Apple Hedges Its Bet on New Intel Chips

Corrado writes "The Mercury News is reporting that Apple is still planning to use PowerPC chips well into 2008 for its low end and portable systems. Does this increase the "warm fuzzes" for the Intel move? More information from TheStreet and lots more links from Google News."

Comments

Power Efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the one of the points of the switch to make more efficient use of electricity? Then why are they going to continue to use PPCs in their portable devices?

Re:Power Efficiency?

[/ASCII]

Well, this contract is with Freescale, i.e. Motorola, who make the G4. The G4 is a pretty energy efficient processor, unlike IBMs G5. So the question here is how on earth are the going to make anybody buy a computer, portable or otherwise, powerd by a G4 in 2008?

Re:Power Efficiency?

[lokedhs]

The article said nothing about quantities.

I can see several uses: Future portable products (video player?) and spare parts. There will still be PowerBooks under AppleCare service contracts in 2008.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[jasonditz]

If they're cheap enough I might buy one... I've got assloads of PPC software and am very skeptical of the ability to run them (well) emulated on an x86.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[bahamat]

...and spare parts. There will still be PowerBooks under AppleCare service contracts in 2008

You hit the nail on the head. In fact, Apple's plans are to phase out the PPC by 2007, that means they will have PPC chips under AppleCare at least until 2010, and I'm sure they'll have many out of warranty repairs for many years to come after that.

Anybody who tries to twist this into "Apple isn't so sure about Intel" is just fooling themselves.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[Trillan]

What we know is Apple has secured a line of PowerPC chips into 2008. However, Apple has no commitment to buy. It being for Powerbook, etc is pure speculation on the part of the contributor and contradictory to the keynote.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[Spruitje]

Wasn't the one of the points of the switch to make more efficient use of electricity? Then why are they going to continue to use PPCs in their portable devices?


Yeah, and that's precisely the reason why Apple stocked up PPC chips.
At the moment Intel has one of the worst processing power/power useage figures on the market.
Their 2,4 Ghz. Pentium 4M uses around 28 watts peak.
That is almost the same as a PPC 970fx uses at 2,7 Ghz..
The new mobile G5 uses almost the same as the current G4 processors.
Around 15 watt peak.
So, intel must come with a processor which has the same processing power as a PPC970 1,5 Ghz and uses around 15 watt peak before Apple is going to use it in a Powerbook.
Second, a G4 1,5 Ghz is around 2 or 3 times cheaper than the current Pentium 4m.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the same way they get people to buy an Apple computer powered by an obsolete G4 in 2005.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[netwiz]

Dude, I gotta call bullshit on your numbers. The 970FX most definitely does not dissipate 28watt at peak. Maybe at 50% idle, with the clock throttled back to 66%. The PM also has half the main-memory latency of the G5, and roughly double the integer performance.

Furthermore, Apple isn't interested in sticking Intel's current lineup in their products, they're interested in the next-gen hardware, the ones that provide roughly triple the computing performance at lower power. Did you see some of the pics from last week's IDF? 9 watts for the lower-power laptop parts, with performance to match almost anything the 970 ever did save very well-scheduled and hand-tuned FP and AltiVec algorithms, something that devs don't even have to screw with (mostly) on the x86 side, as Intel's compilers smoke the hell out of anything on the PPC side.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[blinksilver]

I maybe completely off base here, but assuming apple still sells PPC chips untill 2006. and then switch won't they still have a large base of users who will still need repairs to their units for upto 3 years(that is how long apple longest service period is) They would still need the CPUs for servicing those units, instead of new units.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

is it possible that Apple would give out new/refurbished Intel powerbooks for warranty claims? This might be cheaper.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[Alan Partridge]

Ahhhhh!

Re:Power Efficiency?

[KarmaMB84]

Until the customer realizes their PPC-only software won't run on their Intel powerbook and sues...

Re:Power Efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if he was informed first. I would love to get a faster, more power efficient machine as a replacement.

However, the answer to the original question is no. They won't do that. But the reason is not the one you mentioned.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[10Ghz]

G4 itself is a fine processor. It's just crippled by crappy FSB. It's amazing how far they have managed to bring that CPU, using that crappy FSB.

But what would happen if you took that G4, increased the FSB to around 667MHz, added a integrated dual-channel DDR-mem-controller, PCI-E interface and integrated GigE and increased the amount of L2-cache from 512KB to 1MB? And on hi-end models, it would be dual-core. clock-speeds would start at 1.5GHz.

I wouldn't call that a bad CPU by any stretch of the imagination. That CPU is called MPC8641(D). And it would mop the floor with G5 on many occasions.

Re:Power Efficiency?

[catwh0re]

This article does not imply that Apple will continue with PPC chips, infact it implies the exact opposite, this sort of agreement is put in place when you ramp a product out of production(otherwise your vendor will just drop you leaving you dry as you drop to last position on their valued customer list.)

A little reading on Apple's website reveals that you can have a maximum 3 years warranty on current Apple products. So 2005 + 3 = 2008. So right away we know that Apple will need G4 chips from Freescale until 2008, but only current technology, nothing new (hence the claus covering current tech not future tech.)
It is fair to say that Apple have no plans on having anymore freescale processors in any Apple products beyond 2005. (Freescale processors are G4's not G5's).
So it is also fair to say that somewhere between 2005-2006 Apple will not have any more Freescale G4 products for sale, which uncoincidently is what Steve Jobs implied when he said that Intel chips will be used in low end Apple Computers(i.e G4 computers), then ramp up to the higher end machines (i.e G5s).

Now this means that we can expect at most dual core G4s and a few more MHz to get added (as these are a current projects), but beyond that we should not expect anything else.

Steve Jobs pledged that all PPC chips will be gone by 2007, well this is exactly to this timeline.
So it'll go like this: Intels + some G4s + G5s,
then Intel + G5s,
then Intels.

The first thing you can expect to see in Intel form is the Mac mini. Contrary to rumours for september it is not feasible that Apple should engineer a G5 to fit in the mac mini form factor, as this is both contrary to the needs of the Powerbook, cost of r&d and the reality that the mac mini is the apple test bed as it is unimportant to the long term apple customer.(long term customers tend to buy more powerful hardware, while the mac mini is geared towards a try-before-you-buy market: buy the mini, then buy a more expensive mac next time.)

Re:Power Efficiency?

[chaschl]

As you said, there will be lots of follow-on work and warranty, and post warranty work that has to be done, but typically that's contracted out to allow the new corporate culture to be fully focused on the new model, product, direction... I wouldn't suggest that Apple would STAY with PPC chipsets, but that there are other uses for this chipset that transcend through 2008, and perhaps beyond.

Other than the imperious business methods of Intel, I have nothing against them. However, it seems that AMD would be a better match for Apple, since they're the underestimated underdog, and their company has an exuberent and energized attitude. Isn't that what makes Apple so unique, really??? If things don't work out with Intel, I could see Jobs hugging Hector Ruiz on stage at the WWDC 2006.

Chaschl~

Support?

[Oculus Habent]

Has anyone ever heard of support? Apple may need the occasional extra lot of processors for years to come to support their existing support contracts.

Re:Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course I know what "support" is. After all, my company pays a whole lot of money to have Microsoft tell us to call Dell, and Dell tell us to call Microsoft...

Re:Support?

[Saven Marek]

> Has anyone ever heard of support? Apple may need the
> occasional extra lot of processors for years to come to support
> their existing support contracts.

That is one possibility. What is annoying is that the slashdot summary says this:

The Mercury News is reporting that Apple is still planning to use PowerPC chips well into 2008 for its low end and portable systems.

when the article actually says this:

Freescale agreed to supply PowerPC microprocessors for orders placed through Dec. 31, 2008 -- a year beyond Apple's planned transition to the Intel chips.

and from apple & freescale itself:

"Freescale (is) to fill any orders Apple places over the next three years. Apple is under no obligation to purchase Freescale microprocessors other than work in progress that was in place at the time the agreement was executed."

So suddenly "freescale is bound to fill any orders apple may or may not need to place over the next 3 years" becomes "Apple will be making G4 laptops until 2008"

Rubbish as spculation gets piled on top of speculation. It stinks something bad when basic reporting gets errors confounded one upon top of another

Re:Support?

[Elbereth]

Don't worry. They'll correct the summary when the dupe is posted later tonight.

Re:Support?

[It doesn't come easy]

And so a new adage is coined ... "No news is Slashdot news" ...

Re:Support?

[/ASCII]

The most amusing thing is that while the Slashdot summary is speculative, the headline is 100% correct.

Isn't the norm that the headline should be a catchy, speculative blurb, and that most of the actual article is a retraction of the claims from the headline?

Re:Support?

[robyannetta]

And if Michael Dell has his way, he'll soon be telling you to call Apple.

But don't hold your breath.

Re:Support?

[ylon]

Exactly right parent. This is sound business logic on Apple's part. They have to have options, replacements and so forth. There is not a reason to believe that we're going to be stuck with G4 procs or such for the next few years in light of this agreement. And yes, that is rubbish speculation and reporting when they go stringing things together such as this and making people perceive it as gospel.

Re:Support?

[bill_mcgonigle]

It stinks something bad when basic reporting gets errors confounded one upon top of another

Well, blame the highly paid journalism experts who write Slashdot stories. Oh..., no, blame the expert editors who run Slashdot... awww, nevermind.

Re:Support?

[pizpot]

Micheal is too weak to stop sucking Bill's dork. Hear that Micheal? You are weak. Keep doing what you do.

What?

[doormat]

Steve said low end items were the first to go (mini, iBook, etc). What the hell are they talking about.

Re:What?

[waynelorentz]

Haven't you heard? Low end is the new high end. Or perhaps it's a particularly strong lobe of the Reality Distortion Field caused by atmospheric disturbances.

Re:What?

[mrchaotica]

They're talking about spare parts for existing PPC models, probably.

Re:What?

[daviqh]

And everything on the internet is true...

Re:What?

[Penguin Programmer]

Which, of course, makes far more sense. Intel can provide Apple with processors worthy of their low-end machines today, so they could switch any time, whereas there's still some R&D to be done to come up with the G5-replacement.

Re:What?

[chaschl]

Ah yes! This is true. It was the low end items that were supposed to be the first to be released wtih the Intel processor.

Steven Marek makes an astute observation in the news articles we're discussing. The G4 chips are meant to cover orders through 2008. I think the caveat that Apple is under no obligation to purchase any is the rub that makes you scratch your head. After all, no one EVER thought that Apple would have Intel chips inside. I suggest we all just wait for more breaking news. But in the mean time, I have high confidence that their current AppleCare policies will be more than adequately cared for. I'm getting my new iBook next week.

~Chaschl~

no need to panic...

[boomerny]

Apple is just covering their bases. This is merely a safeguard, not an indication that the move is behind schedule.

Re:no need to panic...

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

what are you talking about? supporting 2 different platforms is as easy as clicking a check box with xcode.

and if you can't be bothered to even do that, transparent emulation will take care of it for your users.

Re:no need to panic...

[AKAImBatman]

Having to develop two parallel code branches for years to come?

As long as developers haven't relied on something inherent in the chip (e.g. endianess), there should be no need to maintain separate code branches. All that will happen is that the compiler will produce multi-platform or "fat" binaries. This shouldn't impact most existing code in any way, shape, or form.

Re:no need to panic...

[altan]

If you went to the trouble of optimizing your scientific/engineering/math/multimedia processing application to use Altivec, not only is it going to be a pain to port it to use vDSP or direct SSE instructions; Rosetta won't even run Altivec code.

Re:no need to panic...

[mattyohe]

Exactly.. People are still buying computers with a 3 year coverage of apple care... They are indeed covering bases...

Re:no need to panic...

[statusbar]

Wow! That's crazy! It shouldn't be that hard for rosetta to emulate altivec! Sure it would be slow but it could be made so apps don't break!

jeff

Re:no need to panic...

[metamatic]

If you were doing anything involving science, engineering or math, you almost certainly used the industry-standard BLAS routines--in which case you never wrote a line of AltiVec code, and your source code will compile straight to SSE optimized x86 code.

I don't know what multimedia software companies use, but I suspect the only one that might not already have Intel versions of all their DSP routines is Apple itself.

Re:no need to panic...

[RapmasterT]

what are you talking about? supporting 2 different platforms is as easy as clicking a check box with xcode.

I stand corrected, I didn't realize xcode was a universal SUPPORT application now.

I mean you'd have to be an idiot to confuse the words "compile" with "support", right?

Re:no need to panic...

[mistercharlie]

in a culture historically known for covering their bases, why would they not be doing it here? this seems an overblown story to me...

Re:no need to panic...

[shplorb]

If you went to the trouble of hand-optimising VMX code then I would say there's a fair chance that the code is very application-specific. Or in other words, you're not going to need or be in a hurry to upgrade the hardware - it would most probably be a processor-specific application as well.

But if you do the right thing and follow Apple's programming guidelines then you would have written your vector code using VecLib. VecLib is on every OS X system and is optimised for the specific processor model that computer is running. So if you've done that then updating your app is as simple as ticking the 'Build x86' checkbox.

Re:no need to panic...

[Anonymous Coward]

"But if you do the right thing and follow Apple's programming guidelines then you would have written your vector code using VecLib. VecLib is on every OS X system and is optimised for the specific processor model that computer is running. So if you've done that then updating your app is as simple as ticking the 'Build x86' checkbox."

Shut the FUCK UP you little shit.

We've done the right thing and dumped our Mac development.

All or nothing

[thesmurph]

This doesn't help the "warm fuzzes" at all. It just shows that apple is not as confident as they originally were. If Apple truely believed that the Intel procs they were switching to were so much better this point would be mute.

Re:All or nothing

[multiplexo]

much better this point would be mute.

I think you mean the point would be "moot". Based upon the stuff that Intel has been announcing lately I'm looking forward to an Intel based Macintosh and I'm not too worried about this.

Re:All or nothing

[E-Lad]

The contract into 2008 is likely because Apple needs current and future PPC processors to fulfill support agreements.

You didn't actually think that Apple would cut off PPC users the moment that the last Mac model is moved to Intel, did you?

Re:All or nothing

[hunterx11]

No, the point is "moo." You know, like a cow's opinion: it doesn't matter.

Re:All or nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The word is "moot."

Re:All or nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is mute. Moot, while spelled the same, usually refers to imaginary cases given to law students to argue. Its a very profession-specific term.

Mute, pronounced moot, means expressed without spoken.

Re:All or nothing

[moonbender]

Heh. I googled and landed on a web site that came up earlier today or yesterday in the context of "begging the question". Anyway, here's what their article says: "The mute spelling is a development that has come about because moot is now a fossil word, usually encountered only in this phrase; there is an understandable tendency to convert the unknown into the known, and mute seems to fit the new meaning rather better. But its wrong." But read the whole article for an amusing ethymological note.

Of course as an adherent of descriptive linguistics, far be it from me to agree with the author that any usage is either right or wrong, but a quick Google test seems to indicate that "mute point" is certainly less commonly used than "moot point".

Re:All or nothing

[MightyMartian]

I think Apple's justification for these sorts of statements is to try to convince the skeptical elements of its current user base. When it was first announced, some die-hard Mac users were moaning about Apple's move to x86 as if someone had just announced that Armageddon was coming. Clearly Apple wants to grow its business, but it doesn't want to lose what's already there.

Frankly I think it's very good news, and I do think Apple stands to benefit greatly from using the same CPU as is running Windows and the majority of Linux boxes.

Re:All or nothing

[gstone]

Moot, while spelled the same, usually refers to imaginary cases given to law students to argue.

You mean an imaginary or practice case where the outcome has no instrinsic effect in itself? Kind of like the "mute" point the original poster made?

Re:All or nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - it's not exactly in common usage as "mute" - besides which, the confusion could only happen in the one part of the world where people cannot pronounce 'mute' properly, so it sounds like 'moot'.

Re:All or nothing

[b17bmbr]

I don't think it's confidence so much as offereing a product that people will buy. I for one would rather have a G4 then a celeron. Maybe lots of folk want to transfer legacy apps or want a laptop that's not a nutburner. I'll trade anyday the ibooks cool temps for horsepower. plus, the prices of G4's and even the G5's will drop, and allow apple to compete more and more in the low end pc market. imagine a sub 1K imac compared to a dell.

Re:All or nothing

[Comboman]

How long did it take them to cut off 680x0 users when they switched to PPC?

Re:All or nothing

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

Anyone who spells it "mute" is a total looser!

Re:All or nothing

[tgibbs]

Actually, it is mute. Moot, while spelled the same, usually refers to imaginary cases given to law students to argue. Its a very profession-specific term.

Mute, pronounced moot, means expressed without spoken.

No. I consider this the second most annoying modern misspelling (after "phased" for "fazed"). When referring to a point, the only correct spelling is "moot." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a nice explanation of the derivation.

From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Usage Note: The adjective moot is originally a legal term going back to the mid-16th century. It derives from the noun moot, in its sense of a hypothetical case argued as an exercise by law students. Consequently, a moot question is one that is arguable or open to debate. But in the mid-19th century people also began to look at the hypothetical side of moot as its essential meaning, and they started to use the word to mean "of no significance or relevance." Thus, a moot point, however debatable, is one that has no practical value. A number of critics have objected to this use, but 59 percent of the Usage Panel accepts it in the sentence The nominee himself chastised the White House for failing to do more to support him, but his concerns became moot when a number of Republicans announced that they, too, would oppose the nomination. When using moot one should be sure that the context makes clear which sense is meant.

It's modern legal meaning is consistent with this: "Without legal significance, through having been previously decided or settled."

"Mute" of course, does not mean expressed without being spoken. It means "unable to speak," although like "moot" it also has a specialized legal meaning of "refusing to enter a plea."

Re:All or nothing

[diamondsw]

The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.

Okay, I give up. Someone tell me what the hell this viral sig line is about.

Re:All or nothing

[ifwm]

Perhaps you should be mute.

Re:All or nothing

[Malacon]

I think you're both wrong and right.

According to Dictionary.com Mute has "Expressed without speech" listed as a valid definition.

Maybe moot is correct as well, and certainly is the older term, but it appears both are valid.

Re:All or nothing

[tengwar]

No, grand-parent is correct. "Moot" originally refers to a council gathering, e.g. shire-moot, and is occasionally still used in this sense. From this it is clear how a "moot point", i.e. a debatable one, is derived. "Mute" has nothing to do with this, despite sounding slightly similar. It means unable to speak, or as a noun, a person who cannot speak or a device for diminishing the volume of a brass instrument.

Even if mute meant "expressed without speech" (which it doesn't!) that of itself would not be the same concept as a "moot point" in either the older meaning of a point requiring debate or the modern meaning of a point which has no practical consequence.

Re:All or nothing

[Kadin2048]

Here's all you need to know from that article, or that anyone else needs to know from your post:
"mute point" = WRONG.

Re:All or nothing

[moonbender]

Unfortunately I lack your superior skills in creating a logically sound argument and had to go the long route of explaining my reasoning, including intermediary steps.

Re:All or nothing

[ScottEllsworth]

Apple is very confident.

The people working on the Intel transition are aware of the risks, and are addressing them like the consummate professionals they are. I talked with a lot of them at WWDC 2005, and they know what they were doing, and they know what roadblocks could come up and bite them.

You cannot repair or replace a G4/1.5 powerbook motherboard with any processor Intel ships. By having supply through 2008, they can satisfy any Applecare requirements they may have. This alone would justify their contract with freescale. After all, Applecare is three years, and they are going to be selling laptops with G4 processors until early 2006.

Further, depending on Intel's price points, there may be a place for G4 iBooks or Mac Minis for a few months after introduction. Apple currently sells laptops and minis ranging from $500 to $3000, which is a very big range. It is not clear to me just how quickly they will change every segment of their laptop and mini offerings. Certainly, the high end laptops will change fast, as Apple is getting creamed in that market. For a mini, though, where battery life is not a critical factor, but price is?

The only concrete statement we have comes from WWDC - they will have something running by WWDC 2006, and will have completed their transition by the end of 2007. That is a two year range, in which every machine must change. I am betting that the G4 will vanish overnight, but I am not going to bet the farm, and having an insured supply of chips means that Apple is not going to either.

It takes confidence to make a change this drastic. I, for one, am in favor of it.

Scott

Re:All or nothing

[javaxman]

How long did it take them to cut off 680x0 users when they switched to PPC?

A pretty damn long time, really, if you start counting at the first release of the first PPC machine. That was March 1994, according to this timeline. The last Apple OS to support 68k machines was OS 8.1, which was released in 1997.

So, three years, in a sense, although plenty of people used their 68k macs for a whole lot longer than that...

I can't seem to find any record of what kind of hardware service contracts you could get back then, but three years sounds like a long time for computer hardware, and is probably about right...

Re:Sweet. FP

[waynelorentz]

Whoo, my first first post ever.

No it's not.

fat binaries forever . .

[tubbtubb]

Why doesn't apple just continue to use both architectures?

Re:fat binaries forever . .

[RAMMS EIN]

Yeah, especially since, these days, virtually nobody cares about wasting disk space or bandwidth anymore anyway. And for most applications, most of the space is in the data. In fact, it has been speculated that this is exactly what Apple will do; provide an update to Xcode that will cause it to generate fat PPC/intel binaries, and everybody will be writing software compatible with both platforms with no extra effort.

Re:fat binaries forever . .

[remahl]

That is more than a rumor. That is exactly what the Xcode that was released on the day of the announcement back in July does.

Re:fat binaries forever . .

[prockcore]

everybody will be writing software compatible with both platforms with no extra effort.

Yeah, because if PPC Linux has shown us anything, it's that architecture changes are trivial. Oh wait. No it doesn't. It's not as simple as a recompile. Minor bugs crop up when you take a piece of software and compile it on a different architecture, even if the host OS doesn't change.

XCode can't magically correct any endian assumptions your code makes. Your apps will need to be tested on both platforms.

Re:fat binaries forever . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen.

I've been saying that since The Keynote, and been modded down. Seems like the PC mob is so happy that Apple saw the light that they joined the worst of the Apple fanboys in taking SJ's words as gospel. Anyway.

Fat binaries are a no-brainer in these days of cheap disk space, graphics heavy apps and broadband - save for the whiners who will complain that ls is now 120k instead of 60.

So Apple is going to use x86s. Cool. The point is that Steve said there would be a SWITCH because he couldn't say anything else. If he had said they would have Mactel as well, developpers would have wavered, waited to port apps and so on, and when the machines would have actually been released, customers would have found that the one app they need is not supported on x86 or something and would have demanded and bought PPCs.

You see, supporting both architecture now is a win-win for Apple:
- they diversify suppliers;
- they put pressure on IBM/Freescale to lower prices and come up with better procs;
- they hedge against Intel doing an Itanium-bis.

IF AND ONLY IF developers port apps.

So Steve said there'd be "A Switch".

PR.

Re:fat binaries forever . .

[falconwolf]

it has been speculated that this is exactly what Apple will do; provide an update to Xcode that will cause it to generate fat PPC/intel binaries

Xcode 2.1 does generate fat binaries or universal code.

Falcon

Re:fat binaries forever . .

[hcdejong]

Um, because that would mean spending twice the money on hardware development and OS testing?

Warranty

[Rainbird98]

This has nothing to do with the change over to Intel. Apple needs to support the warranty its existing base of G4 Macs for at least three years.

Re:Warranty

[Halfbaked Plan]

Yes, and this agreement obligates Freescale to supply what Apple requests. It does not require Apple to buy anything. I wonder sometimes why Freescale let themselves into such a deal.

I sometimes wonder if Apple should be blamed for the fact that it's not the good old Motorola that we all loved.

Developer perspective on Apple porting strategy...

[bstarrfield]

Entirely outside the ADC NDA...

If you take a look at Apple's developer tools - specifically, XCode 2.1 and above, you'll find that building binaries for both platforms is fairly easy. I think that Apple not only wanted to allow developers to build binaries for Intel and PPC, but to allow itself some time for the transition. Apple hasn't locked itself into a position where it must switch to Intel on a certain date. This is a good thing.

Really, if we can consider Mac OS X as simply OpenStep 4 (or whatever), then the CPU - to a very large extant - becomes just another part of the machine. With the exception of low level hardware driver experts, do you really care what bridge / Firewire / USB chip is used? Think the same way about the CPU, and you have Apple's apparent perspective on using Intel chips - the OS is fairly independant from the CPU, the developer tools can target multiple platforms, and consumers really won't have too much to worry about.

Hello bloat

[wiredlogic]

So presumably we will again have an extended transitional period where Mac binaries have x86 and PPC code rolled together. I wonder how big an OS X Office install will be now.

Re:Hello bloat

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I would expect that software makers should provide universal binaries for several years because the Macs currently being sold still need updated software from time to time. It would be silly for the third party publishers would require a switch to a new machine arch just to use the latest version.

Maybe the smarter installers will install only the necessary binaries.

Re:Hello bloat

[hunterx11]

Hard disk space is cheap. RAM is less cheap, but having twice as much code and then only loading half of it into RAM doesn't increase bloat at all.

Re:Hello bloat

[justforaday]

Hey codemonkeys, here's a fun project for you. Put together a couple of fat-strippers - progs that'll remove either the PPC or x86 code from fat binaries.

Re:Hello bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the hell would everything be compiled into the Application ?
Do you even know how applications are coded?

ugh, uninformed techie wannabe..

Re:Hello bloat

[TheRaven64]

Here's one:

#!/bin/sh
ditto --arch i386 $1

That wasn't too hard, was it? Of course, fat binaries will only add a tiny bit to most programs, since the non-executable resources for most pieces of software are significantly larger than the executable portions.

Re:Hello bloat

[mrchaotica]

I wonder how big an OS X Office install will be now.

Not much bigger, because the actual binary is only a tiny fraction of the install. Most of the space is taken up with other stuff like images and templates and whatnot.

Re:Hello bloat

[jellomizer]

Hello! it is 2005 Drive prices are now less then a Dollar a Gigabyte. This consern about bloat is a rather mood point now. Besides bloat is more of a problem with the higher level programming code then with the binaries. At this point the cost of making a program that is 10% smaller is more then the cost of getting a drive twice as big.

Re:Hello bloat

[justforaday]

Ahh. Thank god for the power of unix. The last time I ran a prog to strip a binary was in the 68k/PPC days.

Re:Hello bloat

[lokedhs]

In my Office 2004 install on my Mac the Microsoft Word file is 17069566. That's about 16 MB. This means that at worst, Word will use about 16 more MB on disc. Not RAM mind you.

In fact, the size is probably smaller since only the TEXT segment is going to be duplicated. However, I'm not sure how to check this for a PEF executable.

Re:Hello bloat

[nsayer]

twice as much code

Actually, since we're talking about CISC vs RISC architectures, you should find that the x86 binaries will be a bit smaller than the PPC ones. So perhaps the code portions will wind up being 175% the original size. But a sizable portion of a typical Cocoa app consist of the NIBs and other non-executable resources, so you might find that a fat executable may take only an additional 50% or maybe even 25% on the disk.

Of course all of this applies only to Cocoa (will they even support Carbon-based Intel binaries? I believe they've already said they won't support Classic on Intel). Java apps won't care at all what CPU is running them.

Re:Hello bloat

[Halo1]

Of course, fat binaries will only add a tiny bit to most programs, since the non-executable resources for most pieces of software are significantly larger than the executable portions.

I'm quite doubtful about whether only the executable part is duplicated, as the input of lipo is two stand-alone binaries (unless it performs optimizations splitting the data in identical parts -like strings- and different parts -like integer constants- and then relocating the hell out of both binaries).

Re:Hello bloat

[jcr]

I wonder how big an OS X Office install will be now.

Based on how it was in NeXTSTEP, approximately 30%.

-jcr

Re:Hello bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Easily fixed. Don't use Office.

http://openoffice.org/

Re:Hello bloat

[dgatwood]

Carbon != Classic. Classic is an environment for running old apps that were never made fully Carbon compliant. Carbon apps run natively without that virtualization environment.

And yes, Carbon-based binaries are supported. Did you think Photoshop was magically rewritten in Cocoa for the demo? :-D

Re:Hello bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

No. If you're talking about WWDC, it was the PPC version running under Rosetta.

As for whether Carbon is supported on Intel, I would guess you're right. But I haven't read anything to confirm or deny it, since I don't particularly care about that.

Re:Hello bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

HD space isn't that cheap when you're talking about laptops. I have a 100 GB HD in my PowerBook that is nearly filled up. It kinda pisses me off that I have to lug an external 250 GB HD around with me all the time. I don't think there are bigger 2.5" HDs in mass production at this time.

Re:Hello bloat

[snuf23]

Keep in mind that only the executables need to grow in size. Support files for example would not need to have seperate Intel and PPC versions.
As an example, something like say Doom 3, where a huge amount of the install size is graphics and sound files would be nowhere near double the size.

Re:Hello bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite doubtful about whether only the executable part is duplicated

He means the non-exectable parts of the app, not the binary itself. Things like NIB files, images, and other resources that, on Mac OS X, are contained within the app bundle.

And he's right. Who cares about duplicating a 100k binary when you've got 10MB of resources that aren't going to be duplicated? Pages' bundle is ~400MB, with a 2MB binary. iDVD's bundle is over 1GB, with a 3MB binary.

Re:Hello bloat

[mederjo]

dgatwood already pointed out that Classic != Carbon, so I'll just add that Carbon apps can also use NIBs. My app does. Interface Builder ( which generates NIBs ) is a great tool, the best UI layout tool I've used, and I've used a few . It's not perfect mind you, one or two annoying bugs.

People here on /. seem to underestimate the importance of Carbon. There are a lot of developers still using it. It makes a lot of sense for cross platform apps particularly. Cocoa is a good OO framework, but Carbon is a pretty good API as well ( much nicer than Win32 ), especially since the advent of Carbon Events. It used to take pages of code to put up a window, write an event loop and and handle all its basic behaviour ( moving, sizing, zooming, closing etc. ) but now it's less than a page as most ( all ) of the basic behaviour is handled for you by the OS.

Jo Meder

Re:Hello bloat

[stew77]

Finder is Carbon, so this should be proof enough that Carbon is supported.

Re:Hello bloat

[nsayer]

Did you think Photoshop was magically rewritten in Cocoa for the demo?

No, but that was a PPC app running in Rosetta. Not what we're talking about.

Support issue(s) ahead?

[bad_outlook]

Will this be a problem for support? They'll now have to support this much more hardware, and will have to have a fork of their OS X code; or will all code be done for Intel procs now, and 'just work (tm)' via the rosetta on powerpc procs? I think they'd have to do this, but still, I think it's going to taint the marketing a bit. Still, this hasn't been done before, and it's in sits like this that Apple usually does well. As long as production can keep up...

Re:Support issue(s) ahead?

[XxtraLarGe]

or will all code be done for Intel procs now, and 'just work (tm)' via the rosetta on powerpc procs?

I think you might have that reversed. Most Devs don'te even have a Mactel to work on. I'm sure most current stuff will still be compiled for PowerPC, and then run on Intel via Rosetta.

Re:Support issue(s) ahead?

[hunterx11]

OS X has always run on x86 and PPC--it is no more "forked" than NetBSD.

Re:Support issue(s) ahead?

[mihalis]

Will this be a problem for support? They'll now have to support this much more hardware, and will have to have a fork of their OS X code; or will all code be done for Intel procs now, and 'just work (tm)' via the rosetta on powerpc procs?

I doubt very much there is a fork in OS X. Much more likely they keep the code that absolutely must know things like sizeof and endianness to an absolute minimum, and just use utility routines to convert architecture dependent data formats to platform independent formats, and then use clean portable coding techniques to write most of the rest of the code oblivious to the underlying machine.

After five years or more of Mac OS X's "secret double life" it is likely that they are, even, quite good at this portability strategy.

Furthermore, I doubt if the development managers over at Apple will even allow new "intel-isms" to infect the code going forward. Where appropriate, sure, but fancy tricks just because someone has a pentium programming manual, hell no. Steve Jobs would be furious if OS X lost the ability to run really well on PowerPC before the last drop of bargaining power had been squeezed out. He also might be keeping one eye open on all those hot console processors IBM is designing. With a truly portable OS, he can make sure Apple rides the hardware waves of the future and not just this one.

Re:Support issue(s) ahead?

[Halfbaked Plan]

Much longer than five years. NeXT shipped a multi-platform OS for years before they bought Apple Computer.

Re:Sweet. FP

[networkBoy]

"But I don't know much. Plus I wanted to have first post at least once in my life. ;)" :heh:

Really?

[TheRaven64]

I've not R'd TFA (reg required, and all that), but this sounds a lot like the news on Think Secret a few days ago. In short, they have signed a deal whereby FreeScale are required to supply PowerPC chips to Apple until 2008, but Apple are not required to buy them.

Apple have stated that the low end will switch to Intel first, so I don't really know what the basis for this `story' is. It seems much more likely that, if they are extending their purchasing options for G4s to 2008, they will stop selling G4s at the end of this year. This would then give them a supply of G4s to use in replacements until the end of the 3-year AppleCare period for the last G4 units sold.

Good, because

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, because I just plain don't want an Intel chip. I don't care if it's the future of Apple's support, I want to keep buying PPC as long as I possibly can. I don't care if you think I'm crazy or stupid. Personally I just have a whole bunch of personal Altivec code and I don't want to have to rewrite it.

Posted as AC because every time I express that I do not want to be forced to use Intel chips in order to continue using OS X, I get screamed at for being a "zealot". I find it a bit funny that disagreeing with Apple gets you branded as an Apple Zealot now, but there it is.

Re:Good, because

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally just bought an iMac G5, *after* the announcement of the Intel changeover. I might well buy another "last of the PPC Macs" come the next revision round, also. You're not alone.

Re:Good, because

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, it's so hard to stand out and be different when Apple moves to using a mainstream CPU.

I suggest you die your hair purple or wear a shirt with a crazy logo to assert your individuality now.

Ahahaha.

Re:Good, because

[pstreck]

PPC architecture is good but so is x86 64... So I'm somewhat curious as to why you feel so strongly about using a PPC chip. Personally I've owned sparcs, an alpha, pelnty of x86, and ppc boxes. At the end of the day I use whichever platform gets my job done in the quickest manner.

Re:Good, because

[richman555]

I don't own a Mac at all and never have owned one. Until the past year or so I bought an iPod, and use iTunes on my Windows PC. I have been thinking about getting a Mac, mainly because of my dislike for Windows, but now Id rather wait until they have Intel based Mac laptops. The G5s I have read are pretty good, but still I want to buy a "new" machine and the G5s are not available in a laptop. Call me crazy, but Im looking forward to the Intel Mac and will probably buy one because they are using Intel inside. Maybe I am in the minority, I don't know.

Re:Good, because

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, because I just plain don't want a PPC chip. I don't care if it's the future of Apple's support, I want to keep buying 680x0 as long as I possibly can. I don't care if you think I'm crazy or stupid. Personally I just have a whole bunch of personal 680x0 code and I don't want to have to rewrite it.

Posted as AC because every time I express that I do not want to be forced to use PPC chips in order to continue using Apple operating systems, I get screamed at for being a "zealot". I find it a bit funny that disagreeing with Apple gets you branded as an Apple Zealot now, but there it is.

You're a godamm moron. Obsolesence is part of computing. Get with the program.

Re:Good, because

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you cut your hair, put perfect creases in your monkey suit, and buckle down at work for your faceless corporate masters.

Otherwise you might not fit in with all the rest of the drones in the cubicles all around you making menial wages while middle management takes the credit for all your hard work.

/Worn tshirts & jeans @ work for decades
//Suck it down, you stupid little wage monkey

This is not news

[MouseR]

Apple did say the transition would take a couple of years.

It's obvious that after the Intel bomb shell they dropped that they now need to secure supplies of current processors until the entire line has moved onto Intel.

This is common sense. (But you don't have to expect this from news sites that report, even, that Apple might be back-tracking on the Intel switch.)

Registration-Free Link to article

[autojive]

Google Link and just click on the url that shows up on that page. Worked for me :)

They won't change from PPC

[guruevi]

PPC is one of the best platforms ever for both sound, gfx and of course heat production. It is also more efficient as it is a full RISC processor instead of the Intel's who are hybrid CISC and RISC: The core, the base level, is a fast RISC processor. On top of that is an interpreter which 'sees' the CISC instructions, and breaks them down into simpler RISC instructions. So, why should you switch to a b0rked platform which is ages old so it can still support DOS and has the power usage and heat production of a small oven (especially in datacenters)? As long as Apple provides PPC I will buy their PPC or buy other PPC machines.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Dominatus]

Heat? What the hell

The number one reason you havent seen a G5 laptop is heat issues. I don't see any problems running newer and newer x86 CPUs in laptops.

Hell the G5 towers need to be *water* cooled.

Furthermore, while the CISC/RISC business is correct every single report Ive read about the dev OSX86 machines (which are just regular P4s) are that they boot faster, perform faster, and are overall considerably faster than a G5.

Drop the argument, even Apple realizes it's dead.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[altan]

The Pentium M is lower voltage and has a lower power dissipation than the current line of mobile G4s. I too wish the PowerPC would continue, because it seems like a really elegant architecture, but Intel currently has the PowerPC beat in terms of mobile efficiency.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Junks Jerzey]

PPC is one of the best platforms ever for both sound, gfx and of course heat production.

Is this based on more than just personal feelings about the architecture? Honestly, I like the PPC. It's a great implementation of the classic RISC principles: lots of registers, simple and fast instructions, no hardware stack, etc. But, really, this is just geeky fawning over a pretty design. The x86 is certainly ugly in some ways, mostly in terms of the huge legacy instruction set, but it's not so bad overall. Having hardware stack support is very nice. The limited number of registers makes function call overhead very low. If you disassemble code for typical PPC applications, you may see dozens of instructions for entering and leaving a function. And with each of those instructions being 4 bytes, that's a big deal in terms of instruction cache usage. So it's not entirely clear that in the modern world a classic RISC architecture is better.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Sin(O) Cos(O)]

Your example is not a good one. I disassemble x86 code and see instructions pushing parameters onto the stack. I disassemble PPC code and see instructions moving parameters into registers. How good is x86 with functions that have a large amount of local storage and a large number of parameters?

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

by your metric for the ppc being risc.. that would also make the intel pentium upwards a risc chip.

sorry, but ppc is about as risc as intel or any other cisc chip.
and i *like* the power platform!

Re:They won't change from PPC

[laptop006]

> Hell the G5 towers need to be *water* cooled.

No they don't. Only the first gen 2.7GHz were water cooled, and when they got updated the water cooling was removed.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Junks Jerzey]

Your example is not a good one. I disassemble x86 code and see instructions pushing parameters onto the stack. I disassemble PPC code and see instructions moving parameters into registers. How good is x86 with functions that have a large amount of local storage and a large number of parameters?

You're talking about the caller. I'm talking about what happens in the function that you're calling. On the x86, the return address is pushed on the stack as part of the "call" instruction (and popped as part of "ret'). On the PPC, both of these translate into multiple instructions (for non-leaf functions). On the x86 you typically only save and restore a handful of registers: ebx, esi, edi. On the PPC you potentially have to save and restore a dozen or more registers. I routinely see functions with 48 or more bytes of set-up and tear-down, but it can be much larger.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Sesticulus]

ehem, http://www.apple.com/powermac/design.html

What are the two words in the image near the top of the page.

Liquid Cooled.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Halo1]

On the PPC you potentially have to save and restore a dozen or more registers. I routinely see functions with 48 or more bytes of set-up and tear-down, but it can be much larger.

You don't have to save anything you don't use, and you (the compiler) should only use extra registers if it is advantageous to do so (taking into account the cost to save/restore them). Having more registers available simply gives you more options.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Junks Jerzey]

You don't have to save anything you don't use, and you (the compiler) should only use extra registers if it is advantageous to do so (taking into account the cost to save/restore them). Having more registers available simply gives you more options.

That's the optimist's view. In reality it's less clear than that. When you see 20+ instructions to handle entry and exit code, then that strikes me as RISC gone wrong. And this is with a good compiler, not just some student project.

As an aside, when you pass parameters in registers you often have to turn around immediately and copy them to different registers or write them out to memory. It's not hard to come up with cases where it's faster to pass parameters on the stack.

See SufficientlySmartCompiler.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[plasmacutter]

I have a second gen 2.7 dual.. it's heat syncs have 'liquid cooling" warnings. but as for the grandparent.. BS! no stupid p4 is faster than a g5. they're obviously stripping something down on it for it to boot that fast.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Halo1]

That's the optimist's view. In reality it's less clear than that. When you see 20+ instructions to handle entry and exit code, then that strikes me as RISC gone wrong.

I really don't see why. If you can win the cost of that (and more) back in the body, then what's the problem? And again, you do not have to save all those registers. You can pretend you're on a register starved architecture and only use 8 registers so you don't have to save much, just like on 80x86. But indeed, compilers do not do that, because it does not result in faster code.

FWIW, the PPC also has an instruction with which you can save an arbitrary number of integer registers (even all of them) in one instruction. It's not used because it's slower than the combination of the individual replacements. Just like on 80x86 things like lodsb, loop and jecxz are slower than the alternatives consisting of more instructions (on modern processors).

As an aside, when you pass parameters in registers you often have to turn around immediately and copy them to different registers or write them out to memory. It's not hard to come up with cases where it's faster to pass parameters on the stack.

To pass them on the stack you often first have to load them from elsewhere in memory first. By passing them via the registers you can distribute the load on the memory interface by scheduling the loads with code at the caller side and the stores by code at the caller side. If you don't have to load them from memory, then you don't have to load them from memory either when passing them via registers.

And in other cases it is not necessary at all to copy them back to memory, so you also win.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Sin(O) Cos(O)]

When you see 20+ instructions to handle entry and exit code

Huh?? How much programming experience do you have?

Re:They won't change from PPC

[0xABADC0DA]

Except the PPC has instructions to save multiple registers at once to memory. So you can save registers 3-8 to the stack in one 32-bit instruction. I assume the compilers you are using do not do this for parameters because it's faster not to. Much like x86 xor'ing a register with itself instead of setting it to zero.

So I would question what kind of functions these are that you say are takin 20+ instructions. But also, ultimately performance has little to do with the overhead of functions since the vast majority of time is spent in simple loops.

What you say is correct though, that functions are more wasteful on PPC, but another way to look at it is that languages like Java will run insanely fast on PPC since they hot spots are often inlined 5 or more functions deep -- something that is basically impossible with a language like C or C++. That means no function calls, and using up all the registers for something useful. RISC may be a poor choice for C... true dat.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[vanka]

I think you missed the point; he's not talking about high level code (i.e. C, C++, or whatever Apple uses), he's talking about machine code (compiled high level code).
A simple one line statement in a high level can very well take several lines/instructions to execute. I used to write assembly code for a Motorola micro-controller (don't remember the model number) and an instruction that would be extremely simple in C took several intructions in Assembly.

C code:
        int i = 5;
        i = i + 12 * 2;

Assembly:
        Reserve memory in RAM
        Set memory to 5
        Store memory value in CPU register A
        Do multiplication and store result register B
        Do register addition and store result in register A
        Store value of register A in RAM
Note: Some steps may be more than one instruction.

So I can understand how it may take 20+ instructions to handle entry and exit code. The CPU needs to worry about the state of the registers, RAM, stack, etc; so it takes quite a bit of extra instrcutions to check the status of the registers (and etc) before and after a function is called or whatever else is done.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[i41Overlord]

BS! no stupid p4 is faster than a g5. they're obviously stripping something down on it for it to boot that fast.

Incorrect. P4's have continually been released in faster revisions while the G5's have been stuck at nearly the same clock speed for quite a while.

The performance of newer P4's easily exceeds that of the G5's.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[aliensporebomb]

Not correct.

The 2.5 and 2.7 ghz duals are liquid cooled
(9 fans and liquid cooling).

The 2.0 and 2.3 duals are air cooled (9 fans).

And I don't believe it is water cooling but rather
some synthetic liquid that enhances the cooling
process. Creepy.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[plasmacutter]

yeah, and my dogs have lovely wide white wings, and they fly and fly around and around our house! I'm not some provincial mac zealot. I've been continuously exposed to varying models of p4, g4, and g5 systems, and I'm telling you right now that in terms of response time, a p4 system will only match that of a dual g4, never that of a g5.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[i41Overlord]

If you look at the benchmarks (not the PR benchmarks released by Apple), you'll see that both the Athlon64 and the P4 outperform the G5 by quite a margin.

Even the developers who are testing OSX86 commented how the speed on the P4 developer systems is impressive. Hell, even Steve Jobs must have seen something on Intel's side.

To get the Mac to win common benchmarks, you need to compare a dual G5 system to a single P4 system. But single vs. single? Speed revisions for the G5 have been slow to come. The P4 surpassed it long ago with its constant speed increases.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[plasmacutter]

benchmarks can be manipulated like any other statistics. bring forth the full spec on the benchmarks and i can tell you more. In the mean time.. as a power user i have my own standards of responsiveness and power. If you open more than 5 intensive programs on a p4 machine and swap between them you'll end up with lag which does not occur on a g5. As far as osX86, keep in mind it's a DEV edition. It is not the final product, and is likely stripped down or some other way altered from what is currently out there. If you want to talk speed.. my g5 can boot win2k in 25 seconds and run it in emulation as if it were on native. I'm particularly abusive and demanding upon my systems, and find it hard to overload a g5, but a pentium machine will start to complain at the drop of a hat.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

If you open more than 5 intensive programs on a p4 machine and swap between them you'll end up with lag which does not occur on a g5

Most new OSes has multitasking so if yours doeasn't cut it (OS X?), why not try another one and you see any other OS can run 5 programs with breeze.

Re:They won't change from PPC

[10Ghz]

If you open more than 5 intensive programs on a p4 machine and swap between them you'll end up with lag which does not occur on a g5.

Are you using a SMP-G5? That would explain it. Lagging and stuttering does occur on uniprocessor-systems (all P4-systems are uniprocessor-systems), but SMP-systems the problem is practically eliminated (yes, that includes Xeons and Opterons, as well as G5's).

Re:They won't change from PPC

[i41Overlord]

At this point you're just making up false "facts" to support your invalid argument.

The fastest P4s and Athlon64s are faster than the G5s. Despite your claim of not being a Mac fanboy, your actions speak louder than words. You'll never admit that your G5 is slower no matter how much proof you're confronted with. You *are* the typical Mac fanboy.

killjoy.

[tubbtubb]

Of course, but you're missing the point.

This is a perfect opportunity to blather on with uninformed speculation, rumors, pipe dreams of dual core Antaries laptops, etc. . .

Re:killjoy.

[blowdart]

You missing the more important point, it's the perfect change for Wintel people to go "See, we told you PowerPC chips were low end and slow"

<g>

Re:killjoy.

[JabberWokky]

I heard that Future Crew were designing the GPU, and the manufacture would be done by Infinium Labs. Of course, the next version of the OS, codenamed Sabretooth, will be written by 3D Realms.

--
Evan

Re:killjoy.

[kargis]

I heard that Future Crew were designing the GPU

Hrm. I'd heard it was Bitboyz Oy . . .

Kargis

Re:killjoy.

[JabberWokky]

Heh. I thought of that right after I hit "Post". Bitboyz was riding their connection so much (intentionally or not) I always mentally think "Future Crew".

--
Evan

Re:killjoy.

[khellendros1984]

In that light, it's even more obvious that Apple is trying to drive up the price of x86 processors by increasing demand, at which point they'll be able to market their PPC-based machines to an inflated marketplace! It's economic genius, I tell you!

That doesn't make intuitive sense...

[soft_guy]

Intel has made their whole company strategy around low power high performance chips. That was the stated reason for moving to Intel. Therefore, I would think that Portables would be the first thing to move. For example, there is no G5 portable and we've been waiting a long time for a portable with a better chip than the G4. My powerBook is getting long in the tooth, but I won't replace it with another G4 powerBook - what would be the point? - unless it quit working.

The G5 desktops are still very fast and I could see staying with PPC there for a while, but not on portables.

Re:That doesn't make intuitive sense...

[jellomizer]

I think they were talking about the iBooks other then the power books. If my Powerbook died right now I would probably just save some cash and switch to an iBook. But if they were a G5 or Intel based PowerBook I would go with that. The Power Book line is starting to really drag.

Re:That doesn't make intuitive sense...

[myov]

I did exactly that a few weeks ago, replacing my G4 powerbook with another one. Reasons?

- After 3 years, snapped hinges, required hw repairs (most recently firewire = new logic board), etc, it was time.

- It's out of applecare. That logic board is at least $700 to replace. New machine is under warranty

- The new powerbooks have many new features (to me anyways) - backlit keyboard, airport extreme, integrated bluetooth, etc.

- There's no way I'm buying Rev 1 intel anything. I think back to the Rev A iMacs that had a USB bug, my rev 1 G3 which doesn't support slave IDE devices, etc.

It will take time to work out the problems. In 2-3 years when that happens, I'll be ready to replace this machine.

Re:That doesn't make intuitive sense...

[soft_guy]

Well, if my powerbook was broken, or was an older TiBook, then I would probably do the same. As it is, I have the last rev of the TiBook which seems pretty new to me in the grand scheme of things. I don't feel like I'm missing that much by not having Airport Extreme. Plus, I have a newer 17" Aluminum PowerBook and a Mac Mini at work, so that kind of evens it out.

I'll probably buy an Intel PowerBook either right at launch, or after the first motherboard rev. I used to also have a policy on not buying rev. A hardware. I've had very luck with non-rev A hardware from Apple over the years. And some hardware problems with rev A hardware that I've had to deal with at work. So, your probably right to avoid rev. A intel hardware.

Realities of a Manufacturer

[standards]

When an auto manufacturer ships a new engine, they don't immediately halt production of the old ones that it is destined to supplant. A phased transition is simply a reality of the manufacturing business.

Apple doesn't have to rush out an entire new line of units in one big bang. Good engineering and facility planning take time.

Re:Realities of a Manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

According to slashdot conventional wisdom, all car analogies suck.
Therefore, your post sucks.
Just kidding.

Re:Realities of a Manufacturer

[JimBobJoe]

When an auto manufacturer ships a new engine, they don't immediately halt production of the old ones that it is destined to supplant.

I hate to criticize the analogy, but auto makers don't phase transition auto production. (Though I would have to think if automakers would produce a little bit of the old engine for parts.)

One of Honda's main claims to fame is that it can transition from one model (say the X generation Honda Accord) to a completely different model (the X+1 generation of the Honda Accord) very quickly. They plan out the transition on the assembly line meticulously in advance and make the changes to the line as the final car rolls its way through. Hondas goal (and the PR claims they succeed) is to have the first car of the new generation Accord begin production as the last one rolls off the line.

Prior to this, automakers would often shut down their assembly plants for weeks or even months while retooling occurred between different model generations.

Re:Realities of a Manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Honda's main claims to fame is that it can transition from one model (say the X generation Honda Accord) to a completely different model (the X+1 generation of the Honda Accord) very quickly.

Right. But they don't transition all models at the same time. The article claims that it's strange that Apple will continue to produce some PowerPC models after they have released an Intel-based model. Since you're clearly involved in manufacturing, you've got to agree that Honda would be crazy to drop a new engine or drivetrain into all of their models over the period of a year.

The engineers are always working on new models - it's just that they don't work on them all at once and then take a break for a few years.

Re:Realities of a Manufacturer

[JimBobJoe]

But they don't transition all models at the same time.

Ahhh....yes indeed. Apologies. I see the concept now.

Re:Realities of a Manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

You have dismally failed to mention BMW in a thread about Apple Computer that also mentioned cars.

Lawsuits and Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, for like no money, they've secured access to a chip. If they hadn't, they'd be liable to lawsuits for not securing chips in case there is a problem with the transition. CYA material, plain and simple.

Supply for support

[Novajo]

Apple has to support current computers with their Applecare program. Applesinsider has discussed that these go into 2008. So really, this is probably nothing more than the winding down period.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1248

Superb

[ericdfields]

This is welcoming news to a new Powerbook owner. I needed a highly portable laptop for this upcoming semester (and into the future), and have wanted a Mac since OS X 10.0, but I was cautious about purchasing an apple product knowing that the future was headed toward intel. No one really knows how long they will keep support and software coming for PPC systems, but eventually, they will be phased out. I know people who have had their G3 and earlier Apple laptops and can still run newer software, oftentimes improving their system performance. I was afraid I was at the end of this chain.

But with PPCs in portables til 2008, that means software will probably support PPC into 2010, if not longer.

The Aztecs predicted the end of the world to happen on December 12, 2012. Seven years out of a mac portable? I'm satisfied.

Re:Superb

[Anonymous Coward]

But with PPCs in portables til 2008, that means software will probably support PPC into 2010, if not longer.

No, it means that with PPCs in portables until 2006, they will be able to support them through 2008.
You see, you need to be able to buy replacement chips in order to support them, for when your ibook's cpu craps out or something. Who will they be buying G4 chips from in 2010?

All they have done is guarantee that they'll be able to support the existing PPC lines through 2008.

Re:Superb

[Anonymous Coward]

The Aztecs predicted the end of the world to happen on December 12, 2012.

Why do people keep bringing this up? Why should we listen to the Aztecs? Their world ended hundreds of years ago. That doesn't make them very credible. What other cool predictions did they make? How many of them came true?

Wrong

[andyring]

No, Apple does not plan to keep using G4s in the lower-end stuff. It'd make no sense. Apple is likely securing this contract so they have a supply of G4 chips for product repairs for the next three years, as AppleCare is a 3-year agreement.

Slightly OT

[TubeSteak]

But I'd like to give the /. ed's kudos for including a link to google news.

Its amazing how most news articles will not give you the full story, or worse, you get their slanted version of events.

Reading multiple articles (not something /.'ers are likely to do since we can't even get them to RTFA) lets you get all the facts so you can draw your own conclusions.

Just my 2 pennies

Moof!

[littleghoti]

Clarus says Moof!

Re:Moof!

[shawnce]

Clarus x86 says fooM!

Re:Moof!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarus x86-64 says !fooM

Re:Moof!

[AnonymousKev]

> Clarus x86 says fooM!

Now that's funny! I wish I had mod points.

Re:Moof!

[jcr]

Actually, I think Clarus x86 may say "ofMo", but I'd have to check...

-jcr

Re:Moof!

[shawnce]

Depends on data type sizing :)

(2 byte, 4 byte, etc.)

Re:Moof!

[nathanh]

Clarus x86 says fooM!

On certain x86 processors, Clarus x86 says fooF!

Re:Moof!

[shawnce]

...and on certain x86 AMD processors without heat sinks...

Clarus says POOF! (in conjunction with a little smoke)

Re:Moof!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be...

property hex_vals : {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"}

set moof to {"M", "o", "o", "f"}
set newMoof to {}
repeat with i in moof
set x to charToHex(contents of i)
set x to (reverse of every character of x) as string
set newMoof to newMoof & {hexToChar(x)}
end repeat
return newMoof as string

on charToHex(a_char)
set ascii_num to ASCII number a_char
set big_end to (ascii_num div 16) + 1
set little_end to (ascii_num mod 16) + 1
set hex_val to {item big_end of hex_vals, item little_end of hex_vals}
return hex_val as string
end charToHex

on hexToChar(a_string)
set big_end to the offset of (character 1 of a_string) in (hex_vals as string)
set little_end to the offset of (character 2 of a_string) in (hex_vals as string)
return ASCII character (((big_end - 1) * 16) + (little_end - 1))
end hexToChar

Then again, Clarus would live in the Rosetta pasture and thus say Moof anyway :-)

PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[rawwa.venoise]

Apple is not only extending the line for compatibility. If the Cell proves to be a sucesefull processor i think Apple will probably look into IBM for a nice chip contract. This way, what Apple is trying to secretly doing is to decide wich chip will target the high segment and wich one will remains for lower budget machines. Just my 2cts

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[Blimey85]

You're nuts. Why would Apple want three different architectures? They use PowerPC now, they are going to use Intel in the future, and at some point they will only use Intel... until they decide to switch once again, if that happens. It's not like Linux which runs on everything. Apple sells hardware and software. They need to ensure that their software is as close to 100% perfect as possible on their hardware. Each time you add in different hardware, you make it much harder to get close to 100%. Just having to deal with PPC and Intel is going to be difficult, but Steve apparently thinks it's worth it. I'm excited about the possibility of running both OS X and Windows on the same machine... but say they offered a box that used the Cell processor... there goes Windows compatibility. And so what if it's faster than anything else? The G5 isn't a slow chip. Intel makes fast chips. It's not like you are choosing between a fast Cell based Mac and a shitty slow something-else based Mac. There is just no reason to support any other architecture. There wouldn't be enough of a reason for people to buy the new hardware. And keep in mind that Apple needs to buy all of their chips from Intel to get the big discount from Intel. That's something they are looking forward to. Cheaper chips. Not having to worry if their supplier can keep up with Intel. Not having to teach us that Mhz don't matter.. and all the other crap that has gone along with using non-Intel chips all these years. With Macs being able to run OS X for daily stuff and Windows for games, who wouldn't buy a Mac? I'm getting a new one as soon as the mid-range PowerMacs are shipping with Intel chips.

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[rawwa.venoise]

I has not saying three buth only two systems. In the end if people use only Apple dev kit then making software for both platforms is not that difficult. Beside, Apple has to face a big issue on Intel machines. Not optimized compiler tools from Intel exists for Objective-C so how can Apple take advantage of huge pipelines and other intel "godies"? Have they alredy developed their own Objective-C compilaer hyper optimized for Intel has the Intel C/C++ Fortran compiler ofr tho they relly on GCC or other third-party programs?
Beside, Cell only makes sense for a very speciffic target people, apart from that it is pretty much useless ... but still for those i think it's worth every cent you spend in. Let's way for the new Sony console ...

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[happyemoticon]

I think they're mostly trying to take advantage of the Intel compiler for scientific applications, which is where you're more likely to use Fortran. Most Mac developers will use XCode because it's free and it's well-integrated.

They've pitched the Cell processor to Apple before, and Jobs turned it down. He said he wasn't impressed. Frankly, I'm not either. It's a gimmicky processor that's designed to be poetic and sexy rather than practical. Anyway, Apple is clearly moving away from highly vectorized code and has been for some time. The G5 is a great, fast floating point processor with the Altivec instruction set tacked on for backwards-compatibility - it's not the main attraction. I'm sorry, but a move to the Cell arch would be absurd in the extreme, as they'd have to reengineer all of their operating system code again from the ground up, and expect their third party developers to move in lockstep with them. You'd sound like less of a moron if you postulated that they're going to adopt the Itanic.

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[Blimey85]

Intel seems to really like the idea of Apple being a customer of theirs. Apple was very vocal about Intels chips being inferior to what they were using. I'm not saying the chips really were inferior, but Apple wanted us to believe that they were. Now that Apple is going to be using Intel chips, they won't be spouting off about how slow the chips are compared to something else. This turn of events can only help Intel, and we're not even talking about profits that Intel may make off of chips it sells to Apple. It's leading detractor has now decided to use it's products, that's a huge win for Intel.

So yea, I wouldn't be surprised if Intel is working on an Objective-C compiler right now. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel and Apple are going to work very closely on some stuff so that Apple has an edge over Microsoft. We all know that Intel and MS are not buddies.

Along comes a computer that can run OS X or Windows and does both really well. That has to scare companies like Dell. They can compete on price but their machines won't run OS X... so unless they can license them from Apple, like HP did with the iPod, what are they going to offer that compares?

And then we have the various architectures... I think Apple chose Intel for two reasons... first, it allows the same machine to run both OS X and Windows. That's huge. Second, they can get chips cheaper than before. Lowering your costs is always a good thing. Yes, there may be an advantage to some end users of having a Cell based machine, but how much of an advantage and what is it worth in dollars? Then how many people are willing to pay that? Now subtract the cost of developing a version of OS X that would run on a Cell processor and see if you get a positive number. If not, and I doubt you would, Apple would lose money on the deal. There simply isn't a strong enough reason to have more than one architecture. It's why OS X was only on PowerPC, it's why Windows is only on X86, etc. Linux is a completely different ball of wax... it's not made by a single company like both Windows and OS X are. You have a lot of different people with different wants/needs/desires working on it so it's able to support lots of architectures... and sometimes I think they just do some of the stuff to see if they can. "Lets see if we can get Linux to run on an Apple IIGS... we won't actually use it ofr anything, but lets just see if we can." although I'm sure that's already been done. But you get my point.

It costs a lot of money for Apple to switch. In this instance they have a lot to gain. Compatibility with Windows is huge. That's the biggest thing for me. I want a computer that can play games and while OS X can do that, a lot of games are Windows only. I don't want half measures... I don't want an emulator or anything like that. I want it to simply work the best that it can so I want a high end PC running Windows XP for games. But I don't generally like Windows... so I don't want to have to use that for anything else... and now I can get exactly what I want. A single machine that can run both. That's what is important, not the processor underneath it all.

I would guess that the average computer user doesn't know the difference between various processors. They have a choice between Intel or AMD and they go with Intel because they've heard the name before... or AMD because the box was $100 cheaper (my laptop was a couple hundred cheaper over the same thing with an Intel processor). Can Apple sell enough Cell based Macs to high end professionals for enough money to make it worthwhile? Not very likely. Didn't Intel have a high end chip that cost a helluva lot that didn't do so well? I belive it's called Itanium or something like that... doesn't seem like that worked out very well for Intel... why would Apple want to try the same thing? Although if they did want to go with a high end processor, it might make more sense to go with Itanium or whatever is Intels high end these days, rather than Cell.

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[LWATCDR]

"And then we have the various architectures... I think Apple chose Intel for two reasons... first, it allows the same machine to run both OS X and Windows. "
What I find interesting is WINE, Xen, and VMWare. The new Macs "could" run Windows software under OS/X.

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[i41Overlord]

Along comes a computer that can run OS X or Windows and does both really well. That has to scare companies like Dell. They can compete on price but their machines won't run OS X... so unless they can license them from Apple, like HP did with the iPod, what are they going to offer that compares?

Dells can run OSX, many are doing it right now. In fact, I'm running OSX on my HP machine. Yes, it's not 100% legit according to the EULA, but neither is the version of windows that most people use.

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[richman555]

Umm... can you say 'illegal' followed by 'jail time'?

Re:PowerPc, Cell and Intel

[i41Overlord]

Jail time for running OSX86 on a Dell? Keep dreaming.

Unless you're caught running a piracy ring, you're not going to see jailtime. Let's be realistic here.

Re:Apple Finally Gets What's Funny About...

[TheRaven64]

People may laugh when you say `Intel' and `Roadmap' together, but they don't laugh nearly as hard as when you say `Freescale' and `Roadmap' together. I remember these guys promising 3.6GHz+ G6 chips being ready by 2002 back in the late '90s. Next to them, Intel roadmaps look positively reliable...

Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the point is mu.

Makes Sense

[blueZhift]

This move makes sense from the standpoint of smoothing the transition to Intel chips. It may mean additional challenges for Apple's support personnel, but the bottom line is that Apple's typical customer doesn't care what chips are in the box as long as Macs act like Macs and iPods act like iPods, etc... Apple managed the transition to PPC pretty well, so there is a good chance that they'll be okay going to Intel, afterall, there isn't any big rush to do this that I've heard about.

Re:Makes Sense

[Prophet of Nixon]

Could've fooled me. I used Macs exclusively around the time the 680x0 to PPC transition happened, and I thought it was managed pretty awfully. Quadras still outsold PPCs for quite a bit, the PPCs were not impressive at all, applications were incompatible, and combined with the Newton flop it more or less resulted in Apple's near bankruptcy.

Re:Makes Sense

[aduzik]

What is impressive, however, is that when the first PPCs came out, they actually ran a 680x0 version of the Mac OS -- mainly because no PPC version existed. The whole OS ran in a dynamic recompiler, which is like an emulator, but it actually translates the non-native code into native code on the fly so it can reuse the portions already translated.

Plus, remember that when the PPC Macs first came out, there was literally no software for them, and Apple had an installed base of millions of 680x0 Macs to support. Fat binaries didn't please everyone -- hard drive space being expensive in those days -- but it made it easy for average consumers to just buy a program for their Mac, PPC or 680x0, and know that it would work.

The difference this time is that Apple's been planning ahead. NeXT made an Intel version of NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP, so it cost them very little to develop OS X for Intel in parallel with OS X for PPC. Again, they're using a dynamic recompiler (Rosetta) so that PPC apps will run on Intel-based Macs. This time around, Apple is much better prepared to make this transition. The goal, as it was the last time, is to make it easy for Mac users to pick up a piece of off-the-shelf software for the Mac and know that it will run, regardless of the processor inside. On the developer boxes, as I understand it, many of Apple's own apps are still PPC-only and are running in Rosetta; iTunes is a prime example of this. Plus, the particular reason Apple's going with Intel right now is because they know that they can build more impressive computers -- right now.

Re:Makes Sense

[paulpas]

What's also impressive is that Apple was able to do seamless dynamic recompiling back in 1994, save for rogue -11 errors when an FPU was needed. Not even Speed Doubler could come out with something until 1996 (correct me if I am wrong). I miss the days of SCSI being standard.

Today it has to be childplay. From my understanding current EPI^H^H^HVLIW architecture excells at providing an emulation layer. I know that's why HP is using Itaniums for their transition away from PA-RISC.

My wish: AMD CPUs in Macs, they seem to be on par with their roles as underdogs-who-are-really-better-than-the-rest-but- most-people-are-idiots-or-well-idiots.

Re:Makes Sense

[aduzik]

Part of my senior thesis when I was an undergrad was to research the Mac OS dynamic recompiler. It was truly remarkable that they built such a thing at an extremely low level -- like emulating device drivers, even.

VLIW is really nice. If you ever have a chance to play with an Itanium -- OK, Itanium 2 -- take it. Use the -S flag (I think that's what it is) in gcc, and prepare to be amazed by the assembly that comees out. Even though VLIW could make things easier, the underlying problem of turning machine code into an IR and then outputting a different machine language is still just as tough. But with DR, it's a sort of "one time investment" as you run a program.

AMD makes some of the best processors on the planet. I'm a fan of anyone who can build a better Intel processor than Intel. When he announced the Intel switch, Steve said that he was most impressed by the Intel roadmap. That means one of two things: either AMD can't maintain the level of output that Apple would require (likely) or Intel's got some kick-ass processor coming down the pike that will blow AMD away (unlikely). It may simply be that Intel has better brand name recognition (years upon years of that five note Intel thingy at the end of almost every computer commercial gets in peoples' heads, I imagine). In either event, Apple and AMD both occupy the same mindspace in most geeks -- better, but underappreciated. I'm thinking that Apple's trying to get out of that space by favoring Intel over AMD.

Re:Developer perspective on Apple porting strategy

[morgan_greywolf]

That's not what the deal is. Apple isn't hedging its bets. From the various articles: " Apple Computer Inc. said it has an option to keep buying microprocessors from Freescale Semiconductor Inc., three months after saying Macs will switch to Intel Corp. chips next year." Apple has negotiated for an option to buy the processors, and there is no set number of processors they will buy. Freescale just agreed to supply whatever Apple orders for the next three years. Apple could order 0. Apple could order a bunch. But probably not. They're most likely buying these processors to support the existing user base, to produce enough existing models to meet existing contractual obligations, and to be able to meet any unexpected surges in demand during the transition period. Where do people get that Apple is "hedging its bets?" Apple has bet the farm on Mac on Intel. Believe it. And don't think that for one minute the underlying hardware makes no difference. There will always be certain types of applications that will very much be hardware dependent, and yes, it DOES make a difference.

and another

[fracai]

lipo -remove i386

Intel has just...

[Anonymous Coward]

..."killed" (or abandoned) the reason for Apple's switchower...
Will we see Steve telling us that he is back on the Power ??

Portables?

[nurb432]

Was that not the entire point of switching? That Jobs was not pleased with the PPC options for portables?

And what does he mean by 'low end' ? Does that mean as better PPC chips come out ( like the G6 ) they will just be ignored?

This whole thing is rather confusing now.

Personally, im glad to see the PPC will still be around in Apple products for a while longer, but gheesh, lets make a decision and stick with it...

Re:Portables?

[Halfbaked Plan]

The better 'Power PC' chips will continue to exist, i.e. IBM's POWER architecture. They won't be ignored, Apple just won't produce 'desktop' hardware that uses watered-down versions of them any longer.

Whether anything called a 'G6' will come out is dubious, since G3, G4, G5 were all marketing-gimmick names coined by Apple Computer.

Re:Developer perspective on Apple porting strategy

[ArbitraryConstant]

"If you take a look at Apple's developer tools - specifically, XCode 2.1 and above, you'll find that building binaries for both platforms is fairly easy."

If you don't feel the need to do testing on both binaries...

fat strippers? no thanks!

[bongoras]

No thanks, if I want to see fat strippers I'll go here: http://www.bigburlesque.com/home.html

Reducing the Osbourne effect.

[.tardo.]

My initial reaction to this was... Hmmm, maybe I can go ahead and make the plunge to buy that new G4 iBook

But has anyone thought that this may have only been done to generate that very reaction. I have been holding out on purchasing an Apple because of the upcoming Intel switch. I will, again, have to wait to see what Apple is going to do...

Note that the agreement does not require Apple to buy any addtional G4 chips

Apple is the best computer I almost bought!

Caveat Emptor, I say.

Re:Reducing the Osbourne effect.

[tji]

What is the "Osbourne Effect"? Is that where you can't understand what the hell someone is saying, for various reasons (slurred speach, illogical conclusions, etc)? Yes, a reduction of that is really needed here at slashdot.

A cool thing for Apple, would be to reduce the Osborne effect, where people don't buy your existing product because you've pre-announced something better.

Re:Reducing the Osbourne effect.

[cosmic_0x526179]

My initial reaction to this was... Hmmm, maybe I can go ahead and make the plunge to buy that new G4 iBook

I got one. It rocks. xcode 2.1 with 1.5 gb of ram. I'm very pleased (other than the speakers which seem wimpy and sound tinny). It's been a week since I put in the extra ram... and top says "VM: 4.62G + 70.9M 223233(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts". Love that 0(0) !

Plump Binaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying.

Apple's 64-bit Intel roadmap takes longer...

[Been on TV]

Well, this is not so much about Apple hedging its bets, as it is about timing. A lot of folks anticipate an announcment of new hardware at MWSF in January. It ain't gonna happen!

Having now seen last weeks Intel announcement, it makes me believe it is unlikely they will launch Intel based Macs with 32-bit processors. Both iMac, Pro Mac and XServe are already 64-bit and they will stay that way. Anything else would be seen as a complete failure by the market.

For the mini and portables, the picture is a bit more tricky. From what I can gather from the latest announcements from IBM and Freescale, what I think will happen is that Apple will introduce a mini with a dual core processor from IBM perhaps even in September at MacWorld Paris, and follow up with similar announcements for the rest of the product line. Exception is of course the portables where they for thermal reasons have to stay at G4 until the switch to Intel, hence the agreement with Freescale.

I have a little more detail about this in an article I wrote a couple of days ago.

Re:Apple's 64-bit Intel roadmap takes longer...

[diamondsw]

Oh, I don't know. I don't think the majority of the market cares if it's 32-bit or 64-bit, especially the consumer segment. Seriously, name one app that a consumer will run that will run into the 4GB memory limit? Maybe video editing, and programs like that have generally already found ways to work around such limitations. Pro equipment needs it, sure, but that is slated for 2007, which fits in quite nicely to the published roadmaps.

As cool as it sounds, 64-bit just doesn't mean much for most people. It's not urgent in as many areas as the 16/24 bit transition to 32-bit was.

Re:Apple's 64-bit Intel roadmap takes longer...

[diamondsw]

If there is a mistake...well, you should have used the 'Preview' button!

Yes, yes I should have.

Re:Apple's 64-bit Intel roadmap takes longer...

[Been on TV]

I am answering myself, but there was one detail I forgot, and that is the educational customers.

Schools have made major investments in software that still only runs on System 9 (or in Classic if you want on OS X.) Classic will not run on the Intel-based OS X because of legacy Motorola 68x00 code, therefore Apple will need to keep a cheap eMac type system around for some extended time to cater to the needs of these customers. The Freescale chips serves this purpose.

Re:Developer perspective on Apple porting strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

With the exception of low level hardware driver experts, do you really care what bridge / Firewire / USB chip is used? Think the same way about the CPU, and you have Apple's apparent perspective on using Intel chips - the OS is fairly independant from the CPU,

Actually, when compiling binaries, the type of CPU can make a huge difference. just a few months ago, Intel was blasted by AMD for thier compiliers not optimizing for certain shared techs that AMD and Intel both use (Intel was checking for the genuine Intel during compilation.) Anyways, back to the point, if you know exactly what type of CPU you are compiling for, the speed and performance of your application (or entire OS) can be greatly affected.

NO.

[Formz]

As per Job's Keynote they will be doing a full move to Intel by the end of 2007. The chips are for WARRANTY computers. They have to have a supply to fix computers, NOT sell them.

finally experienced why...

[dAzED1]

last week I finally experienced what is speculated as one of the major reasons Apple is moving to Intel from PowerPC. Friend let my wife borrow his mac laptop so she could run something that was mac-only. That thing is HOT. Heated up the whole damn room. Was suprized at just how hot it actually got.

Re:finally experienced why...

[javaxman]

mac laptop so she could run something that was mac-only. That thing is HOT. Heated up the whole damn room.

You've obviously never used a Pentium-based laptop. There is a reason why Apple is going to use the newer, cooler, mobile chips rather than Pentium chips.

Of course, it's really speculation that Apple is going to use those newer chips, but given that the timeframes for the chips' introduction and Apple's switch, it's not a big stretch...

Apple laptops can get warm, though, especially the newer, higher-clockrate ones. They're clearly pushing those G4s pretty hard. Oddly enough, though, there are no stories of Mac users burning themselves on their laptops...

Re:finally experienced why...

[dAzED1]

um, yes...I have. The point is that the Intel "mobile" chips are an alternative in the Intel world. There is no alternative in the PowerPC world. Which means that they can't make anything other than hot laptops, whereas cool intel or amd based laptops are easily available.

Was just saying I didn't realize until recently just *how* hot it was. With no alternative, I can see why that was a major platform change issue.

Re:finally experienced why...

[eobanb]

Your story sounds really improbable. Let's think about this for a minute, please. The G4 in an iBook or PowerBook uses what, 20W max? And the rest of the machine uses maybe another 20W? That's only 40W. Not even a single 60 W light bulb. If this room to which you're referring is the size of a shoebox, perhaps such as ones in a dollhouse, then your conclusion that it 'heated up the whole damn room' might be correct. But everyone knows that guys don't play with dolls, and that there are no girls on slashdot. So you must be, well, you must be lying.

Re:finally experienced why...

[dAzED1]

10 watt light bulb. Who still uses the kind that wastes 90% of the energy to heat?

There is a distinct difference between how hot it is in here when that mac is on, and how hot it is when the mac isn't on. Sorry if that puts a frown on your face. Why would I lie about this though? When one wakes up in the morning and says "huh...I'm going to call some random stranger a liar, for no reason" just what side of the bed is it that you get up on? I assume you have a choice, since there's obviously not anyone with you in the bed.

Re:finally experienced why...

[audunr]

Oddly enough, though, there are no stories of Mac users burning themselves on their laptops...

The reason why: Mac users are cool.

Re:finally experienced why...

[javaxman]

um, yes...I have. The point is that the Intel "mobile" chips are an alternative in the Intel world. There is no alternative in the PowerPC world. Which means that they can't make anything other than hot laptops, whereas cool intel or amd based laptops are easily available.

yea, I know, I was partly trying to be funny by linking the guy-burned-his-privates-on-a-laptop story, and although ( to my surprise ) the machine he was using was an Intel® Mobile Pentium® III with 443BX/PIIX4m, if you believe the Inquirer story I linked to. I had just assumed it was one of those nutty Pentium IV laptops of the non-M variety. I don't really understand why you'd make a laptop with a Pentium IV 3.6GHz non-M chip, myself. I guess they just have to prove that battery life and heat issues don't matter to some laptop users. So you can play Doom3 on the coffee table, I guess.

I'm not saying that Apple laptops, especially the smaller-form-factor G4-variety laptops ( which I guess they're all G4s now, aren't they ? ) don't get hot- they do - but compared to these Pentium IV non-M machines, they've got to be downright cool... as cool as the fact that I was going for "funny" and got "interesting" ;-)

Re:finally experienced why...

[snuf23]

The Pentium 4M (this is the mobile version of the Pentium 4 chip) laptops were actually a lot faster than the first generation Pentium M chips. I also don't think that Intel expected the Pentium M chips to be as good performance-wise as they have turned out to be. Intel was heavily invested in the Pentium 4 line and as a result the Pentium 4 supported more modern technology (i.e. higher bus speeds, faster memory) than the Pentium M.
Pentium 4 laptops were also aimed at true desktop replacement computers. More a portable desktop than a true laptop.
It seems that with the announced road map from Intel, that we will see a movement towards processors incorporating everything that's great about the Pentium M (power consumption, performance at lower clockspeeds) and everything that's great about the Pentium 4 (EMT64, dual core, higher bus speeds).

Sorta OT

[tomstdenis]

All I have to say is they better not rely on P4 based systems [including the Smithfield P4 [that's the dual core 8x0 series with EM64T]].

The 64-bit Intel P4 processors are largely inferior to the AMD64 design in ALL respects. So they better pull a new rabit out of their hats.

Tom

Re:Sorta OT

[BensonLeung]

See IDF news for the answer to that... Apple will incorporate Intel's newest processors from 06/07, meaning processors like Yonah, Merom, Conroe, and Woodcrest. They are all based on an entirely different microarchitecture than the Pentium 4.

Re:Sorta OT

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you been living in a cave?

Can if you use the right libraries

[SuperKendall]

XCode can't magically correct any endian assumptions your code makes.

If you use the right libraries endian issues are automatically corrected.

So basically all you need for testing is one PPC mac and one Intel Mac. But when you get to the point where both work, it's pretty easy to maintain the endian compatibilty going forward (as long as you remeber to keep using thr right libraries) which is what makes years of dual proc support not such a big deal.

Re:Can if you use the right libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, glad to hear your Hello World xcode project will weather Apple getting dumped into x86 land.

However, for those of us grownup with humongous libraries of media and graphics code...

Re:Can if you use the right libraries

[MightyMartian]

It's almost as if people now accept what Kernigan and Ritchie was saying all those years ago. I'll wager that a move to x86 was on Apple's mind a long long time before the announcement, and thus reasoning behind moving to a *nix platform.

Re:Can if you use the right libraries

[Paul Jakma]

If you use the right libraries endian issues are automatically corrected.

No, not at all. Particularly for any software which implements networking protocols (other than character strings based protocols like HTTP), you'll get bugs porting from big-endian software (which don't per se need to use htonX(), as the byte order is the same), to little-endian. Other things will break, where a programmer manipulates data naively. Little-endian systems tend to discourage such naivety pretty quickly, simply cause little-endian is so odd.

Re:Can if you use the right libraries

[Phroggy]

I'll wager that a move to x86 was on Apple's mind a long long time before the announcement,

Well, that sounds like a pretty safe bet, since Jobs has explicitly stated that Apple has been building everything on both architectures for the past five years....

Re:Can if you use the right libraries

[Halfbaked Plan]

It builds robustness into the development process to develop to two dissimilar architectures. That's the secret behind the robustness of NetBSD. And it's why 'Linux runs on everything' is laughable. Linux is just a kernel.

And it would have been insanity for NeXT, rebadged as Apple, to throw out their multiplatform OS. (NextStep ran on Intel, Sparc, PA-RISC, etc.)

Re:Sweet. FP

[Yocto Yotta]

You posted a link to the same thread? My productivity just plummetted 37.23%. Thanks a lot.

Much longer

[SuperKendall]

Apple will support PPC macs in OS X probably about seven years after the last one is sold.

That's based on older models that OS X supports today, every release it seems like back support from OS releases is about five to seven years.

We know that not all mac will switch at once, say high-end Intel macs start coming out the year after next. That's 2007, which means there will be solid PPC support from Apple until at least 2012.

WHat about software vendors? Well you can imagine they would have strong motivation to keep software working well on PPC macs until the percentage of Intel macs is a lot higher than PPC macs. But that will take some time, so I think in the end you'll see universal binaries from just about all Mac software makers until at least 2012 - and it costs them nothing to keep making the universal binaries if they decided to drop testing support for PPC versions, which could extend it out longer.

In short, buy the powerbook.

Re:Much longer

[mbourgon]

Seven years. There's some piece of law that says they have to support it for 7 years. I remember being affected by this when the Newton was discontinued.

Fat strippers? this way please.....

[PureCreditor]

> deltree /y C:\Windows
> _

Sorry Sir

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Apple has switched to using Intel, I'm afraid you are no longer allowed to dislike them or issue disparaging remarks related to them.

As a courtesy, you may continue to fawn over AMD if you wish as long as you realize they have become irrelevent to the coming Apple Juggernaut.

Apple //e card: support or final death strike

[buckhead_buddy]

Apple used to make and sell an Apple //e emulation card for 680x0 macs with PDS slots when they were trying to transition schools and final hold-outs clinging to old Apple II hardware to something they were more willing to produce and support.

It appears likely that having a chip supply would allow Apple to make a G5 plugin card for new Intel Macs if some high powered hold-outs demanded G5's remain available.

I see no concern about purchasing chips for a tech Apple claims it's dumping. It actually makes it more likely they'll be prepared to deal with stragglers and hold-outs so that they can officially abandon PowerPC retail computers sooner (if not the chips and architecture itself).

Re:Apple //e card: support or final death strike

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree...Freescale don't make G5 CPUs they only make G4, and Apple is not obliged to purchase PPC CPUs under this agreement, it's just a tentative agreement saying they can.

Re:Apple //e card: support or final death strike

[DECS]

Problem is that Freescale (formerly Motorolla) makes G4s, not the IBM G5. Of course, it would make no sense to put a G5 processor in an Intel Mac, because if the G5 were faster, they could simply just ship a G5 Mac instead. Which is exactly what they announced: replacing the G4 with mobile Pentium M first, and transistioning the G5s later. If it were cost effective and/or technically practical to put a G5 onto a little card, they'd probably be using the G5 where the G4s are now. But they're not, so they aren't and won't. Schools weren't holding on to old //e hardware, but rather wanting to run their //e software on those Mac LCs. The PDS card was required because the Mac wasn't really fast enough to emulate the //e hardware in software. Neither problem exists in WRT the Intel Macs. OS X software runs fine natively or via Rosetta, so no hardware is necessary.

Re:Apple //e card: support or final death strike

[buckhead_buddy]

DECS wrote:

Problem is that Freescale (formerly Motorolla) makes G4s, not the IBM G5.

Very true, and I knew that, I meant to write PowerPC rather than just G5 but I didn't press preview.

Schools weren't holding on to old //e hardware, but rather wanting to run their //e software on those Mac LCs. The PDS card was required because the Mac wasn't really fast enough to emulate the //e hardware in software.

There were already software emulators for the Apple II on the mac and had been since 1985 (e.g. ][ in a Mac). The issue was completely because schools had incompatible hardware like joysticks and monitors and printer dongles that just weren't usable on a Mac like on an Apple II. The emulator card has physical ports, //e roms, and hardware on-board to really make it like you're running an Apple //.

Could the same thing happen with the PowerPC G4? Possibly. But with this transition more complaints are likely to come from influential customers who have developed in-house programs that rely on AltiVec (a G4 standard Apple isn't transitioning to Intel) or need a real PowerPC chip for running a custom assembly language routine they don't want to pay to re-write yet. Hardware is less of an issue in this transition, but Apple has people still using old 601 and 603 PowerPC machines with SCSI ports, LocalTalk ports, and Apple Serial or ADB ports. Again, all of this stuff would be reasons for their choosing NOT to move to modern mac architectures, but providing an optional $200 PowerPC card aimed at getting the old faithful to move to Intel may be a necessary evil for Apple.

Some might see it as providing more support for dead technologies, but I think Apple would see it as the way to provide a final compelling argument to get old users to move on and by making it optional and of some cost, it would discourage the cult of mac from continuing to write new Altivec routines or rely on quirks in the old Apple SCSI drivers.

Re:Apple //e card: support or final death strike

[DECS]

The point of putting a G4 on a card would make even less sense. While the G5 is fairly competitive in performance and architecture, the G4 is seriously old technology. It sits on a sub 200 MHz MHz bus!

No amount of Altivec magic is going to help out the saggy ass G4. A despite the marketspeak, Altivec on the G4 isn't in a different class than SSE, and it would not benefit any class of user to outfit an Intel Mac with a G4.

As far as obsolete hardware and ports go, there aren't ANY machines with ADB, LocalTalk, etc that CAN EVEN RUN Mac OS X Panther, let alone Tiger.

More power to anybody hacking away on old machines and having fun with them, but Apple customers who haven't upgraded Mac hardware past 1996 ARE NOT CUSTOMERS WORTH THINKING ABOUT.

A G4 on a PCI card is not going to help somebody trying to figure out how to integrate an Intel Mac into their LocalTalk network or plug in their 1993 ADB graphics tablet anyway, so that line of logic boggles the mind.

You are right about the //e card: it had the Mega II from the IIGS onboard, which basically was the entire Apple II architecture in a VLSI chip, so it supported all the wacky hardware and ports for software. However, trying to draw an analogy between it and Intel Macs, as a reason for Apple to want a G4 supply, is quite a stretch!

Re:Apple //e card: support or final death strike

[jeffChuck]

That might make sense... if the contract wasn't for G4s.

Sorry Apple doesn't want the Cell

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple considered the Cell and it was just not suitable.

The Cell is a general purpose PPC processor with 8 other vector processors. If your app can't be vectorized then the 8 other processors are about worthless.

However the rest of the world is going dual core general purpose CPU's. To go dual general purpose with the Cell would require 18 processors and a ton of heat.

Plus programming for Cell would be hard because nobody has done it, so there is a lack of talent out there. It would be Apple fighting the tide all over again.

Apple is now about going with the tide and controling where it will go. Going after market share and developers, which are x86 based and trained.

IBM has the big server and cluser market sown up anyway, so Apple can't sell any hardware there.

Re:Sorry Apple doesn't want the Cell

[rawwa.venoise]

Consider a high-end video workstation taking advantage of a dual Cell system. You're right on, nobody yet has done a easy developer library to link and take advantage of the Cell, yet, Cell runs linux and probably in the future some open source libraries could take advantage of this. And we can expect this code to be easily moved into mac. And finally, Altivec instruction set should not be difficult to emule under the new Cell processor. Supose you can translate all Altivec instruction and have 8 independent emultators. Even if the Altivec emulation runs in half of a native implementation the 8 cell's could make a big difference in the final speed.

Legacy

[ParadigmLA]

You just have to wonder about the chips Intel is going to produce for Apple. Most likely they'll end up in iPods and Macs. When Apple came out with the iMac it was revolutionary in that it had only USB for serial communications. Wouldn't it be nice if they could convince Intel to do the same for their processors? I mean Apple doesn't need x86 backward compatibility (just low power and high performance).

Re:Legacy

[i41Overlord]

You just have to wonder about the chips Intel is going to produce for Apple. Most likely they'll end up in iPods and Macs. When Apple came out with the iMac it was revolutionary in that it had only USB for serial communications. Wouldn't it be nice if they could convince Intel to do the same for their processors? I mean Apple doesn't need x86 backward compatibility (just low power and high performance).

Intel isn't making any special chips for Apple. Apple is using standard Intel chips, so you're not going to see Intel design a chip without X86 compatibility for Apple.

Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[Animats]

It's amusing to watch the Apple fanatics apologize for Apple's policy changes. This has been going on since Apple was late with color displays ("The Mac doesn't need color. It has resolution"), through the day Jobs bowed down to Gates on the big screen, and through the years during which Apple couldn't get a new OS out the door.

This isn't about spare parts for repair. For a consumer product, you handle that by running off extra boards while the product is still in production and storing them. Then you shut down the production line. This is more about keeping options open in case the Intel transition doesn't come off.

There are a number of ways this could go bad. For example, many Mac users still run Microsoft Office on the Mac. Microsoft isn't obligated to offer that on x86 for the Mac, now that the five year deal has expired. PPC emulation on x86 may not work all that well. Many Mac developers may just drop the Mac rather than switching to x86, which is what happened at the PPC transition.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[diamondsw]

What a load of FUD and bullshit. All I'm going to point to is the two very successful transitions Apple has pulled off with 68K->PPC and OS 9 -> OS X, not to mention the flood of early reports that every damn app people run in Rosetta runs just fine. Photoshop, Office, they all just run.

Please, come up with more than FUD for your doom and gloom scenario.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[sribe]

his has been going on since Apple was late with color displays ("The Mac doesn't need color. It has resolution"), through the day Jobs bowed down to Gates on the big screen...

Apple supported large high-resolution color displays before Windows 2.0 even shipped. Look it up. Yes, the original Mac was B&W. But starting with the Mac II the platform held a huge lead in color graphics support for years and years.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[pammon]

>For example, many Mac users still run Microsoft Office
>on the Mac. Microsoft isn't obligated to offer that on
>x86 for the Mac, now that the five year deal has expired.

Why did Microsoft come on stage at the Keynote and publicly promise to offer Office/x86 then?

> This is more about keeping options open in
> case the Intel transition doesn't come off.

I don't think you can know that now.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[Animats]

The 68K-PPC transition was only "successful" to those who live in the Jobs Reality Distortion Field. In reality, Apple market share dropped substantially through the transition. Before the transition, Apple was a serious #2. After the transition, Apple was a niche player.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[diamondsw]

That has a whole lot more to do with the fact that Michael Spindler was running the company. That's when OS development went down the tubes (Copland), hardware went down the tubes (ten bajillion Macs that were configured the same, yet had different model numbers - Performa, anyone?), no marketing at all, no strategy, etc. Everyone was being told to develop for Copland (which was going to break all kinds of software), Apple developed several large software packages that went nowhere (PowerTalk, QuickDraw GX, PlainTalk) and started losing money hand over fist to clone makers. Yeah, they managed to do all of that in the 1994-1996 era, which is after PowerPC and prior to Amelio/Jobs.

None of that has a damn thing to do with the 68K to PPC transition, which was one of the smoothest the industry has seen. Your software "just worked", albeit slightly slower. By the second generation of PowerPC, emulated software ran faster than on the original hardware (jumping from 40Mhz to 120Mhz in a year and a half didn't hurt things). If you used Codewarrior (the savior of Apple at that time) then a checkbox made your code PowerPC native. The System 7 transition (32-bit clean, virtual memory, 32-bit QuickDraw, aliases, etc) was FAR worse than the 68K->PPC transition, yet that didn't scare off developers.

So, as someone who not only lived it but was paying attention, please take your FUD and misinformation and politely shove it.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[snuf23]

Two reasons kept me away from the Mac in the early '80s - lack of color and cost.
I used an Amiga at the time, loved the color and video capabilites, low cost and multitasking.
Apple was first to the mass market with 8bit color screens in the Mac II (I believe in 1987), but the cost was astronomical. So yeah they were there with color but for years after the Mac IIs release, the lower end black and white Mac SE and SE 30s were commonly used. I think the Mac IIsi was probably the first relatively low cost color Mac. Even then the IIsi had slow video, since the video card used system memory rather than dedicated vram.

Re:Watch the Mac fanatics twist and turn

[Animats]

Your software "just worked", albeit slightly slower.

Er, no. Reality distortion field alert.

68K floating point didn't work in the PPC's emulator. If you ported your engineering application to PPC, you had to go from 80-bit floats to 64-bit floats, making your data incompatible with the 68K program and the x86 version. Most engineering apps dropped the Mac at the PPC transition.

There was a third-party "SoftFPU", but it was slow and didn't work very well.

I'll probably be using Linux by then anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

I just gave OpenSUSE a try and I must say, if Linux continues improving by the leaps and bounds I've seen recently, then by the time Apple has completed their switchover to Intel I will probably be switched over to Linux full time. I dumped Linux when OS X came out, but it is looking more and more likely that I will be switching back.

Does it HAVE to be x86

[BigChrisUK]

One thing that many people don't consider - does an intel chip HAVE to the of the x86 variety?

Re:Does it HAVE to be x86

[saddino]

Clearly, it does.

Between the 83 occurences of "x86" in Apple's Universal Binary Programming Guidelines and the x86 chip architecture in the Development Transition Kits, how could it not be an x86 chip?

Anyway, I thought the speculation was over now that Intel has revealed its roadmap.

Re:Does it HAVE to be x86

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't (itanium etc). But Apple's developer preview machines use P4s, so we can expect that Apple will stick to the x86 architecture instead of some non-x86 variety.

How about this?

[Orion Blastar]

Dual processor motherboards, has two sockets. One for an Intel chip, and one for a PowerPC chip. You choose which one you wish to use at the factory when you order it. If you chose one, and decided you need to run programs designed for the other, you can order that chip and have an Apple Tech put it in for you. If you cannot decide, order both chips and use them in a parallel processing.

Special dual-use Macintosh motherboards can be designed to work with an Intel chip, a PowerPC chip, or both.

For those who bought an Intel or PowerPC Mac without the dual-use capability, Apple will be happy to provide an expansion card with the other chip on it to run programs designed for that processor. Just like they used to have an Apple // or PC on a card for the original PowerMacs.

How about we put a fire under the MAME/MESS community and they design a PCI card standard that uses Intel X86, PowerPC, 680X0, Z80, 6502, 6509, Z800, MIPS, SH4, and other processors on it, or have the sockets to add processors to it for emulators and other systems to use to run non-Native code on the processor card. Then your F/OSS software can use the PowerPC on the PCI card to run PearPC on your Intel X86 Linux PC at almost normal speeds? Stick a G4 or G5 on a PCI card, and sell it for use with F/OSS software that uses the card.

How about the Asian community makes a PowerPC socket for their Intel X86 motherboards to use it as a co-processor for emulators and other things? Just buy a PowerPC chip, clip it in the socket, run PearPC, Bochs, or whatever, and be happy with your native run PowerPC OS of choice.

Re:How about this?

[jcr]

Special dual-use Macintosh motherboards can be designed to work with an Intel chip, a PowerPC chip, or both.

Umm... Are you trying for a "funny" mod?

Having a big-endian and a little-endian processor trying to share memory sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

-jcr

Re:How about this?

[bark]

i can't figure out why an "asian" community has anything to do with powerpc chips???

Re:How about this?

[bmeteor]

the g4 isn't a big endian chip. It can switch modes. The 680x0 were, and the g5 is, and the os has been written that way.

so, theoretically, this could work.

Re:How about this?

[JHromadka]

It was done already. There was a Mac 10 years ago that had a daughterboard with an Intel processor. It was nice to be able to switch between OS 7.5 and Windows 3.1 with a keystroke and not be using emulation.

Re:How about this?

[climb_no_fear]

I had one. It was basically a 486 computer on a card, with its own RAM. So when you switched over, your Mac was still running in the background.

Re:How about this?

[Foamy]

OrangeMicro?? Was that the name of the company that sold the Intel CPU daughtercard?

Re:How about this?

[Halfbaked Plan]

It wouldn't be as difficult as you're making it.

Hook each computer up oriented to opposite ends of the bytes. (D0-D31 for Intel is D31-D0 for PPC)

Re:How about this?

[Orion Blastar]

Sorry my mistake. My mind has been slipping recently due to my many illnesses.

I meant the Asian motherboard maker companies. My mistake.

Re:How about this?

[Mattintosh]

Apple sold a Performa 610 (630?) with a "DOS Compatibility Card" in it. That was in about 1995.

Orange Micro made their own version for a much longer period, and they worked with systems all the way up to, but not including, the G5. (It was a PC-on-PCI card, so any Mac with PCI could do it. G5's have PCI-X.) The fastest one was a K6-2 with 64MB of RAM and a Rage Pro GPU. (Yes, I asked them. It was around the time of the release of the Blue & White G3's, and they were phasing the cards out even back then.) IIRC, the switching software required MacOS 8.1 or later, but not OS X (duh... we're talking 1998-era tech here). It was pretty slick, but still a kludge. KVM's are cheaper and present a better way to have a Mac and a PC side-by-side. And then monitor prices came down, so... yeah.

Re:How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, PowerPC little-endian mode (implemented in G4, not in G5) is not true little endian. All multi-byte data types are still stored in memory in big-endian order. In order to simulate little-endian memory semantics, low-order address bits are swizzled in different ways depending on the width of the memory access, in such a fashion that when software written with LE assumptions tries to pick apart a multibyte word into bytes, it gets the bytes it expects.

I have always been mystified why this bizarre scheme was used rather than simply byteswapping all loads and stores, but it's there, and it's ugly. I am not aware of any CPU architecture with support for this pseudo-LE format besides PowerPC -- and it isn't even implemented in all PowerPCs.

Re:How about this?

[bani]

68k, z80, 65xx, z80, mips, sh4, etc are trivial to emulate at far faster speeds than you could ever buy in real silicon. hardly any point in using real chips.

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"The G4 is a pretty energy efficient processor,"

So is an 8086, but you don't use it in a modern computer.

Re:Hmmmm

[andreyw]

I don't think the 8086 and 8088 (along with the 80186) actually *qualify* as processors.

MCUs sure. CPUs? Eh...

*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*

[Anonymous Coward]

" PPC is one of the best platforms ever for both sound, gfx and of course heat production."

The Pentium M is a generation new and better. The Pentium M is simply the best processor in the world right now. Yes, I know its 32 bits. Yes, I know other processors may be faster in certain circumstances, but when you have a laptop that will last 6:45 (the HP DV4000 I just got) and have performance to do anything, then that's a pretty f'ing good chip.

The PPC is simply old news. Its main use at this point is as an embedded processor (in terms of volume). Its not a terrible processor, but The Pentium M is clearly the chip you want.

Weapon of Choice

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

I think Jobs merely wants to exercise his new weapon of choice (sorry... just love that video) as much as possible. The longer he can keep PPC on life-support, the longer he has an extra negotiating chip.

Nearly all applications have a G3 code path

[diamondsw]

Thanks to G3's holding down the low-end of Apple's line for so long, nearly every app on the market has a G3 code path (otherwise you'd be dumping an awful lot of relatively recent iBooks, iMacs, eMacs, etc). Rosetta simulates a G3; the application will simply take the G3 instruction path and run fine, just a tad slower. Emulating a vector instruction set like that across platforms would have been hell, and likely slower than the G3 codepath in the first place.

Only applications that are G4-only will have any trouble (damn few outside of Apple, and theirs are already Intel optimized).

Re:Nearly all applications have a G3 code path

[dan_bethe]

To run with your point... a lot of free and open source software such as mplayer or RC5 which have optional altivec optimizations already have optional ia32 optimizations and often also have other ia32 assembly surrounding it. So maintainers of such projects probably need to do something simple like change the GNU autoconf target definition and runtime CPU core detection to mimic the Linux ia32 definition.

Re:Nearly all applications have a G3 code path

[Bert64]

Or just treat it exactly the same way it has always treated the darwin kernel when running on x86 hardware..

Altivec transition not such a big deal

[diamondsw]

If you went to the pain of adding Altivec enhancements by hand, then you're probably going to have no problem recoding them for Intel's SSE and such. Most major products are cross-platform and have this code written already, and most minor products just used compiler optimizations. Either the hard work is already done, or Intel will do it for them, gratis.

And as I said elsewhere, nearly every program has a G3 codepath, so Rosetta will run them just fine. Those that really got a significant boost from the G4 will be hurt the hardest, so those will be the ones you upgrade first to Intel native versions. Since such apps clearly have made an investment in the platform and have a need for speed, they're also the most likely to be ready first.

Conspiracy theory

[coinreturn]

1. Produce an Intel version of OS-X
2. Make a pretend announcement to change over to Intel
3. Leak the Intel version of OS-X
4. Let Windoze users salivate over OS-X.
5. Change back to PPC.
6. Windoze users buy PPC Macs.
7. PROFIT!!!

Re:Conspiracy theory

[the phantom]

The hell? Step 7 should have been "???"... then "PROFIT!!" at step 8. You must be new here.

Re:Conspiracy theory

[oPless]

You missed out " ???? "

I for one welcome our old/new/current PPC overlords

Re:Conspiracy theory

[coinreturn]

The hell? Step 7 should have been "???"... then "PROFIT!!" at step 8. You must be new here.

No ????? needed because there are no holes in this business plan.

Re:Conspiracy theory

[the phantom]

Grumble... I once again fail at humor...

So this is a bad move on Apple's part?

[Infonaut]

This is more about keeping options open in case the Intel transition doesn't come off.

I'm not sure how Apple making a decision to keep their options open constitutes reason for anyone to twist and turn. To me it sounds like smart business, which is something the old Apple didn't even know existed.

For the last several years Apple has been running off a new playbook. I think it is fair to say that talking about its dumb moves from six years ago or more amounts to archaeology.

iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe a G4 iPad or iTablet might be the reason.

Apple CYA

[Capt_Troy]

This story is just an artifact from the announcement that Apple contracted Freescale until 2008 to provide processors. This may be simply a CYA manuver in case something goes south with the intel deal (be it delays etc).

So I'm not sure that this means you won't get your portables until 2008, just that Apple has a backup plan in case, with intel portables in 2008 as a longest possible estimate.

-T.

Re:I think I got it

[Anonymous Coward]

The PowerPC chip won't be going where I doubt I'd imagine. Right into the river of our disuse it isn't bound yet. But soon...but aren't all things under and above the wide open blue? Entropy, the pundits' play toy, sees to it despite their desire to mold it into their demogoguery. I love Intel though...I know that's unpopular...but they keep me with conditioning and deserted work surprises.

I think this got modded Redundant because Slashdot doesn't have a "-1, WTF?" mod...

Plain and Simple....

[riversky]

It is for warranty and repair contracts. You can get a 3 year warranty with AppleCare. The are telling there corporate/scientific users that they will honor this going forward so to reduce the risk for those buying machines now. They need to have replacement parts and machines if you buy one on the last day they will use the PowerPC. This is the reason! People over think everything Apple does.

There is no 64-bit Intel roadmap from Apple...

[kuwan]

You can read what I've written about this here:

Why we won't see a G5 PowerBook/iBook...
Re:Why we won't see a G5 PowerBook/iBook...

You might also want to check out Apple's Universal Binary Programming Guidelines. Note the section titled Conventions (emphasis mine):

The term x86 is a generic term used in some parts of this book to refer to the class of microprocessors manufactured by Intel. This book uses the term x86 as a synonym for IA-32 (Intel Architecture 32-bit).

Apple has only give developers an IA-32 roadmap for Intel. Not a single Apple engineer has given any information about future 64-bit support on Intel processors. The reasons for this are outlined in my links above, but the bottom line is that 64-bit x86 chips cannot run the same way that 64-bit PPC chips can. A 64-bit PPC chip (the G5) can run a 32-bit operating system (Mac OS X 10.4) and both 32-bit and 64-bit applications at the same time. However, a 64-bit x86 chip can only run 32-bit and 64-bit applications at the same time under a 64-bit operating system.

This is why IA-32 will be first. Apple has not yet announced what they are going to do for 64-bit support on Intel nor have they given developers the roadmap that we need to prepare for it.

Re:There is no 64-bit Intel roadmap from Apple...

[Been on TV]

Well, but you'll have to agree with me that there is ABSOLUTELY NOW WAY Apple is going to return the Pro and Xserve product lines to a 32-bit processor, now that they have a number of customers out there with 8 GB configs in production? (I believe the Virginia Tech 1100 node cluster is using 8 GB nodes.)

Hence, they will have to create a 64-bit version of the OS for Intel.

Another reason to build a 64-bit system only is to prevent pirate copies to be hacked onto existing non-Apple 32-bit Intel hardware.

Reason why you have not seen anything in the developer roadmap, is the combination of the very fresh Intel announcement for the new chips, and the fact that Apple tends to hide underlying hardware dependencies from their developers through their tooling. I am pretty sure that projects built with XCode will run just fine on 64-bit hardware the day it is available, just like it took some developers a matter of hours to make their PPC software recompile an run on the Intel version of OS X.

Re:There is no 64-bit Intel roadmap from Apple...

[kuwan]

Well, but you'll have to agree with me that there is ABSOLUTELY NOW WAY Apple is going to return the Pro and Xserve product lines to a 32-bit processor, now that they have a number of customers out there with 8 GB configs in production?

Well, this is obvious, but your assertion that Apple will only ship 64-bit x86 machines is wrong. If they were going to do that they would have provided programming guidelines for EM64T (Intel's 64-bit instruction set) for developers to get working on it. The guidelines they have provided are for IA-32 only. In fact, Apple has also stated that only SSE2 is guaranteed to be available on their new Intel-based Macs. You can find this in the SSE Performance Programming Overview:

What we are calling SSE in this document was actually delivered as three separate vector extensions to the IA-32 ISA, which appeared (in order over time) under the names SSE, SSE2 and SSE3. Each builds on the extension that went before it. The first two are defined to be part of the baseline hardware requirement for MacOS X for Intel. SSE3 has been recently introduced (first in the Prescott family of Pentium 4 processors) and may or may not be available on a machine running MacOS X for Intel.

This clearly points to the Pentium M processor. It is IA-32 and does not support SSE3. This also follows the logic that portables and lower-power Macs will go Intel first (in other words replacing the G4).

Apple will obviously need to replace the G5s with a 64-bit chip, but this will not be done for a while. This is mainly because the G5 is much more powerful than anything Intel has now and anything that Intel will be able to put out in the near future.

Also, in the same document I linked to above you'll find this in the Hardware Overview:

(Note: Apple has not yet defined a ABI for 64-bit programming on MacOS X for Intel. 06/24/05)

64-bit Intel machines will eventually come, but they most certainly won't be the first machines introduced.

Another reason to build a 64-bit system only is to prevent pirate copies to be hacked onto existing non-Apple 32-bit Intel hardware.

Apple can and has already done this with DRM. Yes, it's been hacked already, but Apple might make it more difficult in the future.

I am pretty sure that projects built with XCode will run just fine on 64-bit hardware the day it is available, just like it took some developers a matter of hours to make their PPC software recompile an run on the Intel version of OS X.

IA-32 applications should run unmodified on an EM64T system, if they don't then there will be riots in the streets of Cupertino. Other than that, porting PPC64 applications to EM64T shouldn't be all that difficult. The problem is that there is no information on how to do it yet and no test systems to test it with. Until there is information on how to do it and tools to do it with then there's no reason to expect Apple to ship a product based on it for a while. We have the Developer Transition Kits right now so that we can build, test and run our applications on Intel machines. If Apple were to introduce 64-bit Intel machines first then we'd need a 64-bit development system to build and test our applications with.

Re:There is no 64-bit Intel roadmap from Apple...

[Been on TV]

(Note: Apple has not yet defined a ABI for 64-bit programming on MacOS X for Intel. 06/24/05)

The obvious reason for this is that at the time of the statement, Intel had not announced their new gen chips, hence as far as Apple was concerned they did not exist so there was nothing to define. And we all know how sensitive Steve Jobs is to picking the right moment for an announcement.

If Apple were to introduce 64-bit Intel machines first then we'd need a 64-bit development system to build and test our applications with.

You will probably see such development systems in the hands of he first, trusted developers by the time Intel has their first beta of their compiler for the next gen chips ready. If they were to announce in January, developers would have real prototypes in their hands by now. I've worked in Apple product management through an earlier processor transtion and know how much time these things take.

Another thing is that I seriously doubt they will make the switch on system 10.4. There simply is not enough time to build 10.5 for a January 2006 launch on a 32-bit Intel processor.

P4M???

[charnov]

The P4M is pretty much gone. Everything shifted to the Pentium-M a while ago with Apple looking to the the Merom for their Intel generation computers. The Merom is dual core @ 35W max with 1-2W nominal @ 65nm. I'm not a rah-rah Intel kind of guy (I own stock in AMD), but they really got something with this next line if they can deliver on their 65nm process.

One thing you can read from this

[Enrique1218]

Apple will be transitioning all their G4 product beginning in 2006. They contract Frescale till the end of 2008, which 3 years - the length of a typical applecare extended contract. So, I guess they only intend to sell these systems till the end of this year. Given the recent announcements of Intel processor lineup, I guess Apple will release new Powerbook, iBook, and mac mini's along side Intels release of dual-core and single Yonahs.

I agree fully with you.. for various reasons

[plasmacutter]

For one thing, no matter how they try to play it down, their execs at the pentium d launch announcement went on at length about how the "D" in pentium d stood for DRM.

Add to that the fact that pentium chips add on kludge after kludge, and the fact that my last pentium system had a bug which resulted in it not being capable of properly encoding video, and i'm sticking with ppc until it's good and dead.

To that end i've sacrificed a lot of my budget to buy a high end g5 with as much as i can cram into it for the long wait.

Hopefully by then they'll have worked the damned bugs out of their stupid chips, and the populace or hackers will have successfully thrown off the yolk of intel's processor embedded DRM.

come on down!

[itomato]

They need a piece of news to keep people interested in PPC Apple products.

Been to Fry's since the announcement? No electricity in the air.. Just a bunch of high-priced, under-equipped machinery.

Those G4 iBooks won't sell themselves, especially not when they are presumed to be the last of the breed. Who wants that?

Re:come on down!

[falconwolf]

Those G4 iBooks won't sell themselves, especially not when they are presumed to be the last of the breed. Who wants that?

Actually I'm hoping they'll have Intel based Powerbooks out early next year as I'm planning on getting a Powerbook then. I'm hoping they will drop the price of G4 Powerbooks but I also want to be able to compare the price/performance of the two.

Falcon

Re:come on down!

[vandan]

I realise that you meant this jokingly, but just for the record ...

As someone who supported them 100% on their choice of the PPC architecture, I am certainly not going to be buying any more PPC products from them. If I can't buy a G5-based system from another retailer, I'm going back to x86, alright, but not Mac's x86. x86-64 on Linux, and on generic hardware. Enough is enough.

Curious? Read it again.

[ThreeDayMonk]

So I'm somewhat curious as to why you feel so strongly about using a PPC chip.

Did you read what he wrote? The original poster said:

Personally I just have a whole bunch of personal Altivec code and I don't want to have to rewrite it.

That's why. His code won't run without rewriting, so getting his job done in the quickest manner means using the optimised code he already has. Rewriting it for SSE3 or whatever not only may not be as fast, it's a lot of extra effort.

conversion tools

[hayne]

One possible conversion tool is macstl (which comes with some scripts that claim to help in converting Altivec to SSE) - I haven't used it myself, only read the blurb.

Much more thoughtful take

[Fuzzle]

Ars has a much more thorough and thoughtful take from someone who actually follows Apple and has some common sense.

This is not a sound buisness plan.

[imsabbel]

Its clearly missing the "?????????" point....

Uh... yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, look. I'm sure that you see microchips locked inside of an opaque case as something that someone might treat as part of their "individuality". And I'm sure you just absolutely love to play at your little Apple Versus Whoever dodgeball fights on slashdot and look down on all those "elitist" mac users.

However, to some of us, computers are tools. Some of us just want to get fucking work done. To this end, your little games aren't particularly amusing. I actually have needs that are better suited by PPC than Intel, for example working with my legacy altivec stuff, and I don't feel like having to go through a long and painful transition process just because omg steve jobs says it is teh bettar.

Re:Uh... yeah.

[Halfbaked Plan]

You coded yourself into a dead end. 'Altivec' is indeed rapidly becoming 'legacy.' You can file it where a lot of people file their 6809 assembly code.

Deal with it. Maybe you should port your code all over to the Dec Alpha processor. *smirk*

Re:Uh... yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, why don't you write super-optimized assembler to assure maximum performance on P4 processors. Oh wait, that's a dead end too. They're going with lower-clocked Pentium M procs from here on out.

See, Intel finally learned a thing or two from AMD, Motorola, & IBM about actually getting PERFORMANCE out of their processors instead oflistening to their marketing droids. They've been locked into upping the clockspeedlike crack addicts with virtually no performance gain for way, way too long.

Who gives a rats ass if Intel's marketing droids got what they wanted, the absolute most they do is feed misinformation down the insatiable gullets of Intel fanboys like yourself.

LAME

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long-time Windows user who was looking for something more, I was waiting until the new x86 came out before buying a new Mac because I didn't want to get stuck with old-and-busted PPC when new apps were written for x86. Originally, I thought I would have to wait until next year, but it now looks like I will be waiting much longer. I guess my next machine will be another x86 box for now, probably Windows, but maybe Linux if I can get used to doing everything by hand.

You can harp all you want about how Apple is committed to supporting both archs, but I wouldn't have wanted to owned a 68k machine either after the PPC transition. Maybe I'm just weird.

Stupid move, IMO. Shit or get off the pot already.

Bizarro

[OrangeTide]

Perhaps this is Bizarro-slashdot?

G5 Powerbooks?

[falconwolf]

The new mobile G5 uses almost the same as the current G4 processors.

Apple has mobile G5s? I just checked and they don't have any G5 laptops, do you know when they go on sale?

Falcon

Re:G5 Powerbooks?

[ball-lightning]

Apple doesn't have any G5 Laptops, but they also don't make G5s, IBM does. IBM has been rumored (fact?) to have a mobile G5 in the works.

developers need two code branches?

[falconwolf]

Anyone else feel bad for their developers? Having to develop two parallel code branches for years to come? ouch...

Developers shouldn't need to be concerned about having to work with different codes or source branchs. Apple has worked on universal binaries, using Xcode developers can output both PPC and Intel code in one package.

Falcon

switching to Intel

[falconwolf]

It's almost as if people now accept what Kernigan and Ritchie was saying all those years ago. I'll wager that a move to x86 was on Apple's mind a long long time before the announcement, and thus reasoning behind moving to a *nix platform.

That's what they said when they annouced the switch, that they had OSX running on Intel for 5 years.

Falcon

hd space

[falconwolf]

HD space isn't that cheap when you're talking about laptops. I have a 100 GB HD in my PowerBook that is nearly filled up. It kinda pisses me off that I have to lug an external 250 GB HD around with me all the time. I don't think there are bigger 2.5" HDs in mass production at this time.

Yea, I'm planning on getting a Powerbook early next year and hope they get bigger hds than the 100GB one they have now. I don't want to have to rely on an external hd for storage, especially if I also get a new DSLR camera. On the other hand so I don't have to have a laptop with me all the tyme if I get a DSLR I may just get a portable hd so I can offload my photos onto it.

Falcon

Personally I've owned sparcs, an alpha

[falconwolf]

Your Alpha, do you have NT4.0 on it, and if so did you have any trouble installing software on it? I got an Alpha several years ago but I could only install a few programs so it's been pretty much a waste. DEC's FX!32 didn't work that good for me.

Falcon

Re:Personally I've owned sparcs, an alpha

[Bert64]

That's more the fault of proprietary software vendors than the alpha architecture..
If you run an opensource OS and compile opensource apps on it, you`l have a lot more success.. Most linux apps compile and run very well on alpha systems

Re:Personally I've owned sparcs, an alpha

[falconwolf]

That's more the fault of proprietary software vendors than the alpha architecture.. If you run an opensource OS and compile opensource apps on it, you`l have a lot more success.. Most linux apps compile and run very well on alpha systems

Besides WinNT Redhat Linux is installed on a second drive, I ordered it that way from Microway however now I spend my computers mostly online and when I got the Alpha I didn't get it with a modem. As I now have cable access I'd like to go ahead and network the all three of my computers, other than the Alpha I have a 766MHz Celeron with Win ME and PowerMac 7300/200. All of them are rather long in the teeth, the Celeron is the newest and it's more than 5 years old. When I'm ready I'll need to find a good resource to help me setup the network. One of the things I'm wondering is if I should use a router or a switch, my knowledge of networking is rudamentary at best.

Once I setup a network then I'll use my Alpha as well as my Mac.

Ooh, even if running Linux doesn't different apps depend on what the processor is, with different ports for the different processors?

Falcon

Re:Personally I've owned sparcs, an alpha

[Bert64]

Not different ports, but obviously the apps need to be compiled for the appropriate architecture..
You could install gentoo on all 3 machines, and compile mostly the same apps on all 3 machines... Most of the mainstream distributions like redhat don`t support alpha anymore, the latest version of redhat for alpha is quite old and would have trouble compiling most modern software.. I suggest you install the same version of gentoo on all 3 machines, and run them side by side running the same versions of the same programs, just compiled for the appropriate platform.

Yet another over reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

And monkeys like to eat potato salad.

What??? That doesn't make any sense you say?

Ah well now you know how I feel when I read some of the responses to this article. TFA simply says that Freescale has agreed to supply Apple with processors until the end of 2008 nothing more nothing less. Apple will be in need of service parts until approximately 2010 to cover warranty repairs. This isn't the start of the "were all doomed" scenario that many people are trying to make it out to be.

I swear some times the more "zealous" of my fellow Mac users make it very embarrassing for those of us who are not quite so... "Rabid" about any news from or about Apple (that may or may not) put Apple in a bad light to admit that we use, support, and are other wise proud Mac users.

Mactel powerbooks

[falconwolf]

I think they were talking about the iBooks other then the power books. If my Powerbook died right now I would probably just save some cash and switch to an iBook. But if they were a G5 or Intel based PowerBook I would go with that. The Power Book line is starting to really drag.

I'm hoping they have Mactel Powerbooks by January, February at the latest. I'm planning on getting a Powerbook around then and am hoping that Intel based powerbooks will drive down the price of G4 Powerbooks. I also want to compare the price/performance of G4s and Intel laptops. If the Intel ones are better in this regard I may get one instead of a G4.

Falcon

So are the Intel chips 'more expensive'?

[failedlogic]

I can see that the warranty issue is a concern - heck I just bought an iMac G5 2 months ago w/ the Apple Care warranty.

But I have to wonder - the article mentions the 'low end' systems will continue to use PPC chips (by 2008 likely still the G4??) then I have to wonder ... are the Intel chips Apple will be buying likely to be more expensive than deals they have with IBM on the G5? Afterall, if Intel were more affordable, the low end systems would have Intel in them only.

Re:So are the Intel chips 'more expensive'?

[argent]

the article mentions the 'low end' systems will continue to use PPC chips

They probably pulled that statement out of the same hole someone pulled "the 'low end' systems will be the first to switch to Intel" out of.

Nobody knows, outside of Apple and such suppliers they have under NDA.

Windows is only on X86

[falconwolf]

Actually Microsoft released Windows to run more than just X86 compatibles. I know as I've got Windows NT4.0 running on a DEC Alpha.

Falcon

G4 based iPods around the corner

[5plicer]

just kidding...

They probably secured the deal just in case things get off to a rough start with Intel. Furthermore, bet they'll need a few extra G4 chips for future hardware repairs. The deal doesn't say that they WILL buy the chips - just they CAN buy the chips if they need them.

Re:I think I got it

[milktoastman]

World Thumpin' Friar, no doubt.

apple buffalos the market

[leckmi]

first they make the PPC-based used Macs prices fall down by telling the horror-story of moving to intel and now make hope again... clever boyz over there. too bad i didnt buy a G5 before this news

Re:Developer perspective on Apple porting strategy

[Halfbaked Plan]

If you only test your code on one system, don't count on getting many PayPal dollars from people registering their copy.

Re:Developer perspective on Apple porting strategy

[ArbitraryConstant]

I made this for work, but it's useful all over the place.

Sometimes "journalism" is crap

[Swift2001]

Think about it. Who else uses the chips that Apple may want? Nobody. They're ordering an unspecified number for a period of time so they will be able to put a new motherboard in your uncle's iBook in 2007. If they didn't get a deal like that, they'd be screwed if anything happened.

My question about all this is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why intel? why not AMD?

This is prolly old, but why the hell arent they going with AMD? AMD is now much cooler and a much more efficient, not to mention, cheaper chip than anything intel has created as of late.
Also, AMD is several steps ahead of the game and are continuing to keep jumping further ahead.
while intel is still picking their ass and wondering how they're going to make a 64 bit cpu work, intel has done so, and has done multiple cores as well. and is already looking into going quad core.

and if you call apple support...

[Anonymous Coward]

you'll notice we never use the term "laptop"

it's a "portable"

This is so depressing.

[fordahla]

I was really looking forward to the intel move. I want to buy a high end macintosh so that I can dual boot windows and os x. I could use the windows partition for my gaming needs and the os x partition for my computing needs. For all you naysayers, imagine not being able to dual boot windows/linux. Imagine having to maintain two machines, one for playing games, and one for getting things done. Now I will have to split my resources two ways, buying a mediocre pc clone and a low end mac. How depressing. To those who say: Buy a console! Console games suck and are for mutants with multiple thumbs. PC gaming forever (hopefully sometime soon on a mac) that is all, blah