There are 64 bit variants of the PPC chip, they're just not used on Macs. Look around IBMs PPC documentation and you might find some info about Northstar and Pulsar both of which were 64 bit PPC chips...
There's Itanium, a processor that has been in development for quite some time by two of the greatest microprocessor manufacturers there, HP and Intel. A processor that HP will be replacing it's own PA/RISC processors with, processors that perform very respectably by the way. A processor that the entire computer industry is backing, from IBM to SGI. A processor that's already been accepted by the entire 3D Animation industry as their future platform. A processor that actually exists in Silicon and has been in pilot programs for some time and is due out at the end of this month....
Then there's Clawhammer, which doesn't exist yet. All people have seen is a software emulator of the X86-64 instruction set, and a lot of RUMORS about the technology that's supposed to drive the chip
And judging by all this, you somehow conclude that Clawhammer will be faster and better than Itanium at running native 64 bit code!!??
I don't know how the AMD chip will perform, it doesn't exist yet. It may or may not be better than the Itanium, we won't know until it's out there and shipping. One thing I know, is that Intel did the couragous thing by ditching the legacy baggage and starting from scratch at the expense of 32 bit performance. It may not run old Windows apps well, but if it didn't kick ass in 64 bit floating performance it wouldn't get the wide industry support it's getting now.
FYI, there is no shortage of Ghz Mobile Pentium IIIs. The websites that reported that claimed at the time that major OEMs like IBM had ran out and were unable to get their hands on new ones.
Well, for the last three weeks, IBM has been listing the 1 Ghz Pentium III notebooks as "in stock". So maybe before you start going off on how people are "misinformed", you should do a fact-checking yourself.
As for the hardware review sites. Of course they should get a few laptops and compare them. Duh! That's how a review is done. And if they can't find those laptops, they should hold back on those reviews until they do. They are "hardware sites" after all, right? Don't Notebook Computers classify as "hardware"?
I think Apple is being absolutely fair by giving back the part of the code that it actually is benefiting from. Apple uses BSD/Mach for the core of its operating system and they give back the core of their operating system as Darwin. This seems to be just fine to me.
What I think would be cool for Apple to do though, is maybe release a binary version of Quicktime Player for Linux/PPC only. That way they'd be serving people who want to run Linux on Apple hardware.
Dude, I don't know what you do with 3DS Max but my dual Pentium III 866 is hardly responsive enough for me to not want an upgrade. Anything that's more than a hundred thousand polygons starts to become limiting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we recently seen a lot of people here saying:
"I think Mac OS X looks really cool, but I'm not gonna buy an entirely new computer just to use it, only if they port it to X86"
So if people aren't gonna buy a new computer even to run an entirely new operating system, what application could possibly make them spend that money?
If Apple did port OS X for X86, and it managed to become even remotely popular, it would move all OS X application development to X86, just like all commercial applications for linux are developed only for X86. This would effectively kill Apple's PowerPC hardware business and force them to make PCs. And if they make PCs then they're competing with all those PC manufacturers big and small who don't spend a dime in R&D and just slap the parts together to build PCs. They couldn't possibly compete.
Sure, they could do what they always do, create innovative hardware but for X86, right? Right! SGI tried to do just that when they first came out with their NT visual workstations, remember the 320? They built things into them that no other NT workstation had. They even hacked USB into NT when it didn't support it. All the hardware reviewers raved about those machines and how cool they were. So what happened? People still bought the cheapest PCs they could buy, 'cause after all it was just an Intel box. They lost tons of money so now they're doing what everyone else does, they take off the shelf components and slap them together...
Besides, how smart is it to spend resources on porting OS X to X86 when even Intel is moving away from it? X86 is not the future, even if AMD succeeds in extending its life expectancy with their 64 bit extentions. All Apple's trying to do is keep their OS hardware independent, it takes much longer to develop a solid OS than to build new hardware.
So you think looking at 3D holograms of paintings at the Louvre is gonna be the same as looking at them in person. Well then maybe you could have a 3D hologram of scrambled eggs for breakfast too, bet it'd taste great.
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There are 64 bit variants of the PPC chip, they're just not used on Macs. Look around IBMs PPC documentation and you might find some info about Northstar and Pulsar both of which were 64 bit PPC chips...
Hmm,let me get this straight....
There's Itanium, a processor that has been in development for quite some time by two of the greatest microprocessor manufacturers there, HP and Intel. A processor that HP will be replacing it's own PA/RISC processors with, processors that perform very respectably by the way. A processor that the entire computer industry is backing, from IBM to SGI. A processor that's already been accepted by the entire 3D Animation industry as their future platform. A processor that actually exists in Silicon and has been in pilot programs for some time and is due out at the end of this month....
Then there's Clawhammer, which doesn't exist yet. All people have seen is a software emulator of the X86-64 instruction set, and a lot of RUMORS about the technology that's supposed to drive the chip
And judging by all this, you somehow conclude that Clawhammer will be faster and better than Itanium at running native 64 bit code!!??
I don't know how the AMD chip will perform, it doesn't exist yet. It may or may not be better than the Itanium, we won't know until it's out there and shipping. One thing I know, is that Intel did the couragous thing by ditching the legacy baggage and starting from scratch at the expense of 32 bit performance. It may not run old Windows apps well, but if it didn't kick ass in 64 bit floating performance it wouldn't get the wide industry support it's getting now.
FYI, there is no shortage of Ghz Mobile Pentium IIIs. The websites that reported that claimed at the time that major OEMs like IBM had ran out and were unable to get their hands on new ones.
Well, for the last three weeks, IBM has been listing the 1 Ghz Pentium III notebooks as "in stock". So maybe before you start going off on how people are "misinformed", you should do a fact-checking yourself.
As for the hardware review sites. Of course they should get a few laptops and compare them. Duh! That's how a review is done. And if they can't find those laptops, they should hold back on those reviews until they do. They are "hardware sites" after all, right? Don't Notebook Computers classify as "hardware"?
I think Apple is being absolutely fair by giving back the part of the code that it actually is benefiting from. Apple uses BSD/Mach for the core of its operating system and they give back the core of their operating system as Darwin. This seems to be just fine to me. What I think would be cool for Apple to do though, is maybe release a binary version of Quicktime Player for Linux/PPC only. That way they'd be serving people who want to run Linux on Apple hardware.
Dude, I don't know what you do with 3DS Max but my dual Pentium III 866 is hardly responsive enough for me to not want an upgrade. Anything that's more than a hundred thousand polygons starts to become limiting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we recently seen a lot of people here saying: "I think Mac OS X looks really cool, but I'm not gonna buy an entirely new computer just to use it, only if they port it to X86" So if people aren't gonna buy a new computer even to run an entirely new operating system, what application could possibly make them spend that money?
If Apple did port OS X for X86, and it managed to become even remotely popular, it would move all OS X application development to X86, just like all commercial applications for linux are developed only for X86. This would effectively kill Apple's PowerPC hardware business and force them to make PCs. And if they make PCs then they're competing with all those PC manufacturers big and small who don't spend a dime in R&D and just slap the parts together to build PCs. They couldn't possibly compete. Sure, they could do what they always do, create innovative hardware but for X86, right? Right! SGI tried to do just that when they first came out with their NT visual workstations, remember the 320? They built things into them that no other NT workstation had. They even hacked USB into NT when it didn't support it. All the hardware reviewers raved about those machines and how cool they were. So what happened? People still bought the cheapest PCs they could buy, 'cause after all it was just an Intel box. They lost tons of money so now they're doing what everyone else does, they take off the shelf components and slap them together... Besides, how smart is it to spend resources on porting OS X to X86 when even Intel is moving away from it? X86 is not the future, even if AMD succeeds in extending its life expectancy with their 64 bit extentions. All Apple's trying to do is keep their OS hardware independent, it takes much longer to develop a solid OS than to build new hardware.
So you think looking at 3D holograms of paintings at the Louvre is gonna be the same as looking at them in person. Well then maybe you could have a 3D hologram of scrambled eggs for breakfast too, bet it'd taste great.