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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.
It's crow. Eat up. (I'll have to eat my share too.)
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Late Friday afternoon, C|Net News published an extremely valuable trade secret about Apple and Intel, days before Apple was scheduled to announce it ( Apple to Ditch IBM, Switch to Intel Chips ). So, where's the friggin' lawsuit against C|Net to find out who leaked? Where is the judge who is going to claim that what C|Net published was "stolen property"?
6 /05/apple_intel_wheres_the_lawsuit_against_cnet.ph p
From: http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/0
Man, it is cold in hell today. Brr. :P
- oZ
// i am here.
Are you sure [y/N]?
This is-- it's hard to tell-- possibly a good business decision for Apple. It's probably good for the seemingly quite large contingent of people here on slashdot who say over and over they have always wanted macs but never actually get one. For those of you in the "let's run linux on a toaster!" contingent this is fantastic, since you now have the fun challenge open to you of screwing with Darwin and getting an unauthorized port of Mac OS/x86 running on your athlons or whatever you kids are using these days.
For Apple's actual customers, this fucking sucks.
I've been using macs for... I can't even keep track. Somewhere between thirteen and sixteen years now. Shortly into this, I had to deal with a painful and extremely nasty transition, when Apple switched from the 680x0 to the PowerPC architecture. This was necessary. The 680x0 was not a growable architecture; the PPC architecture was (and still is). The PPC represented such a massive boost in power that the 680x0 could be emulated with more speed than the fastest mac 680x0s themselves offered. But it was still hard. Mac users had to deal with the obnoxiousness of fat binaries vs ppc vs 68k for years, and the slowdown when those 68k apps were running, and the 68k binaries never quite went away all the way up until OS X. Getting PPC binaries was in theory just a matter of recompiling, but sometimes relatively essential apps had been made by developers who had disappeared off the face of the planet, or had made their programs dependent on legacy programming tools without ppc support, or were just plain lazy. In practice FAT binaries were a luxury because devs generally either had compiled for 68k long ago and didn't feel like recompiling, or were compiling on PPC and didn't feel like going to the bother of compiling and distributing FAT just for the convenience of the users of a discontinued architecture.
Awhile after this, I had to deal with another painful and extremely nasty transition, when Apple switched to OS X. This too was necessary, and we'd known it was coming for years; most of us were getting quite impatient, since we'd been waiting since Spindler for an OS where we could for(int *p=0;;*(p++)=0); without having to reboot. But it wasn't effortless. Aside from random complaints about the spatial finder or migrane-inducing cutesy interference bar patterns everywhere, the mac software library was kind of messed up for a long time. Classic was not really usable except in an emergency, especially not since the early versions of OS X dealt so horribly with RAM starvation and Classic was a big RAM demand. Classic also didn't work with a lot of apps, especially in the A/V area. So this wasn't like the 68k switch, where having the wrong binary meant a little bit of slowdown; the software library had to start over at zero. Yeah, we got Word and IE and the other big apps relatively quickly, but that does not a software library make. You need support apps. You need Adiums and VLCs and Colliloquys. You know, the little programs that maybe aren't in day to day usage and maybe not everyone -- but everyone needs one of these apps eventually, and when you need them, you need them. Unless like me you were lucky enough to know how to escape into UNIX-land and use the software library there, for a long time you would find yourself periodically screwed. But, this was necessary, and this passed. It took five years or so, but the software library has now gotten to the point where if I suddenly find myself thinking "hmm, I need an app that does blah" I can look on versiontracker and more likely than not find it.
Except now this new transition is going to make that library restart once again at zero.
And this transition is different. There isn't a viable benefit to the customers. When the whole thing's done, in three years or whenever, we'll have a marginally faster computer, maybe a few tens of percents faster. Or rather so long as you weren't using any Altivec-heavy apps (since SSE is a poor replacement) and as long
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Or can I homebrew an OSX box? :)
That'd be nice.
My prediction of when you'll be able to run Mac OS X on an x86 machine is still: never. Apple isn't a software company. They're a hardware company. Just because they're changing their processor does not mean you're going to be able to run it on your hardware.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I also have been agreeing with the industry analysts who said Apple would be running on Intel chips before long, and I've been vindicated.
Now, if my prediction that Microsoft will have a Linux or other UNIX-like kernel in Windows by 2015 holds up I'll consider myself the Nostradomus of IT.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.h tml
The rumors are true: Intel will be inside
Jobs talked about the major transitions in the Mac's life -- starting from the Mac's Motorola 68000-series processor to PowerPC. "The PowerPC set Apple up fro the next decade. It was a good move," he said.
"The second transition was even better -- the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X that we just did," he continued. "This was a brain transplant. And even though these operating systems (9 and x) vary only by one in name, they are very different, and this has set Apple up for the next 20 years."
As the Intel logo lowered on the stage screen, Jobs said, "We are going to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, and we are going to do it for you now, and for our customers next year. Why? Because we want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward."
"I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven't been able to deliver that to you," said Jobs. "But as we look ahead, and though we've got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap," said Jobs.
Intel processors provide more performance per watt than PowerPC processors do, said Jobs. "When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of perfomance per watt, but Intel's roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do," he explained.
Transition to Intel by 2007, and yes, Marklar exists
"Starting next year, we will introduce Macs with Intel processors," said Jobs. "This time next year, we plan to ship Macs with Intel processors. In two years, our plan is that the transition will be mostly complete, and will be complete by end of 2007."
Jobs then confirmed a long-held belief that Apple was working on an Intel-compatible version of Mac OS X that some have termed "Marklar."
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."
Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple's Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system.
Apple needs developers' help to complete the transition
"We are very far along on this, but we're not done," said Jobs. "Which is why we're going to put it in your hands very soon, so you can help us finish it."
The future of Mac OS X development is moving to Xcode, said Jobs. Of Apple's top 100 developers, more than half -- 56 percent -- are already using Xcode, and 25 percent are in the process of switching to Xcode. "Less than 20 percent are not on board yet. Now is a good time to get on board," said Jobs.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
This means we'll be able to buy Apple hardware and run Windows software natively, through WINE or similar.
After recovering from the shock, this is starting to seem like a good move for Apple.
"I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears..."
...when huge monkeys come flying out of ones ass...
The rumors are true: Intel will be inside
Jobs talked about the major transitions in the Mac's life -- starting from the Mac's Motorola 68000-series processor to PowerPC. "The PowerPC set Apple up fro the next decade. It was a good move," he said.
"The second transition was even better -- the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X that we just did," he continued. "This was a brain transplant. And even though these operating systems (9 and x) vary only by one in name, they are very different, and this has set Apple up for the next 20 years."
As the Intel logo lowered on the stage screen, Jobs said, "We are going to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, and we are going to do it for you now, and for our customers next year. Why? Because we want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward."
"I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven't been able to deliver that to you," said Jobs. "But as we look ahead, and though we've got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap," said Jobs.
Intel processors provide more performance per watt than PowerPC processors do, said Jobs. "When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of perfomance per watt, but Intel's roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do," he explained.
Transition to Intel by 2007, and yes, Marklar exists
"Starting next year, we will introduce Macs with Intel processors," said Jobs. "This time next year, we plan to ship Macs with Intel processors. In two years, our plan is that the transition will be mostly complete, and will be complete by end of 2007."
Jobs then confirmed a long-held belief that Apple was working on an Intel-compatible version of Mac OS X that some have termed "Marklar."
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."
Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple's Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system.
Apple needs developers' help to complete the transition
"We are very far along on this, but we're not done," said Jobs. "Which is why we're going to put it in your hands very soon, so you can help us finish it."
Widget, scripts and Java applications should work in the new environment without any conversion, said Jobs. Cocoa-based applications will require "a few minor tweaks and a recompile." Carbon-based applications require "a few more tweaks," recompiling, and "they'll work," said Jobs. And projects built using Metrowerks' CodeWarrior need to be moved to Xcode.
The future of Mac OS X development is moving to Xcode, said Jobs. Of Apple's top 100 developers, more than half -- 56 percent -- are already using Xcode, and 25 percent are in the process of switching to Xcode. "Less than 20 percent are not on board yet. Now is a good time to get on board," said Jobs.
A new build of Xcode, version 2.1, is being released today. This new release enables developers to specify PowerPC or Intel architectures. "... and you're going to build what's called a universal binary. It contains all the bits for both architectures," said Jobs. "One binary, works on both PowerPC and Intel architecture. So you can ship one CD that supports both processors."
"This is nothing like Carbonizing"
Many developers reading this news may be thinking that they'll have to go through the same woes they had to in order to get their Mac OS 9 applications "Carbonized" to run on
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?
They've been building everything on PowerPC and Intel at the same time for five years. Wow.
libertarianswag.com
Fuck.
Somebody send this guy some Worcestershire sauce. I hear it goes well with felt.
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!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I think this is simply the biggest challenge Apple is ever going to take:
- From a marketing point of view
- In engineering (hardware and software)
- In communication with its partner (it seems it's already a success as Wolfram Research, Adobe and Microsoft are in the wagon)
Wow...
The powerbooks weren't cutting it and there was NO WAY to get a G5 in there.
Maybe I can get back to a 4-5hr runtime like the first generation Tibook had..
..don't panic
If it runs the same processor as my $300 Dell, why should I go spend all the money and get a Mac? Just for the OS? I'm wondering.
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
That smug bastard Dvorak was right.
Dammit.
Possibly not - the new version of XCode builds universal binaries for both Intel and PPC. So, what's the problem again?
Uh, no. They are going to put intel chips inside their machines. They will still use openfirmware, and not a pc bios, and still allow the os to only run on their proprietary machines. x86 != PC
The macworld.com live update from the keynote said they demo'd MacOS X on a 3.6GHz P4.
I wonder if it was actually a Xeon, with x86-64 support.. At this stage in Apple's evolution (and the state of the x86 market), I can't see them ever using a 32bit CPU. It just doesn't make sense.
But, that also opens a lot of other questions..
One big need is for a next generation PowerBook. What will power that? The Xeon is too hot & power hungry to use in a laptop (just like the G5). So, Intel must have a x86-64 Pentium-M in the works.
Also, why Intel and not AMD? It seems like the power management on the AMDs has been much better than Intel.
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.
Never. Apple will simply use a custom chipset in their hardware, and OS X will only run on that chipset. The chipset will be incompatible with Windows. Absolutely nothing will change with regards to compatibility between Macs and Wintels. Of course, something COULD change at any moment, and that's what's so beautiful about this plan. After Apple has successfully migrated the OS X developer community to MacIntels, it would be an easy step to open the floodgates and unleash OS X for ALL Wintel systems. My guess is that Apple isn't doing this until Microsoft is less of a threat (perhaps with a democratic administration in to pursue unfair business practices by Microsoft), but it's basically an "in case of unbridled euphoria, break glass" option.
"Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms." - Fyodor Dostoevsky -Chines
Now that Apple has announced that it is moved to Intel, who is going to buy a G5 now? I am sure as hell not. Apple just killed the sales of its hardware for the rest of the year. Also does this mean I will be able to buy a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Mac OSX Server?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
And yes, I know that many of you think it will never happen because Apple will do some shenanigans at the hardware level to make sure it never works. But I'm not so sure they can. Remember -- OS/X runs on an open-source Kernel. The point of a kernel is to be a hardware abstraction layer between the upper layer software and the hardware. This means that the part that Apple can fool with is Open Source.
Now, I'm sure they'll put in some sort of dealies here and there to test if they're running on genuine Apple hardware, but these things can be fooled.
It may take a little while, but we will definitely see OS/X running on standard hardware. And what's interesting is that Apple knows it. So here's the big question...
Will Steve allow it to happen, perhaps grudingly, and make a ton of money in the process? Yes, yes, I know, Apple makes their money from hardware. But selling software hasn't exactly hurt Microsoft, now has it? The money has always been in the software.
We'll see, should be verrrry interesting.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
...did he say anything about a two-button mouse?
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?
All of this would assume that they wanted the information kept secret. I have little doubt that if news.com was publishing this information, Apple didn't have that big of an interest in keeping it secret. With individual product releases, they are quite a bit more protective because they want to control how the products are treated in the media.
A good example of how this can work, if information came out on the shuffle well in advance of release, you'd see lots of reviews picking it apart for it's lack of a display, etc. So, before it ever hit the streets there would be a certain image of the device that could hurt their sales. But when Apple released it, they managed to spin the lack of display as a sort of feature. That the shuffle is about random playing, not picking songs out of a large library.
As far as this change goes, it doesn't really need to be handled in any particular way. They needed to keep it officially secret as a publicly traded company, but practically speaking I don't think they really cared. Ultimately the people most effected by it, ISV's, seem to have had some awareness ahead of time under NDA's (at least the bigger ones).
The end users of macs, for the most part, won't even understand what this means, or care. As long as the next mac they buy runs the software they have now and works as well as what they have now, they won't care.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It'll be available about 30 seconds after DVD-Jon releases a patch to install Mac OS X on any Dell, and it will be withdrawn about 30 seconds later after Apple mobilizes all Mac OS X 10.4 machines into a botnet to DDOS the living crap out of any server which serves a copy of said patch.
For more information, click here.
when Intel CEO Otellini said he would buy an apple.
You can defy gravity... for a short time
Its about time, but a switch to AMD makes more sense. Tables have turned indeed. AMD CPUs are more expensive faster/better. Intel has reduced prices, performance lacks. ...and now this. BTW I recently bought a P4 3.2 Ghz Prescott, so I'm on the side of facts, but the facts are obvious aren't they.
I can't help but think that Apple didn't want this move, but was forced by IBM.
IBM might have said that they weren't going to spend any R&D on the G5/970 for the laptop for instance.
And Apple was forced to take the plunge.
And now they are desperately trying to make this sound as if it will be an advantage to the end user and that it is a great thing.
But behind the scenes Steve Jobs is cursing IBM.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
(And no, I'm not just an Apple-basher. I've been using PowerBooks for years, despite the fact that their performance sucks unbelievably compared to a PC.)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It wasn't a secret. It'd been discussed on numerous sites (including this one) many many times.
Macs run on Intel and Microsoft uses PowerPC! What a country!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Oh this is so exciting.
...
Over the years, I've made a ton of bets with Mac fans who swore up and down that Apple would never, ever switch to Intel processors.
I am now owed several kegs of beer and some free fancy dinners. A couple people owe me a million bucks.
Business strategy:
1. Make wagers with Apple people.
2.
3. Profit! Steve Jobs will make the announcement for you.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Farewell?
(official "apple is dead" #94,549,238,192,204,223)
Apple has shown time and time again their resiliency to major hardware and software migrations. Once people get over the shock and awe of this announcement, people will start to realize it was a natural progression. We will be moving from a "niche" OS using a "niche" CPU to a "niche" OS using the "industry standard" CPU.
If next year, IBM sold off their PPC manufacturing, Apple would/could be dead in the water. Now that they are with Intel, they can just glide along with the industry.
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
I am, for one.
Why wouldn't you? You're going to be running the same apps, on the same platform (software) and it's a good processor.
The pc market has *never* been a "wait six months then buy," market. Everything changes too fast. Why would people deny themselves the tools they want (or need) waiting for the upgrades? Upgrades and changes will ALWAYS bee just over the horizon.
Here on /. we have moaned and whined and foamed at the mouth about Intel's hardware-based DRM plans. But some suggested that even if the Wintel world rattled down the DRM highway in lockstep, at least there would be the creative side world of Apple where Uncle Steve would put stickers on computers saying, "Don't steal movies" and maybe some half-hearted picket fences to keep the most obtuse user from figuring out how to move movies from one machine to another.
Doesn't this change everything? Won't Apple just become another fiefdom in the DRM kingdom, where users are kept in chains? Won't this mean that Macs will be just as distrustful of their owners as PCs are going to be? Cuz I'm no "pirate," and I respect copyright laws, but I hate being treated like a thief by my own equipment. If Apple is about to go down the same DRM highway, I think it's going to become my way rather than their highway. And my way will be away from Apple, and toward FOSS completely. Maybe I'll buy the last "free" PowerBook Apple sells, max out the memory, get lots of backup parts, and then run Ubuntu or something on it for the next decade.
Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple's Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system.
That means that I will be able to 100% natively tri-boot Windows/Linux/OSX on the same rig? I cannot wait to do that.
I believe that's called having your cake, eating it too, and not having to clean up.
from http://bertc.com/three_crows.htm :
Crow Pie:
1 crow
stuffing of your choice
salt and pepper
shortening
flour
2 Pie crust mixes
2-3 hard-boiled eggs
Stuff the crow. Loosen joints with a knife but do not cut through.
Simmer the crow in a stew-pan, with enough water to cover, until nearly tender, then season with salt and pepper. Remove meat from bones and set aside.
Prepare pie crusts as directed. (Do not bake)
Make a medium thick gravy with flour, shortening, and juices in which the crow has cooked and let cool.
Line a pie plate with pie crust and line with slices of hard-boiled egg. Place crow meat on top. Layer gravy over the crow. Place second pie dough crust over top.
Bake at 450 degrees for 1/2 hour.
Collected by Bert Christensen
Toronto, Ontario
Of course, I'm posting this from a G3, so what would I know.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
NeXT eventually threw in the towel on shipping 68000-based hardware. The transition from "black" NeXT hardware to "beige" PC x86 hardware pissed off a lot of early adopters.
One of the pissed-off users remixed the original audio welcome mail into this. They posted it to usenet with the readme:
I'm sure the mindless Apple fanboys are now going to find some new magic word besides "Altivec" to justify their purchases. Me, I'm just happy with this mini.
Think about it. We don't have a G5 Powerbook because we hear about the massive heat issues. Hell, just recently, I am having to take back my recently aquired G4 Powerbook because they are catching on bloody fire.
Secondly, I understand that Adobe is not making Photoshop and their other products for the Mac *first*. They are going to the PC, and then the Mac.
I mean, this quote says it all:
"I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven't been able to deliver that to you," said Jobs. "But as we look ahead, and though we've got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap,"
So they go Intel. Who cares? Most of us are using Linux on x86, and we couldn't care less. The only thing that alarmed me was that they didn't choose AMD64, but thats just me. Hopefully, this will influence developers to port their stuff over to OS X now (which would benifit Linux indirectly imo). So hopefully we'll get a ton more games (yay!... games are a wasteland on the Mac) and apps because of this switch.
Things are abotu to get interesting now. Its like Jobs saying, "OK, Gates... lets fight in your ring."
++Om
MacNN writes Rosetta can translate for old programs to use the new libraries, and that Jobs showed Office and Photoshop CS2 running using Rosetta with no slowdown. You should wait to say how Apple handles the transition. Remember, Jobs also said OS X has been x86 compatible for years, so they've had a lot of time to prepare for this switch, and it might just go very smooth.
Seriously. Who would drop many $1000s on a piece of hardware that has a lifespan of 2-3 years. You know the support for ppc apps will last a couple years before companies compile for X86 only.
And going back to 2 gig memory limit and 32 bits is going to be really fun.
Well, to be fair there's been plenty of rumors about this for a few years now, but this is the first solid proof to come out. :)
-EvilMagnus
I'll be buying them up like crazy. 5 years from now everyone will want the last of the Macs that actually worked, and had no mat errors and no overheating problems. ;-)
RTFA. The announcement is not that Apple is porting OS-X to run on ANY x86 box. It's that they're going to port it to run on THEIR x86 box. You're not going to be able to fire up OS-X on your Dell, Acer, Gateway, or eMachines PC. You're still going to be buying Apple's low-to-mid-range hardware (eMac line?). It's just going to have an Intel processor inside instead of the PPC. The release says they will be using the processor in their mid-range boxes, not their high-end boxes. So the demographic who will be buying the G5s in the future are be the same ones who're buying it now. People with a need for a stinky-fast machine that runs OS-X.
Also does this mean I will be able to buy a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Mac OSX Server?
Not likely. See above.
...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
I, for one, welcome our new Intel overlords.
Like Jobs said, most apps are simply recompile. It will take only a couple months to get most apps you find on things like versiontracker over to the Mac.
It makes PC game conversion simpler and less expensive. No more big vs little endian problems or re-writing X86 assembler.
It allows for cheaper hardware, meaning the pros can buy a cheap intel Mac to play around on to see if the transition will hurt them or not before they all change over in 2007.
It gives Apple choice. If Intel continues to lose out to AMD, Apple can switch without losing compatability.
It also showcases the amazing portability of Mac OS X.
Last but not least, would be if they let you run Windows side by side with the Mac OS on dual core or multiprocessor machines. This would let "switchers" use both until they can transition to the Mac OS and let Mac heads play all those PC games they have been missing out on. I think this may be just HUGE for Mac gamers.
We shall see what the fallout is, but I think on the whole, this is a very positive and smart move for Apple.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Apple is making the transition to Intel processors (which does NOT mean that MacOS X will run on commodity x86 hardware).
Why? Steve mentioned a lack of a PowerPC roadmap. Leander at Cult of Mac mentioned possible Intel DRM to enable iTunes for Movies. Everyone mentions that we haven't seen a PowerBook G5.
Why now? We all know that Apple's going to take it on the chin in the Mac hardware sales division. But Apple can take that hit right now. It has the well-known $4 billion in reserves. And it also has the iPod and iTMS - which have been bringing in a large percent of Apple's profits lately. With iPod running high for, well, the next year or so, that can prop up the Mac division through the transition slump.
-- Niherlas
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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Gee, I thought the Mac was impervious to viruses, spyware, and worms due to the bullet-proof security of OSX. Now you're telling me that it was due entirely to the PPC platform?! Who would have guessed?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The preview includes the computer itself. A 3.6GHz P4. "Read the keynote"
-JD-
Yes, I don't see Apple releasing 'OS X for Windows', ever. And the fact that their BIOS is completely different will prevent most folks from booting OS X on PC hardware.
But... VMWare and Microsoft can now make changes to their virtualisation software (which, remember, can emulate any hardware they chose to code, limited only by the CPU architecture) so we can run OS X in a Virtual Machine at native speeds.
That would be pretty damn cool.
-EvilMagnus
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.
C|Net has an update to their article with some more specific news regarding OSX on any old PC:
"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."
When the new G5 towers were rolled out two years ago with the promise of hitting 3 GHz within a year, we annoying Mac Zealots practically creamed ourselves. G4 and G5 chips did outperform Intel offerings at the time on a per-clock-cycle basis.
However, two things happened since then to change all that.
First of all, IBM dropped the ball. Badly. It's been two years, and the G5 is just now hitting 2.7 GHz.
Secondly, Intel came out with a new line of notebook CPUs which kick G4 ass six ways from Sunday, and the G5 is simply to hot and power hungry to consider in a laptop. Powerbooks are absolutely vital to Apple's present and future. They've always been leaders in notebook hardware, and it's simply killing them that they've been losing that edge.
So the choice for Apple is: Stick with G5 and continue to stagnate, or change. Given that they've decided to change, they wisely decided to give their devs a year to ramp up for it.
This has the added bonus of pimping their Xcode and Apple Dev licenses to software houses which have been using Metroworks Codewarrior up until now. Win-win, as far as Apple is concerned.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Man, it is cold in hell today.
However this is nothing new to long term Apple users, we already have our Parka's from when IBM was transformed from the "Satan" of the Apple universe into a partner. Keep in mind that unlike Intel, IBM was an actual competitor. Intel was merely a supplier to competitors, well, that and a convenient whipping boy for marketting material of questionably accuracy.
I sure as hell will. I need to upgrade my system now, and this news does not make all G5 computers obsolete instantly. I'm not going to wait a year to buy a new computer, that's just silly talk.
I'm going from an AMD PC to a Mac G5 dual desktop. Strangely, when I upgrade again in a few years, I'll be going from PPC to Intel. Go figure.
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
Now, if only they could support C++ with Cocoa
You can use C++ with Cocoa, as well as mix C++ with ObjectiveC. ObjectiveC is evidently an acquired taste, though I don't know of many programmers who have wanted to use C++ once they got used to ObjectiveC.
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.
What's the fourth horseman???
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
You so need to sit down and take a chill-pill. Being x86 will not make it easier to make viruses. That whole aspect will depend on the OS, and it is still OSX. And your friends computer is suddenly not going to stop working. The transition is not happening for a wee while yet, and so Apple will still support his system. They're even going to allow the production of dual platform binaries. You're just getting worked up over nothing. I just think you and your friend are zealots - mac on x86 may be good. They might even have the rights to licence altivec over to intel processors. Just chill...
Have you seen what happens when people try to bring Objective-C features into C++? TrollTech tried with Qt.
You get a complex meta-language layered over the top of Qt that involves a lot of complex memory semantics, another special compilation phaze that's obnoxious to deal with, special build tools that lack flexibility, and odd syntax that editors don't recognize.
It's a nightmare. Objective-C is a much better language all around for GUI programming. C++ has its place, and that's why ObjC and C++ can talk and play nice. But pure static typing (inferred or lexical) in Applications is going the way of the dodo, get on the bus now or be left behind.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Nice post Troll, you really doesn't have a clue how IBM makes its money nowdays, does you?
The main problem is that Mac frequently does this to their userbase.
They did the m68k to ppc migration, which was really rough, both for early adopters of the ppc platform and over time, those who bought m68k macs near end of the product life left out in the cold when new applications released.
Then, as the pain of that faded, they scrapped the also crappy classic OS9 for OSX, which caused essentially the same pain, but less so....
Now the pain of that migration is at and end and they are jumping processor architecture again, which is a really painful deal. They claim that their technology would be able to execute ppc code effectively, but they made similar claims at m68k to ppc time and that didn't work out either.
This time at least should be a pretty final step, if going to x86-64, since the architecture is a competitive one (AMD vs. Intel) and so much of the world runs on it, if it got screwed somehow, more than Apple would suffer. Picking m68k over x86 was a simple misprediction, picking ppc over x86 again was a mistake they are finally owning up to.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Thanks for correcting the troll before I had a chance to do so. There's nothing quite like someone screaming "RTFA" when they haven't done so themselves. I also get a huge kick out of the "Apple is losing their edge" trolls. The modern Apple is all about the style and user experience. OS X will still only run on Macs, Apple industrial design will still be the object of much lust, and people will still either love or hate it, based on random points of zealotry that have little to do with the actual usability of the system. Whether it's powered by a G5, pentium, or a squirell, as long as the eye candy is rendered smoothly, people will drool.
C|Net's article created fantastic media buzz for Apple. I'm betting that ten times as many people followed today's keynote address than otherwise would have. This allowed Steve to explain the transition in the best possible light, to a huge audience. And I do think he did a great job of putting a positive spin on this, with the CEO of Intel and the cofounder of Wolfram Research as eloquent guest speakers.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Possibly not - the new version of XCode builds universal binaries for both Intel and PPC. So, what's the problem again?
The problem is when some "smart" developer decides to save space on his binary by simply not compiling in PowerPC support because "his userbase doesn't have that significant of a percentage of PowerPC users anymore". That's fine and dandy to the majority of x86 Mac users, but what about those left with a perfectly good aging PowerPC system?
They're suddenly unsupported and that's a horrible worthless feeling with nobody to blame it on except Apple for making, at worst, an arbitrary platform shift. At best, it's a failure of engineering which isn't terribly reassuring either.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
But Apple (well, Jobs) has always placed "insanely great" ahead of backwards compatibility. I wish Microsoft would dump their baggage and create something new once and a while instead of simply adding more and more useless features to the same bloated code.
As the old saying goes, to make an omelet you have to first break some eggs. I applaud Apple for its willingness to take chances and for breaking so many eggs.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
The first thought that pops into my head, is: "why 386 instead of AMD64?" The 386 is finally on the way out, so it seems strange that anyone would migrate to it nowdays. But everyone seems to be inferring that that is what Apple intends to do.
But they didn't say 386, they said Intel.
So that makes me wonder if they're doing something weirder, like migrating to the IA64(Itanium) or maybe even an Intel PPC clone.
If they really do mean the 386, as everyone seems to think, then WTF are they going to do as the 386 fades? Mac users do lots of multimedia work, and they're going to be among the first to bitch about the limits of 32-bit address spaces. Is there going to be Yet Another migration right after this, where "fat binaries" contain code compiled for 68k, PPC, i386, and AMD64? Sheesh.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yeah, because all of the most important apps we need to run aren't cross-platform. Like Photoshop, Illustrator, Office, etc.
...so what's left? Final Cut Pro? I would suspect that they're already on board.
Oh, wait.
So, what big Mac apps are there (which aren't made by Apple) that aren't already cross-platform?
I suspect that the Rosetta emulation will be sufficient for smaller apps, it's the big ones I worry about.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
virus will never have been easier to port, so does worm, spyware et al.
Sorry, but I need to put the smack-down on this right now. You haven't a damned clue about how this stuff works. Virii and worms depend largely on application-level "design features" or exploitable holes to get a foothold on a system. Virii, worms, and spyware also utilize system call and system library/framework calls to further establish that foothold and/or effect their individual program functions. These have nothing to do with the particular processor architecture.
Where processor architecture matters is in low-level binary exploit code such as the "shellcode" used to take advantage of a particular processor architecture. Simply put, anyone who's capable of actually writing shellcode for one platform can write it for another with a modicum additional effort and docs easily downloaded off the 'net.
The best example of this is a white-hat security company whose developers got tired of writing assembly. So they wrote a suite in Python that lets them give a high-level description of the exploit and target app parameters -- the Python code then generates the appropriate shellcode for every platform out there. Got a version of OpenSSH with a known exploit? Think you're safe 'cause you're on (SPARC, ARM, PPC, etc.?) Think again. These guys don't even have to click a button to do the translation; the high-level app just generates and tries various platform's shellcode, possibly hinted by system fingerprinting runs.
If there's any protection to be had, it's in the different OS platform layers (e.g. no ActiveX, radically different system libraries, etc.) rather than processor architectures.
I see alot of comments about how OS X will never run on commodity x86 hardware, how the x86 BIOS and OpenFirmware are too different, blah, blah. Newsflash! Darwin, the core of OS X has been running on x86 almost since it was first introduced to the public [1], [2], [3].
The core of OS X is booting and running on commodity hardware NOW. There is no speculation needed. It's here.
I also hear complaints about how now Apple is starting from scratch again with their software base, libraries, etc. Newsflash #2. They're almost starting from scratch, but with a much larger audience, AND a more enthusiastic developer base (see [1],[2],[3] yet again, and [4]).
Steve Jobs knows this. Why do you think he's releasing this preview for developer consumption now? Because by the time the x86 Apple machines actually ship, developers and users will have already been running full Darwin/OS X x86 system for quite awhile. He's leveraging early adopters and the OSS movement. This will be a far better transition than the m68k/PPC was.
[1] http://www.opendarwin.org/
[2] http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
[3] http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
[4] http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
RTFA, dude.
1) Apple never stated that PPC chips weren't more powerful now, only that according to Intel's and IBM's roadmaps, they won't be more powerful in the future. And they actually didn't make any mention of total power, just "power per watt", and we all knew that this was the reason they couldn't get a G5 in a PowerBook anyway.
2) Your friend's computer is going to be just as useful as it would have been if they hadn't announced the switch. They're not even going to start switching for another year, and that's likely to be the platforms that require low heat dissipation requirements, i.e. notebooks.
3) This will have virtually no effect on most end users. All software will run seamlessly on both Intel and PPC for years. The software that needs to have a speedup on Intel will of course have to be recompiled, but much software probably won't show a demonstrable difference (especially software that's primarily just a front-end for Apple technologies like QuickTime or Core Image).
4) This will have no effect on Java developers, perl developers, web hosting, etc., and virtually no effect on developers who use XCode (e.g. Mathmatica, which was ported in 2 hours, despite having "code dating back to the Reagan administration"). The only developers who will suffer a significant impact are the 20% of developers who haven't started a switch from Metrowerks.
Microsoft needs to do this by telling Intel that they're expendable. They send this message to their closest business partner (Intel) do this by making a deal with their biggest enemy (the guys who pour billions into Linux) for the XBox just to prove it can be done.
Intel has the harder job of needing to prove that Microsoft is expendable. They do this with Linux initiatives and by working with guys like Apple. Even if they paid Apple to use their CPUs it'd be important to Intel to show that another commercial OS can run on Intel chips now that all the proprietary unixes (sco, hpux, etc) are dead.
The real winner in the MSFT/Intel war - the consumer who will benefit as Intel and Microsoft both drive each other into zero-profit commodity suppliers.
He says that the P4 roadmap is more promising than the PowerPC roadmap, but the G5 PPC has had a faster growthrate in clockspeed than the P4, and has a much better vector engine. I think Jobs just can't bear the fact that he stuck his foot in his mouth on the 3GHz thing, a wall that has stumped the ENTIRE semiconductor industry and not just IBM. IBM has MUCH better R&D than Intel and comes out with semiconductor innovations like it's a bodily function: dual core, copper wiring, SOI, 90nm, etc.
They've been ahead of Intel by a wide margin. AMD, as ubiquitously pointed on on /., would have been much smarter.
Stupid fucking move.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
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."
Read this carefully and you have a HUGE opportunity for Apple and a HUGE problem for Dell, HP and others. If you buy a Dell you get Windows and/or Linux. Buy and Apple and you will get OS X, Linux and Windows. Apple suddenly becomes a "partner" of Microsoft because Microsoft doesn't sell hardware. Imagine Apple and Microsoft entering into an agreement to bundle a version of Virtual PC that includes a copy of Windows Whatever. Microsoft instantly achieves near 100% market share and at the same time kills any monopoly argument because Apple builds the ultimate choice machine. Apple could enter another agreement to bundle with Red Hat and offer an out of the box tri-boot system that would be a developers dream. Apple gets the sweet irony of Dell and others being screwed by Microsoft. Their dependence on Microsoft to provide them with an OS and their complicity in building a monopoly that now screws them by helping remove the one thing that protected them from the best hardware company in the business.
Short term this will kill Apples hardware sales. I know I am going to hold off replacing my desktop for a year. But long term market share will be determined on Apples ability to produce machines and market them.
JMHO
Yes, this a bold move, but if Apple can pull it off, Microsoft might actually have to work for their money for once on the desktop.
You mean, developers can buy the transition kit today, compile the new binary for the weekend, and wait for one year til the first intel based mac to test it next June?
That's brilliant!
Of course this means you'll have to check if the software you're running is compiled to run on the system you're using.
I wonder what this will do to commercial deployment ton Mac OS? Games? Adobe?
It's not binary computability, you have to recompile, which means that $2,000 a graphics artist just invested in Adobe and Macromedia software is down the tubes if they want to upgrade their MAC. My employer is having a lot of problems with customers who are in the middle of massive MAC upgrades. What do you think this will do? A lot of newspapers are struggling with getting upgraded to Mac OS X machines, now they'll have to worry about if the software they're installing is for MAC OS X PPC or MAX OS X Intel?
And now our client software has to be recompiled for, tested on and deployed on MAC OS X PPC or MAX OS X Intel? Please.
I was considering a MAC before, and I'm ditching the idea now. I'll keep the iPod that I got as a gift, but I'm not investing anything in their hardware.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
As one of the few Terra Soft / slashdotters, it is my pleasure to represent the company on this situation:
I guess you're wrong.
This is a change, and a big change at that, but our business has changed before, and we're fighters. Apple isn't the only company producing PPC hardware, and we already have established business connections with several other PPC-based manufaturers.
-AJ
no comment
Absolutely. Post the pictures too.
So not only has Apple dumped IBM, they also appear to be planning to dump gcc.
I don't think so. I think they'll be pointing at IBM and saying, yeah, it was a really good platform up till now, but those guys in the suits dropped the ball on us, are too stupid to get the G5 right (a well-publicized problem), and Intel took the lead with the new Pentium portables. Fuck this -- we have always gone with the best chip out there, starting with the 6502, and we always will. Heck, with all of the Intel ads out there, your average consumer probably saw the PowerPC as more of a problem. Like, why aren't these guys using "the Centrino" like everybody else?
In fact, after a bit of quick footwork, this will be a beautiful position for Apple to be in. Look, they can say, this is what you can do with a Pentium -- if you have OS X. Look, kids, same hardware has your Windows box, but not one single virus, no crashes, no maleware...
Having Intel and Apple dovetail their marketing efforts -- scary, actually. But not bad.
It also about supply, IBM was bad enough making enough processors for Apple. AMD is a lot smaller than either Intel or IBM... They would be betting their future on a company on the ability for AMD to fill their demand. I don't think it was a risk they were willing to take.
Disclaimer: I am an OpenOffice.org Mac OS X devleoper and a founder of the NeoOffice project
Quote: This means OpenOffice.org 2.0 will work *now*. This means no more second-class Mac versions of popular OS apps.
This statement couldn't actually be farther from the truth. In fact, it will actually make the push for OpenOffice.org, at least, more difficult. If you dig into the details it means there's much more work ahead:
Changing processors does nothing to help OpenOffice.org development on Mac OS X except slow it down yet again. Chances are you'll probably see it running in an emulator for a long time before it's running on Mactel hardware.
ed
My apologies to Mr. Orwell, but it must be done:
At this moment, for example, in 2005 (if it was 2005), Apple was at war with Motorola and in alliance with Intel. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Apple had been at war with Intel and in alliance with Motorola. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Apple was at war with Motorola: therefore Apple had always been at war with Motorola. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
I desperately need a big endian machine for compiler development. Little endian just hides too many programmer errors.
When I bought a G4 PowerBook 3.5 years ago (wiped OS X and installed Debian), it immediately enabled me to find errors in the g77 I/O library that only came to light on a big endian machine (before that I had a Pentium II Compaq Armada).
I hope IBM will deliver a PowerPC 64 based Linux laptop within a year, otherwise I'll have to switch to a SPARC one, which Sun undoubtly will tout as "one more sale of Solaris" (ugh).
Note the date: 03.18.03:
"Apple Computer Corp. will switch to Intel processors within the next 12 to 18 mo nths."
Oops. Nope, he's wrong here; off by a few years.
"Apple will announce its Intel initiative by showing a transition machine that us es both the Intel and Motorola processors."
No, wrong again. None of this dual-core nonsense; it's all or nothing.
"Apple will announce its use of the Itanium chip,"
This is funny. Even back in 2003 it was clear that the Itanium was a dog, doomed to fail.
"Waiting until 2004 is too risky,"
Heh. Enough said.
Like someone else said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. So, just refer back to his previous predictions if Dvorak gets too smug for you.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Even worse, as long as we're admitting stuff, the boxes weren't all that shiny!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
nah, you'll buy a mac for the same price, and it'll look the same and work the same (only faster). I don't see how a switch from powerpc to x86 is an ideological shift or anything.
Apple has been slowly transitioning from proprietary hardware for a very long time. 20 years ago the system was all SCSI/68000/3.5" floppies (when PCs were IDE/x86/5.25"). That stuff cost too much money though (economics of scale), so they switched. The only thing left was the CPU, and its been killing them.
As long as the machines are still built by apple exclusively, this'll be more-or-less transparent to the mac user.
Jeremy
Since the hardware abstraction happens at the Darwin level, I would expect
that if Apple wanted to, they could make OSX run on anything that BSD runs on.
Think about it. They've abstracted enough to make a smooth (presumably)
transition from PPC to x86...they can probably transition to any architecture
they want without too much trouble.
*sigh* back to work...
Steve Jobs ventures forth from Apple to make startup NeXT. Steve dumps proprietary NeXT architecture and ports NeXSTep to beige box PC, killing off NeXT. Steve returns to Apple with much fanfare, and does his trick again by killing Mac by porting OS X to beige box processors. Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems tries to pull a half-assed Steve Jobs, and fails with *two* architectures. HP pulls double-assed Steve Jobs with reverse twist porting HP/UX, NonStop, and VMS to Itanium and kills market for all three!
My thoughts exactly. I need to buy a new laptop asap. My old Powerbook is dead as dead can be. I'm half tempted now to just buy a low-end Dell and slum it for a year or so until the new computers come out. Why would I invest in a new Powerbook today that will be the abandoned hardware in one year. I realize that the support won't completely dry up, but come on, $3000 for a new fully loaded Powerbook that won't run the newest versions of the OS in about a year. That worries me.
Apple posted Intel Universal Binary documentation to their website. It's interesting, and everyone should read it. Notable is a caveat that OpenFirmware is going away. That seems to point towards more standard hardwware.
Your G4 processor was obsolete when you bought it.
It's not like your PPC is going to stop working next year. It's not like Apple is going to abandon PPC users. I'm sure that eventually, like the 68000 series, the PPCs will stop getting updates. I'm sure that date is a lot farther in the future than the usable lifetime of a G4 mini.
Personally, I'm still going get a G4 mini. I'm sure they will be faster, maybe cheaper in the future. Such is all technology.
Just a couple of initial thoughts... I personally don't have any real problems with Apple going x86. Here's why:
1) higher performance per watt
2) more likely-interchangeable PCI / AGP cards
3) Full-speed Windows / Linux / BSD emulation (think VMWare as opposed to Virtual PC)
4) Better Linux / BSD support
5) Less effort in porting (Windows API issues aside, which will possibly be solved by #3)
6) finally, we'll see the NeXTSTEP fat binaries in action
and the bad:
7) no more AltiVec
8) no more elegance in instruction set
9) fewer GP registers to play with
10) the death of the FreeBSD-ppc effort (not that NetBSD/ppc won't live on and flourish)
So basically, in 18 months:
:)
Microsoft will be shipping PowerMacs based on IBM PowerPC processors to developers who are programming on the Xbox360 platform, and
Apple will be shipping PowerMacs running OS X, based on Intel processors, to consumers.
Tell my wife I loved her and sorry about the brains on the monitor, because MY HEAD ASPLODE!
Heh, it gets worse. Enderle was right too.
Enderle vs. Chaffin debate from macnewsworld.com
Even the concerns about things like endianness are not really a problem so long as the code was written the right way in the first place.
you mean, "using Emacs as your editor?"
Sorry. Sorry!
Yes... things always work if done the right way.
I share your lack of surprise about Mathematica if you'll share my lack of surprise that a lot of things will not port smoothly. (especially that endian thing).
-pyrrho
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.
If it runs the same processor as my $300 Dell, why should I go spend all the money and get a Mac? Just for the OS? I'm wondering.
And how is that any different from yesterday? Apple's OS and bundled software are the only reasons to buy a Mac, PowerPC or x86. Other than the rare zealot no one really cares what CPU is inside, many Mac users probably would be surprised to find out they had a "different" CPU. The whole PPC vs. x86 thing was just marketting BS(*), hopefully you already knew this.
(*) In general PPC offered a 25-30% advantage over an x86 of the same clock. This advantage was nullified by large clock discrepancy. Apple reacted to this by offering dual CPUs. This was a fine short term stop-gap measure but a pretty expensive long term one. There are a few applications out there that really benefit from a RISC architecture but they are not what normal users are running. If Apple decides to use 64-bit x86 then these apps will not suffer much, if at all. When you build your app for 64-bit x86 you get some architectural improvements, more registers for example.
Over Christmas, I plunked down $2000 I'd been saving for the past two years to get myself a G5. I love it; it's fast, efficient, and does everything without a hitch. I'm doing a small time documentary using Final Cut Express, and planned to take this machine with me to college.
Now, I'm supposed to sit back, and listen to Apple say, "Looks like what we were 'committed' to was a facade, expect the lifespan of your computer last only until we decide, and there's nothing you can do about it." Where does this put me? Where?
There's no way ATI or NVidia plan to support this hardware anymore, it's obsolete, so no more new video cards in the future. The RAM to run this thing? Well, no point in making that anymore, the computer is obsolete, prices are going to skyrocket. It'll only take two hours to port a program? Tell that to all the OS 9 developers who never bothered to get their stuff converted to X, even though that was supposedly "fast and easy" too. And then for Apple to have the balls to come out and say that this has been in the works for the past five years, but not have any kind of warning whatsoever? I'm a high school junior on a limited budget- Small time upgrades are all I have or will have the money to pay for. Had I known I was putting down $2000 in sweat and blood for something got the rug pulled out from it six months later, I would have waited. Now what? In three years, after their transition is over and Apple drops their support for the G5, then what am I supposed to do with this worthless, unupgradable hunk of metal at my feet?
Shame on you, Apple. The whole reason I went with you from the first place was the fact I thought you didn't double-cross your customers. The sad thing is, too, I've put too much money into this OS and machine to switch to anything else.
Sell your machines, make your profits, get your stock price up, Apple. But just remember, you're now the very thing you sought to be different from. Thanks a lot.
Apple has four major advantages over the position Be held:
1. A much larger base of loyal customers.
2. A much stronger reputation. (Over a year before Be sold its assets to Palm, I had prospective employers look at my resume, see my internship at Be, and say "Be, I remember hearing about them. They went out of business, didn't they?")
3. A much larger and more visible community of software companies which support them.
4. A much deeper pocketbook ($7 billion in the bank, $11 billion/year revenue, $1.2 billion/year free cash flow)
If Apple doesn't wait too long to embrace an identity as a software company, OEM is not the only route. There are a lot of people, myself for example, who prefer MacOS to Windows but use Windows exclusively because we need Windows-only software and can't justify buying twice as many computers. If Apple offered a boxed software OS X for vanilla Intel PCs, I would gladly spend a couple hundred dollars to be able to dual boot. This didn't work for Be, but it might work for Apple, because as I argued above Apple is not Be.
Another route Apple could take would be to make an implementation of the Cocoa API which can be compiled into a Windows app, and sell it to software developers as a way to make a more stable, more reliable app that will with just recompilation run on 1) Windows PCs, 2) Apple/Intel PCs, and 3) Legacy Apple/PPC computers.
Strategically, the second route is Apple's best counter to the possibility of Microsoft breaking Office for OS X (short of Microsoft's reluctance to abandon 16+% of their upgrade market), since whatever Office substitute arises on Macs (AppleWorks, WordPerfect Office, Lotus Smartsuite, OpenOffice, something new, whatever) would instantly become a credible substitute for Office on Windows PCs.
Yes, this is a risky route for Apple to take. Yes, Be failed when they tried a similar route with less resources and community support. But I think they have a good chance of succeeding, at least enough to stay viable.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Um. RTFA?
It doesnt _have_ to "work both ways".
New binaries will be released with both PPC and x86 object code - "universal binaries". Generating them will be as easy as a click of a button (xcode 2.1).
OSX has had this ability for a _long_ time thanks to bundles and property lists which make all this architecture-specific stuff transparent, flexible, and forward compatible.
Now if a vendor chooses to release an x86-only OSX build of their application, then that is their choice to make. But it is a stupid one as they lose out on a huge existing market of PPC macs. So your complaints should be directed at stupid lazy vendors -- not apple.
I think this will finally kill of the PPC as a general desktop processor. With no major OS pushing it forward, all alternative platforms hoping for a major breakthrough should probably attempt to get off the architecture if they want to survive.
Incredible how the x86 is becoming the defacto desktop CPU, there is just no way around it anymore :/
- barkholt
In 2007, Apple announces they will be phasing out OS X and installing Windows XP (or Longhorn) on all future shipments.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I value ingenuity. I value openness. Most importantly, I value liberty.
That sounds more like a free operating system running on commodetized parts.
Play Command HQ online
Quite simply, Intel no longer uses CISC. Sure the instruction set is CISC, but it's all microcode reduced to RISC instructions underneath the hood (which was done WAAAY back with the Pentium II and may have partially been implemented on the original Pentium). MMX has been dead for a while, replaced by SIMD and SIMD2, which can actually run in parallel to the floating point unit and no longer requires a context switch. Seriously, though, outside of the math world, you probably don't need either unless you're doing software rendering of graphics - the original reason for MMX was to speed up processing of games and video effects in software and this work is now pretty much entirely handled by the GPU.
Apple would be idiotic not to include something akin to VirtualPC - or maybe even more like VMWare - on these new macs, to let them run windows at near-native speeds on top of OS X
Thereby removing any incentive for developers to target OS X. See OS/2. The bad thing is, this will happen whether Apple supports it or not.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Did you ever have to QA an Adobe Photoshop plugin?
This adds an architecture to the process.
This also complicates corporate roll outs of upgrades, as well as the purchasing process for companies.
Saying it's only a recompile away is an easy thing for the Linux crowd, especially when two thirds of the users compile form source when installing anyway.
Tell that to the Newspaper IT department that has to roll out a Photoshop upgrade to 300 users on a mix of Mac OS X machines with different OS versions and now different architectures.
And don't forget all the users who will take their new Mac, load it up with the install CDs from their old Mac and call IT demanding to know why Photoshop is running slower than it did on the old Mac. Telling the user about thins like the performance hit from Rosetta emulation wont, fly, and will make the IT department look bas, especially to PHBs and PHUs.
The fact that Adobe can release a new version doesn't make it any better to deal with. You quickly hit the point where it's enough of a headache for management to tell the graphics people to suck it up and switch to Photoshop on the PC.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
ibooks and mac minis are made by ASUS.
From the article...
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.
So if they haven't been compiling on the x86, Intel must have been producing custom chips, chipsets and instruction sets for Apple for the past five years. Of course its going to run on an x86!
I don't want to read
My reasoning: Apple and Intel have to prove that this will work and they have to do it fast. Apple doesn't want people in late 2005 going, well, it's only six months, we know it's going to be the low end, I won't buy my Mac Mini or iBook then...you need to surprise people just the way Scotty did it on the Enterprise: Give them a longer time frame and then astound them when you beat it. Intel has a thing or two to prove, and they already built that little Mac Mini clone thingy, which I bet was a proof of concept for something that had to do with Apple. You also want to have PowerPCs and Pentiums side by side in the Apple Stores as soon as possible so people get used to the idea -- just like Linux, where it is just assumed that it will sort of run on anything.
The main problem are going to be the portables. The G4 is at the end of its rope, and the iBooks and PowerBooks are way behind the pack, especially the 12" PowerBook. But you can't upgrade the iBook to a Pentium without pissing off the PowerBook people, and if they don't upgrade the PowerBooks soon (like, tomorrow), I don't think anyone is going to buy them for a very long time. That is going to be a critical step for Apple.
Oh well. I guess the reason why Steve Jobs is a billionaire and I'm not is because he has this stuff figured out...
Available here.
-ch
I don't think dual booting will happen. Too much work, and makes Mac users reboot (and we love doing that!)
I think the more likely scenario is a version of Virtual PC that doesn't suck. Runs the windows code semi-natively...
WHAT REASONS are there to spend the extra $500?
$500 would be no problem. A nice case alone costs nearly $200 and no one can touch Apple when it comes to industrial design. They know how to make things that LOOK GOOD. And lots of people think the Aqua GUI looks way better than Windows, myself included. Considering one of the biggest markets for Apples are artists of various kinds, it would be an easy sell. However I think they are going to ask a lot more than a $500 premium. Probably more like twice that, especially on high end systems. But I have no doubt that they will pull it off. Look at their success with the Ipod. These people are not stupid. The biggest question is whether Leopard will be cracked for use with standard PCs. Although I don't think the Mac crowd are the kind of folks to download an illegal, cracked OS from Emule or whatever. So it's mostly a non-issue anyway. And anyone who even thinks about making a PCI/USB plugin firmware adapter would get sued into the stone age. Interesting move from Jobs. I have to wonder what Gates is thinking about right now. Looks like he could be getting some real competition finally, especially if the new IntelMacs have super-low introductory pricing.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
... 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.
World class or not, the management and success of Apple depends way too much on Steve Jobs. Remember his operation and the effect it had on the stock price? It was a good reminder of why I have not invested deeply in Apple.
Apple will not be a truly world-class company until they demonstrate success post-Jobs. Right now they don't seem to have a product development process that is independent of this one man's personal involvement.
Until then it is a highly risky investment...like investing in Brad Pitt or Heidi Klum. One run red light, and there goes your investment.
You ever try to use a mouse on a laptop when at a client site where you have barely enough space for the laptop itself?
My Thinkpad has a decent built in pointing device, but because a Mac requires an external mouse to be useful I can't use it on the road, because there's almost never a place to set a damn mouse. I'd have to use a trackball or external touchpad, and let me be blunt, having an external touchpad hooked up to a laptop that already has a touch pad looks pretty absurd.
This isn't about the fact that I'd have to buy an external pointing device for the laptop to be useful, it's about the fact that the need for an external pointing device makes it sub standard hardware for use on the road and it's that's not worth my time or money.
Apple hardware is, to be kind, overpriced and suffers from castrated functionality.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
...forward looking but also incredibly obvious. Decreasing power of suppliers is busines 101. Pepsi/Coke at one point owned their own steel manufacturing units but didn't use them just to get better prices. Microsoft built an entire web-based Office suite called NetDocs just in case web-only apps took off. Etc, etc.
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.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
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.
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.
I do not see anyhthing in Jobs' statements about the x86, just Intel, who's (by now) as eager as anybody to break away from the x86 legacy (and show us some new innovation in hardware dewign). Note that the 8086 _was_ pretty cool and innovative - in 1975.
Unlike the situation with the Wintel architecture, there's NO thing limiting Apple to backward x86 compatability. They can just march straight forward with Itanium, I64, AMD64, or whatever the 64-bit mode is gonna be. My guess is that Intel will be happy to supply them with modern, 64-bit CPUs, without x86 legacy compatability.
Why bother with x86? They never had it, and _don't_ need it!
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Diversity is important for tons of reasons - security, a healthy computing ecosystem, and because I just like it that way.
Too bad. :-(
I think it is quite unfair to categorize this ias a Steve Jobs hissy fit. IBM failed to deliver processors that met the roadmap Apple was planning, and promised by IBM, so they are switching suppliers. Having Mac OS X run on x86 over the past 6-7 years was Apple's way of ensuring they were not stuck.
This is a sensible business decision that has nothing to do with looking bad. As it happens, Apple is probably the one company that is in such an excellent position to switch suppliers, given the choices: AMD, Intel, PowerPC. How many other consumer electronics companies can make a switch like this? Other companies are stuck because their stuff will only run on a specific platform.
If you saw the video of the keynote, you'd know that Jobs was running the entire presentation from a system running Mac OS X - a Pentium 4 system, specifically. He even showed off the "About this Mac" window that showed it in no uncertain terms. So yes, this does mean Pentium 4 (maybe Pentium M for laptops) systems running OS X.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I love my Mac for the usability of its user interface (both CLI and GUI) and for the fact that it looks so damn good. It depresses me when I have to fire up my ugly old PC when I actually want my code to finish in a reasonable time.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Yeah because 68k->ppc and fat binaries so obviously destroyed apple.
And for those of you who didn't use macs back then, 68k emulation on ppc was much slower than native 68k. The first powerpcs (66mhz 601) simply weren't fast enough - there were no eg 2ghz G5s back then. A modern mac emulates 68k faster yes, but back then -- no.
Get this man more cool-aid, stat!
Will old 68k code still run?
:) [Including the last decent version of MS Word).
Will it happen with the 68k emulator itself being emulated.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I *do* have enough 68k software for this to be an issue
hawk
Unless by "unlock" you mean "reverse-engineer non-standard support chips", there's nothing to unlock:
As for
Schiller doesn't like that:
(with no indication of whether that's legal, technical, or both).
The problem isn't necessarily gcc 4.0, but Apple's gcc 4.0. The ABI is different between PowerPC and x86. It's also a different linker and slightly different compiler. We've frequely had ICEs with the Apple gcc that didn't happen on Linux or Solaris. I suspect gcc 4 is in better shape than Apple's first gcc 3 releases on 10.2, but I wouldn't hold my breath until I can throw the templates with > 200 template arguments at it (yes, when expanded, several templates go that wild in the code).
ed
Unless your hands are water cooled I doubt they get cold.
Heat output was one of the reasons for switching to x86 in the first place.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
love it when you talk technical. your logic is inescapable...
Apple's gcc supports universal (fat) binaries. XCode uses gcc for compilation, but it's just a wrapper. Gcc still works fine without it.
A for Apple (integrator, still)
I for Intel (duh, bye IBM)
M for Microsloth (Office, bye Motorola)
We hardly knew ye. So much for think different.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
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"
That is assuming that both designs have equal resources pouring into them. In other words, that all variables save design are controled.
Unfortunately, in the real-world, might is right, and more money, R&D specifically, is poured into the x86 architecture.
Another way of looking at this is to say that if I use a clean architecture from today and compare it to an 8086 from the early 80s then the clean architecture would destroy the 86, because it has had a lot more money and man-hours invested in it.
Besides, Intel processors basically are clean, save the ugly emulation functions they preform to maintain reverse compatibility.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Oh sure, YOU don't care about the mods...but what about those of us who have been trying to raise Anonymous Coward's karma by posting on-topic, insightful, interesting, and informative stuff? It's assholes like you who keep us at zero. Thanks for nothing!
Using large datasets stress test both the computational ability of the hardware "and" the i/o abilities of the underlying OS not to mention memory management.
Is it not possible that a different OS might provide different performance? Maybe windows really does suck bad.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The idea was that Motorola would produce cheap PowerPC chips for low end computers, while IBM would continue to create fast POWER chips for their big servers.
Motorola dropped the ball, so Apple switched to IBM for their CPUs. But while you can use a server CPU in a desktop machine, the power consumption is too high for a laptop.
IBM isn't really interested in laptops (or desktops for the matter, they just sold their entire PC division). I suspect the estimnated sales numbers for Apple laptops are too small to warrant the development cost alone (unlike the sale numbers for game consoles).
with no indication of whether that's legal, technical, or both
Most likely both. The legal bit is a given - it's been true of Mac OS for years - maybe even a decade. It is a violation of the EULA to run Mac OS on anything other than an Apple Mac.
They'll undoubtedly put some technical stumbling blocks in the way too. And they'll aggressively pursue any open source efforts to circumvent their EULA restrictions - don't put it past Apple to invoke the DMCA here. Expect a lot of nascent "Mac on Intel" sourceforge projects to experience court ordered takedowns.
Even if some fringe project succeeds there won't be many stock intel boxes running Mac OS X - if the people building and/or selling them become too visible they'll become targets for police raids and lawsuits.
Apple switched to Intel ...
... or something.
Debian finally releases Sarge.
It would have been a perfect day if Duke Nukem' Forever was also launched today
Use iScroll2 which adds two-fingered scrolling of the new PowerBooks to older PowerBooks.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
The Joy of tech puts our reaction so well.
6 93.html
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Any moderator who moderates me must have no life what so ever to find a post in the mist of 3000 posts. Filled with disterbed zealots from both sides. As Nelson puts it. HA HA
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.