New binaries will be released with both PPC and x86 object code - "universal binaries". Generating them will be as easy as a click of a button (xcode 2.1).
OSX has had this ability for a _long_ time thanks to bundles and property lists which make all this architecture-specific stuff transparent, flexible, and forward compatible.
Now if a vendor chooses to release an x86-only OSX build of their application, then that is their choice to make. But it is a stupid one as they lose out on a huge existing market of PPC macs. So your complaints should be directed at stupid lazy vendors -- not apple.
Of course this means you'll have to check if the software you're running is compiled to run on the system you're using.
wrong
It's not binary computability, you have to recompile, which means that $2,000 a graphics artist just invested in Adobe and Macromedia software is down the tubes if they want to upgrade their MAC.
"Jobs also discussed a new technology called Rosetta, that he described as "a dynamic binary translator." It runs existing PowerPC applications on the Intel platform, he said. Jobs described Rosetta as "lightweight," and said "it's nothing like Classic."
Jobs demonstrated Rosetta by running Microsoft Office applications, Quicken and Photoshop CS 2 -- all unmodified PowerPC-binary versions, unlike Mathematica -- on the new Intel-based hardware.
"So that is Rosetta, Jobs concluded. "These PowerPC apps just run . And that's what we're going to have for our users, because every app isn't going to be there for our users on day one."
The chip business is hard, but not that hard. Find a niche, fill it.
Unfortunately, Transmeta's niche was a little too broad for a newcomer to fill, and there was already a lot of fierce competition.
IMO Transmeta could have set their sights a bit lower -- go for a nice ultra-low-power embedded PC or something. Or even something like Via's Eden (C7 line).
They set their sights a bit too high, didnt quite manage to reach it, and were eventually beaten into the ground by Intel's Pentium M and AMD's mobile lines.
Too bad they didn't partner with Via. I'd like to see a really powerful Nano-ITX system.
Objective C isn't popular because the "C" is misnomer. Its sorta like C, but its syntax is sufficiently different from C to totally weird out C programmers.
C++ is much more "natural" for C programmers. That is, they can write plain old C and start using bits and pieces of C++ as they learn them. They arent forced to learn a fundamentally new syntax from the get go.
This is also why Java and C# have done relatively well. It's very easy for C programmers to "dive in".
The "dive in" rule is important to a language's success, which is why PHP has done very well despite all its warts.
Apple can't meet that volume, so they get memory at much higher prices than Dell. Think about that for a minute. Part of the reason Apple's memory is more expensive than Dell's memory is that, well, Dell gets it much cheaper than Apple. So, to compete with a company like Dell, Apple ( and other manufacturers, even in the PC world, like Sony ) have to compete by not competing- they need compelling designs that Dell lacks, like the mini and the Vaio.
So er... so why then can I buy ram, direct from 3rd parties for 1/2 what apple charges for it? i'm not buying in volume. I'm buying qty 1.
No, the reason PC vendors can make such cheap PCs is because everyone is using the chips (via, nvidia, etc). Enormous production scales allow the vendors to make these chips extremely cheaply for anyone who buys them -- not just dell. Not only that, some of the components (southbridge) are used by both intel and amd architectures, across all CPUs (x86, x86_64, etc) Thus driving costs even lower. You're talking about production scales several orders of magnitude larger than apple. Everyone building x86 PCs benefits from the low prices provided by large production scales. Not just dell.
There's no way apple can produce eg intrepid that cheaply.
Nforce and ATI integrated video is just fine (certanly much better than the ati9200 in the mac mini). Whether the intel mini clone uses them is another story, but it doesn't mean nobody can use them.
why would it have to skimp on video, other components or software? it can use the exact same video the mini uses, because an ati radeon 9200 isn't exactly an apple-specific design.
the PC design can be cheaper because the PC components are far cheaper than their apple counterparts because stuff like integrated north and southbridges already enjoy massively low pricing thanks to economy of scale. while apple can use many off the shelf parts, there are still enough apple-specific parts in the mini to drive up its cost relative to a massive-economomy-of-scale PC.
you seem to be under the impression the only integrated video chipsets in existence are the intel i8xx stuff. this is simply not the case.
and you should refactor your code to either completely remove the platform dependencies
your post amuses me greatly. you've obviously never tried porting to win32:-)
maintaining cross unix code is a wildly different beast than unixwin32. with unix you're dealing with minor (at best!) api differences. with win32 you're dealing with a completely different plane of existence.
or hell, even OSX. Carbon is wildly different from say, POSIX and X11. And wildly different still from win32. and when I say OSX I mean a native OSX app, not something that uses Xdarwin as a crutch and doesn't use Carbon at all.
try a native linux/win32/osx app and get back to me. then i'll take your posts seriously:-)
I predict they sell more of these than apple ever does of the mini. The PC market is _enormous_ and sales figures that would be considered a dismal failure in the PC market would be considered a roaring success in the apple market.
I just used that dell pc as an example. Cut a pc down to similar specs as the mini, and it would be far cheaper than the mini. Even if you included high end video.
the G4 cube was a revolutionary Mac. For PCs it was very old hat. Small and tiny PCs, even cubes, had been available for many many years before apple ever thought of the cube.
And the G4 cube wasnt exactly a rousing success. Not when you could buy a much more capable G4 tower for the same price.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because adobe and apple are obviously too stupid to release x86 builds of photoshop and FCP.
I thought apple put all that altivec magic into the frameworks so that developers wouldnt have to hand-code altivec asm.
Or was that all a lie?
Um. RTFA?
It doesnt _have_ to "work both ways".
New binaries will be released with both PPC and x86 object code - "universal binaries". Generating them will be as easy as a click of a button (xcode 2.1).
OSX has had this ability for a _long_ time thanks to bundles and property lists which make all this architecture-specific stuff transparent, flexible, and forward compatible.
Now if a vendor chooses to release an x86-only OSX build of their application, then that is their choice to make. But it is a stupid one as they lose out on a huge existing market of PPC macs. So your complaints should be directed at stupid lazy vendors -- not apple.
wrong
It's not binary computability, you have to recompile, which means that $2,000 a graphics artist just invested in Adobe and Macromedia software is down the tubes if they want to upgrade their MAC.
even wronger.
Rosetta keeps old apps running
What kind of hat is it?
:D
I hope it's tasty.
It will be a cold day in Hell before this happens.
Got your ice skates ready?
Bet you feel rather foolish now, your prediction was completely and utterly wrong.
The chip business is hard, but not that hard. Find a niche, fill it.
Unfortunately, Transmeta's niche was a little too broad for a newcomer to fill, and there was already a lot of fierce competition.
IMO Transmeta could have set their sights a bit lower -- go for a nice ultra-low-power embedded PC or something. Or even something like Via's Eden (C7 line).
They set their sights a bit too high, didnt quite manage to reach it, and were eventually beaten into the ground by Intel's Pentium M and AMD's mobile lines.
Too bad they didn't partner with Via. I'd like to see a really powerful Nano-ITX system.
MySQL does have a threadpool, as does apache.
So creating threads is not the bottleneck here.
This test is very revealing about Mac OS X.
Objective C isn't popular because the "C" is misnomer. Its sorta like C, but its syntax is sufficiently different from C to totally weird out C programmers.
C++ is much more "natural" for C programmers. That is, they can write plain old C and start using bits and pieces of C++ as they learn them. They arent forced to learn a fundamentally new syntax from the get go.
This is also why Java and C# have done relatively well. It's very easy for C programmers to "dive in".
The "dive in" rule is important to a language's success, which is why PHP has done very well despite all its warts.
The other problem is that as you near 1.0c, that interstellar gas becomes cosmic rays. You'd quickly become fried.
Though I suspect your sails would become eroded from friction long before you reached significant values of c anyway.
Interesting thought though. Use sails to accelerate to where ramjets become effective.
Itanium?
:-)
Yeah, just what the world needs -- a $10,000 PC that performs like a pentium 233
Yeah, and you know all your speculation is fact because apple is perfect and never makes any stupid mistakes. :-P
endian swapping isn't that hard.
as for altivec, i thought apple split out altivec support into frameworks so applications wouldn't have to hardcode altivec asm internally.
You mean the fact it was overpriced wasn't a factor in its failure? The fact it was too large?
Palm swooped in with mediocre software by comparison, but their device was cheap and small. And they soundly kicked apple's ass.
Even if the newton's handwriting recognition were perfect, it was still too large and too expensive.
wonderful search function
Why the Apple Newton Failed - written by Larry Tesler, Newton Development lead for two years.
the editors obviously thought the story was so important that it had to be posted twice.
the editors obviously thought the story was so important that it had to be posted twice.
They had to be odd/abstract because the hardware sucked. You can only do so much with a 2mhz Z80 or 6809 and 256x240x4bpp.
pac-man was pretty freaking weird too.
uh... actually, no. The northbridge chipset is pretty much the same
are you absolutely sure ?
Apple can't meet that volume, so they get memory at much higher prices than Dell. Think about that for a minute. Part of the reason Apple's memory is more expensive than Dell's memory is that, well, Dell gets it much cheaper than Apple. So, to compete with a company like Dell, Apple ( and other manufacturers, even in the PC world, like Sony ) have to compete by not competing- they need compelling designs that Dell lacks, like the mini and the Vaio.
So er... so why then can I buy ram, direct from 3rd parties for 1/2 what apple charges for it? i'm not buying in volume. I'm buying qty 1.
No, the reason PC vendors can make such cheap PCs is because everyone is using the chips (via, nvidia, etc). Enormous production scales allow the vendors to make these chips extremely cheaply for anyone who buys them -- not just dell. Not only that, some of the components (southbridge) are used by both intel and amd architectures, across all CPUs (x86, x86_64, etc) Thus driving costs even lower. You're talking about production scales several orders of magnitude larger than apple. Everyone building x86 PCs benefits from the low prices provided by large production scales. Not just dell.
There's no way apple can produce eg intrepid that cheaply.
Nforce and ATI integrated video is just fine (certanly much better than the ati9200 in the mac mini). Whether the intel mini clone uses them is another story, but it doesn't mean nobody can use them.
kangaroo (1982)
i,robot (1983)
5 years (hard drivin', 1988)
so it wasn't a GUI application then.
cross platform portability is pretty simple as long as you don't have to deal with UIs.
why would it have to skimp on video, other components or software? it can use the exact same video the mini uses, because an ati radeon 9200 isn't exactly an apple-specific design.
the PC design can be cheaper because the PC components are far cheaper than their apple counterparts because stuff like integrated north and southbridges already enjoy massively low pricing thanks to economy of scale. while apple can use many off the shelf parts, there are still enough apple-specific parts in the mini to drive up its cost relative to a massive-economomy-of-scale PC.
you seem to be under the impression the only integrated video chipsets in existence are the intel i8xx stuff. this is simply not the case.
and you should refactor your code to either completely remove the platform dependencies
:-)
:-)
your post amuses me greatly. you've obviously never tried porting to win32
maintaining cross unix code is a wildly different beast than unixwin32. with unix you're dealing with minor (at best!) api differences. with win32 you're dealing with a completely different plane of existence.
or hell, even OSX. Carbon is wildly different from say, POSIX and X11. And wildly different still from win32. and when I say OSX I mean a native OSX app, not something that uses Xdarwin as a crutch and doesn't use Carbon at all.
try a native linux/win32/osx app and get back to me. then i'll take your posts seriously
I predict they sell more of these than apple ever does of the mini. The PC market is _enormous_ and sales figures that would be considered a dismal failure in the PC market would be considered a roaring success in the apple market.
I just used that dell pc as an example. Cut a pc down to similar specs as the mini, and it would be far cheaper than the mini. Even if you included high end video.
The audio out picks up internal crosstalk from firewire and other components. Sometimes it can be very noisy.
I'm guessing apple omitted the audio input because they found it was too noisy.
the G4 cube was a revolutionary Mac . For PCs it was very old hat. Small and tiny PCs, even cubes, had been available for many many years before apple ever thought of the cube.
And the G4 cube wasnt exactly a rousing success. Not when you could buy a much more capable G4 tower for the same price.