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Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006
telstar writes "According to C|Net, Apple has officially decided to drop IBM, and will use Intel processors starting in their '06 line of systems. This change was rumored last month. The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech." From the article: "Apple successfully navigated a switch in the 1990s from Motorola's 680x0 line of processors to the Power line jointly made by Motorola and IBM. That switch also required software to be revamped to take advantage of the new processors' performance, but emulation software permitted older programs to run on the new machines."
Looks like they will want to snap up a bunch of developers from the PearPC project!
Have you Meta Moderated t
so... OS X86. Maybe it'll be called Chameleon instead of these cat names? crossing platforms, it will be!
Really, this has been on the table many times. When will this rumor die? Oh, and on tuesday, Steve will announce that Disney is purchasing Apple.
Hell has officially frozen over. My god they sold their souls.
...for Apple as all their current operating systems depend on correct floating-point results.
WINE is not an emulator! It's a translation layer, it's totally useless on a non-x86 platform.
Thanks for the insight. Did you happen to miss the entire point of this slashdot post?
God Fucking Damnit
So Apple is the Bizarro Microsoft.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
AsSeenOnTV, please tell us it's not true!
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
you know the world is coming to an end when the best golfer is black, the best rapper is white, apple goes to x86 and microsoft goes powerpc.
good thing i bought armageddon insurance!!
John C. Dvorak actually predicted something that happend!.
I'm scared. Hold me.
if Apple get's it's own chipset
ERROR: unnecessary apostrophe overflow
I'll eat my hat if Jobs announces a switch to Intel chips (and I'll even be there at the Keynote). The most glaring giveaway in the article that this will NOT happen is this:
Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
So Apple's going to force their Developers, the people who need to have the latest, greatest and fastest machines, to use Mac Minis to develop their software on? Not in a billion years!
There's no way in Hell that Apple could ever get away with switching low-end Mac Minis first and then top of the line Power Macs a year later. No developer is going to torture himself on a Mac Mini when they could be developing on a Dual 2.7 GHz (or higher) G5. Sure there are those that will say that Apple will let you compile on a G5 and then just test on a Mini - that will never happen either. It would increase development time by at least a factor of 2 and probably more. This would effectively kill the Mac platform.
If Apple would ever consider this (which I doubt, AMD is far better than Intel and I believe the PPC platform has a far brighter future than the x86 platform, just look at all the next-gen gaming consoles) then they would need to transition their high-end machines first if not at the same time as everything else.
Not to mention the fact that SSEx pales in comparison to Altivec. Why does this matter? Because Apple has invested heavily in vectorized libraries, especially CoreImage. CoreImage & Quartz 2D Extreme rely heavily on Altivec when you don't have a graphics card capable of running them. SSE just wouldn't be able to cut it. Also, what's Apple to do with all their engineers that have so much experience with PPC and Altivec? I could go on and on.
It would take 4-5 years or more for Apple to make the transition and optimize OS X on Intel to where it is today (Apple might have a version of OS X running on x86, but I'm sure that it's nowhere near as optimized as Tiger is for PPC). Does Apple really want to give Microsoft that much time to catch up? I think not! They'd much rather run circles around Microsoft. It will be a cold day in Hell before this happens.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Sorry, I just had to follow the trend.
I mean, that things almost a laptop already!
And a bike is almost a motorcycle.
Dude, if you're going to be reading slashdot you'd better make your parser a little more robust than that when handling malformed input.
CNet is not a rumor site. If they did not have a very creditable source they would not report it.
Holy Crap! Vijay Singh is black?!!?
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
Holy Crap! Tupac was black?!!?
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
"Inapt."
What's their best processor? The Pentium M, aka the P3, aka the P3 with modern fab and some marketing spin.
The P3 being just a somewhat revised, better-process P2; and the P2 being a somewhat revised, better-process Pentium Pro. Which was introduced in 1995. The Pentium M is a supercharged 686.
Would that be worse than hearing the plinky plonky sting that comes at the end of every other PC advert playing over the new iMac?
shudder
And I got laid! We're all fucked!
And I got laid! We're all fucked!
:(
You might be, but I'm still waiting... bastard
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
My aunt knew him when they were growing up, and said he was a crybaby jackass then, and that was before Apple.
Do you know him personally? Do you know he has a heart of gold and a soft spot for babies, dogs and old people? Do you know those mean old reporters are just jealous of his manliness, his leadership, his, his, his MOJO?
Yeah, you are being an ass.
So, Intel and Apple (though not x86) is mentioned in some rumor articles and you will now be surprised unless Apple switch to AMD x86 processors?.
My advice? Next time be wary of the difference between caffeine and cocaine.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
Frank? Is that you?
-Nano.
You have obviously had an experience with a Pentium 4 HP "desktop replacement" unit. Of which seem to actually run hotter and weigh more than the iMac G5 (once you remove the stand ;-)
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram of of x86 chip) this is the x86 processor. The x86 is a processor from Intel, but the x86 is now installed in MAC Mini. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!
Why would a x86 processor -- not even a PPC -- come be be found in MAC Mini with a bunch of Mac software? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this post? (calmly) Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this post! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a software developer posting on slashdot, and I'm talkin' about x86 on a Mac. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're sitting there reading this post and wondering where in the hell is Chewbacca... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this fine website, it does not make sense.
If x86 is now found in Mac hardware, you must accept it!
End Post.
Bet this