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Apple Switching to Intel
Steve Jobs announced at the WWDC keynote today that Apple is switching to Intel processors. MacNN has live coverage. The bottom line is that Mac OS X for the last five years has been running on Intel, the switch is expected to be complete in two years, and Rosetta will allow PPC apps to run on Intel-based Macs, transparently. If you're using Xcode, it is small changes and a recompile; otherwise, you might be seeing a lot of work ahead of you. You will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today.
Or can I homebrew an OSX box? :)
That'd be nice.
I think that IBM happily supplying the PPC-based Xenon chip for Xbox 360, while being unable to deliver 3.0 GHz chips for Apple, was the slap in the face that finally caused them to jump.
Now, the question is... what will the new platform be called? Certainly not PowerMac...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I wonder how they'll transparently handle all the endian issues? Every data file with binary integers in it will have to be converted. Arghhh!
I'm guessing that IBM/Motorolla told Apple that, due to the small # of Macintoshes made each year---as opposed to the # consoles manufactured, that they would be fulfilling Microsoft's, Sony's, and Nintendo's orders before Apples.
Watch the tool vendors scramble to catch up. Note that Metrowerks only recently sold its entire x86 compiler chain to an unnamed party to focus on PowerPC. Looks like Apple didn't keep them in the loop.
This isn't good news for many developers using Codewarrior. Either build for a second-class processor, or switch over to a new IDE (whose quality is why many keep to CW). There's a third option there, but it's not very pretty.
That's my question...I can see how Apple could choose Intel as the chip for the Mac product line, but does this mean that OS X will be runable on _any_ x86 proc?
Will intel incorporate a tasteful logo on the new macs? Or can I peel that sticker off? Seriously, doesn't intel have some licensing agreement with computer manufacturers s.t. they have to put that sticker on? Or do they actually want the sticker? Is Apple's brand strong enough that Jobs can just say no to the Intel co-branding? Of course I didn't RTFA
More music, fewer hits
...cause it's where Intel's headed. They've realised the folly of letting marketing dictate chip design (more megahurtz...joe luser demands it!) and have gone with the intelligent choice, check out wikipedia, especially the bit about Merom, does that timeframe look familiar? ;o) So they'll be selling the commodity pieces as x86 machines first, then by 2007 will have a dual-core 64-bit part for their more hardcore machines.
I am NaN
"Apple is adopting Intel, but is not "ditching" IBM."
This is a huge blow to PowerPC's credibility, though. First, Motorola had problems, then IBM couldn't deliver competitive chips. Without MAC, that leaves IBM's own machines running PowerPC, which will vastly shrink PowerPC's Slashdot fanboy club. MAC is what made PowerPC 'cool' outside of the embedded world.
It'll still be true that it's x86-64, SPARC, and PowerPC moving forward as the surviving ISAs, but the overall balance in the demographic will be quite different by a few million CPUs after two years.
Folks, you can argue the technical pros and cons back and forth until you're sick in the face, but one thing lept out at me from Steve Jobs' presentation :
"Mac OS X has been "leading a secret double life" for the past five years, said Jobs. "So today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for PowerPC and Intel. This has been going on for the last five years."
Damn. This is forward looking, hedge all your bets corporate Management. World class Management.
I don't know if this thing will succeed or fail, but just parsing that statement above shows me that Jobs and Apple Computer will continue to evaluate all possible options at all possible times.
This is one well run company.
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My guess is IBM told Apple that they are not going to be creating new PowerPCs chips useful for desktop workstations, and are instead going a different direction with the platform... i.e. maybe to support parallel processing efforts, like the Cell chip in the PS3, etc.
Faced with no long term vision that works for their needs, they had to switch to the only other alternative.
That is, it isn't supply, but product lifecycle that influenced the decision.
I'm with you. A lot of clever people are going to devote a lot of effort to finding a way to hack OS X for their homemade beige boxes.
Here's my main concern: they will succeed, and a significant "pseudo-clone" market will spring up. It will cannabilize Mac hardware sales. In self defense, Apple will force users to register their copies of OS X. No more slipping the DVD into the drive and clicking on "install". No, now you'll have to enter a 30-character registration number, and you'll have to authorize the OS within a certain time limit. In other words, I'll be jumping through exactly the same hoops that I've always hated dealing with in the Windows world.
Actually, I found that the 68K to PPC transition went pretty smoothly. Virtually everything still ran. On the first generation of PowerPC's, 68K applications ran perceptibly slower, but not by much--about like having a 68030 instead of a 68040. By the second generation, even the 68K applications were faster than on 68040.
And it is likely that this transition will probably go even more smoothly: Early versions of the PPC MacOS still were running a lot of 68K OS code in emulation; it is a safe bet that the Intel OS X will be 100% native code. And there is less hand-tweaked assembly code running around, so it will be easier for developers to simply recompile. Most major applications are already cross-platform, so developers already know what to tweak to enhance Intel processor performance.
My guess is that the transition will be smoother than the PPC transition, and much smoother than the OS X transition.
Financially, this is going to be a big bump for Apple. I'm certainly not going to order any more new Macs until the Intel systems are available. This may be one reason why they chose to do it now, when the success of the iPod will carry them through.
It may be the best decision for Apple, but I still think that it would have been better if they'd been able to reach a deal with IBM to develop the PPC further. I would much rather have seen multicore PPC's.
The question of whether the Intel OS X will run on generic Intel hardware seems to still be open. I'd guess not, but then I didn't believe that they'd switch to Intel in the first place.
The reason I'm not going to buy one...and I was this close *holds fingers very close together*...is that they are effectively obsolete. They've already told us that they're going to switch to an entirely different architecture. And I don't care what they promise about running old PPC code on new Intel chips, it's never ever that smooth. The last thing I want to do is buy a big beefy dual G5 now, and in 2 years not be able to run new programs. Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but who can say that won't be the case?
However, I think this may spur the sales of the mac minis, as it seems an effective and cheap stopgap while everyone waits for the new Intel machines to start sprouting.
I've figured it out. You may be wondering what the hell Apple's reasoning is when IBM has some very promising things in the pipeline. Well I know. The MHz myth is now dead. Even if Macs could be X% faster than PCs by using IBM chips, it's a gamble. If Apple is ahead, eventually they'll be behind, and the cycle will repeat itself. The whole argument is now a moot point. Macs will always be THE SAME SPEED as PCs (give or take a small bit at any given time) from now on. If IBM pulls out ahead in the speed race, it won't matter, because Windows PCs don't use IBM chips, and they never will. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. A guaranteed tie is better than gambling on a possible loss or a very, very minor win at best. There's also a secondary benefit: If the hardware business becomes unprofitable, Apple can always become a software company at a moment's notice. And it looks like Apple's going to make this easy enough for both end users and developers. I see all of this as good news and welcome our new Intel overlords.
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"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far"
Really? Last I checked, AMD was running circles around Intel in the 64-bit arena. Does Steve know something I don't know, or is he blowing smoke?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It doesn't shock me too much that it only took 2 hours to port Mathematica. I mean, the API for OS X on Intel is probably exactly the same as for OS X on PPC. Probably only very, very small parts (if any at all) of Mathematica are written in assembly code. You fix those parts and anything that relies on specific processor behavior then do a recompile.
The majority of Mathematica is written in Mathematica. Porting Mathematica over is probably akin to porting Emacs: you get the elisp going, and you're pretty much done.
Sure there is some code to port over, but remember that Mathematica runs on Windows, MacOS X, Linux, and Solaris, and that the majority of the code is in Mathematica and doesn't need to be changed... I'm a little surprised it took 2 hours.
Jedidiah.
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So not only has Apple dumped IBM, they also appear to be planning to dump gcc.
And with an open source kernel, how, exactly, do they plan to stop people from hacking OS X onto commodity PC hardware?
Trusted Computing/DRM? I don't see any other way then through some form of remote attestation. Given their track record with iPod DRM, i wouldn't put it past them, either.
Perhaps the Mac crowd will become the ultimate DRM apologists, claiming, with some credibility, that Mac couldn't survive if it didn't have TC/DRM involved.
A unique argument: We're using technology to preserve a monopoly - except that it isn't really a monopoly.
Maybe Apple won't let OS X run on custom x86 boxes but I wonder if Microsoft is going to release Windows for x86 Macs. This might force Apple to think about supporting all PCs. well, that's very unpropable but still we can always dream :)
I had so hoped, though, that we were finally going to get beyond the x86 architecture - that their strategy of piling kluge on top of kluge on top of kluge in the name of backwards-compatibility was finally going to come crashing down.
That the chip guys could start spending resources on actual innovation in hardware design, without having to keep one foot in the bucket of x86 binary compatibility.
That PowerPC, or the Cell, or anything with less than thirty years of binary baggage, might get out ahead and stay there long enough to put x86 to rest.
Dammit!
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
At the Stevenote, he informed devs that they would be supporting both platforms for a long time to come.
You have to wonder if maybe he's hedging his bets. If IBM or one of the PPC licensees comes out of their coma and delivers, he has plenty of opportunities to backstroke. Nothing like having some options.
... according to the developers docs on the apple home-page, Intel-based macs will not use openfirmware, also:
i gns+with+Intel+-+page+2/2100-7341_3-5733756-2.html ?tag=st.next
from cnet today:
http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch%2C+al
--------------
After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that."
However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.
Physicists get Hadrons!
[begin excerpt]
"The move is being made because Intel has "the strongest processor road map by far," Jobs is quoted as saying in a statement released as the keynote got under way.
"As we look ahead, although we've got some great products now, we can envision some amazing products we want to build for you. And we don't know how we can build them with the future PowerPC road map," Jobs said during his keynote.
The problem with the future PowerPC chips is performance per watt, Jobs said. Intel's chips are far ahead of IBM's when it comes to delivering performance without consuming a lot of power, a quality that is very important to Apple's future products, he said."
[end excerpt]
Jobs is looking for better "performance per watt" and picks Intel over AMD which was not a very smart decision on his part. Apparently he is unfamiliar with the newest AMD 'venice' core and the derivative 'Turion' AMD mobile chips which offer better performance than the Pentium M with less power consumption.
It's an ideological shift because for years the Mac Zealots have pulled the Apple line about why the PPC is superior to x86. Now they are forced to admit that PPC was a mistake.
Either that, or that Jobs has made a mistake in going to Intel.
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With AMD really becoming a major threat to Intel it got intel to produce higher quality products. Forcing them to rethink heat, power consumption more then just raw speed.
It is just in the same way that Linux forced Microsoft to improve. If you don't believe me see Windows 3.1 and compare it to windows 95 - 98. And now compare it with Windows 2000 and 2003. Microsoft OS's are much more dependable then they were back 10 years ago and much more then they nessarly wanted it to be.
Now with Mac using x86 this will probably keep the Dells, Gateways, and other honest by having With these new Macs being able to Run windows as well (although not supported). So now the consumer can either choose a well designed system, that can run OS X with all its niceties and run Windows too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The SGI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstatio n>Visual Workstation shows just how easy it is to produce an x86 based computer that is not really a PC. The biggest difference is that there was no BIOS, but ARCS firmware.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"