of Apple's successful iMac by a mere six years. This is probably, ifyou will permit me a bit of nelogizing, the minimal period needed for effective punditric credibilogenesis. Any shorter and you're talking about something that nobody is thinking about yet -- disaster. Any longer and all the good theories for what everyone expects to happen will have been taken, and the whole idea will have to be put back on the shelf for five or more years.