Apple to announce switch to Intel procs on Monday

[LiamC]

http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM,+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=cd.lede

I know that this has been rumoured, but this seems a lot more substantial. A shake up in the market if true.

Given that all reported leaks have used Intel and not x86, IA or any other generic term, I am expecting Apple to announce support specifically for Intel processors, and most likely Merom/Conroe and derivatives as their power envelopes suit Apple's model/methodology/design philosophy where Netburst does not, and taking into consideration the timeframes announced.

Something in the article linked strikes me as odd though:

...""If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned," said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. "I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers" and more software partners, he said."...

Given that x86 is the largest software market there is, this will simplify Apple's software partners task and gain Apple access to software it currently does not.

I am also expecting this to be an exclusive deal (probably with some proprietary BIOS/firmware). Why? To send a signal to Microsoft.

Given Johan De Gelas' article over on AnandTech, I think such a decision (to be Intel specific) is a mistake on Jobs' part, but I think that there is a lot more to this announcement than meets the web.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436

 

[Santilli]

Well, looks like Apple is stepping into the big leagues. I think what we are going to find is what Apple OS X users have known for a long time, OS X pretty much sucks speedwise, and, the competition is going to make either OS X faster, or MSFT is going to get even faster.

I really think this will give MSFT a shot in the arse to really trounce Apple, and we will end up with a far superior product, Longhorn, or Windows 64.

s

 

[CougTek]

...I think such a decision (to be Intel specific) is a mistake on Jobs' part,...

A BIG mistake IMO.

I thought they had plans going on about releasing dual-core G5 processors. This would have been awesome. Since the 2.5GHz G5 have been out and also because of MAC OSX 10.4 "Tiger", I've been somewhat tempted to make the switch or at least buy a PowerMAC system to try it out. But if they are becoming just another x86 system integrator and leaving the Power 4 architecture behind, no way I'm gonna drop one penny on an Apple box anytime soon.

 

[Santilli]

On the otherhand, switching is a very good thing for paripheral parts, and cost.

Judging by IBM's pricing, I suspect they aren't going to give apple any parts deals likely to increase market share.

From what I got out of that article, they describe the different situations that slow down the mac os. Apparently some of that can be avoided using PC chip design, rewriting the kernal etc.

Frankly the biggest reason not to buy a mac is the apple tax, which has been decreased considerably with firewire and usb externals, but, needs to go even further.

Fact is, Apple provides competition if they do it right. I could very well decide to drop 129 dollars for Tiger, vs. 170 dollars for Windows 64 bit, for an AMD based system this weekend. Actual operating system competition would be a wonderful thing.

On a side note, one of my kids at school has a techy for a dad, and was telling me how great Redhat is. So I brough in 9.0, and asked her to install it. She couldn't get past the disk formatting which would have required a complete reformat...and doesnt' seem to allow a dual boot.

s

 

[Handruin]

I think they are in for a tough up hill battle to switch or support intel compatible architectures. At least windows has had a few years to work out compatibility issues with 3rd party peripheral manufacturers. Apple will need to support a much wider distribution of components before I would consider using their OS. otherwise we will be in the same position with the over-priced mac components that we see today. The 3rd party manufacturers will also have to write drivers (or whatever OSX uses) to support all these devices.

 

[Pradeep]

If they make OS X runnable on any old PC, Apple is going to go tits-up pretty quick. Why would anyone pay the "Apple Tax" when they can run it on a $300 Dell SC420 or similar? They are still going to have to make it proprietary to Apple hardware only via BIOS etc.

 

[Stereodude]

If they make OS X runnable on any old PC, Apple is going to go tits-up pretty quick. Why would anyone pay the "Apple Tax" when they can run it on a $300 Dell SC420 or similar? They are still going to have to make it proprietary to Apple hardware only via BIOS etc.

This goes to show you that they should have become a software only company a long time ago and let other people build the hardware.

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

If they make OS X runnable on any old PC, Apple is going to go tits-up pretty quick. Why would anyone pay the "Apple Tax" when they can run it on a $300 Dell SC420 or similar?

This basically happened to Apple in the mid-90s before Jobz came back -- with the Mac Clone experiment -- when Apple licensed out the Macintosh *hardware* platform. The Mac clone builders had to license the basic Mac hardware platform and the operating system from Apple. Each clone maker then had to add any device drivers and firmware enhancements themselves.

They are still going to have to make it proprietary to Apple hardware only via BIOS etc.

Several small companies jumped into the new Mac clone market, however it wasn't that long before they all (except one) went out of business or went on to something else because, as it turned out, the Mac marketplace really didn't expand when the age of the Mac clone began.


Power Computing in Austin, TX basically took over the Mac clone market and then began to put a major squeeze on Apple's sales in a way that was pretty much reminiscent of the early PC clone wars when Compaq began applying pressure to IBM sales in the 1980s. The Mac clone market soon turned out to be a cannibalistic affair for Apple.

Power Computing did many smart things to reduce the price of a Macintosh, such as making a Mac mobo that would fit into a (PC) ATX chassis and power supply -- of which they could a basic beige box design for dirt cheap out of Taiwan. They were also working with a Dell-like low-price volume production model and direct sales, which was nothing like Apple.


When Jobs came back and got back in control of Apple, he quickly cancelled all Mac clone licenses (i.e. -- basically Power Computing). After the license revocation, Power Computing eventually started making Alpha "clones" and even X86 notebook computers. However, they only lasted about 3 years doing this.

 

[Santilli]

Yes, and the Power Computing machines were better then Apple's, often at half the price.

I have a G3 333mhz that has half speed ide, 16 mb a sec, and a max pci bus speed of 73 mb/sec., thanks to Apple cost cutting, on a then, top of the line machine, worth 3000 bucks.

s

 

[Onomatopoeic]

Unless there's a new, cheap, fast Itanium Lite that Intel has shopped to Apple (existence protected by non-disclosure agreement) as a PowerPC replacement, I don't see much for Apple to jump to Intel for their X86 product; AMD would be a better choice for that. About the only thing worth going for that Intel has might be the Pentium M for notebooks. If they started using Pentium M processors in notebooks, there is basically no reason to stop them from staying with PowerPC processors in desktops.

Of course, I could fall back on my old theory that Apple will eventually merge with a consumer electronics company (like Sony or Samsung) so that they can share manufacturing and design resources with each other. The only problem with this picture is that the consumer electronics company that makes microprocessors is Samsung, and that's the unfortunately-dead-end Alpha. If the Alpha could stay alive, Apple could use Samsung Alpha processors, Samsung hard drives, and Samsung RAM! However, that will never happen.

So, a merger with Intel? Maybe. But in this case, maybe it's Intel that has a *plan* to get into the consumer electronics market by first buying a company like -- oh -- Sharp, or LG, or some other Asian consumer electronics middleweight and merge with Apple to become a worldwide upper echelon competitor against Sony, Philips, Panasonic, etc.

 

[Bozo]

I think this might have something to do with the switch...

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1


Apple could then make the OS, Apple only too.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[GIANT]

One other thing I forgot to mention in ll my rambling above was that:

First, let me coin a couple of phrases here "OSX86" and "MacX86." The name OSX86 differentiates the X86 version of OSX from the PowerPC version of OSX, and MacX86 is obviously an X86 Macintosh.

A definite advantage for Apple moving to X86 hardware is that the MacX86 machine could also run Microsoft Windows in an OSX86 virtual machine session at full speed. So, you should be able to run your eye-candy OSX and your sukkyass Windows ( :lol: ) together without penalty. The instance of Windows would be running in VM mode, so you would have a slight penalty compared to a regular PC running the same microprocessor, RAM, etc. But, it would still blow away a conventional PowerPC Macintosh running X86 Windows in emulation.

I would suspect that Apple probably would NOT opt to sell a copies of Windows with its OSX86 Macs for the people interested in optionally running Windows on their MacX86. Instead, it would only provide a VM capable of running Windows (and probably certain Linux distros) and rely on the user to buy their own copy of Windows -- though I wouldn't be particularly surprised if Apple did sell the optional copy of Windows if it saw enough money in moving these optional copies of Windows.

Otherwise, these newfangled MacX86 machines would certainly NOT have a PC BIOS, but instead have what eventually will be the fate of every future X86 computer, namely Extensible Firmware. I believe I've talked about this here a couple of times in the past (maybe not), but the BIOS will finally start to go away sometime during the next few years. Itanium systems have been using Extensible Firmware since nearly the beginning (though they did use BIOS in the very beginning). Intel is very keen on killing BIOS and pushing Extensible Firmware. If the MacX86 doesn't incorporate it first, we should first see Extensible Firmware appearing on high-end multi-multi-processor enterprise X86 rigs with the trickle down over time to the lowliest of no-name vomit boxes. The Macintosh has always used a similar system firmware approach going all the way back to the days of the Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac II back in the mid 1980s.

So, are we beginning to see a possible pattern here??? Maybe something like Apple buying Intel processors, probably getting extra goodies like low-priced Dell-like licensing fees on Intel's darling Extensible Firmware and PCI Express, low-priced hardware pricing on mobo chipsets, etc???

 

[Fushigi]

I think this might have something to do with the switch...

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1


Apple could then make the OS, Apple only too.

But if it'll run on "suitably equipped portable devices" then it'll run on non-P4D chips, unless "suitably equipped" means "powered by Pentium 4D". At that point it's a licensing & codec issue and the software could be written and licensed for Power-based Macs.

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

By the way, for those who care, the next version of Mac OS X will be called "Leopard." Yes, of course, it has X86 support! In fact, X86 is it's main theme -- transition to X86.

I wonder if there will be a PowerPC version of Leopard, otherwise, it'll probably be tagged Def Leopard (or Deaf Leppard, or LapDog) by the old-school Macanistas. I strongly suspect there will have to be a PowerPC version of Leopard, but that'll probably be it.

All of this brings up some interesting points about how well Apple will support "old" Macintoshes with operating system updates and upgrades. If the past is any indication, 2 years will be about all you can expect before Apple turns perfectly good PowerPC Macintoshes into Macintrashes.



PS: Steve Jobz has done this switch-to-X86 dance before. He did it with NeXT in the early 1990s. And, yes, I have personally used an original Motorola-powered black NeXT cube as well as the i486-powered NeXTStation (manufactured in Japan by Canon) that superseded the cube. The i486 NeXT was a generally faster all around compared to the NeXT cube and a hell of a lot less expensive than the magnesium metal cube. The cube did LOOK better, though.

 

[Pradeep]

Teh skoop from the WWDC

http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2438

 

[Santilli]

WOW

They did it!!!

Where is AMD's home office?

It's going to be fascinating to see how they play this one out...

Not to be skeptical, but partnering with Apple hasn't been a good career move for IBM, Motorola, Power Computing, etc. Wonder if Intel is going to have better luck?

s

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

...Wonder if Intel is going to have better luck?

June 2007

"As we look ahead, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current Intel roadmap. So, we've signed an exclusive deal with AMD to provide..." :lol:

 

[Santilli]

...Wonder if Intel is going to have better luck?

June 2007

"As we look ahead, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current Intel roadmap. So, we've signed an exclusive deal with AMD to provide..." :lol:

ROFL!

"And, the reason for our switch is Performance per Watt"

http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2438&p=2

:mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

Apparently the Nipple developer kits that're shipping out are using 3.6GHz P4 560s that use a standard Phoenix BIOS and NOT Openfirmware. Developers are reporting that they can dual book Linux or XP on those machines along with OSX.

Given these things as fact, it's safe to say that whatever Apple eventually develops will at least be hackable onto non-Apple hardware. I'd LOVE have OSX on a PC. The cost for the Nipple unit is $500 to join Apple's developer program + $999 for a pretty sexy 3.6GHz P4 with 1GB RAM. That's not unreasonable for a name-brand unit from anybody.

I wonder what this will do to the prevalence of Mac-based spyware.

Apple's decision to go Intel, rather than the far superior Athlon64, has everything to do with manufacturing capacity. AMD can't make chips fast enough, and that's precisely the problem they have with IBM right now.

I like PPCs a lot. I know they are good machines - I used to work with a lot of Motorola StarMAX workstations - but the x86 chips have just been embarassing the PPC for the last couple years. AMD's got chips at 4GHz, and IBM is poking along at 2GHz for their best stuff, and they can't even put that chip in a Powerbook.

Guess what I'm saying is, as a PC person, this is something that seems like a very promising step.

 

[Pradeep]

Given these things as fact, it's safe to say that whatever Apple eventually develops will at least be hackable onto non-Apple hardware. I'd LOVE have OSX on a PC. The cost for the Nipple unit is $500 to join Apple's developer program + $999 for a pretty sexy 3.6GHz P4 with 1GB RAM. That's not unreasonable for a name-brand unit from anybody.

From what I understand you have to return the hardware after a year. So it's more a lease rather than a purchase.

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

From what I understand you have to return the hardware after a year. So it's more a lease rather than a purchase.

Yes, that is essentially correct -- YOU HAVE TO SEND IT BACK.



So far, nothing here at the Apple Developer's Store, yet:

http://store.apple.com/AppleStore/WebObjects/ADC?qprm=38839

 

[Santilli]

Mercutio:

I want OS X on a pc for one reason, competition. Without that, MSFT goes nuts, and Linux is NOT competition.

s

 

[Fushigi]

Run MacOSx86 on any Intel/AMD PC.

 

[sechs]

Unsurprisingly, hardware support is poor....