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New Apples Next Week
Vicissidude writes "CNN/Money reports: 'Apple may be gearing up to unveil a new slate of mini-Macs and may also release updated versions of its popular iBook laptop computers as early as next Tuesday, according to unconfirmed reports on a Web site that tracks Apple.' The Web site Think Secret reported three new Mac mini and two new iBook part numbers have appeared in Apple's retail database, indicating that new models are imminent. Apple would neither confirm nor deny the reports. The new mini models will be priced at $499, $599 and $699, with new iBooks priced at $999 and $1,299, according to the original story at Think Secret."
"to unveil a new slate of mini-Macs..."
They're called a "Mac mini" not a "mini-mac".
-Imidazole
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Mac Mini not far behind
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.. since $500 for an annual developer subscription just to get the right to buy a $1000 intel mac is a bit steep. I'll make it back in sales by reassuring people about my games' upgrade path, but i love my mini and would just like the same thing with an Intel.
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You still seem to be ignoring the point of the GP post, which is that both Apple and NeXT went through architecture changes (exactly the same as they're doing now). Fat binaries were made for new versions of most apps for years and years after the switch. Software houses generally know not to piss off their customers by doing what you propose (well, except for maybe Quark).
"Whatever Steve says, I don't believe that binaries will stay Intel/PowerPC for very long."
Try thinking about it in the most practical terms possible.
1. PPC Macs are going to dominate the market for years . The Mac market is going to be 100% PPC-based for another year. After that, PPC Macs will greatly outnumber Intel Macs for 4 or 5 years; possibly longer. Mac owners tend to hold onto their machines for a long time. The hundreds of millions of existing PPC Macs aren't going anywhere.
2. Creating "fat" dual Intel/PPC binaries is easy. With XCode it's only a mouse click away in most scenarios. In fact, I think the latest version of XCode creates dual binaries by default. So it would actually require effort to not create dual binaries, if I'm not mistaken. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
So. What is your reasoning again? Why would Mac developers ignore the majority of their market when supporting them takes no effort? I'm no Apple loyalist; I haven't owned an Apple computer since my IIgs, so if anybody is wary about being burned by a lack of Apple support it's me. But I would have no problem buying a PPC Mac today... in fact, as soon as I have some money I hope to pick up a Mini for testing purposes.
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Except, not everyone wants or needs all of the extras. I would rather they start with a stripped machine and let you add on what, if anything, you need rather than paying for something you don't want. For example, I'm typing this right now quite happily on a 256 MB machine without a DVD burner or bluetooth, which I have no use for. I *do* have use for wireless, so I added a wireless card - but not everyone does.
from Aspyr:
Minimum System Requirements
Doom 3 runs on any iMac G5, or any Mac that meets the requirements below
# Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3.8 or later
# CPU Processor: PowerPC G4/G5 or later
# CPU Speed: 1.5GHz or faster
# Memory: 512 MB or higher
# Hard Disk Space: 2.0GB free disk space
# Video Card (ATI): Radeon 9600 or better
# Video Card (NVidia): GeForce FX5200 or better
# Video Memory (VRam): 64 MB
# Media Required: DVD Drive
Recommended System Requirements
Doom 3 runs best on a Power Mac G5 2.0 GHz or faster
# CPU Processor:PowerPC G5
# CPU Speed:2.0GHz or faster
# Video RAM:128MB
Don't think a mini will be there anytime soon...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Apple has always, and apparently still is taken with selling hardware that will only last two years at most.
I guess all those people who get five years or more out of their Macs must be hallucinating, then?
I bought a Power Mac 7600 in 1996, and it was my primary machine until 2002. Over the years I added RAM and a USB card and threw a G3 upgrade into it, but it was still a viable machine when I replaced it, except from the standpoint of being able to run OS X-- I needed a more recent model to do that. I'm a consultant, so I wanted a machine that would run it as my clients would see it, not with some third-party hack to get it working.
The 7600 was replaced with a used G4/733 from 2001, and that one was just fine until I bought the G5 I'm using now (yes, I only got 2 years out of the G4 as my primary Mac, but it was only ever intended to tide me over until the G5s came out). The G4 is now in my office running Tiger like a champ, and I expect this G5 to last me until nearly 2010.
Apple already successfully managed a CPU transition back in the 90s, and they did it without instantly obsoleting anyone's computer. I have no doubt that this one will go just as well. Mac applications that are written for the Intel processors can be compiled for the PPC by clicking a checkbox, so there's no additional effort or expense required for developers to support both architectures-- and with 5 years worth of PPC-based Macs out in the world (not counting the PPC Macs that can't run the current incarnation of OS X), they'd be crazy to not do so for at least the next five years.
~Philly
1. You're right, PPC will dominate for a while, but I suspect that a larger number of people will be getting new Macs once the Intel Macs come out since they will be so afraid of their PPC Macs becoming quickly outdated. 2. The latest XCode still requires a little hunting to find the checkbox, which is not checked by default. In addition, there is often a bit more to making it cross-platform than checking a little checkbox, particularly when there is code which needs to be different for little endian and big endian. For a Cocoa application, that is minimal, but for Carbon, it takes quite a bit of effort.
Hmm I think you have it wrong there. You see, with Apple's Xcode development platform, all you need to do to compile of PPC and Intel is click both checkboxes. If your application ran in PPC at first, then the developer's guide will help you port to Intel. If you are developing an app right from the start, here is your chance to follow the porting guide and apple programmer guidelines and get your code right the first time. If you had been following apple's guidelines from the beginning then porting to intel is easy.
You don't want to alienate your customers... You want your app to run on both for a long while until PPC becomes obsolete. That's like, 8 years from now considering the higher resale value of macs
Xcode provides the magic to do the compilation twice and package up both programs into the same bundle. This is really just to simplify the user experience. You could just as well offer separate "Photoshop - Mac PPC" and "Photoshop - Mac Intel" products, but that gets annoying to keep track of.
CNN's main goal is financial profit. Providing news, let alone news that is has any basis to it, is completely secondary. Of course they'll use an Internet rumor mill, such as Think Secret, as a reliable source of news. It gives them something to stick all of their ads around. And it's very cheap, too! No expensive reporters or investigators to pay.
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Will that drive work with iDVD though? Does it qualify as a 'SuperDrive'?
Apple seem to have that a bit nailed down, as another poster has pointed out. That's kind of annoying.
(I mean, if you think about it, having DVD authoring software that refuses to work unless you're using a particular model of DVD drive is a bit 1999, really, isn't it? I'm still not sure why they do this - do they subsidise iDVD development from the money they make selling SuperDrives?)
Yes and sort of.
.iso image in addition to burning straight to the DVD. You can then burn that .iso using disk copy, or even transfer it to another computer that might happen to have a DVD-R drive.
.iso feature shows that Apple is probably catching on to the fact that many people are unhappy with that solution.
Patch Burn is a tiny, simple app that will allow OS X to work with almost any non-supported DVD-R drive. It's free, just download it, run it once, and you're done.
Assuming you don't want to go with patch burn, the new version of iDVD supports outputting an
The only reason Apple really does this with iDVD is compatability issues. I'm not sure about the current revisions, but Superdrives have always been Pioneer DVR-XXX series drives with Apple-designed firmware. I guess Apple was just really keen on maintaining the "experience" by guaranteeing that a DVD drive WOULD work with iDVD. Patch burn has always been a simple way around it, but the introduction of the
Intel chips are more expensive than IBM's PPCs, despite the Apple fanboy delusions of "cheap x86 Macs".
the raw costs of the intel chips are definitely more expensive. but apple now no longer has to pay for their own chipset development arm - design, testing, fabrication - when they can just buy, as a set, the 955gx (or whatever) as well.
the reason MIPS, Alpha et al are no more is that the respective companies behind them figured they could not compete with the economies of scale; even if the "per unit" manufacture cost was cheaper, the developmental arm you need to upkeep adds on a price premium you've got to find some way to pay for.
In that sense, the higher price-per-CPU for an Intel chip is a "true" price, while the lower prices apple can get from IBM etc. does not take into account all the hidden costs they have to pay to integrate it into a unique platform.
Actually, I'd say you're in a prime spot then. Grab an older single processor powermac from a liquidation company or ebay. You'll save money and it should fit right into your spec requirements.
I'm on a recent model G5 iMac and I bought 2gigs or RAM to slip into the poor beast because I never want to have a system that thrashes.
Nothing is more detrimental to the health of my machine than suddenly going from running at RAM speed to crawling at disk speed.
Seriously, Macs have always been under chipped in this respect.
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When NeXTStep went to multiple architectures, most binaries were provided in all architectures, even ones people didn't use (SPARC). My hope is that it will be the same this time around.
I can absolutely confirm this (dammit, I leave Slashdot one day & folks are already posting the answer *I* wanted to give).
As a Mac developer writing software that's in the hands of a not inconsequential number of people, I have on my desk one of the Intel-based Developer Transition Kits. The reason I have this is not because I'm now going to be building Intel-only applications from now on, but because in a year's time, when a client buys a new Mac an it's running on an Intel processor, they will still want to use my software.
As a result, I compile everything as a 'Universal Binary' -- which, to the uninitiated, is a new name for the 'Fat Binary' of yore; in other words, it's got the Intel and the PowerPC binary files concatenated together, with a little table of contents up front.
When I first fired it up, it took me one day to get a quite a few programs (components of one software product) to build & perform perfectly on Intel (one little problem - ntohl() modifying the source operand on Intel processors - caused 80% of the delay, due to it being a bitch to track down) and PowerPC. They even generate various files which can be passed between one another with nary a glitch.
And before people start whinging about applications doubling in size, take a look at the size of the actual program binary itself. Delicious Library is 908Kb. Final Cut Pro is 4.7Mb. Things like Photoshop will undoubtedly be larger, and will therefore be candidates for seperate Intel/PowerPC binaries (i.e. the installer detects what system is running, and installs the appropriate binary). It's worth noting, though, that applications which make heavy use of the OS X frameworks will be smaller, and much more palatable as universal binaries.
In short, as an Apple developer, whose software is installed on hundreds of thousands of Macs, it's actually more work for me to make my software work on intel only - after all, for that I would need to:
-Q
You do not void the warranty when you upgrade a mini's RAM.:
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny