Posted by
Hemos
on from the circle-round-round-and-again dept.
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?"
The article is quite worthless
by
antifoidulus
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
All it says is that "Apple will use intel chips", it doesn't state what kind of chips, but it does repeat itself over and over again. Maybe Apple will use Intel chips in an embedded device, maybe they are considering bringing back the mac/pc hybrid. There is really no "meat" to this story, but we can all speculate anyway.
Re:Does this mean -
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The thing that sets Apple apart from all other companies in this area is that they aren't just a hardware company or a software company. They are both. Most people buy the hardware because of the excellent software they offer on top. It's the combined experience that makes their hardware stand above the rest.
Re:Does this mean -
by
/ASCII
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
My guess is they really are planning on using Intel chips - just not processors. Remember, Intel produces wireless chips, Flash memory, Ethernet chips, and Salt and Vinegar chips.
Re:Does this mean -
by
squiggleslash
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· Score: 5, Interesting
You'd be surprised how architecturally different Apple's regular offerings are from one another. I believe even Apple's latest PowerBooks use technologies considered obsolete in the rest of the line, such as ADB for the internal bus used for the keyboard and pointing device. The G4 and G5s have much bigger differences between them than the G3s and G4s, and Apple is trying to support a whole range of systems from the ground up.
In that respect, it may be easier for Apple to switch to an entirely new CPU architecture than you might think. The additional support wouldn't be dramatic, it could continue to have a lot in common with the rest of their systems (which heavily use USB and IDE, PCI and AGP, etc), making the CPU and a few other minor details the major changes. It certainly wouldn't need a dedicated department of any serious size to support this version of OS X, it'd just be an additional platform to test the recompiled version upon.
This is, of course, assuming we're talking about Intel chips being used in Macs (with an OS X compiled to run on it) and not a generic version of OS X being developed that'll run on IBM PC clones, which is an entirely different issue.
-- You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The WSJ does have an excellent reputation, but remember what it says... "Chips." Nowhere does it say x86. This could be an agreement for Intel to get into the PPC business, which would be a great supplier coup for Apple, or it could be an agreement to switch to cheaper Intel wireless networking chips. Maybe Intel will build Apple's ROMs. There are a lot more chips in a computer than the main processor, and nowhere does it say they're thinking about switching suppliers for that or the base architecture for that.
And maybe they won't be used at all. The WSJ says they are in talks that "could" lead to using Intel chips. It's known that at least one version of Apple's OS was up and running on an x86 chip, in the same way that Microsoft had Windows up and running on a PPC architecture. It's also known that Apple talks a lot.
I'd say the chance of a complete platform shift is slight, as backwards compatibility from x86 to PPC would be a nightmare. But Intel supplying PPC chips to Apple, after the years of languishing Apple went through before IBM could deliver a G5? That's a lot more likely.
Slashdot Mirror
All it says is that "Apple will use intel chips", it doesn't state what kind of chips, but it does repeat itself over and over again. Maybe Apple will use Intel chips in an embedded device, maybe they are considering bringing back the mac/pc hybrid. There is really no "meat" to this story, but we can all speculate anyway.
Monstar L
The thing that sets Apple apart from all other companies in this area is that they aren't just a hardware company or a software company. They are both. Most people buy the hardware because of the excellent software they offer on top. It's the combined experience that makes their hardware stand above the rest.
My guess is they really are planning on using Intel chips - just not processors. Remember, Intel produces wireless chips, Flash memory, Ethernet chips, and Salt and Vinegar chips.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
In that respect, it may be easier for Apple to switch to an entirely new CPU architecture than you might think. The additional support wouldn't be dramatic, it could continue to have a lot in common with the rest of their systems (which heavily use USB and IDE, PCI and AGP, etc), making the CPU and a few other minor details the major changes. It certainly wouldn't need a dedicated department of any serious size to support this version of OS X, it'd just be an additional platform to test the recompiled version upon.
This is, of course, assuming we're talking about Intel chips being used in Macs (with an OS X compiled to run on it) and not a generic version of OS X being developed that'll run on IBM PC clones, which is an entirely different issue.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The WSJ does have an excellent reputation, but remember what it says... "Chips." Nowhere does it say x86. This could be an agreement for Intel to get into the PPC business, which would be a great supplier coup for Apple, or it could be an agreement to switch to cheaper Intel wireless networking chips. Maybe Intel will build Apple's ROMs. There are a lot more chips in a computer than the main processor, and nowhere does it say they're thinking about switching suppliers for that or the base architecture for that.
And maybe they won't be used at all. The WSJ says they are in talks that "could" lead to using Intel chips. It's known that at least one version of Apple's OS was up and running on an x86 chip, in the same way that Microsoft had Windows up and running on a PPC architecture. It's also known that Apple talks a lot.
I'd say the chance of a complete platform shift is slight, as backwards compatibility from x86 to PPC would be a nightmare. But Intel supplying PPC chips to Apple, after the years of languishing Apple went through before IBM could deliver a G5? That's a lot more likely.
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