Well, duh! It's on the Internet! Nobody in the world would ever think to do that! New medium equals new patent!
Like email on a cell phone. I should patent that! Errr, wait, did someone do that already? OK, I'll patent auctions in space and email in space, I don't think anyone's done that yet.
Patents should be issued for physical inventions - actual physical products that you can hold in your hand - a propeller-hat or Dippy Drinking Bird for example. Patents should not be issued for business methods - a.k.a. any idea that comes out of my ass at work. It's patents like these and the ones behind the Blackberry case that show that these types of patents are completely anti-productive and against the original purpose of the patent system.
Basically, they are existing ideas or "business methods" applied to a new medium. There's nothing novel or unique about them. Someone just said, Hey, you could do auctions on the Internet, let's patent that! or Hey, you can do email on a cell phone, let's patent that!. I might as well start applying for patents for Email in Space! or Auctions in Space! That'll make me rich.
These things are so stupid and obvious I'm surprised that Judges will uphold them. Technically I suppose they're probably just following the law and their hands are tied. But that just means that the law needs to be changed - fat chance of that though considering the lobbying power of the large patent holders.
I suppose having a link to one of those Free Mac Mini sites that I've had in my sig for the past 6 months makes me incapable of speaking about the subject.
Regardless, it's a great machine with a not-so-great video card. Highlighting what Apple said about integrated video only amplifies what others are now saying about it.
Or finally some night you get lucky and instead of having trouble with the girl's bra you can't get into your damn house because of your elevated heart rate.
Oh wait, this is/. none of us would ever have this problem.
I post it once to one other Mac Mini story and suddenly that becomes "every single Mac mini story"?!
The old Mini wasn't much of a gaming system either and the same goes for the new one. Having an integrated graphics chip really sucks for a lot of things, but not so much on what the Mini is intended for. The dual-core version especially has a lot of raw CPU power in a very small form factor. If you don't need GPU power then it's a great little computer.
If you don't want to see sigs then turn off sigs and stop bitching about what people put in them.
My favorite is the stuff Apple used to say about integrated graphics cards back when the PPC Mini was shipping (From the Graphics page):
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an "integrated Intel graphics" chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don't even have an open slot to let you add one.
Other than the graphics card it's got a nice amount of raw CPU power, especially if you get the dual-core version or upgrade the single-core version by replacing the processor. It'd be great to buy a bunch of these for an Xcode build farm. Of course Xcode doesn't yet support cross-architecture distributed builds, so you'd have to be using all-Intel Macs for it to work well. Hopefully Apple will fix this in the near future.
Yeah, good for the fans because it makes it so they can't do something that they've been able to do since the advent of personal recording equipment - record songs off the radio.
Well, from what I've read from the people that have taken the new Intel Mini apart it doesn't sound like there's room for an add-on graphics chip. So Apple would probably have to change the form factor in order to add a better graphics chip.
It's kind of ironic though. One of Apple's selling points (Google Cache) for the PPC Mini was that it didn't have an integrated graphics card:
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an "integrated Intel graphics" chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don't even have an open slot to let you add one. [emphasis mine]
Oh well, a bit of a step backwards on the graphics front. But a bunch of Core Duo Minis would make a great, inexpensive Xcode build farm.
Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, and 56 other senators have introduced a bill that would mandate a 10 percent increase per year in NASA's science budget from now through 2013, among other things.
More people ought to contact their representatives about NASA funding. Unfortunately space exploration doesn't seem to get as much press time as other "important" issues these days.
So the obvious implication is that if you're "well educated" then you cannot believe in God and must be an atheist. I think many "well educated" people would disagree.
BTW, does being "well educated" include misspelling atheist?
Instructions for breaking the iMac's are presently located at the bottom of the comments
Actually, if you RTFC (RTF Comments) which are at the end of the article (as it says in the story) you'll find that you can completely screw your new Intel Mac into not booting. Not even running the OS X install CD will fix it. Here's one of the comments describing the problem:
From Dave Schroeder posted 01/23/06
We have already irreversibly lost a couple of iMacs trying to load various EFI modules. They will no longer boot, even with "zapping the PRAM" (firmware reset), or with disconnecting the motherboard battery and removing power for an extended period of time. Further, the tianocore EFI shell *only allows features already present in the manufacturer's EFI implementation to be accessed* (see the documentation for details).
This guy's talking out of his ass. First of all, Metrowerks has not made any announcements that they will make a Mac/Intel version of CodeWarrior (CodeWarrior is the compiler, PowerPlant is the framework). In fact, Metrowerks announced that CodeWarrior 10 would be the last release of CodeWarrior for the Mac platform. Period. End of story. That's why the latest release is so cheap ($99, download only). Also, Metrowerks no longer even exists as a company inside of Motorola. All Metrowerks/Motorola is doing for PowerPlant (the C++ GUI framework) is releasing it as open source so that someone else will be able to port it to MacIntel, they aren't going to be doing any of the Intel work.
The main reason CodeWarrior had to come to an end on the Mac is because Metrowerks/Motorola sold all of it's x86 compiler technology to a third party, Nokia I believe. They no longer have the rights to develop an x86 version of CodeWarrior. No x86 version means no future on the Mac. Though many of us have seen the writing on the wall for a long time and have expected CodeWarrior to come to an end sooner rather than later.
Adobe will be moving to Xcode because everyone has to move to Xcode. There is no other option.
Also, to put the Adobe comments into context, Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen had an interview with CNet where he discussed the difficulties in the transition as well as Adobe's possible timeframe:
Q: I wanted to get your take on Apple's switch to Intel. How difficult is the process of migrating apps from platform to platform? Chizen: Steve (Jobs) likes to trivialize the process and make it seem easy, but moving the apps over is not that easy...Getting over to MacTel is work...
Q: What are the early returns from the people doing some of the work with the developer market? Not that easy, is it? Chizen: It's not that easy because you have to compile the app, you have to test it. If you look at most testing cycles, for any complex cycle, for any complex product, that's three or four months until it's out. You just can't turn a switch and get a MacTel product--and Steve knows that.
Q: So, when do you think that Adobe will be ready to take Photoshop? Chizen: I haven't given a date yet... If you look at our product cycles for products like Photoshop and Creative Suite, they tend to be in the 18- to 24-month cycle, which means that you're talking about either Q4 of '06 or Q1 of '07.
Contrary to what a lot of mindless posters think, the transition is a lot of work and will be very difficult for many companies.
What about a PPC SDK and simulator?
on
IBM Releases Cell SDK
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· Score: 4, Interesting
As the Cell is basically a PPC processor I find it strange that the SDK is for x86 processors. Fedora Core 4 (PowerPC), also known as ppc-fc4-rpms-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm is listed as one of the files you need to download. Maybe it's just because of the large installed base of x86 machines.
It'd be nice if IBM released a PPC SDK for Fedora, it would have the potential to run much faster than an x86 SDK and simulator.
Oops, I guess I should have put a (*SPOILER*) warning on my original message. Still, I wish I could buy up all the latest gadgets only to see what it takes to kill them. Such fun it must be to destroy the newest toy that everyone wants.
The article should really be entitled How to Kill an iPod nano as I think that's the real purpose of the article. It must be fun to buy the latest gadget and then find creative ways to destroy it.
Basically the final cause of death for the iPod was to throw it up in the air as high as possible, about 40 feet, and then let it smack down on the concrete. That was the final nail in the coffin after dropping it from 9 ft., dropping it multiple times from a speeding car (10 MPH to 50 MPH) and running over it twice. Pretty durable for a little music player.
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.
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.
Yes, but Apple isn't going to start shipping products in 2007, they're starting at the latest in June of 2006. Also Apple hasn't provided any direction on what they're 64-bit roadmap is for Mactel. The only thing that matters is what chips Apple will be shipping in a year. If Apple were going to be shipping 64-bit chips in their products next year then they would have both an IA32 and an EM64T transition guide. Right now they only have information on IA32 and absolutely nothing on 64-bit. This means that the first products that they'll be shipping will be 32-bit.
If the PowerBook line is one of the first products to go Intel (as many have speculated) then that means it will be using a 32-bit chip. This also means that Apple cannot release a 64-bit G5-based PowerBook now and replace it with a 32-bit chip. Who knows, maybe the PowerBook won't be one of the first products to go Intel, maybe it will be the iBook. In that case I can see a G5 PowerBook which would then be replaced, probably in 2 years, by a 64-bit Intel PowerBook.
Now, let me go a little more into why there is no 64-bit roadmap for Mactel. The main reason is that the PowerPC platform was designed from the beginning to be a 64-bit platform that can also run 32-bit code. For this reason the G5 has no problem running 32-bit code alongside 64-bit code, the PPC architecture was designed to do this from the beginning. This is why we can have Tiger, which is basically a 32-bit operating system that can run both 32-bit apps and 64-bit apps at the same time.
Now let's go to the x86 story. The x86 platform was not designed to be a 64-bit platform. The AMD x86-64 implementation was designed so that their 64-bit processors could also run 32-bit code without problems, but there is a BIG catch. In order for the 64-bit chips to run both 64-bit and 32-bit code they must run on a 64-bit operating system. This means we can't have what we have now in Tiger - a 32-bit operating system that can run both 64-bit and 32-bit apps. Apple needs to ship a fully 64-bit version of Mac OS X in order for it to run on 64-bit x86 chips.
Apple probably hasn't figured out yet exactly how they're going to do this and that's why they didn't give us an x86-64 roadmap at WWDC. This also means that writing 64-bit applications for Tiger will be different from how they will be written for the 64-bit version of Mac OS X. A 64-bit version of Mac OS X is a good thing and something we'd probably have seen anyway for the G5, but it does add more complexity to the transition and more pain for developers.
As much as I (and many other people) would love to see a PPC 970FX based PowerBook there is one glaring reason why we will never see one - the G5 is 64-bit and the Pentium M is not.
Every document and every piece of information that Apple has provided about the Intel transition is for moving to IA32, there isn't so much as a mention of any 64-bit future on the Intel platform. I was at WWDC and I tried as best I could to get any information about the future of 64-bit computing with Intel chips and not a single Apple engineer or representative would give anyone any information at all about it. It is clear then that the first Intel Macs will use a 32-bit processor. That's not to say that we'll never see 64-bit Intel-based Macs, Apple will need to have them to replace the G5. But it definitely means that the first Intel-based products Apple introduces will be 32-bit and not 64-bit. (If anyone would like I can go into more detail regarding why Apple hasn't announced their 64-bit plans for Mactel.)
For this reason Apple cannot put a 64-bit G5 into a PowerBook now and then offer a down-graded 32-bit Intel version in a year or two. It would be marketing suicide and customers would virtually rise up in arms. If the transition to Intel means anything with regards to future PowerBooks it means that we will never see a G5 PowerBook no matter how cool IBM can make the G5 run.
Of course I'd love to be wrong. I'm one of those that believe that Apple will stick with PPC as long as it performs better than whatever Intel has. I can see a scenario where Apple continues to sell G5/G6-based PowerMacs indefinitely since PPC will probably continue to beat x86 on the desktop for many years to come. If that is the case then Apple may never drop PPC entirely and we'll end up with PPC and Intel Macs living together. In this scenario I could see Apple selling a G5 PowerBook as the High-end and Pentium M PowerBooks/iBooks as the mid-range to low-end.
Re:side by side image of the patented player &
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Apple Sued Over iTunes UI
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Add to that the fact that apple employees had been to the demo of this player the case may stand up a bit more.
So does that mean that if you ever see something presented at a developer's conference, say SIGGRAPH, then you are automatically prevented from ever using any information that you saw there? This would mean that you would never be able to develop 2D or 3D image processing software ever again for having attended SIGGRAPH because some slimeball would have a patent on something that was presented and he'd find out how to make it apply to anything in the image processing world.
I'm sorry but this part of their case sounds just like what the SCO Group is trying to argue against IBM - that anyone who has ever had access to their Glorious Unix System V source code is tainted and can never work with anything that is similar to it again (Linux, *BSD, etc.) without their work becoming the property of SCO.
If scumbags like these people can ever make this argument stick then it will be the end of innovation in the software industry, at least in the US.
I'll eat my hat if Jobs announces a switch to Intel chips (and I'll even be there at the Keynote). The most glaring giveaway in the article that this will NOT happen is this:
Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
So Apple's going to force their Developers, the people who need to have the latest, greatest and fastest machines, to use Mac Minis to develop their software on? Not in a billion years!
There's no way in Hell that Apple could ever get away with switching low-end Mac Minis first and then top of the line Power Macs a year later. No developer is going to torture himself on a Mac Mini when they could be developing on a Dual 2.7 GHz (or higher) G5. Sure there are those that will say that Apple will let you compile on a G5 and then just test on a Mini - that will never happen either. It would increase development time by at least a factor of 2 and probably more. This would effectively kill the Mac platform.
If Apple would ever consider this (which I doubt, AMD is far better than Intel and I believe the PPC platform has a far brighter future than the x86 platform, just look at all the next-gen gaming consoles) then they would need to transition their high-end machines first if not at the same time as everything else.
Not to mention the fact that SSEx pales in comparison to Altivec. Why does this matter? Because Apple has invested heavily in vectorized libraries, especially CoreImage. CoreImage & Quartz 2D Extreme rely heavily on Altivec when you don't have a graphics card capable of running them. SSE just wouldn't be able to cut it. Also, what's Apple to do with all their engineers that have so much experience with PPC and Altivec? I could go on and on.
It would take 4-5 years or more for Apple to make the transition and optimize OS X on Intel to where it is today (Apple might have a version of OS X running on x86, but I'm sure that it's nowhere near as optimized as Tiger is for PPC). Does Apple really want to give Microsoft that much time to catch up? I think not! They'd much rather run circles around Microsoft. It will be a cold day in Hell before this happens.
Well, considering that it's still under NDA you're probably not going to see a lot of reviews on it. Or, you may see a lot of reviews that will then quickly disappear courtesy of Apple Legal. I did read a good one that I can't find right now (it was probably taken down) where the reviewer said that he couldn't go back to Panther after using Tiger. Tiger, even though the version he had was a little buggy, was so much faster than Panther that he'd rather live with the bugs than give up the speed. I think he was using either an iBook or a PowerBook.
Anyway, some real tests need to be done, but it's looking good so far. -- Join the Pyramid - Free Mini Mac
Slashdot Mirror
Well, duh! It's on the Internet! Nobody in the world would ever think to do that! New medium equals new patent!
Like email on a cell phone. I should patent that! Errr, wait, did someone do that already? OK, I'll patent auctions in space and email in space, I don't think anyone's done that yet.
It's all just a load of crap.
Patents should be issued for physical inventions - actual physical products that you can hold in your hand - a propeller-hat or Dippy Drinking Bird for example. Patents should not be issued for business methods - a.k.a. any idea that comes out of my ass at work. It's patents like these and the ones behind the Blackberry case that show that these types of patents are completely anti-productive and against the original purpose of the patent system.
Basically, they are existing ideas or "business methods" applied to a new medium. There's nothing novel or unique about them. Someone just said, Hey, you could do auctions on the Internet, let's patent that! or Hey, you can do email on a cell phone, let's patent that!. I might as well start applying for patents for Email in Space! or Auctions in Space! That'll make me rich.
These things are so stupid and obvious I'm surprised that Judges will uphold them. Technically I suppose they're probably just following the law and their hands are tied. But that just means that the law needs to be changed - fat chance of that though considering the lobbying power of the large patent holders.
Held in February!!! Why wasn't it news before it happened? How are we going to meet any girl gamers now?
You trot them out once a year from the depths unknown and then tell us about it after it happened!?
I suppose having a link to one of those Free Mac Mini sites that I've had in my sig for the past 6 months makes me incapable of speaking about the subject.
Regardless, it's a great machine with a not-so-great video card. Highlighting what Apple said about integrated video only amplifies what others are now saying about it.
Or finally some night you get lucky and instead of having trouble with the girl's bra you can't get into your damn house because of your elevated heart rate.
/. none of us would ever have this problem.
Oh wait, this is
I post it once to one other Mac Mini story and suddenly that becomes "every single Mac mini story"?!
The old Mini wasn't much of a gaming system either and the same goes for the new one. Having an integrated graphics chip really sucks for a lot of things, but not so much on what the Mini is intended for. The dual-core version especially has a lot of raw CPU power in a very small form factor. If you don't need GPU power then it's a great little computer.
If you don't want to see sigs then turn off sigs and stop bitching about what people put in them.
My favorite is the stuff Apple used to say about integrated graphics cards back when the PPC Mini was shipping (From the Graphics page):
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an "integrated Intel graphics" chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don't even have an open slot to let you add one.
Other than the graphics card it's got a nice amount of raw CPU power, especially if you get the dual-core version or upgrade the single-core version by replacing the processor. It'd be great to buy a bunch of these for an Xcode build farm. Of course Xcode doesn't yet support cross-architecture distributed builds, so you'd have to be using all-Intel Macs for it to work well. Hopefully Apple will fix this in the near future.
Yeah, good for the fans because it makes it so they can't do something that they've been able to do since the advent of personal recording equipment - record songs off the radio.
Yep, it's good for everyone all around isn't it?
Well, from what I've read from the people that have taken the new Intel Mini apart it doesn't sound like there's room for an add-on graphics chip. So Apple would probably have to change the form factor in order to add a better graphics chip.
It's kind of ironic though. One of Apple's selling points (Google Cache) for the PPC Mini was that it didn't have an integrated graphics card:
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an "integrated Intel graphics" chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don't even have an open slot to let you add one. [emphasis mine]
Oh well, a bit of a step backwards on the graphics front. But a bunch of Core Duo Minis would make a great, inexpensive Xcode build farm.
At least someone is doing something:
Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, and 56 other senators have introduced a bill that would mandate a 10 percent increase per year in NASA's science budget from now through 2013, among other things.
More people ought to contact their representatives about NASA funding. Unfortunately space exploration doesn't seem to get as much press time as other "important" issues these days.
Processor - PowerPC 440 700MHz; two per compute node - Lowpower allows dense packaging; better processor-memory balance
Not particularly powerful CPUs individually, but I guess if you cram enough of them together it adds up.
Solitaire?
we're all well educated athiests
So the obvious implication is that if you're "well educated" then you cannot believe in God and must be an atheist. I think many "well educated" people would disagree.
BTW, does being "well educated" include misspelling atheist?
Actually, if you RTFC (RTF Comments) which are at the end of the article (as it says in the story) you'll find that you can completely screw your new Intel Mac into not booting. Not even running the OS X install CD will fix it. Here's one of the comments describing the problem:
This guy's talking out of his ass. First of all, Metrowerks has not made any announcements that they will make a Mac/Intel version of CodeWarrior (CodeWarrior is the compiler, PowerPlant is the framework). In fact, Metrowerks announced that CodeWarrior 10 would be the last release of CodeWarrior for the Mac platform. Period. End of story. That's why the latest release is so cheap ($99, download only). Also, Metrowerks no longer even exists as a company inside of Motorola. All Metrowerks/Motorola is doing for PowerPlant (the C++ GUI framework) is releasing it as open source so that someone else will be able to port it to MacIntel, they aren't going to be doing any of the Intel work.
The main reason CodeWarrior had to come to an end on the Mac is because Metrowerks/Motorola sold all of it's x86 compiler technology to a third party, Nokia I believe. They no longer have the rights to develop an x86 version of CodeWarrior. No x86 version means no future on the Mac. Though many of us have seen the writing on the wall for a long time and have expected CodeWarrior to come to an end sooner rather than later.
Adobe will be moving to Xcode because everyone has to move to Xcode. There is no other option.
Also, to put the Adobe comments into context, Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen had an interview with CNet where he discussed the difficulties in the transition as well as Adobe's possible timeframe:
Contrary to what a lot of mindless posters think, the transition is a lot of work and will be very difficult for many companies.
As the Cell is basically a PPC processor I find it strange that the SDK is for x86 processors. Fedora Core 4 (PowerPC), also known as ppc-fc4-rpms-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm is listed as one of the files you need to download. Maybe it's just because of the large installed base of x86 machines.
It'd be nice if IBM released a PPC SDK for Fedora, it would have the potential to run much faster than an x86 SDK and simulator.
Oops, I guess I should have put a (*SPOILER*) warning on my original message. Still, I wish I could buy up all the latest gadgets only to see what it takes to kill them. Such fun it must be to destroy the newest toy that everyone wants.
The article should really be entitled How to Kill an iPod nano as I think that's the real purpose of the article. It must be fun to buy the latest gadget and then find creative ways to destroy it.
Basically the final cause of death for the iPod was to throw it up in the air as high as possible, about 40 feet, and then let it smack down on the concrete. That was the final nail in the coffin after dropping it from 9 ft., dropping it multiple times from a speeding car (10 MPH to 50 MPH) and running over it twice. Pretty durable for a little music player.
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.
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):
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.
Yes, but Apple isn't going to start shipping products in 2007, they're starting at the latest in June of 2006. Also Apple hasn't provided any direction on what they're 64-bit roadmap is for Mactel. The only thing that matters is what chips Apple will be shipping in a year. If Apple were going to be shipping 64-bit chips in their products next year then they would have both an IA32 and an EM64T transition guide. Right now they only have information on IA32 and absolutely nothing on 64-bit. This means that the first products that they'll be shipping will be 32-bit.
If the PowerBook line is one of the first products to go Intel (as many have speculated) then that means it will be using a 32-bit chip. This also means that Apple cannot release a 64-bit G5-based PowerBook now and replace it with a 32-bit chip. Who knows, maybe the PowerBook won't be one of the first products to go Intel, maybe it will be the iBook. In that case I can see a G5 PowerBook which would then be replaced, probably in 2 years, by a 64-bit Intel PowerBook.
Now, let me go a little more into why there is no 64-bit roadmap for Mactel. The main reason is that the PowerPC platform was designed from the beginning to be a 64-bit platform that can also run 32-bit code. For this reason the G5 has no problem running 32-bit code alongside 64-bit code, the PPC architecture was designed to do this from the beginning. This is why we can have Tiger, which is basically a 32-bit operating system that can run both 32-bit apps and 64-bit apps at the same time.
Now let's go to the x86 story. The x86 platform was not designed to be a 64-bit platform. The AMD x86-64 implementation was designed so that their 64-bit processors could also run 32-bit code without problems, but there is a BIG catch. In order for the 64-bit chips to run both 64-bit and 32-bit code they must run on a 64-bit operating system. This means we can't have what we have now in Tiger - a 32-bit operating system that can run both 64-bit and 32-bit apps. Apple needs to ship a fully 64-bit version of Mac OS X in order for it to run on 64-bit x86 chips.
Apple probably hasn't figured out yet exactly how they're going to do this and that's why they didn't give us an x86-64 roadmap at WWDC. This also means that writing 64-bit applications for Tiger will be different from how they will be written for the 64-bit version of Mac OS X. A 64-bit version of Mac OS X is a good thing and something we'd probably have seen anyway for the G5, but it does add more complexity to the transition and more pain for developers.
As much as I (and many other people) would love to see a PPC 970FX based PowerBook there is one glaring reason why we will never see one - the G5 is 64-bit and the Pentium M is not.
Every document and every piece of information that Apple has provided about the Intel transition is for moving to IA32, there isn't so much as a mention of any 64-bit future on the Intel platform. I was at WWDC and I tried as best I could to get any information about the future of 64-bit computing with Intel chips and not a single Apple engineer or representative would give anyone any information at all about it. It is clear then that the first Intel Macs will use a 32-bit processor. That's not to say that we'll never see 64-bit Intel-based Macs, Apple will need to have them to replace the G5. But it definitely means that the first Intel-based products Apple introduces will be 32-bit and not 64-bit. (If anyone would like I can go into more detail regarding why Apple hasn't announced their 64-bit plans for Mactel.)
For this reason Apple cannot put a 64-bit G5 into a PowerBook now and then offer a down-graded 32-bit Intel version in a year or two. It would be marketing suicide and customers would virtually rise up in arms. If the transition to Intel means anything with regards to future PowerBooks it means that we will never see a G5 PowerBook no matter how cool IBM can make the G5 run.
Of course I'd love to be wrong. I'm one of those that believe that Apple will stick with PPC as long as it performs better than whatever Intel has. I can see a scenario where Apple continues to sell G5/G6-based PowerMacs indefinitely since PPC will probably continue to beat x86 on the desktop for many years to come. If that is the case then Apple may never drop PPC entirely and we'll end up with PPC and Intel Macs living together. In this scenario I could see Apple selling a G5 PowerBook as the High-end and Pentium M PowerBooks/iBooks as the mid-range to low-end.
Add to that the fact that apple employees had been to the demo of this player the case may stand up a bit more.
So does that mean that if you ever see something presented at a developer's conference, say SIGGRAPH, then you are automatically prevented from ever using any information that you saw there? This would mean that you would never be able to develop 2D or 3D image processing software ever again for having attended SIGGRAPH because some slimeball would have a patent on something that was presented and he'd find out how to make it apply to anything in the image processing world.
I'm sorry but this part of their case sounds just like what the SCO Group is trying to argue against IBM - that anyone who has ever had access to their Glorious Unix System V source code is tainted and can never work with anything that is similar to it again (Linux, *BSD, etc.) without their work becoming the property of SCO.
If scumbags like these people can ever make this argument stick then it will be the end of innovation in the software industry, at least in the US.
I'll eat my hat if Jobs announces a switch to Intel chips (and I'll even be there at the Keynote). The most glaring giveaway in the article that this will NOT happen is this:
Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
So Apple's going to force their Developers, the people who need to have the latest, greatest and fastest machines, to use Mac Minis to develop their software on? Not in a billion years!
There's no way in Hell that Apple could ever get away with switching low-end Mac Minis first and then top of the line Power Macs a year later. No developer is going to torture himself on a Mac Mini when they could be developing on a Dual 2.7 GHz (or higher) G5. Sure there are those that will say that Apple will let you compile on a G5 and then just test on a Mini - that will never happen either. It would increase development time by at least a factor of 2 and probably more. This would effectively kill the Mac platform.
If Apple would ever consider this (which I doubt, AMD is far better than Intel and I believe the PPC platform has a far brighter future than the x86 platform, just look at all the next-gen gaming consoles) then they would need to transition their high-end machines first if not at the same time as everything else.
Not to mention the fact that SSEx pales in comparison to Altivec. Why does this matter? Because Apple has invested heavily in vectorized libraries, especially CoreImage. CoreImage & Quartz 2D Extreme rely heavily on Altivec when you don't have a graphics card capable of running them. SSE just wouldn't be able to cut it. Also, what's Apple to do with all their engineers that have so much experience with PPC and Altivec? I could go on and on.
It would take 4-5 years or more for Apple to make the transition and optimize OS X on Intel to where it is today (Apple might have a version of OS X running on x86, but I'm sure that it's nowhere near as optimized as Tiger is for PPC). Does Apple really want to give Microsoft that much time to catch up? I think not! They'd much rather run circles around Microsoft. It will be a cold day in Hell before this happens.
Well, considering that it's still under NDA you're probably not going to see a lot of reviews on it. Or, you may see a lot of reviews that will then quickly disappear courtesy of Apple Legal. I did read a good one that I can't find right now (it was probably taken down) where the reviewer said that he couldn't go back to Panther after using Tiger. Tiger, even though the version he had was a little buggy, was so much faster than Panther that he'd rather live with the bugs than give up the speed. I think he was using either an iBook or a PowerBook.
Anyway, some real tests need to be done, but it's looking good so far.
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