First Look at Apple's Intel Developer Macs

xyankee writes "Think Secret is reporting that developers have started taking receipt of Apple's Intel-based Mac kits. Along with some specs and photos, the site reports that Windows XP installs without a hitch on the systems and that casually trying to install Mac OS X for Intel on a Dell doesn't work... yet..."

Comments

Strategy?

[dsginter]

the site reports that Windows XP installs without a hitch

Perhaps this is part of the strategy? I wonder if they could run Windows on one core and OSX on the other.

Re:Strategy?

[hcdejong]

Probably not; you'd need some kind of arbitration, otherwise the cores would interfere with each other's communication to the rest of the system. A 'virtual machine' approach would be much easier to accomplish.

Re:Strategy?

[BubbleSparkxx]

I would buy a machine that would allow me to run both OS natively w/o sacrificing/performance. And I believe that this would appeal to a great many Mac and PC owners. I hope that this will truly be the case, but somehow I doubt Apple will let their hardware get watered down in this fashion -

Re:Strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's chips for 2006 should all have the 'Vanderpool' work in them, which improves hardware support for virtualization. This will make programs like VMWare, VirtualPC and Xen much faster.

Re:Strategy?

[pedantic bore]

A simpler explaination is that Windows XP has already been ported to practically every x86 chipset and common peripheral, so it's no surprise it works.

Re:Strategy?

[adjensen]

I have met lots of people that say they love Mac hardware and design but hate the operating system. I would think Apple would probably try to appeal to them.

Really? That's almost exactly the opposite of what most people say... "Oh, I love the UI and OS, but I'm sure not paying an extra [$100 / $500 / $1000] for their hardware!"

Aesthetics being the usual culprit, it's amazing that Apple's more "unique" designs, like the original iMac, appeal to people despite the fact that the machines are really kinda marginal.

So, would someone pay an extra hardware fee just to have a funky looking hardware design that runs Windows (gamerz not withstanding; I guess they've demonstrated that people will, but we're talking mainstream here.)

I doubt it. If Apple chucked OS X into the bin and just started shipping Windows boxes, they'd stay in the computer hardware business, oh, maybe 14 minutes. No "true" Mac person would buy one, out of righteous indignation, if nothing else, and the snobs out there who would be willing to pay a premium for what would amount to nothing more than a cool looking beige box would be too few in number to keep it going long.

Apple's strength is indeed in design, but that's bolstered by a great software product holding it up. Without OS X, Aqua and all the doo-dads that you show off to your friends, it's just a pretty looking box.

And if said box is stuffed under your desk and the only entry to it you have is through your monitor, who cares what it looks like?

Re:Strategy?

[BlowChunx]

Was it Ctrl-Alt-Delete? ...nah that gets you out of windows.

Re:Strategy?

[pohl]

Apple is a hardware company. They make money from selling Macs, not OS X.

Although this is historically true, it would be foolish to assume that this would be true in perpetuity. The balance of revenue streams in a business does change over time, sometimes by the whims of market forces, and sometimes by deliberate strategy. Take the iPod/iTunes revenue stream, for example, which could be a deliberate attempt to grow a revenue stream that is large enough to ensure that Apple could survive a transition from the low-margin hardware arena enjoyed by the likes of Gateway and Dell to the high-margin software arena enjoyed by Microsoft. I'm not saying that this is the case...only that it could be the case.

Re:Strategy?

[adjensen]

No, no we're not talking mainstream. We're talking people that like Mac hardware but want to run Windows, much like the gaming community. If that is ten people then that is ten more sales. Apple is not planning on chucking OSX so that is irrelevant.

Well, I'm not a mind reader, but I don't think that Steve Jobs' intent in the grand scheme of things is to become a boutique manufacturer. Apple sees the Intel roadmap as a path to a significantly greater market share, and that means hitting the mainstream, not picking up ten guys here and there.

This is an argument that I've seen numerous times over the years... Apple should just dump the OS and start selling PC clones with pizzazz. But distinguishing yourself in a design which, like I said, for most people is irrelevant because it's still just a computer that few people see, and a higher price, isn't going to bring people in the doors.

Logically, your argument is correct. Ten guys is ten guys. Realistically, it's not. That's not where Apple is headed. Well, hopefully not, because that's a dead end.

Re:Strategy?

[pohl]

"The soul of the Mac is the operating system" - Steve Jobs, at the very end of the WWDC keynote, right before he says "thank you". And look at their front page today, which features a Fox Trot comic strip that plugs the forthcomming "Leopard" version of OSX. I think they're moving tap into a high-margin software revenue stream.

Re:Strategy?

[Seahawk]

You mean like my new Dell machine comes with XP for free?

Ofcourse its not free - the price is just hidden.

Re:Strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things:

The hardware, however, is designed beautifully, runs quiet, and is laid out in a compact and efficient manner while keeping the welfare of the hardware a priority.

Then you've been fucked. You really should have bought a Shuttle-X series case and motherboard combo, then plopped a nice passively cooled graphics card in there along with whatever cpu, ram and storage you require. Mine cost about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of my G5.

To me, a Mac with the Mac OS is useless, and a Mac with Linux on it is one of the best utilizable personal machines I've ever had to the pleasure of working with:) Not to mention that the sheer amount of software for linux makes the mac's software library look miniscule.

I have no problem with Linux as a server (since I've been admining Linux since '96 and UNIX since '92), but on the desktop I just have to say from the folks I've spoken to you're in the extreme minority. I switched simply because I'm tired of playing grabass every time I want to view a video clip or do something aside from web browsing, coding, or using OpenOffice.

On top of that, it isn't politcally correct to say here, but I find commercial Mac apps to be much more stable than the majority of Linux offerings, and I'm a big boy (a productively employed adult) whose time is money and am not afraid to pay for software.

And yeah, my Shuttle runs Ubuntu and Libranet along side my dual G5 tower. I like em both. My Shuttle for hacking, and my Mac for everything else.

Re:Strategy?

[LWATCDR]

" I have met lots of people that say they love Mac hardware and design but hate the operating system."
Who? I have never heard anyone say they hate the Mac OS. I have heard they hate that they could not get this or that program for the Mac but I have never hear that they hate Mac/OS.
You are probably right that Apple couldn't care less if you bought an Apple and ran WindowsXP on it. They get their money so who cares.
Two potential big winners in this will be VMWare and CrossOver Office. The lack of software for the Mac will quickly drop since a lot of window apps will run. Now if they get Winelib for OS/X up to speed then you could see a lot of software move to OS/X even if it does not take advantage of all of OS/X it will ease transition.

Re:Strategy?

[avdp]

Yes, you get whatever version of the OS is on the box at the time you bought it. It's not different than the PC market in that regard. The point was, software upgrades are not free. They're not in the PC world either, but in the PC world the software comes from a different company than the hardware (Microsoft, usually). That's what I mean by double dipping: they make money on their hardware AND the software that runs on it, and of course, since there are no clones, they can leverage one over the other.

Re:Strategy?

[nickos]

"Apple is a hardware company."

I prefer to think of Apple as a consumer appliance company (allbeit a consumer appliance that runs Unix). The OS is an integrated part of that. It's only when you think of the PC market where the hardware has been commoditized do you think of the need to buy a seperate OS.

Re:Strategy?

[PM4RK5]

The problem with doing this, maybe mentioned elsewhere, is trying to share hardware peripherals such as the network card, sound card, etc... among multiple operating systems running concurrently. If both operating systems try to initialize each peripheral, then one will randomly clobber the configuration set up by the other.

It is not a problem of being able to run both concurrently on separate processors; it is being able to manage hardware resources (busses, graphics, peripherals, etc...) among operating systems without them interfering destructively with one another.

Even more complicated would be using a single NIC to connect two operating systems to the same network. Unless someone came up with a clever solution, each OS would need its own IP address. However, routers and switches outside the computer would become immensely confused when a single NIC and a single MAC address belong to two IP addresses, since most routers/switches only have a one-to-one correlation between MAC addresses and IP addresses.

Even if firmware could solve the problem by implementing all the low-level drivers, the single-NIC, multiple-IP problem is one that cannot be solved at the firmware level, and would require massive modifications at both the OS and application level to get multiple OSes running various services running on a single IP using a single NIC.

There are more problems to doing this than your comment leads one to believe, and that's why I think we won't see that happening anytime soon.

Just my initial thoughts on the matter; maybe someone who knows more about the hardware involved can correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Strategy?

[bhtooefr]

First, I haven't seen a problem with MS Virtual PC running on a system using direct connection to the network. I'd be surprised if it WEREN'T two IPs, one MAC.

Second, a simulated NAT could be done. So, the second OS has a different IP address, and doesn't directly touch the router, only the OS that eventually touches the router.

Re:Strategy?

[vertinox]

"Look at it this way... when those butt-ugly purple, orange and other "flavoured" iMacs first came out, how many did Apple sell? And, at the time, some clone company came out with pretty much the same thing that ran Windows. How many of those got sold?"

I might be biased because I worked in Computer repair for 5 years in a mom and pop shop, but I would say a great deal of those E-Machines got sold at Best Buy ended up at our shop for repair. They ran like crap, but they looked pretty. As far as the the pretty iMacs go, I saw a great deal here and there, but I couldn't give you my opinion on why people were buying them. My impression was the major selling point was because they looked pretty.

Latter down the road, I had a discussion with some major level people at an ISP I had gotten employed with where I had to learn Macs because of the amount of customers that needed to be supported. One of the debates that occurred to us about why people bought them (other than the fact that OS X just worked with DSL... although OS 9 was a unholy pain) was that they expected computers to be like those in the movies.

That may seem like a strange idea, but when a person who knows nothing about computers and sees something out of the future with a GUI interface that looks almost like something they saw in a movie, they are more likely to choose that because it just looks powerful.

To me or you this may seem absurd, but it's the same reason people buy lots of things that aren't really any better than their blander counterparts.

Or rather why people by fancy cars, jewrly, and other things that only real value is because they look cool or make them feel like they own something powerful or valuable.

That and the mac OS X is pretty futuristic looking compared to say even Winxp. If someone had no knowledge of any OS I'd say they would choose the one that looks the most impressive.

Personally, I'd choose the one that just works. *coughs*

Re:Strategy?

[empaler]

...and BAM, you were in windows

Sounds like a horrible nightmare...

Re:Strategy?

[PM4RK5]

That's a bit different, because Virtual PC provides a layer of software between Windows and OS X. I'm pretty sure Virtual PC has two network configurations:

1. Let both OSes share the same IP, same MAC.
2. Put Windows behind a virtual NAT router on its own IP and own software-generated MAC.

Either way, Virtual PC software sits between Windows and the OS X network stack. In the first case, Virtual PC handles corner cases where both OSes are trying to run services on the same port, etc... To the outside world, it looks like all packets are coming from the single NIC, and a single IP address. In the second case, it's exactly as if Windows were behind a real NAT router, eliminating such possible corner cases, but limiting functionality in some areas.

Either way, both of these are very different than running two IP addresses on the same MAC address, which would seem to be the case with the proposed hardware-sharing method of running Windows and OS X concurrently.

Unfortunately, when sharing the hardware directly, there is no layer of software between a second OS and the NIC to resolve conflicts that could arise with having two operating systems running services on the same port concurrently. Such a task is not something that could be designed into hardware and fits in software much better, but would still require large amounts of work on each OS separately.

Even if that logic could go into hardware/firmware, adding a new type of protocol (like IPv6) would be unsupported by the hardware, and then IPv6 conflicts would start arising... it just seems like there's no easy hardware-only solution to that problem, and I honestly believe that neither Microsoft nor Apple are going to put the effort into making that virtualization possible...

As for Intel's forthcoming virtualization-friendly chipsets, I have no idea; those chipsets may very well solve these issues. For now, though, I still don't see concurrent operating systems happening directly on hardware without a layer of software virtualization (i.e. VMWare, Xan, or something higher-level like Virtual PC).

Re:Strategy?

[fanblade]

FYI, (from a wall street journal report)

Will users be able to install and run Microsoft Windows on the new Intel-based Macs?

Apple's official position is that it won't block the use of Windows on its new machines. Unofficially, however, the company says people won't be able to just buy a copy of Windows XP and install it on an Intel-based Mac. That's because Apple is unlikely to build in all the standard under-the-hood hardware pieces that Windows is designed to mate with. And it won't supply any special software called "drivers" to help Windows use the unique under-the-hood hardware Apple will use.

However, I expect some third-party company to supply the missing drivers and otherwise make it possible to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Microsoft itself might even do this. That would allow Mac users to run Windows programs that lack Mac equivalents at speeds comparable to a Windows computer's.

Re:Strategy?

[InvalidError]

Vander may have some performance issues though since much of the memory management is done in software.

AMD pulled an ace on Intel with x86-64 and it seems AMD will also have the better deal on virtualization with more of it being transparently handled by hardware.

To me, it seems Intel severely dulled its edge on the P4 anvil. I wonder how many years it will take for it to be solidly back on tracks... I am guessing 3-5 years as a minimum unless something truly ground-breaking failed to leak through the usual rumour channels.

Re:Strategy?

[GweeDo]

"Even more complicated would be using a single NIC to connect two operating systems to the same network. Unless someone came up with a clever solution, each OS would need its own IP address. However, routers and switches outside the computer would become immensely confused when a single NIC and a single MAC address belong to two IP addresses, since most routers/switches only have a one-to-one correlation between MAC addresses and IP addresses."

Never had a single NIC in Linux bound to multiple IP's have you? Used to work for a company where a single server would have a good 200 some IP's running on that one little NIC...no issue...no problems, the switch's could have cared less.

Re:Strategy?

[MsGeek]

No, he runs Mac OS X.

I think the reason why Microsoft didn't completely fold up the Mac Business Unit after Apple raised its middle finger in Microsoft's face with Safari and iWork was that the "Chief Software Architect" prefers working with Mac OS X over XP.

Who could blame him?

I believe this is also why, when MacIntel makes its appearance, that without fail there will be a brand new version of Virtual PC that will use Intel's hardware virtualization ideas and the Connectix Windows/Mac OS connectivity concepts to create a very highly optimized "run Windows on Mac x86" platform.

The loser in this equation, however, would be Linux and *BSDs other than Darwin. You can bet that this new Virtual PC product will NOT allow anything as a guest OS other than a Microsoft OS. Period. End of story.

Bill Gates is a weird mofo. Everyone remembers the hate side of his relationship with Apple and with Steve Jobs. But nobody remembers that for as much mutual animus these guys have, they also have a great deal of respect. And they both have a common enemy: Free/Open Source operating systems.

Yes, The Steve has been more adroit using F/OSS for his purposes. But ultimately, The Steve wants as dearly to embrace, extend and extinguish F/OSS as Bill does. Remember: Darwin alone != Mac OS X. It's Darwin+Aqua+Quartz+Carbon+Cocoa. They give away the lower-level OS. You just have to pay for their user experience.

Re:Strategy?

[PM4RK5]

Well, I have, but I still had it set up to be 1 IP per NIC. Thanks for pointing that out, though; I'd never really seen that type of configuration, so I stand corrected on that point.

Running two OSes still doesn't seem quite parallel to having Linux sitting underneath all those IPs to manage them, but apparently I don't quite understand how switches learn to direct packets. So... I still see problems on the machine trying to run two OSes, but I trust that you're right in saying that external switches/routers wouldn't get confused.

Thanks for correcting me.

Re:Strategy?

[sessamoid]

There are still some things I wish it did bettelike a sane way to use the menus without the mouse

There is a way to use menus without a mouse:

System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > Keyboard Navigation > Move focus to the menu bar.

You can change the short cut key to any key or combination you like.

Re:Strategy?

[llamaluvr]

This is what I said a while back, and I got modded to hell:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151972&c id=12753570

I'm dead serious- I WANT this. I really like the Powerbook. I think it has one of the best feature sets of any laptop on the market. And it looks sexy. But, I'm not totally sold on OS X, probably because I'm really quite productive in Windows. If I could switch back without ditching the hardware if I ended up not liking it as much, I'd be really stinkin' happy.

Re:Strategy?

[EvilFrog]

No, Orange Micro was a third party vendor of a similar product. Apple actually produced such cards of their own and bundled them with their own machines. Early ones were labeled "DOS Compatible" while later ones were labeled "PC Compatible". I recall the default key command to switch between them being simply Command-Return, but I could be remembering that wrong.

Of course, they had plenty of problems. The hardware was pretty non-standard, so you pretty much had to use the drivers that came with the card. They had no onboard memory, so you actually had to dedicate some of your RAM to the card itself. That was before RAM was dirt cheap, so that actually was a pretty huge liability.

Also, I recall that the pass-through cable that allowed you to use the same monitor was occasionally faulty and irritating to work with in general.

All in all, it was an interesting idea, but far from a practical one.

In case we lose the article due to slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

A first look at Apple's Intel Mac (with photos)

By Ryan Katz, Senior Editor
June 22, 2005 - Apple's Intel-based Mac development kits have started trickling into developer's hands, Think Secret has learned.
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The Apple Development Platform ADP2,1, as the systems are officially designated, features 3.6GHz Pentium 4 processors with 2MB of L2 cache operating on an 800MHz bus with 1GB of RAM.

The Intel systems run Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger identically on the surface as ordinary Macs, with the exception of a modified Processor System Preference (from Apple's CHUD tools) that allows the user to toggle Hyper-Threading on or off. Apple System Profiler includes a new line under Hardware listing CPU Features; for the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 this comprises a rather lengthy list of technical acronyms: FPU, VME, DE, PSE, TSC, MSR, PAE, MCE, CX8, APIC, SEP, MTRR, PGE, MCA, CMOV, PAT, PSE36, CLFSH, DS, SCPI, MMX, FXSR, SSE, SEE2, SS, HTT, TM, SSE3, MON, DSCPL, EST, TM2, CX16, and TPR.

Apple's System Profiler reports the graphics card as an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 800. Inside the Intel Mac, DVI support for the video card is provided by a Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N Dual Pad x16. Oddly, neither Silicon Image's Web site nor Google turns up much information on the latter card, the latter yielding a single link to a recent Dell support forum posting.

The motherboard on the system is unmarked except for the word Barracuda. The system's internals are housed inside a case similar to Apple's Power Mac G5 systems but with a different configuration of fans.

Running Windows; Mac OS X on other PCs

Along with running Mac OS X, Windows XP installs without hitch on the Intel-based Mac, just as it would on any other PC, and booted without issue when installed on an NTFS-formatted partition. The only misbehavior sources encountered involved the video card. Initially, Windows refused to budge from an 800x600 setting on a 23-inch Cinema Display. Some prodding managed to get the screen to 1600x1200, but sources were unable to get Windows to take advantage of the entire screen.

Apple alluded to developers at its recent Worldwide Developer Conference that Windows should be able to run on Apple's Intel Macs.

As for installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, attempts to boot from the included Mac OS X for Intel disc resulted in an error message on both a Dell and off-brand PC. The message states that the hardware configuration is not supported by Darwin x86.

Sources have indicated that Apple will employ an EDID chip on the motherboard of Intel-based Macs that Mac OS X will look for and must handshake with first in order to boot. Such an approach, similar to hardware dongles, could theoretically be defeated, although it's unknown what level of sophistication Apple will employ.

Also uncertain is whether the Intel-based development kits seeded to developers already feature the EDID chip or whether the installation disc contains a less sophisticated installation check that simply seeks out one particular hardware configuration--the one given to developers--and will not install on other configurations.

Re:In case we lose the article due to slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a look here for something just a tad more useful.

Re:In case we lose the article due to slashdotting

[CODiNE]

Also uncertain is whether the Intel-based development kits seeded to developers already feature the EDID chip or whether the installation disc contains a less sophisticated installation check that simply seeks out one particular hardware configuration--the one given to developers--and will not install on other configurations.

I think the 2nd option is more likely. It's exactly what Apple has been doing with OS X for years. When you buy a Mac you get an install CD which is exactly like any other except each model comes with a "supported hardware" check as it installs. The eMac install will not work on a Mac mini, nor the iBook install on a Powerbook, etc... They all have a list of chipsets / CPU's and other hardware built in that they use to identify which system it's running on. (That is, assuming you don't have OF as these x86 Macs won't) All Apple has to do is keep doing what they've always done and you're pretty much locked into Apple hardware, I suspect they'll simply include drivers for their own chipsets and motherboards and tada... everyone is already locked out. There's no need to add extra hardware components simply to identify it as a Mac when Apple is the only one using a certain Mobo.

-Don.

Re:In case we lose the article due to slashdotting

[Francis85]

That was true in the OS9 days (and before..)

Also, it would not check for a particular hardware configuration, but just the gestalt ID.

The question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the reality distortion field still work?

Leaks?

[wiggly-wiggly]

Now that Think Secret has confirmed that developers have the Mactel machines, will it only be a matter of time before OS X leaks out onto the Internet? Perhaps the previous stories were a little premature, but as soon as the protection mechanism on these machines is understood, it's only a matter of time.

Re:Leaks?

[slaker]

I prefer inpple, myself. :D

Re:Leaks?

[MarkGriz]

"I prefer inpple, myself. :D"

I think that's the breast one of all.

Re:Leaks?

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Personally, I like PentiuMacs. Kind of like how Apple's dev lists are calling the versions of OS X that run on these Intel-based Macs "osx86".

Re:Leaks?

[wildsurf]

"I prefer inpple, myself. :D"

I think that's the breast one of all.

Funny, I think it sucks.

so..

[isecore]

where's the torrent for OSX Intel Edition?

Re:so..

[Anonymous Coward]

Need ISO....
Really i'm suprised the images have not leaked yet...

Can't decide

[wchin]

I worked one over at WWDC for 2 hours... our stuff doesn't need six or 9 months to port, as we mostly have Java or Cocoa Obj-C code. However, we do need it for a short period of time for testing. It would be nice to be able to ARD into a Macintel for testing, but $999 for a 1.5 year lease is a bit steep when we won't be able to effectively use the box for very long.

Re:Can't decide

[jcr]

The main benefit you'd get from having one of the developer evaluation machines, is being able to run your apps under Shark on Intel. If your app doesn't need a lot of fine-tuning for performance, then it's probably not worth it for you to get a pre-production unit.

-jcr

Re:Can't decide

[jcr]

maybe what you want is for Apple to make these available in the compatibility labs?

They already are. If you're in the Bay Area, call up ADC and make an appointment to drop in and test your app.

-jcr

Re:Can't decide

[Daniel_Staal]

I can't find my link at the moment, but there is already a group set up that has purchased a kit and is selling testing services. (You ship them your code/app, and they test it for you.)

Re:Can't decide

[rampant mac]

"Please post that link if you happen across it, it'd be useful..."

3rd paragraph from the bottom.

"For smaller companies that may not want to invest the time or the US$1,000 to rent the Intel system, a company called Advenio has a service in which it will do the necessary porting work. As an indication of the relative time involved, the company is charging a flat US$100 fee to create a universal binary of a Cocoa application; the fee for porting a Carbonised program starts at US$500 and depends on the amount of work involved."

http://www.advenio.com/

No OSX on a Dell...

[wvitXpert]

"the site reports that Windows XP installs without a hitch on the systems and that casually trying to install Mac OS X for Intel on a Dell doesn't work... yet..."

Keep in mind that the developer systems are probably built with off the shelf hardware, and doesn't contain the drm hardware that will be required to install OSX-x86.

Driver Support

[Bob Gelumph]

There might be some simple (or complex) mechanism for locking the OS to the Apple/Intel system, but even if this is broken, who is going to write all of the drivers for that Dell that everyone keeps talking about?

Re:Driver Support

[paulbd]

This is utterly and completely wrong.

SCSI may be SCSI but a Tekram SCSI controller is not an Adaptec SCSI controller, so you need driver for each. WiFi may be WiFi (not, depending on which version you are thinking of), but Broadcom continually makes minor tweaks to their chips that require new versions of drivers. PCI - heh, clearly you've never read the internals of an operating system with all of its tweaks for different PCI bridge chipsets, and lets not forget PCI-X and PCI-E. And don't forget audio, a domain in which there are still at least a a half-dozen chipset makers and at least twice that many board makers with widely different products.

Re:Driver Support

[tezbobobo]

There is - you'll notice in the picture there is a fan within the case. Everyone knows that Apples run without a fan. I've never seen a windows box without a fan. That means when these macs eventually ship they will remove the fan, windows wont run and the machine will be maclocked.

Re:Driver Support

[jtshaw]

It is "based" on BSD... at least the user space environment is. The kernel, however, is vastly different from the BSD's (it is actually a Mach kernel at heart) and thus the BSD drivers require heavy modification... it is almost easier just to rewrite them honestly. At least that was my experience with the one driver I've written for OSX.

Re:Driver Support

[LarsG]

Yes but the Darwin drivers would.

Is there an updated HCL available? The only one I could find was ancient, and listed only the 440BX chipset as supported.

Re:Driver Support

[v01d]

So may I ask which PCI SCSI controllers MacOS X does not support?

Adaptec - supported
NCR/LSI/Symbios - supported
Tekram - supported

No. I know for a fact many Adaptecs and LSI cards are not supported in a usable way. Very few are bootable, and most don't work well.

First Post of the Inevitable Post

[Ath]

I will say it before someone else does:

Nowhere did Apple say x86, they just said Intel chips! So maybe there is a brand new chip that Apple will use from Intel.

Now the truth: Apple did say x86 and that, if you are interested in which specific Intel x86 chips Apple will use, check the Intel CPU roadmap for mid 2006 to get an idea.

Just trying to be efficient...

Re:I can't wait

[BlueLightning]

But it won't be a Mac. It'll be OS X running on a PC, which is entirely different.

OS X on a Dell

[DenmaFat]

Other versions of Darwin will run on that Dell. I'm not familiar with OS X innards, but couldn't someone figure out how to replace the handshake-enabled Darwin with the Dell-friendly bits?

Re:OS X on a Dell

[numbski]

People people people....

We're all unix geeks here, right?

**crickets**

Okay, well even if not....

Go to the Darwin site. Download Darwin for x86, install it. Ta da! We have the BSD Subsystem. :)

Okay, get your shiny new developer mac, place it side by side with your Darwin machine. Check the passwd file, the passwd entry in netinfo, and groups. Make sure the uid's and gid's generally match up.

Export for nfs from you dev mac:

/ --alldirs --maproot=0

Now, mount that someplace on your darwin boxen.

Use cp -pr anything of interest to the darwin box. I would take special note of anything in /etc/rc.

Kick the darwin box.

I filesystem comparison between a clean dev box and a clean Darwin box might me useful, diffs on text files to go along with it.

Provide me or any good hacker that, and we'll have an installer out in no time. ;)

Re:OS X on a Dell

[Professor_UNIX]

What if Aqua won't start without talking to a hardware chip on the motherboard? You might be able to fake it, but that would be violating the DMCA.

Re:OS X on a Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh noes! I can't violate the DMCA while I'm infringing on someone's copyright!

Re:OS X on a Dell

[John Harrison]

Which is probably just fine with Apple. The more that gets pirated the more that gets sold. It has worked well for MS, it will work for Apple as well. Remember, if you pirate it and you like it and you want to use it at work then you are going to get your work to buy it.

OS X on a PC...

[mpontes]

Can't wait until someone hacks the x86 version of Mac OS X to run on non-Mac. However, I suppose the biggest problem wouldn't be the "Mac-only" protection itself, it would be to find OS X drivers for your average PC hardware. Well, I suppose you could make many BSD drivers work under the x86 Darwin with little tweaking, but I might be wrong.

Can't wait, though. Triple boot PC! Or if a decent OpenSolaris distro comes out, tetra-boot! After that, no one on Slashdot can trash my OS anymore...

Re:OS X on a PC...

[mpontes]

Nope. I'll just ask them what OS are they running and reboot to that OS. The problem would be that I couldn't argue with a Linux Zealot and a MS Fanboy at the same time without having to reboot 30 times in a row...

Re:OS X on a PC...

[0xABADC0DA]

I suppose you could make many BSD drivers work under the x86 Darwin with little tweaking, but I might be wrong.

Mac OS X has a completely different, subset of C++ driver system called IOKit. They did this because the *BSDs had basically no ability to change power states, and writing new drivers was time consuming (now you subclass a similar driver that does not of the work already).

So, no, it would take a complete re-write to get normal BSD or Linux drivers into OS X.

OS X on a PC

[LittleGuernica]

No doubt that they will eventually get OS X to work on a generic PC clone. It will probably take some serious work around and then you have the driver problem. nobody can get an airport extreme to work on a mac right now with any version of linux, so driver's are goign to be a problem.

But since Apple won't officially allow it to install OS X on any other computer but a mac, nobody will ever be able to sell a computer with OS X pre-installed. So it will enver get mainstream and i'm sure Apple will have few sleepless nights because a few geeks have it running on their generic PC box.

Re:OS X on a PC

[porcupine8]

Wow, somebody actually talking some sense. The reason Windows has spread like pirated wildfire isn't because people are downloading illicit torrents. It's people borrowing the CD that came with their friend/relative/neighbor's new computer when it's time to upgrade instead of buying a new one themselves. Heck, I did the same thing to upgrade from OSX 10.1 to 10.2.

You'll never be able to do that with a Mac, unless Apple specifically decides to let you. If my mom wanted to switch to OS X, it would never occur to her to search through some P2P network for a hacked version of the OS, plus lots of drivers and things. She'd ask to borrow my or my sister's disc, and when we say it won't work on her computer, she'd wait til she's ready to buy a new computer and get a Mac.

Sure, a few dozen people will have a geek friend who will put it on their machine for them. But it won't be enough people for Apple to worry about.

It sez...

[da]

"Windows XP installs without hitch" but it also says "Some prodding managed to get the screen to 1600x1200, but sources were unable to get Windows to take advantage of the entire screen." Isn't it unlikely they'd be keen to make it work, given that if the hardware's was any good and priced competitively, people would buy them and run Windows ?

Re:It sez...

[CockblockTheVote]

how many joe sixpack users acutally buy an operating system, or even install one? they use what comes with the computer. i don't see too many people buying these to run windows on. why would you buy an integrated machine to rip out some of the best parts?
I, for one, want a generic OSX that i can run on my AMD box. I just want apple to say on the box "tested with this hardware..." so i can build my own.

Missing the point...

[lxt]

I think you're missing the point - this is a developer's model. It's sole purpose is to enable developers to transition across to Intel based macs. Lets just wait until Apple start releasing actual Intel based products before complaining about the hardware?

with photos....

[kibbylow]

Wow! They showed us photos of a motherboard, a video card and a monitor displaying windows XP.... I've never seen that before!

Re:I can't wait

[Waffle Iron]

But it won't be a Mac. It'll be OS X running on a PC, which is entirely different.

That's right; the PC would be lack the requisite Lucite case.

Re:I can't wait

[grandmofftarkin]

Well by your logic you can build a Dell. But of course you can't, only Dell can Build a Dell! ;-)

So, the Grandparent was right. You'll be building a PC that runs MacOS.

Re:Why have apple just built a PC?

[Trigun]

Umm, the MAC is a bog standard computer, it's not just the same bog standard. Mac is not going to use OEM boards, you're not going to see a Tyan motherboard in there.

They don't throw shit on the motherboard that they don't need just to rice it out, Everything on your motherboard has a reasom for being there, and all of it is designed similar. Windows has to install on a lot of different flavours of hardware, so there's no big shocker when it installs on this one.

Re:Why have apple just built a PC?

[ooze]

Especially the "Windows XP installs without a hitch " makes me think hard. That means there is a normal BIOS, that also means segmented memory, thaold 640k limit A20 gate, realmode bootup, completely messed up ACPI implementations, no relible and stadrad way to get hardware information from the firmware...all doors for all the Problems we all so love with our Wintel machines are open.

Just as I said before ... Apple basically gave up building good harware.

It is easier to carry the "antiquated baggage"

[Anonymous Coward]

When you look at a PC under the hood (not literally, but from a system architecture standpoint), you really do see twenty years of computing history, from a time when DOS programs manually invoked the PIT8253 timer to invoke timing interrupts, 16 bit code, the BIOS, and all of that junk. Yes, in a perfect world, it would be nice to wave goodbye to all of that crap.

However, the laws of economics say otherwise.

The reason that it is hard to dump them is because it doesn't really cost anything to continue to support them. You cannot buy an Intel processor that does not support 16 bit code. Antiquated timers like the PIT8253 are supported in the chipsets. Unless the legacy parts actually take up physical space on the motherboard (like ISA slots and the physical parallel port itself), it is much easier to buy an off the shelf chipset that supports everything. The alternative is to make a custom chipset that may be cleaner but have less volume.

You would be paying extra so that CGA doesn't exist. Thats just plain silly.

Coral Cache

[cr3ative]

Looks like the server is groaning already, so here:

http://www.thinksecret.com.nyud.net:8090/news/0506 intelmac.html

Just put wine on it

[nietsch]

Ok this may have been suggested before, but:
If wine runs on all x86 unix-like OS's, and OSX is unix-like, will wine run on OSX-86? It would open up a very large market for apple without having to invest too much money. They will need to do some tricks to get it to use native widgets and stuff, but that's not impossible to do.

The downside is that the better wine works, the better the adware/spyware works on it too. I am probably not the only one to infect my wine IE install with ad/spyware.

What works for OSX will maybe also work for linux. There are already ABI's to make use of executables compiled for *BSD, so maybe OSX-86 binaries will run on linux soon too.
(yup wishfull thinking and pie in the sky...)

Re:Just put wine on it

[Megane]

1) it's still going to use X-windows, not Quartz/Aqua
2) did you read the article yesterday about Codeweavers support? Apparently the Wine codebase works great under Linux, but BSD support is regularly broken.

Re:Just put wine on it

[digidave]

If Apple was counting heavily on Wine they'd have forked the project just like they did with KHTML. I suppose maybe they already did. We'll find out as soon as OS X86 is released.

Hardware sales == good for Apple

[LKM]

Isn't it unlikely they'd be keen to make it work, given that if the hardware's was any good and priced competitively, people would buy them and run Windows ?

I doubt Apple would care too much. They make money selling hardware. If you bought an Intel Mac just to run Windows on it, it's your loss, not Apple's.

Even so, Apple probably won't do anything to make it easy for those who want to run Windows on the MacIntels. They've said that they won't prevent, it either.

It's probably simply not an issue.

The reverse though, running Mac OS X on PCs, now there's a subject they probably worry about a lot :-D

Too bad

[rbanffy]

Too bad it is still a PC-style computer. Does it have PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports? ;-)

I hope Apple will build a legacy-free x86 box for the real ones.

Yet, I think installing Windows on a Mac is one incredibly dull idea. Why would you ruin a Porsche by putting a Yugo engine inside?

As for installing MacOS X on generic x86 boxes, that should not be that hard at all, nothing that hasn't been done with XPostFacto - I doubt Apple will take the effort to lock it down as the only ones who will use it will be the very same pirates that made Windows a de facto standard. Piracy, in their case, may very well help sales.

Re:Too bad

[jcr]

Keep in mind that the developer evaluation machine is not a product, or even a prototype.

-jcr

Re:Too bad

[Lucky_Norseman]

Why would you ruin a Porsche by putting a Yugo engine inside?
Actually, with the earlier 911's it was quite common to put in a beetle engine temporarily while the original was taken out for service/repair.
Think of these "Apples" as test-drivers driving a Porsche chassis before the engine is finished.

Why run OS X on generic PCs, anyways?

[jht]

You know, outside of a few Slashdotters who desperately want to run OS X on their pimped-out x86 boxes, there's probably not a lot of people who give a darn about this. Apple makes Macs, and as long as they provide a reasonably complete spectrum of systems across the price band, there's going to be zero measurable demand to defeat Apple's tying and install OS X on a generic PC. Zero. The biggest reason Mac cloning worked in the market for a few years last decade was that Apple wasn't providing the systems that the Mac marketplace wanted to buy. Even then, it cost Apple a lot more money than they ever expected it to, because even with the licensing fees it didn't make up for the lost hardware margins. Apple needs a lot more base market share before they can stop worrying about cannibalization.

Sure, somebody'll figure out a way to do it - every DRM scheme devised thus far has been cracked, pretty much - but what do you get after cracking OS X? You get a unsupported OS on your PC that may or may not work right with the combination of cards, chipset, and BIOS you happen to have. Do people really think that there's going to be any enterprise demand for that? Really?

Bottom line: Macs are Macs, PCs are PCs, and despite the change in architecture the twain are not going to meet any time soon. Stick to Windows, Linux, or xBSD on your generic PC, and run OS X on your Mactel. You can probably expect Apple to give up a little bit of their price delta now that the hardware is directly comparable (and the hardware superiority image is gone), but not all of it - after all, Apple puts a lot more engineering into their boxes than the typical PC vendor does. And when you're running your Mactel, you can look forward to emulation that's finally less crappy than what Virtual PC gives you. Yippee!

Re:Why run OS X on generic PCs, anyways?

[smcavoy]

there's going to be zero measurable demand to defeat Apple's tying and install OS X on a generic PC. Zero.
If you mean legitimate market demand sure there'll be no demand, mainly because it'd (probably) be illegal to circumvent the protection.
But every hacker/hobbyist/etc. and their uncle will be trying to get it running on their clone pc, ASAP.
Unsupported OS? you mean like the millions upon millions of copies of windows?

Re:Why run OS X on generic PCs, anyways?

[kuzb]

Better yet, don't throw money away on a mac. Throwing thousands of dollars at a crippled PC isn't worth it for one operating system.

Re:Why run OS X on generic PCs, anyways?

[jht]

That's pretty much my point - the Slashdot market is, despite what we tent to think about ourselves, not a really significant market on the scale of what the Apples and Microsofts of the world care about. Sure, they'd like to be loved by the geek crowd, but it's just not a priority. If a few thousand alpha nerds run OS X on their Asus mainboards, it's not even a drop in the bucket to Apple.

And remember, Windows may not be supported very well, but it's designed and qualified to run on any system that meets specs set by Microsoft. And vendors design their PCs to meet Microsoft's spec. Ergo, Windows is supported on virtually every PC.

Apple, on the other hand, is going to be tying Mac OS X to Macs, by implementing a form of hardware-based DRM that we don't know the details of yet. The software license will explicitly say that you can only run it on Apple hardware. Sure, you may be able to hack it into running on the aforementioned Asus-based PC, or maybe even on your shiny brand-name Dell. But there will be zero demand for that in business, and virtually zero demand for that at home. It'll be strictly a hacker/hobbyist pursuit. And despite what we sometimes think, the home and business users outnumber hobbyists by hundreds to one.

Not to mention that most of the hobbyists aren't looking to boot every OS on the planet - some do, but most of 'em just want to pimp out Windows and play games real fast.

Re:Why run OS X on generic PCs, anyways?

[TheNetAvenger]

That's not correct -- Apple designed the G5's chipset, including the superfast memory bus that almost equals the Opterons'.

Apple engineers may change the name to G5, and slap their logo on the technology, but you need to go look up the POWER achitecture.

The G5 is nothing more than a IBM designed CPU, from the original IBM POWER designs, and is identical in operation to the IBM POWER designs which Apple has NO hand in...

This is why Apple is fed up with IBM's slow migration to the 3ghz version, and is moving to the Intel architecture.

If Apple was 'designing' the G5 or PowerPC CPUs, they would move them to the 3ghz range, instead of waiting for IBM to do it for them, and getting upset because it isn't happening.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerpc

Re:Why run OS X on generic PCs, anyways?

[bonehead]

by opening up the OS to run on non-apple hardware, Apple would open up their user base tremendously. And possibly garner more than the small percentage of user base that they currently enjoy.

But at what cost? Such a strategy would mean revamping their entire business model, in essence, becoming a whole other company. Not only that, but by shifting focus from selling a "Mac" to selling "MacOS", they become an OS company, placing them in direct competition with Microsoft.

That's a pretty risky move for a company that is already profitable.

Apple's "Red Box" for Windows compatibility

[amichalo]

This article, which is an opinion piece, brings up some insightful benefits of Apple reinvigorating the "Red Box" project to allow full compatibility between OS X and Windows apps.

Seems to fit with this whole Intel dev edition story.

Re:Apple's "Red Box" for Windows compatibility

[TheRaven64]

I'd be more interested in them reviving Yellow Box. Use the Mac as a development platform for deployment on Windows. If they can encourage Windows developers to use Macs (or even Yellow Box on Windows) then it suddenly become just a matter of a recompile to produce native Mac apps, which could be a huge benefit for OS X adoption.

Re:Apple's "Red Box" for Windows compatibility

[Anonymous Meoward]

Y'know, I was waiting for someone to mention this finally.

The "Red Box" was real, at least on OpenSTEP for x86. I believe it was WWDC 2000 when Apple engineers (Avi Tevanian himself?) showed Quake running on OpenSTEP.

Granted, Windows has changed considerably since then. But a built-in virtualization environment for other Intel-based OSes would shake up the market drastically.

Sadly, pissing of MSFT is not a viable option for the AAPL business plan. But if I needed Windows, and could get Red Box, I know what I'd buy in 2006.

Mirror of the MB image

[Anonymous Coward]

Square and greenish, there's a big circular fan hiding the CPU.
3 PCI slots, with one being used by the video card.
A few capacitors & ICs spread all over the place.
Oh it has a cell battery for the clock & bios, that's soo cool !
All in all, looks like a plain MB, hope the final version will look more flashy than that shit.

Re:Why have apple just built a PC?

[Megane]

But just how "normal"? Sure, it's enough to get NTLDR going, but can you install DOS on it? I didn't think that the NT/2K/XP boot process used too much of BIOS functionality. I'm pretty sure that once the kernel is loaded, most or all of BIOS is ignored.

Mod Parent Down!

[Luscious868]

How does stuff like this get modded +5 insightful? Are you people really that uninformed? Give me a break. I thought this was "News for Nerds". As if drivers for one SCSI card will work with another SCSI card from some other vendor? PCI is PCI regardless of the platform? That's the funniest crap I've read all day.

Well, that remains to be seen...

[vitamine73]

Apple Files for Mactel Trademark but the public seems to prefer Macintel.

Re:I can't wait

[BlogPope]

even though the only difference will be a missing chip on the motherboard.

Just the way I mock those people who paid too much for their Ferrari's. I built mine with a VW Beettle frame and a fiberglass kit I ordered from a magazine. Man those "Ferrari ethusiasts" look down their nose at me because they paid too much for their cars. I laugh and laugh at them!

w00t!

How hard were you thinking??

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially the "Windows XP installs without a hitch " makes me think hard

How hard were you thinking?? Or maybe you haven't been paying attention? Apple has said, and its been repeated time and again, that these aren't production machines. There's no guarantee whatsoever that the "real" Intel-powered Macs will look anything like this. That could mean no BIOS, no segmented memory, no A20 gate, and so on. These are just preview machines to give developers a head start while Apple finishes the real Intel-powered Macs. If they were going to use off-the-shelf components in the real thing, and they already have a functional PPC emulator, why would they wait a year to release new hardware?

Fact is, neither you nor I have any idea what the real thing will look like, and neither you nor I have any idea whether Apple has given up building good hardware. I've got my money on my take, though. ;)

Re:I can't wait

[phasm42]

Bad analogy -- one of the key selling points of a Ferrari is the engine, which is analogous to the CPU/mobo, and there's unlikely to be a big difference there.

Is anyone listening?

[ImaLamer]

I keep screaming, but no one is listening...

That is the same exact same reason Linux will do so great on that new Apple hardware!!!!

fsck you Dvorak, you are a hack

Re:Is anyone listening?

[moonbender]

Yes, well, so what? Linux already works moderately great on current Apple hardware, and it works great on existing x86 hardware. Yes, you probably will be able to run Linux on the Apple/x86 hardware, which probably will be pretty "sexy" as far as x86 hardware goes. But being able to run Windows on that same hardware is a much bigger deal for most people. OS X already is a very capable Unix-like niche operating system - but it's not very good in some aspects that Windows is extremely good in, mostly this comes down to the application support.

Or in other words: Hardly anybody cares about running Linux applications on an OS X platform because many Linux applications have been ported and run just as well on OS X. The same isn't true for Windows.

Re:Is anyone listening?

[moonbender]

Oh, you got me wrong. There's tons of open source software for Windows, to your list I'd add the obvious Cygwin. But not the other way round - there isn't a lot of Windows software ported to Linux. This is especially true for games.

And my original point was that most high profile "Linux" software has been ported to OS X. But most of the high profile Windows apps have not been, especially not the games. Which is why OS X/x86 users will be interested in some way of running Windows applications (like through a compatibility layer like WINE or by simply dual-booting) and not so much in doing the same with Linux applications.

Re:Why have apple just built a PC?

[Have Blue]

How many times does it have to be said? These machines do not represent the final products Apple will put up for sale to the public. These are a quick hack to get developers working on the Intel platform, nothing more. The real Intel Macs will use 2006-era processors and chipsets, will be legacy-free, and will almost certainly not use BIOS (the best possibility is EFI), and will probably feature some custom Apple logic on the motherboard somewhere to head off all the problems you're predicting.

Re:Why have apple just built a PC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially the "Windows XP installs without a hitch " makes me think hard.

Not hard enough, apparently (see below). That means there is a normal BIOS, that also means segmented memory, thaold 640k limit A20 gate, realmode bootup, completely messed up ACPI implementations,

32 and 64 bit x86 chips no longer have segmented memory (at least from the programmers perspective, which is what I care about). I don't think there'll be any problem with BIOS issues (rumor has it that Apple will use the next gen BIOS implementation). ACPI may or not be an issue, however I'm pretty sure Apple and Intel will be able to work any kinks out soon enough. Power management is a huge topic going forward. Also bear in mind that Apple will most likely not use P4/Netburst chips and will stick to desktop oriented Pentium-M designs.

no relible and stadrad way to get hardware information from the firmware...all doors for all the Problems we all so love with our Wintel machines are open

Hardware detection already works quite well in both Windows and Linux. The next-gen BIOS mentioned above can only improve things. Further, Apple is already using PCI and PCI expansion cards. I seriously doubt any of your doom and gloom has validity.

Re:Just imagine...

[jcr]

Woulda, coulda, shoulda...

IMHO, if Apple hadn't fired Steve, NeXTSTEP wouldn't have been around to save Apple from oblivion. Apple would have vanished while trying yet another OpenDoc, Pink, or MacApp on top of the same old outdated OS.

-jcr

Re:Here's what I think

[Mr. Cancelled]

Not trolling, just my thoughts:

Hmmm... Sounds like trolling, but I'll bite.

What's the incentive to port an app when you can tell the user to run it under these applications?

Well, for one thing Mac users are fanatical about the look/feel/integration of the entire OS. This is largely why such cool technologies as Fink, and Darwin ports haven't taken over more on the Mac: The look and feel isn't the same as native OSX apps. The GUI/widgets are different, they don't share data off the clipboard in the same way that the Mac does. They don't support standard OSX keyboard commands, instead defaulting to the same shortcuts and such as their x86 counterparts.

Another great example is Open Office - It's no longer being ported due to the low number of users. Instead, NeoOffice was born from the ashes of OO, and is rapidly gaining in popularity due to it's native look/feel, and it's overall integration as a native OSX app.

Running Windows apps under OSX (emulated, or via a virtual pc, such as vmware)will meet some people's needs (read this as potential switchers), but the diehard Mac users will still demand native apps, and an OSX look/feel.

Further, Apple has said, it wont stop people from putting Windows on their Macs, which I think is a mistake. Don't have that specific application? Boot into Windows or run it via emulation

I disagree... There's a helluva lot more apps written for Windows than there is for OSX. And a lot of the apps for Windows duplicate a lot of the other Windows apps that are out there. There's a lot of very similar programs, doing very similar things on the Windows end of things. I personally like to find the best tool for a job, when the need arises. On the Windows end, this means constantly evaluating a lot of different, but similar programs to find which meets my needs/wants the best, and there's constantly more apps coming out that need to be evaluated.

On the Mac end, there's fewer programs, but they're usually of a much higher caliber, and they're way more integrated with the OS look/feel than Windows apps typlically are. As opposed to you, I think that once Windows users start checking out OSX and seenig what can be done w/it, these same people will begin looking for native apps to replace their Windows apps, rather than running them emulated, or rebooting into Windows. Keyboard shortcuts are a great example! Will the average switcher want to remember all the OSX commands, in addition to all the Windows ones, or will they just prefer to memorize one set of commands for all apps? I personally think it'll be the latter, but time will tell.

One quick note about the above: The one app that I use regularly on Windows, which has no Mac counterpart yet is Homesite! There is no Mac editor that will allow me to highlight code the way that Homesite will. Specifically, I'm referring to letting me mod the foreground AND the background colors, based on code syntax. Very disapointing, and I'm a very visual guy, and being able to do this is very important to me. Dreamweaver MX allows me to do this, but it comes with so much bloat that I really hate to use it when all's I really need is a decent editor. If BBEdit allowed me to do this, my life would be much happier! But I digress...

A few die hard companies make Linux games, for instance, but very few. That's the future: A widespread OS with no nifty applications.

I think the difference here is the number and type of users. Linux users tend to be few in numbers (compared to OSX and Windows users - Although that is slowly changing), and of a much geekier variety than the average Windows user (I'm not counting the users of very dumbed down Linux distros, such as Linspire and such... These people are typically the point-and-click, email and web users types, and never stray too much from these basic tasks.). Several companies have tried to make a living out of writing native ports of Windows games for Linux, and you know what? They al

Hardware style

[Winterblink]

One of the things I thought was really nifty about my iMac when I bought one a few months ago was how the inside looked. Anyone who's seen the interior of any Mac will tell you the layout of the hardware, and the hardware itself, is pretty spiffy looking.

Now I know the pictures in TFA are of a developer's kit, but I'm hoping the hardware for the release models looks a hell of a lot better than that. It's entirely disorganized, especially the cabling (when compared to current Mac models). I'm hoping this isn't a side-effect of the Intel switch.

Admittedly this is a bit of a silly gripe, but Apple's philosphy to date has to been to have a very definitive style for their systems, for both their hardware and software. I'd hate for them to become just another PC hardware supplier with a nifty OS.

IP to share

[unconfused1]

I think that a lot of people have forgotten that Intel didn't really have a plan to get anywhere. Shrinking the process doesn't buy you the world, and that was all they were doing.

Intel has ditched their own 64-bit platform in favor of AMD's, they have essentially reached many material limits in their process, they backpedaled to the PIII for the current Celeron and Pentium M designs, and their fake-dual-core designs are pretty lackluster also.

Apple has problems with IBM advancing the PowerPC and producing enough of them to give Apple a very good image in the processing power area. Sure...the PowerPC might have a lot more room to grow (and other such arguments), but if you can't get them fast enough for demand...you have a problem. And with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony looking to the 970 and the Cell for their new consoles...supply wasn't looking better for Apple.

Intel is gaining new life with dual and quad-core designs that Apple has property rights over. Intel is also getting new VPU designs. Lo and behold they have already announced new processors with some of these design changes in them, and I bet Apple will use them in their new machines.

Apple get a product line that doesn't have the shortcoming concerning clock-speed envy. They get Intels successful marketing. And Apple gets a company that can meet processor supply demands. In addition Apple has a very smooth transition plan with fat-binaries for new applications, and Rosetta to run old binaries on the new systems.

They have obviously had this on the back burner for a long time. I personally think this is win-win for both Intel and Apple.

And additionally for us consumers and professionals, we may get a slightly cheaper machine...but will definitely get lower cost items like video cards, controllers, etc. that don't have to have special firmware for PowerPC platform.

OK....I'll bite

[bartron]

Personally I think OS X is cool. It looks like unix...it feels like unix....it is unix (I know..I know....technically it is unix BASSED)

The interface is simple and easy to learn

It is secure (security from obsecurity maybe...if it gets more popular...we'll see)

BUT.....average Joe doesn't care or even want to care. If Apple don't start selling these things (PPC or x86) in department stores then average Joe will still buy Windows boxes. I really hope they take a page from the iPod success story and let all and sundry apply to be an "authorised Apple retailer" or whatever they call them these days.

If the development version gets hacked then it may expose the OS to a few more people but not as much as letting anyone sell 'official' Macs. When you showcase a OS X and Windows together, Windows looks like a wet smelly sock and becomes just as appealing.

As for the dev system..the mobo looks almost identical to the intel mobos we used to buy for work.

Apple/Intel FAQ

[daveschroeder]

http://appleintelfaq.com/

What did Apple announce at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 6, 2005?

Apple announced that it is transitioning from PowerPC processors provided by IBM and Freescale (formerly Motorola) to x86 architecture processors from Intel. The first Intel-based Macs will ship before mid-2006, and the transition will be complete by the end of 2007.

Where can I find out more official information about this announcement?

Apple press release

Intel press release

WWDC keynote address (Transcript)

Why did Apple make this change?

The following scenario likely contributed to this decision:

IBM has been unable to meet its performance commitments for the PowerPC 970 family (G5) processors. In mid-2003, IBM promised 3 GHz G5s to Apple by mid-2004. As of mid-2005, 3 GHz G5s are still not available, over two years after the initial announcement, and over one year after the promised delivery.[1]

Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that IBM will make 3.2 GHz triple-core G5 derivatives available to Microsoft for Xbox 360.[2] IBM is also concentrating efforts on chips for Nintendo Revolution and Sony PlayStation 3.[3, 3.1] With IBM concentrating on expensive high-end server class processors and the console and embedded markets, and with Apple at less than 2%[4] of IBM's PowerPC business, it was clear IBM's priorities were focused elsewhere.

Apple is also less than 3%[4] of Freescale's PowerPC business, with Freescale focusing on embedded, communications, and automotive markets. The priorities of IBM and Freescale do not coincide with performance and other needs of the traditional desktop and portable computing marketplace.

What has Apple done to prepare for this transition?

Apple has been publicly maintaining the core OS of Mac OS X, Darwin, for both PowerPC and x86 platforms since the release of Mac OS X. Internally, Apple has been secretly maintaining Mac OS X in its entirety and all Apple applications for both PowerPC and x86 for over 5 years, since before Mac OS X's public release.[5] Mac OS X's predecessors also ran on x86.

Apple has made available Xcode 2.1, which adds the capability of creating PowerPC/x86 universal binaries. Xcode 2.1 can be used on either PowerPC or x86 systems to create universal binaries. Application developers already using Xcode in most cases need only recompile their application with an additional checkbox adding x86 architecture support.

Apple has also licensed[6] QuickTransit from Transitive Corporation for Rosetta, a realtime binary translation system to support PowerPC binaries seamlessly on x86 hardware. The current performance of Rosetta

Re:Apple/Intel FAQ

[daveschroeder]

If Apple are only getting 2% of the PPC CPU's produced, where the hell are the rest going?

IBM's own very wide array of PowerPC-based servers.

Telecommunications equipment.

Automotive engine control systems.

Transmission control systems.

Networking equipment.

Satellites.

Many, many more embedded applications.

PowerPC is used in a *lot* more places than it's used in "computers".

Re:Think Its A Bad Idea

[oberondarksoul]

Why would the choice of processor compromise this? The operating system will still be Mac OS X, will still be immune to all the Windows viruses, will still be running a Unix underneath it all, will still Just Work (tm). Relax - Apple have a reputation to defend, and they know that'd be a painful thing to lose.

How to Open the Intel Mac Bios

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold the delete key down at boot. It's a Phoenix Bios!

Now if you want to get really freaky, go into the 'boot' menu and turn off the quick and silent boot options. This will display the bios information at boot...

The bios at boot will display the same serial number that is on the chasis sticker, and another secondary id string. It also indicates the system as a Apple Transition Dev system.

Now on the first time you boot it, for 2 seconds you will see 'Darwin x86' on the screen - but we all figured that out all ready.

Darwin support

[lysander]

As for installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, attempts to boot from the included Mac OS X for Intel disc resulted in an error message on both a Dell and off-brand PC. The message states that the hardware configuration is not supported by Darwin x86.

What if one tried installing on a machine with chipsets supported by Darwin x86, e.g. something already running Darwin? I'm curious if it's actually a Darwin issue or if it's some other check that the install does.

Re:I can't wait

[drsmithy]

BIOS: Windows/DOS/Linux translates a lot of system calls into BIOS calls (including for translating HD sectors, interrupt handling, PCI assignments etc.

Not once they've gotten past the bootloader, they don't.

iMacs are a consumer machine. Marginal?

[ianscot]

So often, people who aren't the iMac target demographic don't "get" the machines at all. You're a pretty good example, judging by this post. Not that you're being nasty; you just don't see what the system is aimed at because it's not you.

Aesthetics being the usual culprit, it's amazing that Apple's more "unique" designs, like the original iMac, appeal to people despite the fact that the machines are really kinda marginal.

iMacs with each freshening have been re-situated at a tier and a nudge behind a power/graphics user's level -- which is to say as a decidedly middle-class system. "Marginal" isn't the word for that. They're middle-class appliance computers. Actually as each generation of iMac has come out, Apple watchers have wondered whether the top-of-the-line models were being undercut by them on performance-for-price. The iMac G5 models were no exception. As they came out, /. types were anticipating new tower G5s, because otherwise that line almost didn't make sense any more.

And if said box is stuffed under your desk and the only entry to it you have is through your monitor, who cares what it looks like?

And again, iMacs are designed precisely for people who do not NOT NOT want to dedicate a hutch shrine to their tower down in the basement. Desk? Who wants to dedicate a whole desk in some extra office in their house? That's exactly the model that Apple was tilting against. Note the emphasis on low footprint, from the first CRT models on. This is for people whose response to a tower under the typical chintzy computer desk is "ugh" (and to some extent for schools with limited space or spots on a long counter).

(Personally I got an original Rev A CRT iMac gratis, and it grew on us a ton. There's a lampshade 17" version on the narrow kitchen counter now. The machine's lasted for years now, so if it was marginal when it started it must be positively archaic now -- despite being quite capable of handling Tiger and everything else I've had to touch on it. And it's displaced the [more recent] Wintel boxes in the house, despite my being required to keep those up for work reasons. They're in the basement corner for over a year now. The kids liked the iMacs far more.)

Re:iMacs are a consumer machine. Marginal?

[Dog135]

Personally I got an original Rev A CRT iMac gratis, and it grew on us a ton.

I'm currently typing on a 600 Mhz Graphite CRT iMac right now. And it's sitting on a plywood desk in the kitchen. It's been my wife and my internet computer since it was new. And I have no need to upgrade it any time soon. (Running OSX 10.3, btw)

These old iMacs are good machines, and I haven't had any problems with mine yet. That's why we love it.

Ludicrous?

[Paradox]

All the bugs listed there are patched.

That's one of the reasons people like to say Apple is secure. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches. For local exploits, they have an average (good, but marred by a few bad apples, like the sync bug).

But, MacOSX has always defaulted to all-services-off. So, you wouldn't see a worm targetting the AFP server making it very far on the net.

Apple's security is on par with most Linux distros. This does not mean it's OpenBSD. It means that it does have some bugs, but is highly resistant to most attacks. Apple has been able to be more lax about buffer overflows because of the PPC's architecture, which makes a classic buffer overflow more difficult. When they switch to Intel, we'll probably see them step up their local security policy to compensate.

And your comment, "Most of these are ludicrous! Look at how many remote vulnerabilities there are! Some are absurd! Didn't apple do ANY checking?" That implies that you are not a security person, don't really understand the vulnerabilities listed, and are trying to spread FUD. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely (even if they are not going to disclose data and permissions remotely). Of course Apple does checking. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs, has awesome security features like a time sensitive, integrity-checking Keychain, and generally has a good set of secure, default settings.

Re:Ludicrous?

[Paradox]

This implies that you are not a security person. If your main argument is "oh it's patched, it'se secure", you have done a day of security in your life.

There are two kinds of insecure. The first, insecure and everyone knows it, is Windows. That's bad. The second is statistically insecure, which is the state of most software today. Very few systems actually go to the level of rigor provided by OpenBSD which allows them to make bold claims about security.

And even then, they mess up.

Some of us want stable, non-changing software for long periods of time. You know, so I don't have to go through updating foo-OS every week because my vendor can't get his shit together.

Well yeah, that'd be great, I'm sure. But you're tragically misinformed if you think this will ever be the case. The state of software engineering, and by extension security techniques, is constantly changing. In software, you update until you're obsolete. If you don't like that, don't use software.

Indeed, patching something does make it secure after the fact, but it doesn't help with it being secure in the first place. Apple needs to sit down, hire some GOOD programmers, and comb through their code.

Bugs have slipped through, and they will continue to slip through. This is a problem endemic to the industry, and Free Software is no exception. Please do not blame Apple. If you must blame someone, blame the Apple Fanboys who preach absolute security, because they're creating unfair expectations. So far, OS X has a good track record as a desktop OS. As a server OS, I wouldn't go that far.

Maybe the quicktime heap overwrite from last year, that Apple refused to give attention to.

You mean the qts file heap overflow?. The one blown totally out of proportion because successful remote code execution was extremely difficult?

How about the MP3Concept spoof thing floating around early last year? The one apple failed to acknowledge?

You mean the one Secunia rated at "Very Low Risk"? because it was trumped up by the mac antivirus community? The one that doesn't work properly if you have "show file extensions" on? The one that Apple publicly acknowledged?

Both of these allow me to get access to the computer from somewhere other than in front of it. Especially with some social engineering.

Yeah, too bad they don't work anymore.

Bullshit. Gentoo, Debian, Linux and Freebsd had no vulnerabilites as abusurd as "at not dropping root privileges" in years, Apple did is in Jan. In 1994, it would have been ok to let that slip by, but not any more. Solaris is a different matter..they can't seem to keep their "passwd" utility safe no matter what they do.

Because things like Gentoo, Debian and Redhat get special poster-child treatment. They cheerfully call people when their integrated apps have holes. But, when someone points out that many standard linux applications have holes in them, they claim it's "not part of the distribution."

I go to osvdb, search Apple, OSX and check "remote". I see 56. I don't know what you're smoking. Hell, I see 18 this year alone, and it's only June!

I was talking about on the front page. Yes, Apple has has remote exploits. As I said, in general their track record on patching them has been at least as good as any other commercial vendor. A heck of a lot better than some. They are not the paragon of security, and as they move to intel machines (which, architecturally, are easier to exploit and better understood by the crowd who writes exploits) t

Re:Ludicrous?

[fimbulvetr]

Well yeah, that'd be great, I'm sure.

It is great! Thanks for recognizing. Try running RHEL 2/3 or Debian Woody/Sarge sometime. In a bad month, I'll have to update 1 or 2 packages, usually ones I don't even need to be there (telnet, etc).

blame the Apple Fanboys who preach absolute security, because they're creating unfair expectations.

Wow! This is what I'm trying to do! Look at some of these things I've seen lately:

1. ...but is highly resistant to most attacks.
2. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely...
3. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs...
4. ...has awesome security features like...
5. ...generally has a good set of secure, default settings...
6. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches.

the one blown totally out of proportion because successful remote code execution was extremely difficult?

I wasn't aware the vendors like Apple could blow off vulnerabilities because they were hard to exploit.
The last time I checked, some people on Full disclosure spend hundreds of hours on just one exploit.
The point is: you claim Apple has a "fabulous reputation" - I say they don't. They're no different than everyone else. This negates your "fabulous" claim, which is obviously overzealous.

I don't see any special "poster child treatment" as far as RH, Gentoo and Debian are concerned. Maybe you're taking this too personally - maybe I'm misinterpreting it?

Absolutists like you piss me off. OSX can't have good security.

People who claim OSX has awesome security piss me off. I don't consider myself an absolutist, but if you do, that's fine. I just like to see facts spread around rather than the same old OSX astroturfing that we're seeing so much of lately.
Karma be damned!

Re:Ludicrous?

[Paradox]

It is great! Thanks for recognizing. Try running RHEL 2/3 or Debian Woody/Sarge sometime. In a bad month, I'll have to update 1 or 2 packages, usually ones I don't even need to be there (telnet, etc).

Neither are desktop OS's. They may be able to perform some of the tasks of Desktop OSs, but they definitely fall short of even the Windows XP level of functionality. Please compared Apples to, well... something reasonably equivalent. My Pontiac Vibe can't drive through rivers. That doesn't mean that it sucks compared to a Humvee with a snorkel.

I wasn't aware the vendors like Apple could blow off vulnerabilities because they were hard to exploit.

Linus Torvalds sure seems to think it's okay. Linux isn't going to address the Intel hyperthreading issue because of the extreme difficulty of exploiting it in any practical way. Or did you forget that?

And don't go brining up MP3Concept ever again. That ridiculous farce doesn't deserve anymore discussion. It was a stupid example of a file-icon-vs-type, which nearly every desktop environment has when they do not show file extensions.

The last time I checked, some people on Full disclosure spend hundreds of hours on just one exploit. The point is: you claim Apple has a "fabulous reputation" - I say they don't. They're no different than everyone else. This negates your "fabulous" claim, which is obviously overzealous.

Compared to the rest of the Desktop environment world, Mac OS X has a good track record on security. Compared to its peers, OS X has a "fabulous" security record and turnaround time on most patches for remote exploits.

It is true, and I have already mentioned, that OS X's local security is not-so-fabulous. This is generally considered to be okay for a desktop OS. As Apple moves to the more common infrastructure of x86 and makes inroads in the server market, this policy must change, or they will fail.

I don't see any special "poster child treatment" as far as RH, Gentoo and Debian are concerned. Maybe you're taking this too personally - maybe I'm misinterpreting it?

Your mistake, I think, is in assuming Linux is even a competitor to OS X in the Desktop field. It is not. This is good for Linux and OS X, so let's keep it that way for now.

People who claim OSX has awesome security piss me off. I don't consider myself an absolutist, but if you do, that's fine. I just like to see facts spread around rather than the same old OSX astroturfing that we're seeing so much of lately. Karma be damned!

Mac OS X is the Linux of the desktop world, in terms of darling status. If you don't like the competition, start working on Gnome or KDE. They need your help. No one else is even trying to compete anymore, it seems. Microsoft is happy to rely on their market penetration to keep them moving forwards, BeOS is dead, OS/2 was basically stillborn.

A key point to take away from this is that Apple's products are rapidly becoming more secure. Tiger is significantly more secure than Panther which is much more secure than Jaguar. Apple's security policy seems to scale directly to their popularity and need. Back durng the 10.2 days, they didn't need much security, OS X was so rare and ran on such a poorly-understood architecture that they were almost never even attacked, let alone exploited.

Tiger seems to be the first Mac OS X release that takes local security very seriously. They now have a lot more security on downloads and application execution. While it may not be ready for Server primetime as Debian, Gentoo and Redhat are, it doesn't need to be, yet.

Re:Doesn't work yet...

[saddino]

No, the $999 cost of the development system is only to lease the system until the end of 2006. All machines have to be returned at the end of the lease time period.

Re:Blah.

[Cheerio Boy]

The cases are the same as used in the G5s. How is the style any different?

There's more to a good computer's style than just a good looking case. Apple has for years been producing some of the most innovative works of art the computer industry has ever known. ;-)

Truthfully a good computer platform should be:

1) Do what the user needs the system to do. (I'm not talking about "wants" here I'm talking about needs.)
2) Efficient.
3) Easy to use/Easy to maintain.
4) Be a good balance of internal and external structure.

Number 4 can easily interfere with the other three and thus needs to be considered in the design. The "whole" not just the parts needs to be considered and balanced.

Re:Um... no?

[Anonymous Coward]

yup; but conversely, it's still true
that if darwin-x86 doesn't run on
some machine then OS X-x86 won't
either.

all the people who're saying "*once*
OS X-x86 comes out someone'll hack it
to work on other machines" aren't
really paying attention - if you want
OS X to run on other machines, you
should be making Darwin run on those
machines *right now*, because that'll
certainly be a prerequisite for OS X
running. (and FWIW Darwin's x86 support
is currently limited to a pretty short
list of hardware so there's quite a
bit of work to do ...)

Sigh.

[Doktor Memory]

Apple ships powerpc boxes with Radeons. So there's a driver for the big-endian Radeons that will allow them to work with Aqua on PPC motherboards using OpenFirmware. Those drivers will be useless on little-endian, BIOS-using, x86-based macs.

Re:Sigh.

[Doktor Memory]

What on earth are you talking about? Seriously.

Display drivers are not magic beans. They need to work, correctly, with every piece of hardware and software along the chain between the OS and the monitor.

In order to boot the developer x86 edition of OSX on a generic PC and have Aqua work, you will need a video driver that works with the following:

- MacOX X 10.4.2/x86's implementation of Quartz
- little-endian CPUs
- little-endian GPUs
- PC BIOS
- ...and the PRECISE CHIPSET of the video card in question

At the moment, one such driver exists, and it is for the "Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N Dual Pad x16", a video card that cannot be bought at retail.

Now, in 4-6 months, when ATI and Nvidia have ported their unified drivers to OSX/intel, this situation should drastically change. But for right now, the chances of the above-described hack creating a working OSX instance on a generic PC is exactly zero.

Re:Sigh.

[numbski]

Okay, wow. I haven't had a chance to look since this morning, but I started a war here. Eep.

My thought was that a gpu driver will exist in the darwin-x86 release, as well....they need video cards too, so the little-endian cpu and gpu issue is taken care of there, as is the PC Bios. Chipset as an extension is resolved.

The only remaining issue is the 10.4.2's implementation of quartz. My understanding up until now is that if the OS has the proper kernel drivers, and it understands the OpenGL instruction set (which man do), and it is an AGP card (unless you hack the xml file stating to use PCI instead), AND you have more then 16MB of RAM for Quartz Extreme, you're ready to go.

What part of this am I missing? Remember, I'm an administrator and network designer, not a hardware designer, and I just barely pass as a programmer here.

Re:Sigh.

[Doktor Memory]

My thought was that a gpu driver will exist in the darwin-x86 release [...] What part of this am I missing?

You're missing where the video driver lies and how it works. Darwin includes (or can use; I don't recall if they're actually bundled) X11 (x.org or xfree86) video drivers. Those drivers are specific to X11, and bear no relation to the video drivers that are used for Aqua/Quartz/QE on MacOS X.

(Well, if they're vendor-provided drivers there's probably some code overlap, but the driver interfaces are completely different, and that's what counts.)

Re:Gaming Horsepower

[mbessey]

No. As has been pointed out repeatedly, these systems are NOT representative of what Apple will be shipping in a year. These systems exist only to help developers transition their existing applications over to the Intel architecture.

When new Intel-based Macintoshes ship next year, they'll presumably be based on whatever processors & GPUs meet Apple's needs for the product they're in. You probably wouldn't want to use the processor from the current development system in a laptop or a Mac mini, for example.

If you want to play the guessing game, take a look at the announced roadmap for Intel's processors, starting at a point about one year from now.

-Mark

PPC

[tubbtubb]

And PowerPCs will have the Hypervisor so you can . . . Oh yeah, never mind.

I think you better give it some more thought

[splatterboy]

I dont use and have no desire to use any "windows" apps... whatever that means. I use mac native apps (final cut studio, motion, soundtrack etc) Adobe CS, Cinema 4D and Maya - for major apps - very little else. You may mean games... or M$ office, but Im not a gamer and though I have office, I havent used it since I started trying out star office/open office (mostly I just use InDesign or Illustrator and recently iwork, ilife). For what I, and most people I know - there isn't anything else to need, not counting some shareware, plug-ins, utilities and god bless Radio lover. Thats not everyone but its a decent crossection of Macusers.

Developers spent more time previously porting to Mac than they will need to now, it's only a checkbox, and nobody wants to pump out a product that will be seen as "second rate" vs. other apps where the developer simply took a few minutes (checkbox) extra. And for such a small effort, who wouldn't want their previously windows only app to run properly on a box that doesnt go down with the associated windows issues?

Business stays in business by finding more and newer business -not by refusing to participate in an emerging market. If I were a developer I would see this as a new market, an opportunity to make a move, not something to shy from. Its almost easier to see the opposite of what you say happening, more developers starting to write for the Mac - because its simple, because they can and because it can pay.

Linux is a different issue

Experiences vary.

[Minstrel Boy]

I tried using my Mac Mini (Panther) install CD to reinstall a PowerBook G3 yesterday. It popped the "must run a program to check things" requester, then reported back that the hardware wasn't supported or some such. Perhaps all of Panther was on there and I could have hacked the install, but it certainly didn't work by default.

KeS

Re:should be 98% invisible and irrelevant

[bonehead]

Most developers know that C++ is not a High Level Language.

Bzzt...

Sorry son, it most certainly is.

Apple's history with hardware offerings

[aglerickson]

Bingo. Add to that, Apple isn't going to introduce a machine that can't be sold as "the BMW of computers." Apple probably has already struck a deal with Intel that will allow Apple to be the first to include "The Newest Latest And Greatest CPU EVAR" (for the next two or three months) into their initial offering.

Some corrections to this FAQ

[LionMage]

This FAQ is generally good -- it assimilates a lot of information found elsewhere on the web. However, it contains some inaccuracies.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that IBM will make 3.2 GHz triple-core G5 derivatives available to Microsoft for Xbox 360.

Actually, the Xenon processor in the Xbox 360 is not a G5 derivative at all, though it shares some pedigree in common with the G5. Each Xenon core most closely resembles the PPE from the Cell processor. The similarity between the G5 and the Xenon core is that they both support the PowerPC instruction set and they both are 64-bit capable. That's about it. The Xenon cores support SMT, whereas the G5 does not. The Xenon cores also lack out-of-order execution logic, which the G5 possesses. You can find out more about Xenon at ArsTechnica.

The PowerPC processor included the capability to emulate 68K instructions, allowing almost all 68K applications to run.

This is false. The PowerPC can't emulate the 680x0 instruction set on its own; the early PowerMacs were shipped with a sophisticated piece of emulation software which allowed "context switching" between running PowerPC native code and 680x0 code. (You may have heard the term CFM, or Code Fragment Manager.) This facility was necessary because many Mac toolbox routines had not been rewritten in PowerPC-native code, and many libraries and other pieces of the OS were similarly only available in 680x0 code. In fact, some toolbox routines were supplied in both PowerPC versions and 680x0 versions, because there were cases where emulated 680x0 code needed to call upon a toolbox routine, and the context switch from emulation to native PowerPC and back again was worse than just running the toolbox routine under emulation.

Anyway, bottom line, the PowerPC never had built-in 680x0 emulation. The design win with PowerPC was that it could be made with the same bus that the 680x0 processors used, allowing Apple to retain much of its existing hardware designs. It should be noted that before the PowerPC was decided upon, some folks wanted Apple to go with the Motorola 88000 series of chips -- these were Motorola's first stab at RISC, and had the virtue of being pin-compatible with the 68000 series. I've seen some Omron workstations that used 88000 processors, but I don't think they ever got a lot of traction in the general market. At least one history of the Mac that I've read indicated that the 88000 was seriously considered within Apple before PowerPC was decided upon.

Support is eventually dropped for all older hardware in the current OS (for example, for PowerPC G3-based systems).

Not all G3-based systems are unsupported in Tiger. I believe G3-based iBooks are still supported, for example. Of course, "supported" doesn't mean you get all the eye candy, but that's true for some lower-end G4 systems as well.

Re:Jobs' At It Again!

[Zobeid]

Comparing prices between Apples and Dells is frustrating, because the standard of comparison keeps shifting. Here's how it usually goes, step by step:

1. Somebody starts by ranting about how they have to pay "twice as much" or "three times the price" for a Macintosh. Which is obviously ridiculous, but it keeps being said time after time.

2. Examples are brought forward showing currently available Macintosh models selling for roughly the same price as comparably configured Dells. Sometimes the Apple is slightly less than the Dell. Sometimes the Apple is a fair bit higher -- but never anything like the 2X or 3X that anti-Apple trolls keep shouting out.

3. PC fanatics jump all over the proffered examples, ridiculing them because they could "build a system for a third that much". Never mind that we were talking about Dell versus Apple when the debate started, not home-built systems. When this is pointed out, someone on the anti-Apple side will chime in that only morons buy Dells anyhow, and the smart people always build their own computers.

And that's where it ends. As soon as you show that Macs don't, in fact, cost 2X or 3X as much as a Dell, then suddenly it doesn't matter because Dell is no longer the standard for comparison. (They're only the #1 computer maker in the world, sheesh.) Instead it's now computers cobbled together from components that you have to compete against on price.

Other amusing things sometimes pop up during the argument. . . Some PC fans seem to believe that Quake frame rates are the only meaningful measure of a computer's performance or value. Others are stubbornly oblivious to the typically long lifespan of a Mac, or how well used Macs hold their value (check eBay!), or how much time (and money, if you value your time at all) can be saved from reduced troubleshooting when running a Mac.

I suspect many of the complainers also are school kids who aren't accustomed to working with an adult budget. They're the same class of people who got a C64 or an Atari ST back when the rest of the world was going to PC clones, just because they could save some bucks. They're the same class of people who were too cheap to shell out for a monitor or a hard drive for their Amiga 500 -- blurry TV sets and floppy swapping was fine for playing games, anyow.

That was than. Nowadays PC clones are the cheapo systems.

So where does this whole myth of an Apple for "three times the price" come from? Here's my hypothesis. . .

1. In years gone by -- in the 1980s especially -- Apple sold a lot of systems that were outrageously overpriced. Anybody remember when a Commodore C64 was $250 and an Apple II was $1600? Or when the Mac II was $8000? Yeah, people tend to remember that kind of sticker shock.

2. Apple don't sell very stripped-down models, or compete at the very lowest end of the market. (Though the Mac Mini got them quite a bit closer to it than they ever have been before.)

3. What many of the complainers really want is to run Mac OS X on the PC hardware they've already got. You can't get any cheaper than something you've already got. That's free! And current Mac users have a hard time seeing this, because a Macintosh is what they've already got. They're looking at it from the other side of the river.

what is the BIOS like?

[X_Caffeine]

Can anyone who's gotten their hands on one of these tell us a bit about the BIOS?

I know that we're losing some of the Open Firmware features, but nobody has mentioned if we're losing Firewire Target Mode. Hope not, I use it all the time.

And I know this is silly, but what is the boot like? Is it "mac-like," or are we treated to flashing screens, memory counts and hardware charts?

Re:Yellow Box is now Cocoa and friends.

[TheRaven64]

No, I meant Yellow Box. Originally, OpenStep allowed development and deployment on NeXT, Solaris, and Windows. Then, when NeXT bought Apple (for a negative amount), it became Yellow Box. Yellow Box ran on both Windows and Rhapsody (Sun having abandoned OpenStep in favour of Java) and allowed code developed on one to be built for the other.

Up until after Rhapsody DR2, Apple shipped both x86 and PowerPC versions of Rhapsody, as well as the Yellow Box runtime and developer tools for Windows. The advantage of Apple shipping Yellow Box for Windows again would be that they could sell Macs to developers, the developers could write software for Windows (the largest market), and the OS X port would be free, generating more OS X software.

Red Box, while never released, was a speculated Windows emulation layer inside OS X. Red Box was abandoned when Apple decided not to release Rhapsody (OS X) for x86. It might be brought back with OS X86 (assuming it is still being developed internally, which seems unlikely), and this is what the grandparent poster was talking about.