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What is the Intel Switch Costing Apple?
SenseOfHumor writes "A Business Week article says that it costs Apple $898 for an Intel iMac before loading it with software and packaging. From the article: 'But for Apple, the switch to Intel chips is less about saving money in the short term, and more about hitching its wagon to Intel's longer-term product road maps, particularly in the area of notebooks. IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers.'"
Apple is going with Intel because their competitors' chips "are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat".
It's like rain on your wedding day!
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
If they don't know, why ask us? Everyone knows slashdot crowd knows nothing. But we'll always comment. So I'll say it's costing them at least a hundred pigs a month in tribute. Maybe some biscuits (you Yanks call them cookies).
Did you mean Apples are for old Koreans only?
In the mid 1990s, Apple showed the famous picture of a Pentium grilling a hot dog and claimed Intel's chips were power hungry and ran hot compared to the nice cool sleek PowerPC. That was one of the supporting reasons that Apple ostensibly switched, according to all the engineering presentations at WWDC. So when did this change?
The main reason of course was that RISC processors were on a much faster performance incline than the fuddy duddy old CISC processors like the x86 line. The graph comparing the two in the period 1995-2005 showed CISC acceleration continuing to slow and RISC acceleration continuing with, I believe, a skyrocket attached to the top of the graph. We all know how that turned out.
ibm relationship, $1,000,000,000
porting operating system $30,000,000
finding yourself on the platform you have been bagging out for the last three decades? Priceless!!
-Sj53
Wasn't this the publicly stated reason for switching when Steve announced the move last summer? They said IBM makes great server chips, but the future of personal computing is laptops, something Intel is putting more R&D into than IBM, and thus provides a better solution.
why is this news?
It should be easier to switch to AMD or other X86 platforms in the future, opening up more negotiation possibilities.
The article didn't mention overhead. You can bet that there is a cost associated with the overall organization, plus the physical plant, R&D, etc. that most likely brings the costs way up from where the article puts them!
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
notebooks seem to be the way to go since everyone want to be able to work at home. i think i read soewhere that notebooks are overtaking desktops in sales. where i work %75 of the people have notebooks. (out of 50)
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
...Intel gets dumped in favor of AMD?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers.
So, we jumped to Intel, which hasn't be plagued by this issues of late...
I can't believe that someone actually decided that.
It is odd to me that Apple leverages so much into specific processors rather than specific processes. It would seem to me that Apple really has a great interface -- and that is the product they want to sell. With their OS kernel being based on some *nix variety (BSD? I can't remember) I would guess that the processor itself is unimportant if their software and APIs are hardware transparent.
Here's the great thing about the market and letting it lead you (instead of the other way around) when you are an OS or software provider -- you can focus on writing good clean code, and follow up that code with the hardware that offers your code the absolute best package given the infinite choices.
Power management, heat creation, MIPS, FLOPS, BOPS, GHZ, THZ, MB, MBps, whatever the hardware does best, there's always a ratio to price. That's the great thing about the free market, though, competititors will always want to beat the other.
What is stopping Apple or another software company from offering the best darn interface for programmers and users to work with, and then find the processor to wrap the interface around? Is this Apple goal with Intel, possibly? Shake up IBM (and show smaller processor companies that they, too, have a chance) and create an operating system that must now work with 2 (or 10?) completely different processor subsystems? Is this Apple showing that they can get away from hardware entirely, and focus just on software?
OK, we know that Apple uses desktops and laptops to justify the switch to Intel, but what does this bode for the future of the Xserve line?
If Apple's going to be commodity CPU on the server front, then there's no incentive on the hardware front to pay for Apple.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
The pentium-m processors are incredibly power efficient and perform very well. Sure there desktops are absolutely horrible from the Northwood to the Prescott core (and perhaps some new cores since i've stopped paying attention to what intel releases on the desktop now) but that doesn't exclude the fact that they do infact have one of the best, if not THE best solution for notebooks.
Hmmm... Pie...
The Cell processor is an IBM creation. Several are going into the Playstation 3, so will this require a fan? Seems IBM is still building cooler chips and Intel is not the only one that cares about it.
Don't really have the details. Just wondering what happened. The context of TFA was that IBM just could not "do it" for Apple in the cool laptop department, so they jumped ship.
AMD fanboy's logic
Intel loses market share to AMD
Apple moves to Intel
Therefore, Apple loses market share to AMD
for not having gone with AMD.
I didn't think they would have survived the wrath of Slashdotters for not having ogg on the iPods, now Apple will be in the same league as M$, the RIAA, and SCO.
not suitable for notebook computers? That's not the talk we got from the Apple fanboys from the last 4 years.
I'm a Mac user, and I've been keeping an ear to the ground, but I haven't heard any mention of the new MacBooks having improved battery life over the 'old' PowerBooks, so I am guessing the reverse is true (or much would be made of the better battery life). Of course, there are lots of other reasons for the move than just lower power consumption, and even on that front, there's no way of knowing right now if the new MacBooks will have lower unit-of-power/unit-of-computational-power costs. With the possibility that the new chips provide better-than-G5 performance in a laptop, well, there's certainly something going right with this switch, even if Intel doesn't have the best reputation for efficient, cool chips.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
"IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat..."
In a related news item, IBM chips are now running for elected office worldwide.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Lollerskates: Apple marries Intel, just as Intel product line takes back seat to AMD. Jobs spends huge sum of money to... -maintain second place, in a two-company vendor race.
,,,And, suffers new never-before-seen losses in the form of generic-install piracy.
..But the GOOD news is, the new Macth juth look faaaabulouth!
~
Apple Computer : Proudly going out of business for 30 years
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is why I'm confused about the push to "All Intel, All the Time!" Apple, with Mac OS X's Unix and NeXT roots, should embrace a multi-platform strategy to get the most bang for its buck wherever it can. The PowerPC-derived Cell will rock for workstation and servers, and the Meron will kick major butt for home user kit. Best tool for the job, and just compile for the famous NeXT "Fat Binary." Back in the day, the same NeXT executable would run on 68040, Sparc, PA-RISC and Pentiums. Why not now? Why tie yourself to x86 alone, when there are better alternatives to fit the niche you're targeting?
Too much politics, and not enough engineering.
~ SoupIsGood Food
"IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers."
Nevertheless, Apple zealots were not only gladly buying them for years, but paying premium for them too!
When choosing between Microsoft (overpriced software) and Apple (overpriced hardware), I'd pick Linux (comodity hardware + Free software) any day.
"What is stopping Apple or another software company from offering the best darn interface for programmers and users to work with, and then find the processor to wrap the interface around?"
I think the problem is that Apple is a software company that makes its living as a hardware company. And to make money from hardware, they have to be perceived as different from their competition. If you follow what you're saying to it's logical end, you come up with a solution that says "Apple should not sell hardware, they should write software that runs anywhere".
I'm sure Jobs experience with NeXT tells him that selling an operating system, his experience watching Gasse sell BeOS tells him he doesn't want to compete with Microsoft on that basis. So he's chosen a middle ground that appears to be increasingly difficult to maintain differentiation on the hardware side.
The next few years will be interesting for Apple, that's for sure.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It is if you live in the desert, where everybody gets excited about rainy days. Except on their weddings, which are one time when they really want a nice sunny day.
Normally wanting somethin + getting it at a useless time = irony
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Boy, that Jobs sure can spin just about any situation...
IBM dumped Apple and left them with nowhere else to go.
Everything else is just consequences.
Given the fact that AMD has taken market share from Intel (as documented in the previous post) and their stock value nosedived (http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/17/technology/intel_ analysis/index.htm for more), perhaps it's Intel that needs the help?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I don't think its going to happen.
I think the Mac is on Intel simply because there was little else to do to generate new sales momentum. By going to Intel it is implied that people with the older technology will buy new Apples, thereby increasing sales and making Apple's bottom line look better. This will work in the short term but long term where is the excitement going to come from?
What do Apple computers do that Microsoft computers don't that will appeal to the general computing populace? Computing is probably too strong a term, most aren't doing more than email and surfing. Games are probably the next strongest category for most PC users. So who are they getting sales from? Simple, the Apple faithful. When those run out where do they go for more?
Corporations aren't going to switch. Most are tied by vendor now. In our case we have windows because Dell supplies on Windows PCs. We had HP before and that was because HP supplied Windows only PCs. We don't even look at Apple. Windows is entrenched here and got that way because there was no viable alternative.
Why would the general populace ever want to buy a Mac? You can talk it up all you want but the bottom line is price. If all the GP is doing is surfing/email/IM they are defintely going to be harder to sway. Photography? Nah, most people never use more than the basic features of most products.
With the migration to Intel the "Mac Tax" is more evident. This puts pressure on the geek market. Many of us would like to have a machine to run OS/X. That word "machine" is key. I'm not buying an Apple unless I can use another OS on it. My first preference is that it boot Windows as that is what I need at work and for home use. Next is Linux. So why would these new machines appeal to me? Outside of the mini the new ones will be too expensive for something just to play with.
I'll be very curious what the sales look like 1 year after the switch is complete. It is obvious most sales will be to the faithful. I just don't think they can convince the general computer populace to switch because of the obvious cost difference. Look, they couldn't convince them the premium was worth it before, how are they going to do it now when "smart consumers" can not compare Apples to Apples?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
but a large portion of what Apple sells is the "total experience" for want of a better word. The first Apple product I bought was an Airport Express. You can't believe the design that went into the packaging--it was a thing of beauty. The experience of opening up the well-designed box and finding all the bits and pieces nealy laid out was something that really made a big impression on me.
While I agree that Apple's OS has a lovely interface (and I just bought my first Mac, a powerbook, this week) I don't think that the company can afford to focus exclusively on software. Industrial design (the sleek hardware) is an important part of the Apple experience and that snazzy hardware sells. Indeed, with iPods now the company's profit center, the focus will continue to be on hardware.
Which is too bad, because there's always the chance that people would be willing to pay for OSX on beige boxes.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I know. That's the point. It was a joke. (Is it ironic that you didn't get the humor?)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I don't know what it costs Apple, but I sure know the change to Intel will cost me about 2000 .
I never understood why they didn't have a PowerPC Thinkpad if PPC was so great.
Well, at least now, Apple has what should be an architecture-agnostic OS, so this isn't neccessarily a long-term committment. Right?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What if you seed the clouds in order to get the rain out, but you do not use enough to make it rain right away and rather than having a rainless wedding day, you cause it too rain on your wedding day? THAT is irony... it just doe not fit well into a song.
Ones like this?
For the final time Ms Morrisette, rain on your wedding day IS NOT iroic.
Rain on your wedding day when marrying a TV weather girl who predicted happy sunshine, might be.
A no smoking sign on your ciggerete break isn't irony (just anonying).
A no smoking sign on your ciggerate break having *just* been diagnosed with lung cancer, might be.
Irony and (decent) comedy are two things North America cannot do :-)
no.. Irony is when you try to make something happen one way, and your actions end up creating the opposite effect.
Apple decided years ago that laptops were going to be the future, and the age of giant towers was coming to a close, and odds are that's true.
Small, lower power chips that put out decent numbers are worth more to most people that large, power hungry chips that put out phenominal numbers. It's funny, the story below talks about AMD chips outselling Intel chips in the desktop. At the end of the day though, I fear AMD is taking over a market segment as it's being abandoned, nothing more.
The G5 is a "brainiac" design, a big complex chip with a long highly parallelized pipeline. This is a relatively new approach for RISC chips, which have typically concentrated on a small core, short pipeline, and simple design with a lot of "close" cache.
:)
Intel's Pentium chips have all been "brainiac"s to some extent, but none so much as the P4... which they've backed away from. The new chips in the new Macs are less like the G5 or P4 and, while not exactly as clean and tight as the G4, are closer to it than they are to the real brainiacs.
But there's nothing wrong with the G4 core as a core. Taking the G4 core and giving it a faster bus, the way Intel's taken the PII/PIII core and given it a faster bus in Yonah, would have made a lot more sense. And Freescale's got one like that in the pipeline. They could have called it the "G5 Mobile".
I'm just waiting for the notebook manufacturers out there to start cloning the Apple machines, and stick a cooler processor in with a bigger battery. The specs for the Apple machines aren't unknown, and they are using mostly market pieces.
Yeah, I won't have an Apple that lights up, but I won't be paying the Apple toll for the same hardware either. And, chances are, I'll be able to use OS X.n anyway.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
So what you are saying is that Apple bought Intel's marketing hype?
Oh well, what the hell...
perhaps that is the point of the song? The song itself is ironic because she was singing about non-ironic things but calling them ironic, so she decided to name the song "ironic"
I guess I responded a little hastily and unclearly to the line quoted in the summary: "IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers."
The implication covers more than just the G5; though to be fair, later in the paragraph the author narrows the focus of this statement, something that I would have gotten if I'd RTFA before firing off that post.
Mea Culp Mea Culpa Mea Maxima Culpa
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
For people wondering why Apple introduced the high end MacBook Pro line first, and is still offering the G4 based line of Powerbooks and iBooks - the high initial cost of the Intel chips is precisely the reason. The chips aren't much cheaper (and neither as manufacturing costs) for notebooks offered at much lower price points.
Its a good business strategy - ultimately Apple needs to watch its bottom line while it goes after markets share. As economies of scale, Moore's law, and the network effect (more applications get ported to native Intel architecture) kick in in to drive down the costs, we'll likely see the lower-end notebooks within the next 6 months, and the move to Intel processors despite their high initial costs will pay off for Apple very soon.
Have you heard what the battery life will be? All I've seen is rumors, none of them convincing me that the battery life will be comparable to older Powerbooks.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
It seems to be costing them me as a client, since they dropped FW800, s-vhs, display resolution, probably battery life and anticipated dual-layer DVD-RW drive...
is this still part of the "think different"-stuff or did that train go already?
Ditto. n/t
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Did anyone see the new Apple commercial advertising how intel processors used to be trapped inside dull computers, and how they have now been unleashed now by Apple?
I wonder how Redmond will respond to that.
878659 - yep its prime.
rofl! Alanis Morisette is from Canada, not North America. I should know! I'm Canadian! If you look on a map, you will see that we are just north of North America.
We all know the simple reason why apple made the switch: they could not build the next generation of laptops with IBM chips (G5's). Too much heat. And that's been going on for a while now. Laptop's are probably apple's most successfull non-iPod product. That makes them a development priority.
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
"It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife" is not ironic, either.
However, ten thousand spoons when all you need a knife and then finding out that a spoon would have sufficed would have been closer.
You give her too much credit.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
On thing that is not called out in this article (at least not well) is that Apple is saving R&D costs and R&D time by not having to develop its own chipset like is has done in the past. Instead Apple is utilizing Intel developed and manufactured chipsets. Intel has the economy of large volumes for their chipsets, Apple did not.
When Apple was making its own chipsets they could only afford to revamp them every couple of years because of the low volumes in relation the development cost and manufacturing tooling and ramp. Now Apple can refresh their chipset and product offering as often as Intel does without excess cost.
The component costs per unit may be higher but saving in both time and money other places will help make up for that.
My swimmers could say the same thing about the Intel chips.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Hardly anyone uses the word correctly (especially Madonna and Americans on TV, oh and Sky from Neighbours), it's simpler to just avoid it. Most people just mean sarcasm or an unfortunate event.
If it becomes trivial to pirate the OS, and a significant number of people do that instead of buying a mac, it costs them their business. If it becomes trivial to dual boot Windows, and people do that, and then developers stop developing for mac and tell them to just boot windows... it costs them their business. It's much more than just a price point.
On the Apple website right over the pic of the Macbook is a line reading "What's an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A lot more than it' ever done in a PC". That's pretty funny. I wonder what they'll say in 10 years when AMD has killed Intel (praying that it happens, of course)? I'd love a Mac with an Athlon and Win (games), Linux, Mac OS, and BSD all on the same machine.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Not just Apple, but they certainly are guilty of marketing a message that doesn't encompass the whole truth and all its complexities.
IBM hasn't been giving the power pc line the aggressive and competitive development life cycle that was necessary to keep Apple products competitive. I think the question of cost is overly simple. One needs to see the whole picture and Apples strategy against its primary competitors.
I enjoyed the Ars Technica commentary that points to Coherent HyperTransport as a huge strength for AMD in the cheap supercomputer arena.
Never mind Fat Binaries. The problem has been solved with Java and the JVM. It's such a good solution that it has been copied by Microsoft (.NET CLR) and the PERL and Python crown with Parrot.
The byte codes get JIT'd into native code where top speed is required.
Binary architectures no longer matter. Processor design has converged to 64-bit RISCy VLIW internally, with translation layers on top for running "native" instruction sets (e.g. x86, x86-64, SPARC, MIPS...)
Think there was an article awhile back about what the average cost of an Intel processor compared to a PowerPC and How would Mac rationalized keeping the same price? I did a quick and keep in mind quick price comparison of a Macbook and a Dell. The Mac costs $2500 and the Dell about $2300. The Dell does not come configured like the mac so I had to do some tweeking to get the above prices. The only diffence that I can see in configuration is the Dell has a 7800go and 17" screen and the Mac has a 15.4" and a XT1600. The price for the hardware that you get was a lot closer than I thought(I thought that the difference would be greater) It just depends if you are a mac person or if not do you want to invest time and money into another Computer/OS. For the mass public, I can't see Babyboomers trying to learn a whole new OS, my Dad has a hard enough time as it is with windows.
To each his own I guess
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
"So what you are saying is that Apple bought Intel's marketing hype?"
That, or they saw that the chips Intel already had were fast enough to justify the switch.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Just within the last 12 months has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power.
False. Your statement isn't giving Intel enough credit and is not supported by the numbers. Since the original Banias Pentium M's were released back in March of 2003, we've seen Intel's mobile products have very good performance per watt ratios and overall power usage numbers. In fact, the overall power usage was the lowest in the original Pentium M's out of the entire line. You statement would be correct if you it said this: "...within the last 34 months (i.e. ~3 years) has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power."
Data pulled from Intel Product Specifications at http://www.intel.com/
Banias (the normal voltage models-i.e. 1.7 GHz, 1.6 GHz, 1.4 GHz, etc):
Thermal Design Power: 24.5 W (Full speed) / 6 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 1.7 W
Deep Sleep Power: 1.1 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 0.55 W
Dothan (any model #):
Thermal Design Power: 21 W (Full speed) / 7.5 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 3.2 W
Deep Sleep Power: 2.5 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 0.8 W
Core Duo (any standard power model #):
Thermal Design Power: 31 W (Full speed) / 13.1 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 4.7 W
Deep Sleep Power: 3.4 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 2.2 W
The Pentium M chips were a step towards lower power, but the Intel Core Duo that ships in the imac is the first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems.
Again, False. The first part of that sentence has already been proven false with the numbers I've posted. The second part of your AMD fanboy'ism is also incorrect. AMD offers two TDP ranges in their "Lancaster" single core Turion64 mobile processors: 25 watts and 35watts. As you can see with the data presented above, both of these TDP's are larger than Intel's single core Pentium M offerings which have been available since March 2003. AMD's Turion didn't even arrive on the scene until 2005 which gives Intel a solid two year headstart. What's even more interesting is that more than half of AMD's entire single core Turion line consumes more power than Intel's dual core Core Duo mobile processors. AMD has yet to release their dual core Turion processors. So your statement that the Intel Core Duo is the "first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems" is complete wrong. Intel has had AMD beat since March of 2003 in the mobile market and still continues to beat it. Please check your facts before posting lies or put an AMD fanboy disclaimer on your posts.
Note: I didn't both including Intel's various Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage Pentium M, Core Solo and Core Duo processors that have an even lower TDP than the standard voltage processor numbers I posted above. Adding this information would only serve to futher prove that your statements are wrong.
I'll leave it to the Apple fanboys to riff on this ad nauseam, it's just getting harder to enforce the no-Intel rule in our house is all I care.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
No flame, but is this due to big company slowness (they decided to go Intel back in the Celeron days and could manuver when AMD released the alst 2 years...)?
Of course. "Badge-engineered" differentiation just makes sense! After all, look at the continued successes of auto brands like Geo, Plymouth, and Oldsmobile!
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
(please try to see it as funny, my sense of humour is desperate for understanding
This is all about politics and nothing about engineering. You can easily find the pros and cons of either architecture. The decision to jump ship did not come from Apple's engineers.
all this time weeding through articles suggesting people are bored (or stupid) enough to be spending time getting XP running on a MAC.
on the plus side, it proves without doubt, the existance of black holes
Their software attracts the customers, but their hardware pays the bills. So, not only do they have to push hardware, they can't afford to untie it from the OS. Using a non-mainstream chip has been a form of lock-in, finally abandoned only under unsupportable pressure due to economies of scale.
They'll never admit to it, but it's possible that the most critical part of the strategy is a WINE-like environment for running the cubic buttload of windows-only applications. It's been a constant sales issue for apple. Virtual PC wasn't fast enough or transparent enough (plus it cost extra money), but something where you just click on LegacyApp.exe and do your stuff would make big volume corporate laptop sales not just easier but actually possible in a lot of cases.
Yeah but how may rods to the hogshead will the switch get them?
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Because my impression that the single biggest factor in the switch was that both IBM and Freescale were screwing Apple with regard to on time delivery in large quantities. For Freescale, the problem appeared to be a lack of production capacity of their factories for G3 and G4 chips. For IBM, it was an apparent unwillingness to make Apple a priority customer as they could make more money making greater quantities of chips for other customers.
Yeah, just like Acura, Infinity, Lexus, Cadillac, and Lincoln have already gone out of business. Has it occured to you that you are not every company's target market?
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
Hi, my name is Jake, and I don't know why I'm here, I... Okay! I admit it. I'm a Windows user. I just couldn't figure out how to defrag or install .exe's in Linux. I'll turn in my geek badge now.
(actually my wireless adapter is really nonstandard and won't work, buying new specifically for Linux compatibility)
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers.
PowerPC chips are made for the embedded space, not for notebooks. In fact, this is the primary source on profit for IBM's PowerPC line - again, the embedded space. Apple was a blip on IBM's chip radar that made A LOT of noise and demands over the line. IBM is releaved they left I hear. As for Apple, well, they have quite a bit of leverage over Intel with such large purchaces that are inevitiable in the future. This is your WIN-WIN - IBM gets Apple off its back, Apple is stuck to a real solid dual-core product line and beyond, Intel get's Apples stylish business.... What took y'all so long?
Horns are really just a broken halo.
For Intel, however, it would be a great deal if they gave the chips to Apple for free. The single most vocal critic of their microprocessors -- along with all its fanboys -- has now been silenced.
In the meanwhile, IBM will likely sell 10 processors for game consoles for every lost Apple processor sale.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Offtopic, but I would switch to the Mac full time if they let me turn off the goddamn mouse acceleration. I was a given a dual 1GHz G4, and I'm loving it. Except moving the mouse cursor is like dragging it through the mud because Steve Jobs doesn't think I can handle a 1:1 relationship between moving the mouse and moving the cursor.
It's not simple acceleration like in Windows, it actually DEccelerates when you slow down the mouse, so I'm constantly undershooting my target (and then overshooting when I speed up the mouse and it goes faster than I intended).
You'd figure hey unix and all that jazz, there's gotta be a workaround. Instead there are about a dozen half-assed solutions that usually only turn the acceleration way down. Many of these 'solutions' cost money, like USB Overdrive and SteerMouse.
The best I can do right now is use the MS Intellipoint software, which lets you use it's own acceleration scheme, which is kind of like getting kicked in the balls instead of getting castrated.
I doubt that Apple's move to Intel had a great deal to do with performance, and I dislike this fact being used as a key selling point for the iMac. If you refer to the "definitive" G5 vs. everyone else benchmarks at http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436it is apparent that the G5 is largely comparable to offerings from AMD and Intel (admitedly the new Intel Core Duo is not benchmarked) and although the G5 is, in many cases, not the fastest chip, it is similar. The increases of 2-3x in performance between the G5 and MacIntel iMac are a consequence of having a dual core chip (and being a generation ahead of the G5) besides, Apple could have feasibly used the dual-core G5 chips that they've had at their disposal for a while now. Any Mac zealot will argue that their PowerPC Mac is "just" as fast as an intel based system, but performance is NOT the issue. This is why the iMac was updated first, it is a consumer product, supporting Apple's fledgling attempts to enter the living room (consider front row ) - it desperately needs Intel's brand name associated with its hardware.
The significance of this new product is long term and cannot be underestimated.
Apple finanlly has penetrated the consumer electronics market with the iPod, and their brand recognition and image could not be better. Apple has shoehorned its way into the psyche of the common man. It now has to bring its key product, the mac, to the masses. Consumers will be attracted from a design perspective and because it shares the same logo as their iPod, the OS is a little different to windows, but now at least you have the reasurrance of dual booting into windows (I'd like proof of this concept, but I'm sure it will come) and the processor gives the security of a well recognised brand name (consider brand strengh of Intel vs. AMD).
In the future, I doubt that IBM's die shrunk Power chips will share the low power consumption that I expect Intel will bring, and many concepts for great products will never be realised. I'll be interested to see if the new Intel chips can match up to the PowerPC altivec-ised vDSP FFT's , but in a way I don't care. It is an exciting time to be a Mac user, as more people join the fantastic experience that we have had for so long, and new software and hardware comes our way. Either way, they're finally here and it will be interesting to see what the future holds.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
I, and a lot of Mac users, dont buy a computer thinking in the processor of the machine like an essential issue. OS X is enough to convince us. If tomorrow the launch a new Mac with a diesel engine and they assure me that OS X will run fine, i will not have problem to change to this machine XD.
Makes one wonder what Microsoft's real direction is. Grow the XBox line into a desktop, maybe?
The one bright spot this holiday season was luxury. Many of the established groups sold very well, some such as Tiffany had very, very good sales. While GM is an example of luxury brands, they very often simply relable products. BMW on the other hand builds from the bottom for luxury/performance, and their sales are also pretty good.
There is a difference between these categories of luxury, as there is between Apple and the general Wintel world, and this is likely to remain. Most people it turns will actually pay for distinction from the masses.
Fab capacity isn't an issue, if the price is right AMD will find the capacity outsourcing to one fab company or another.
Intel selling at a loss is an interesting idea. Loss-leaders are all well and good for getting a toe-hold in a market, but making a loss can't go on forever. As soon as Motorola had the balls to jack the prices up -when the Xbox business had bought them a little security, Apple jumped ship to Intel.
Intel are not going to be so reliant on one revenue stream so might not be so shy and retiring as Motorola were, so it'll be interesting to see if when Apple start to have to pay the 'true' price for the chips they're using. Will they hang around, or will they run to the next chip manufacturer?
Freescale's e600 dualcore G4 has been "in the pipeline" for the past 2 years with no sign of pouring out. On paper it should compare quite favorably to Yonah ... if it ever ships. Yonah has a slight advantage in that department.
Clearly you're not connected to the happening world. High quality, well-designed products have a very important market. You left out BMW and Mercedes in your list - probably because while they are luxury cars they are highly desirable.
Good design has value for those who can afford to pay for it. As long as Apple continues to produce well designed products that work well they will survive because people in their right minds DO pay extra for something nice.
Apple has a multitude of reasons for switching to Intel. Most decisions made in the business world are this way. If it was "just" power consumption or "just" performance, or "just" price it probably would not make enough sense for the company to switch horses in mid-stream. Their decision-makers had to conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty that switching to Intel was going to in the long run be a wise business decision. They had to listen to engineers, marketing, accounting, and many others and then weigh everything they learned. Once they did this, they had to conclude that it was better to go with Intel than it was to stay with IBM or go to AMD.
These upper-level managers at Apple are staking their careers on this move. They are confident that their long-range decision will be profitable for the company and that this move will help them gain market share and growth. The timing is far from an accident; they are riding high on the iPod sales and know that they can translate some of these new converts into Apple computer users. Going with the Intel platform has to help with this too. Saying that the processor is an Intel processor is going to make a potential customer a lot more comfortable.
I'm not an Apple fanatic, never used one of their computers and don't own an iPod but, I can see that as a company, they are doing all of the right things.
mips alpha and powerPC have all had versions of NT at some point possiblly others too. i know alpha was supported in NT4 and i think POWERPC was too not sure at what time in NTs life the others were.
and there was a power version with a recent directx added made availible to xbox 360 developers (iirc it was running on a powermac).
apple has done the right thing though and got thier hands on a good emulation engine. in the closed source world such features are VERY important!!!
last i heared intel OSx didn't support classic has that changed?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Cell is not, and never will be a general-purpose CPU. The 8 SPE units that make it shine are basically useless for most computing tasks, and don't use the same ISA as AltiVec (which would mean a switch just as big as the switch to Intel for vectorized code). Maybe, maybe, they would use Cell for Xserve cluster nodes, but that's a stretch.
Everything I've read indicates that the "Cell" chipset can only perform 32-bit ["single precision"] floating point calculations in hardware:
So while there may be the ability to perform double [quad?] precision floating point calculations on the Altivec unit, the primary purpose of the Cell is to preform EXTREMELY INACCURATE but extremely fast calculations for the purpose of rendering [very sloppy, very inaccurate, very lazy, hazy] triangles on something like an HDTV.Compare the similar approach of recent nVidia [32-bit] & ATi [24-bit] architectures:
By contrast, the Toshiba-Sony "Emotion Engine" at the heart of the Playstation-2 performs true 128-bit ["quad" precision] floating point calculations in hardware: So if you care about these things, what we want at the workstation/server level is something akin to the Emotion Engine, whereas the Cell is targetted at the very specific market of multimedia devices [HDTV, Sony Playstation-3, etc] where accuracy is unimportant.And boy, do I wish there were a venture capitalist out there [with a few spare billions of dollars] who could purchase the Emotion Engine and keep it alive for those of us who care about precision in our calculations.
The argument that "performance has reached adequate levels" rears its head every few years or so in the industry. The fact is though, everything goes in cycles. Sometimes the software development outpaces the currently available/reasonably priced hardware, and then things shift back the other direction for a little while. But the one thing that's certain is; development isn't going to come to a halt on the software side. If you develop faster, cheaper systems - eventually, software developers will figure out ways to make use of everything that's available to them. They have to, because in most cases, that's the only thing that keeps food on their tables. New versions are expected practically yearly for most popular applications, and once you've offered all the basics - what else is there to do for the next upgrade? You have to add "cool new things" that catch people's interest. Whether that means toolbars that automatically fade into the background when they're not used for a little while or voice recognition integrated into the app, built-in video tutorials or adding all new capabilities to perform tasks the app never tried to tackle at all before - you're going to need ever faster CPUs to become "commdity items" to go along with your work.
Apple has a deep hole to keep trying to dig themselves back out of largely because the perceived "value for the dollar" of buying a Mac became VERY poor in the mid to late 90's. Sleek new systems running OS X have started turning things back around - but Apple's move to Intel means they've got to be MORE concerned with performance increases than ever before! They can't lean on an excuse (however accurate or inaccurate is really was) of "You can't compare Mhz to Mhz between Intel or AMD chips and our PPC chips!" Now, the CPUs powering their hardware are the SAME ones powering everyone else's hardware. So if your new Mac offers a 2.1Ghz CPU and a new Dell has a 3.0Ghz of the same product type - it's clear. The Dell is a lot more powerful. And the general public understands that.
As it is they are banking their reputation and identity as a computer manufacturer. If this Mactel venture goes south, I doubt Apple could recover from it (except to try out a partnership with AMD). They burned their bridges with Motorola, burned them again with IBM, and if they burn them with Intel, few would probably want to partner with Apple.
What is a Mactel anyways? A PC running OSX. Apple has lost their reputation as a proprietary computer platform. From what I am reading, Apple did very little innovation with Intel, using PC OEM parts and designing them to fit in the iMac form factor. With exception of the Extensible Firmware Interface, everything inside and iMac can be found in any PC notebook computer with the Duo Core branding. I am sure this is costing Apple losing their loyal mac diehards that wanted to move away from the Wintel market and get something more reliable and better designed. With the exception of the case, Apple has lost ALL quality control with their iMac and MacBook computers, and with all future Mactels.
Apple didn't even do anything to prevent Windows from running on Mactel. I am sure Apple is banking that there will be an initial rush for PC users to buy an iMac or Macbook once someone figures out how to run Windows XP on a Mac. Apple may gain a few million quick sales, but eventually running Windows on a Mac will be a novelty that runs off. Apple risks losing OSX as the only major reason why anyone would switch to Apple, because they can get the job done with Windows on an Apple computer. Apple is risking the cost of years of OSX development to try and appeal to the rest of the PC market.
Until Apple starts shipping their new Mactel computers and people start to figure out how to run Windows on them, the verdict is out whether this was a good move on Apple's part. It may inspire a new generation of sales, even encouraging increased adoption of OSX, but in the end I think that any PC user buying a Mactel will be more to run Windows on it, and OSX will be a novelty OS running a few novel applications like Front Row, but not become their dominant OS of choice.
Lastely, what cost is it for Apple to put their software on their computers? I mean, Apple is not like Dell or HP having to license 3rd party software. Is Apple really charging themselves $400+ to install their own OS and software on a Mac? Could the iMac not be cheaper and still be highly lucrative for Apple?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Apple shipped 1.2M CPUs in Q4 vs. 7.52M CPUs for HP. But does HP really use AMD for more than 16% of its boxes? After HP, the next largest PC vendor is Dell. Dell certainly isn't presently shipping 1M AMD chips per quarter. (Granted, they may in the future.) AMD may have outsold Intel this past financial quarter, but how many of the folks shipping AMD chips are top ten PC vendors like Apple?
Or Apple just had a preference? Is there anything wrong with that? Can a company just decide hey, we like Intel chips? I mean look at Yonah. Its a pretty bitching mobile chip...
> Normally wanting something + getting it at a useless time = irony.
No, that's just bad luck / bad timing. That's not irony. I will say that one song would sound a little funny with the chorus line being "Isn't it a poor-timed set of happenstances, don't you think?".
Take off you hosers.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
I believe that I read somewhere (most likely an article linked from Slashdot, but I'm too lazy to go searching) that Apple was hoping to get better pricing on Intel supplied iPod components, as a result of the processor relationship. If that holds true, they may be paying more for iMac components, but less for iPod components. Obviously without the numbers, I can't determine if the decrease in iPod component costs is greater than the increase in iMac component costs. Additionally, Apple has received a lot of media coverage regarding the switch to Intel. What is the value of that PR?
Yeah, the hardware looks pretty, but for those of us who are in the engineering and science fields who have needs that can't be met by osx - yea, we won't be buying Macs anytime soon. Gotta wonder how carefully Apple wrote those agreements with the hardware vendors...
Well, I'll buy a Mac with the intel Duo Core chip when both cores are running at 3.0 GHz or better...
:)
Steve Promised!
Their software will allow you to change the speed multiplier from 1x, 2x and 4x along with adjusting the mouse tracking. It does cost money, but you'll end up with a much nicer mouse than Apple's models. The version they ship with the DP 1Ghz is EVIL. :) I have black and white version of that mouse collecting dust along side my Wacom mice. :)
My friend switched over last year and was griping about the same thing and this fixed it for him.
<]=)
As soon as Fink (a system like Debian's apt for OS X) gets ported to the new architecture, I'll have all the free software I want. So, in essence, I get: good overpriced software (photoshop, etc) + pretty good complimentary software (iLife 06) + World of Warcraft (the other woman) + zero maintainence (no kernel recompiles OR spyware) + free software.
For me, that offsets the cost of the hardware premium. That's not even touching on the fact that your computer is an black box with a separate monitor, and mine has a 20" screen and is mistaken by most people for simply a very nice LCD. To each his own. You've got a super cheap computer that can do a lot of stuff; with free software, I've essentially got a swiss army knife in a really cute package.
But, like all Linux and OS X enthusiasts, I think at the end of the day we can both agree that either choice is better than Windows.
That's a fair argument, but the advent of a computer in every home is relatively recent. As much as the industry wants to keep pushing the envelope, they have to deal with the fact that customers may not be impressed enough with future enhancements to keeping buying a new computer every 3 years.
My personal experience is that owning a 5 year old G4 that was bottom-of-the-line at the time is still a viable computer. Not only can I use it for email and web surfing, but it also pulls its weight in Photoshop and web development. Every other time I owned a five year old computer it was depressingly obsolete.
Anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do question how long hardware sales can drive the computer industry. At the very least, the market is too mature for the kind of growth it's seen over the past 20 years. Barring some next-generation kill app, of course.
And yet every time I play Final Fantasy X (to name a particularly bad example) I get motion sickness watching, in a static shot, the edges of the polygons swim around.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
And when it comes to software, Apple has no peer. Apple consistently creates great applications that normal people want to use. Apple's competition, on the other hand, has demonstrated -- repeatedly -- that they cannot do the same.
So that's the reason for the switch to Intel. Apple has moved what used to be a two-front war onto a single battlefield where it has the ability to outmaneuver all opponents.
Smart move. Expect Apple to capture some market share.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Most people run their mouths on slashdot but the GP poster actually provided solid numbers. In other words, post'em or shut up.
And yet every time I play Final Fantasy X (to name a particularly bad example) I get motion sickness watching, in a static shot, the edges of the polygons swim around.
Exactly - the market has determined that all you need for games & TV is 32-bits of accuracy; anything more is superfluous.
By contrast [at least as far as I can tell], the Emotion Engine, with 128-bits of hardware support, is PRECISELY [-er- pun intended] what a scientist or an engineer wants in his platform. Compare:
The Emotion Engine is an absolutely wonderful platform, but [again, as far as I can tell] it was targetted at exactly the wrong market.
Personally, I do not think that Apple cares how much switching to Intel will cost in the short term. In the long term, they will be able to lower costs and offer their products to a larger consumer base so that they may increase sales. Already, with switching to Intel, they have become more mainstream for the coming shopping seasons, and years. Plus, as the article states, the IBM Processors were power hungry, and created wayyyy to much heat, much like the AMD processors on the market. Intel is definately a good choice for apple in the long run.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
The real reason for the switch is responsiveness!
Intel, being more focused on the consumer chip market will be much more responsive to Apple in implimenting changes that Apple wants. Intel pushes their research in the same direction Apple wants it to go, faster, cheaper, lower power.
Apple will respond to Intel's technology. Hey, they were the first to push Intel's USB bus. Intel has had a difficult time getting Windows PC makers to do that. USB would have failed were it not for Apple.
IBM could hardly care less about a customer as large as Apple. IBM sells support for mainframes and servers, not silicon to customers. That silicon is incidental to their "Big Iron" business.
Motorola/Freescale has also shifted its focus. Apple was once their pride and joy, with the 68000 and PPC processors showing off their technology and using a signifigant portion of their silicon. Now, they're into embeded systems and cellphones.
For both Apple, and Intel, this is the partnership they desire, a symbiotic relationship if you will.
I love my computer -- You make me feel alright (Bad Religion)
Fear not for you are not alone. I too am a windows user, and without any other justification than lazyness !! my computer came with XP on it and I could never be bothered to install linux. But I couldn't resist the pique :) Now I will wait until a few generations of Intel macs are out then i'll get myself one of these mac book. That way, my lazyness will not make me a typing target on /. :)
No, they bought Core Duo chips, which are low-power laptop chips that still manage to compete with a desktop Athlon64 3800+ X2.
"Sufferin' succotash."
ISupply has been getting a lot of press about their analysis of how much manufacturers pay for parts, but where is the evidence that suggests iSupply has any inside information?
Their analysis on Apple's part costs for the Core Duo processor are simply, "we guessed Apple gets a 10% discount," but they offer no basis for that. Apple apparently negotiated a 50% volume discount over retail in Flash RAM from Samsung. iSupply gives no suggestion where they get their 10% figure, so for all we know, they just pulled it out of their ass.
The sensationalism surrounding iSupply's reports (available in full for a fee) make it clear that, while iSupply is in the business of selling information, it has all the integrity of a tabloid like World Weekly News or the Enquirer.
First they released sensationalist PR that suggested that Apple was making crazy money on the iPod Nano (now pay to read the whole report!), and now they release sensationalist PR that suggests that Apple is almost losing money on the Intel based iMac (now pay to read the whole report!). The truth is clearly not as extreme as their PR flacks spun it in either case.
Of course, on its own, a simple guess on the total cost of parts doesn't sound very exciting. But even with a sensationalist headline, a simple guess on the total cost of parts isn't very valuable.
Journalism in general has been coasting along for some time on the reputation of a former institution that earned credibility based on dutiful, responsible reporting standards and a self imposed ethic. Professional journalism is been replaced by cheaper PR editors (within newspapers charged with first making a profit rather than providing a public service) and independent bloggers who scribble whatever comes to mind without bothering to check facts (or assume their recollection of reality is the same as a report based on facts from attributed, verifiable sources).
The lines between [opinion/conjecture] or [commercial/political messages] and [unbiased and objective journalism] are being blurred to the point where the general public doesn't seem to even remember that they are different things.
iSupply is a good example of presenting your personal blog/business as if it were a credible news report.
Until iSupply can provide some basis that suggests they have any real insight into secret pricing deals, their figures are worthless. So far, all they've released is guess work based on what appears to be poor assumptions.
Others have already covered the difficulties with turning the SPEs into general-purpose computing elements.
Additionally, even the PPC core in the Cell isn't good for workstations.
The reason is it doesn't have out of order execution (OOE). If a chip doesn't have out of order execution, it isn't good at hiding memory and execution latencies of instructions. So you have to do this in software, by making the compiler rearrange the emitted instructions to do this. This works very well.
But there is a problem with this. That is, when you a buy a workstation and buy apps for it, they usually come precompiled. You cannot rearrange (or even change them) to suit the processor in your machine.
So basically, you cannot make a family of processors run the same already-compiled binaries well using a non-OOE chip. This is not a problem with PS3 because all PS3s will have the same chip with the same latencies and the same memory with the same latencies.
Cell is a great processor for its purpose. It would not make a good Mac-family processor.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
That 10% number is bent out of shape by the iTunes Music Store, which has ridiculously thin margins associated with it; if you take out the $3 billion+ that it contributed to income, then the 10% number would be a lot higher, more likely over 20% (too lazy to do the math, and it's hard to be accurate given that Apple's margin on music is unknown, but estimated to be low single digits).
I'm sorry, but don't you mean "Royale with Cheese"?
Sarcasm
I know that. That was my point.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Apparently in your world people buy laptops with 4 Gigs of memory and they use them to run applications which require more than 3G of memory.
Sorry, out here in the real world laptops and commodity desktops don't benefit from a 64-bit CPU. It's laughable to claim a 32-bit CPU is obsolete when it comes in a machine that will probably have 1G, or _maybe_ 2G of memory instaled, and no more - _ever_.
I guess it really depends on how you define adequate. Software developers are always going to use/waste (depends on the point of view) additional processing power and there are still examples where added power brings additional use. HDTV comes to mind - most computers around right now are simply not able to play them in software
But in most fields nowadays faster computers just bring more convenience to the end users. It would be cool if I could reencode DVDs in 5 minutes to XVID, but it's totally acceptable that it takes about 5 hours on my rather slow system, because I rarely rip movies and the computer can do the task over night. Furthermore most people owning a PC don't do this anyways.
Back in the early 90's I had completely different problems like not having the money for additional 4 MB of RAM, which I really needed in order to run some essential apps on my SX-25 and when Win95 came out I couldn't play mp3s in realtime on the P100, which I just bought to run win95 in the first place (I know that mp3s can be played on much slower machines, but not with win95 and winamp 1.0). Compared to the minor upgrades I had recently just for snappiness, those were major obstacles.
I don't read replies by ACs.
I was hoping you'd mistyped that as ...And when it comes to software, Apple has no pear.
buisness week lol
"IBM's chips are power hungry and generate a lot of heat, and are therefore not suitable for notebook computers."
This is a selective interpretation of the truth. The portion of the Power family that is used in Apple products generates a lot of heat because it's based on older Power4 technology. IBM's processor roadmaps include smaller-footprint chips just like Intel's do.
It is unlikely that Apple's move is simply about the roadmap due to power consumption. Power architecture is used in everything from cell phones to big honkin' servers. No, it's more likely that IBM's roadmap simple doesn't hit the same performance and power consumption points that Apple wants to hit.
Well fuck me with an oil-rig drill tip; there's something I never thought I'd hear anyone say. They're moving to Intel because Intel chips have low power consumption?
I take it Steve Jobs drives a Humvee because he heard they get pretty good mileage?!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Apple has been trying to kill the classic Mac OS and replace it with NextStep, I mean OpenStep, errr, Rhapsody... since 1997. The original plan was for all new development to be in what's now Cocoa and was at the time called Yellow Box, and legacy apps would run in a simpler version of Classic that basically ran a whole OS 7 or 8 session in a single window, called Blue Box.
The ISVs, paricularly Adobe, plotzed. There was a major row with threats of abandoning the platform, and Apple backed off, improved Classic, came up with Carbon as a transition API, and brought out OS 9 and eventually OS X.
Steve Jobs reportedly had wanted to go with Intel as soon as possible. He thought Apple had made a mistake switching to the Power PC while he was away at NeXT. OpenStep ran on Intel, of course, and Apple had versions of Rhapsody that ran on Intel boxes, even on generic clones. They had a fat binary mechanism in OpenStep that supported by the end as many as five different processor architectures.
And that's why intel. Not because IBM screwed up, but because it was in their long term roadmap and had been for years.
But obviously... that wouldn't fly if they couldn't even cram classic Mac OS off in Blue Box.
But they kept their Intel code base alive, and every other year, about, they tested the waters by trying to stop offering a Mac that could boot up into OS 9.
Every time there was a user revolt.
Until late 2004. The last G4 that could boot to OS 9 disappeared from the Apple store, without any fanfare. And, apparently, there just weren't that many people dependent on OS 9 to make enough noise to notice.
A little over 6 months later, they announced the Intel switch.
Rosetta will run all legacy Power PC applications... well, all legacy Carbon and Cocoa applications that run on OS X. They're not running Classic under Rosetta. Classic is dead.
And nobody's bitching about that, either. Which means they guessed right, and Apple can finally drive a stake into the heart of Classic Mac OS and leave it behind for good.
And that's why they did it now. Because they could.
OK, so Apple adopted a unix OS architecture, an Intel hardware architecture, and the majority of Apple software sales are for Microsoft applications. Why dont they just adopt the BeOS GUI and stick to selling MP3 players? ;)
The new Intel Macs really present quite an issue for consumers - do you buy an Apple x86 computer that can only run an Apple OS, or *ANY OTHER* Intel computer which can run any x86 operating system *including* OSX???
Being the worlds most closed major consumer computering platform seemed more of a convenient technical byproduct in the PowerPC days, but now Apple is selling commodity hardware specifically broken to only run Apple.
Can't understand how it would cost this much when Dell has PCs in the $400-500 range. Is the Core Duo that powerful of a processor than what's found in other PCs? I think Apple is maintaining its margins of at least $300 per machine.
My personal experience is that owning a 5 year old G4 that was bottom-of-the-line at the time is still a viable computer. Not only can I use it for email and web surfing, but it also pulls its weight in Photoshop and web development. Every other time I owned a five year old computer it was depressingly obsolete.
That's just a sign of the times. A 5 year old PC is either going to be a higher end PIII, or a low P4, or the AMD equivilent. Which are all still very capable machines. I know people who get use out of older machines too.
How'd i get modded redundant? I made my post when there were like 20 comments on this and nothing about the pentium-m.
Hmmm... Pie...
The current generation of Pentiums actually does an internal version of dynamic translation from CISC to RISC-micro-ops (which may be 1 or more per CISC instruction) and executes the micro-ops using a different instruction set internally.
Would it be possible to create a compiler that converts my code directly into these RISC-like micro-ops? Then the translation from CISC instructions to micro-ops could be bypassed entirely... and wouldn't that imply, in theory, much higher performance?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
That being said, I don't think double-precision floating point support is required for rendering 3D graphics, even at HDTV resolution. 32-bit accuracy is enormous compared to the screen resolutions (at most 1920x1080) and color depth (8-bits per channel of output--32-bit HDR is PLENTY to drive that; I will guess that 16-bit or 24-bit will be the norm). The only place where I could imagine being limited by single-precision would be complex, non-realtime physics simulations.
But if you really want to buy my PS2 for "billions of dollars", I won't stop you...
I can't believe nobody has mentioned iLife. To me, it's by far the biggest reason to switch to a Mac. Nothing else compares in the quality of features and integration for creating, managing, and sharing your own photos, home movies (editing and creating DVDs), music (recording your own or listening to stuff you bought), and now websites. There's other software out there, but show me one package that does all of what iLife does, as easily, seamlessly, and perhaps most importantly, for so cheap!
Screw the OS holy wars, the price flamewars, and the hardware bitchfests. iLife is why anyone with a creative bone in their body should check out a Mac.
Another thing: In a few years, battery life won't even be an issue, is my guess. Fuel cell packs are already available that give you tens of hours of operation, and that'll only get better. Batteries may be peaked out in terms of large gains (or maybe not) but fuel cells are just now sneaking into the marketplace. It won't make a difference if the CPU pulls 2x the power or not.
But things like vector coprocessing do make a difference, as do highly orthoganal architectures and binary compatibility.
My take: Should have stuck with PPC. Nothing I've read about the new machines has made me do anything but yawn as yet. Next year, we'll probably be reading about how the PS3 outruns any computer on the desktop -- using PPC and vector architecture.
Intel. Pfffft.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So if your new Mac offers a 2.1Ghz CPU and a new Dell has a 3.0Ghz of the same product type - it's clear. The Dell is a lot more powerful. And the general public understands that.
Even that's not quite true. The power of a cpu is what you can do with it, not its clock-speed. A faster chip of the exact same line is not more powerful if the software is less powerful.
For example, for day-to-day tasks, a slower Mac is more powerful than a faster PC. For games, a slower PC is much more powerful than a faster Mac.
When it comes to iLife style apps, a 1.25GHz G4 Mac is far more powerful than a PC (Windows or Linux) of any speed.
Or, put another way, what's more powerful: running Windows Movie Maker on a 3 GHz cpu, or iMovie on a 2 GHz cpu?
I think the greatest thing will be virtualized intel cpu's running multiple copies of OSX for servers.
So then what is Apple do9ng with Vanderpool, and do they plan on making OS X work with Xen?
Can't blame them for telling Apple to go fly a kite.
Look at the history of the way Jobs treats its vendors. They burn 'em. Motorola and the 'it'll be great in 2 years when we won't be using you', the Apple ][ days, et la. Why WOULD YOU trust Steve Jobs to 'do right by you'?
Aren't we going to see a slowdown in "advertised" clock speeds anyway, especially in mobile devices, as pipelining becomes passé and superscalar supercedes it? I mean, I think an 18-stage pipeline is pretty impressive, but MIMD is really where it's at.
The parent post is correct.
Also, INTEL has WiMax and a better position for DRM on hollywood videos. Being able to run WinTel applications transparently on the MacIntel, will help to position OS X as best of breed.
Imagine the lack of viruses, the coolness, the usability.
But really, to get to the home market -- you need games. The rest is all a convenient rational.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Many computers bought today gets double, tripled or even quadrupled memory before the life of the computer is ended. By going 32bit Apple is dangerously close to the limit. What about 2 years from now when 2 Gig may be the standard.
Apple clearly needs to get on with the program and go 64bit very soon. They had an excellent opportunity to do it now with a fresh x86 start but they missed that boat.
Not a smart move.
t's laughable to claim a 32-bit CPU is obsolete when it comes in a machine that will probably have 1G, or _maybe_ 2G of memory instaled, and no more - _ever_.
No it isn't. You are very backward looking.
On the x86 architecture in particular, going to AMD64 (i.e. x86-64) can give you one major performance advantage, and that's the fact that it has twice as many general-purpose registers. Running an OS compiled for this architecture can give you a 30% performance benefit running legacy 32-bit applications at the same clock frequency over a 32-bit OS on the same CPU.
Pretty soon, applications will start appearing with enhanced 64-bit versions.
Just at the 286 died a sudden death when least expected, 32-bit x86 will too. intel is falling behind. I don't see many 32-bit x86 AMD chips for sale any more, including the "value" processors.
Did Apple ever get OS X to run in 64 bits? Solaris went 64-bit with Solaris 7 back in the mid '90s. There was 64-bit Linux by about 1998.
Anyway, designed obsolescence is perhaps a good idea from a marketing point of view. In 18 months time, all those people whi rushed out to buy a new intel Apple laptop will be crawling back to Apple to buy a 64-bit version...
okay lets look at the food chain and figure this out. New mactel imac = $1299 Intel produces new mactel chip $500----->Apple buys chip 900 dollars.
$1300-$800=$500.
apple buys oem parts and produces case now can you buy a lcd produce a case by a harddrive manufacture a motherboard and put memory in it for 500 dollars? I see them loosing money on this! as to buy a generic flat panel probably costs them around 175-250 dollars for 17" so more math.
$500-175=325.
I know motherboards can be made fairly cheaply so lets say 50 bucks. Figuring they might do some quality control plus they are getting them from intel.
$325-50=275.
Okay lets by harddrives from western digital or maxtor either one! lets give them a price 160 gig harddrive of lets say $35 dollars half of what is being charged on pricewatch. 275-35=245.
now lets ad cd burner/dvd/etc... lets figure 20 dollars for this drive as it is probably top of the line.
245-35=215.
Now lets produce a case like macs mmmmm i am think we should give it a price tag of 50 dollars since that is what a nice case like that probably costs to produce.
215-50=165. Now how much are they paying in labor per hour per computer to be put together. With the cost of creating an os, with the cost of marketing, with the cost of maybe loosing people and that should tell you what a new imac costs. My thought is they are loosing money to gain marketshare. As we have seen in the past that does not work! need i say more than e-machines, gateway any of those. The only reason dell has made it is brand recognition and the fact the upsell everybody. You wanna buy a 499 dollar pc that is 8 months - 1 year behind the times of technology then get charged for extended warranty and all the extras they can get you to buy then overcharge you for them. That is why dell makes money. So this just shows why i figure apple is loosing money.
Question though? what will intel give away at chips and tips this year now that they are bed buddies with apple!
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