“Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life. There have been rumors to this effect… We’ve had teams working on the ‘just in case’ scenario.” said Steve Jobs. Apple will ship a Mac with Intel processors by June 6th, 2006, as reports said. It should be complete by June 2007. Says that Intel offers a better roadmap for the markets that Apple services. Jobs talked about IBM missing the 3 GHz mark for the G5 and not being able to put one in a PowerBook. Today’s WWDC demonstration has been done entirely on an Intel Mac Xeon-P4. Developers applauded Steve when he said that both processors would be supported for a long time and the core to this will be universal binaries. ‘Rosetta’ will allow PowerPC compiled apps to work on an Intel Mac. UPDATE: After Jobs’ presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. “That doesn’t preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will,” he said. “We won’t do anything to preclude that.” However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers’ hardware. “We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.“
CONFIRMED: Apple to use Intel Chips – *updated*
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Eugenia Loli
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How many other processor companies can they jump ship to? AMD, I guess.
I’m torn, I wanted to buy a new machine in the next few months. I may have to wait the year or so while the new Intel-based machines come into play. i will get one though. I like the Apple Experience and the processor speed gains will be better now. I don’t condemn Apple for this, though it was startling news. They’re doing the switch the smart way. The transition has already been happening behind the scenes so all major software vendors are on board. That is truly the important thing.
The bigger issue with companies like SGI is that high end hardware was moving closer towards what you could get out of a standard desktop. Moving x86 for them just proved to people that truth. That, and poor management.
Can’t comment on Be too much, but my guess is the apps weren’t there (MS, Adobe) to where they had any leverage. That, and poor management (I’m sensing a trend).
This is a different situation for Apple. They truly are just going for new chips. Not white-boxing their cash cow. They are a healthy company as of late. This will be a good decision.
quote:
If I want to take a book that some guy spent 20 years painstakingly crafting and using its pages for toilet paper, there is nothing he can do to stop me.
>all he has to do is spread a rumor that the book was printed on hemp paper, then you’ll probably smoke it instead
It will be a run-of-the-mill P4 with a custom chipset and BIOS. OS X will only come with support for these, and will crap on startup if it’s run on something else. This will be hacked, and some people will be running OS X with ported drivers on their PCs and no one will care. The number of people that would buy a Mac that would put up with that process has to hover somewhere around insignificant.
In other good news Linux users might care to develop a GNUStep-derived WINE-line program to run proprietary Mac programs.
I am starting to feel a little bittersweet about this. I think the biggest reason why I was bummed was because I was saving up to buy a PowerMac G5 this summer. Because of this announcement, I won’t be buying a Mac until they release their Intel PowerMacs. I still feel that x86 sucks (I know these reasons are intangible to end users…I’m an idealistic bastard), but right now they are faster than any PPC out there apparently.
Well, here’s to next year where I can get a Mac with PCI-Express and DDR2. I would say BTX, but Apple will probably have their own propriatery formfactor.
Anyone get their hands on Rosetta? Looks like PearPC is now doomed to being an acedemic tool to study RISC architecture.
-Eric
as they intend to only allow MacOS-X (by lisence or by technology) to run on Apple hardware this is quite irrelevant.
The only thing that will happen is that Mac users will get pissed when they no longer can use their old software for new hardware. Cheaper processors may make the price of a new mac to drop somewhat, but that doesn’t matter much as the important factor in platform choise is the availability of software. In this field Microsoft rules. Just look at Linux. Today the usability of Linux is better than that of Windows XP still we don’t see any massive deployments of Linux desktop even if the price is much lower.
If they had allowed it to run on generic intel boxes, it could have been a great competitor to MS Longhorn, but as it is I doubt it will change the balance of the market.
I think apple cannot shock the world with a sudden transition to intel TODAY.
so they have this lovely two year plan…guess what, plans change.
They’ll be selling systems by Christmas.
Yes, I saw VPC in action and in fact was absolutly blown away with the fact how quickly Windows came up on fairly low end Apple laptop. Something one must see to believe.
And yet I would guess the program which takes say, a couple of minutes to run on native platform (computationally extensive staff, typesetting of very large document) probably will take at least 3 minutes (or more? are there any benchmarks of that kind?) to run under VPC. Unless of course VPC has smarts to keep some of the converted code in a cache or something like that, don’t know. In any case, emulators are nice given you have no other choice. Runing things natively is better — if you can.
Intel killed your mother?
Perhaps now, IBM can focus their resources on getting Linux to run efficiently and without qualms on PPC. I wonder if this will make Linux the de facto software platform for the PPC arch in the future.
I hope he means source code. A binaries only core would not be acceptable nowadays. Open source is standard.
I wonder if red box is still lurking somewhere in the the deepest corners of Cupertino.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4“… …
It isn’t so bad, that Xeon is a 64Bits processor.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/xeon/index.htm
This could very well be the end of Apple.
We’ve been Punked!!!
This will give current x86 and windows a better choice in Apple Computers because they will be able to dual boot, hopefully without restarting into Windows or Linux.
I predict a Intel Based Mac by Apple by Christmas. I personally want to run 3d Studio Max in OS X someday!
This is the end of Linux on power.
There isn’t any popular platform now running Power.
Get your Mini’s while they last.
Linus can go back to x86.
PowerPC on floating point operations SLAUGHTER Intel chips….
Except they don’t, unless you’re talking about POWER4/5 anyway. An Opteron 248 (2.2GHz) with the Pathscale compiler gets 1691 on specfp. The top Opteron (2.6GHz) breaks 2000 without the Pathscale compiler. The 2.2GHz PPC970 (presumably using IBM’s XLC compiler, since IBM submitted that result), get’s 1241. A 3.6GHz Xeon gets 1701. Of course, the Power5 at 1.9GHz get’s close to 2800! These last four results are all from IBM (the 970, the Opteron, and the Xeon are all from IBM’s L/H/J20 BladeServer line), so they should be pretty comparable.
Yeah right. What are you going to buy instead?
LOL some Mac-Zealots are so overly reacting to this…..this is a step forward.
Well this is a sad day. It seems that x86 has once again won the day in the consumer PC market with little to no chance of anything more modern taking over.
I wonder if Cell could be made to run cool and if it had good integer performance Apple might do an about turn and change their minds before the release in 2006. I doubt it.
But now we will all have to run old cruddy x86. Steve can’t even lie to us anymore about PPC being more powerful.
Using DeCSS to watch a movie (i do that all the time for linux) is a bit different than using it to copy one you just rented at blockbuster.
people will maybe get OSX to run (unless its dependant on a firmware, or chipset. but even if they do, they will know they are breaking the law, and making copies of software when they shouldnt be.
and second of all, whogives a shit about those people. no one. they dotn count cause they are not paying for the product to begin with.
I have been reading this article on a Dell X1. Its really a samsung. It’s fanless 2.7 lbs subnotebook Pentium M 1.1 ULV. I think the reason why apple ditched IBM is because of notebooks. With laptops outpacing desktops, Apple knows the PPC sucks for notebooks. And since Intel (thanks in part to isreal design team) is the only company making viable laptop processors in any volume. They really had no choice.
I’ll be buying one of the last PowerPC based PowerMacs when they come out and putting them alongside my other museum pieces:
Grayscale SE/30, running at 50Mhz
NeXT Dimension Turbo Cube
Each one the pinnacle of computer engineering for it’s time.
RIP PowerPC….
“So Apple want me to use a more power-hungry chip, that needs more cooling, and they want me to go back to 32 bit computing?”
I believe the G5 PPC’s use more power and are watercooled?
So does this mean that iMac doppleganger that Intel was showing to the press a week ago really is the x86 version of the iMac?
This is BS. It’ll already be running on x86 and they’re still going to be difficult about it. If their hardware is a superior as they say then they shouldn’t be worried about people running OS X on white boxes and such.
Price, you don’t think straight. It is impossible to support correctly white boxes and RANDOM hardware. Apple can NOT write drivers for thousands of peripherals, not even if they had the full hardware specs — which they don’t. Opening OSX to white boxes means the DEATH of the Mac EXPERIENCE.
So, no, PRAY that OSX won’t do the same mistake BeOS did. OSX should only run on Apple PCs.
http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+th…ml?tag=nefd.top
“After Jobs’ presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. “That doesn’t preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will,” he said. “We won’t do anything to preclude that.”
So the new Intel Macs are just standard PC’s capable of running Windows.
“However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers’ hardware. “We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac,” he said.”
So then the new Intel Macs must have a chip of some sort that OSX will search for on bootup to verify it’s an Apple/Intel Mac. But standard enough for Windows to run on it.
I’m sure we’ll be seeing a patch to allow OSX to run on any PC even before it’s release next June.
DDR2, PCI-x, SATA and SLI were due to x86!
Umn….not really DUE to x86. These were due to companies wanting generally higher performance to solve (various) bandwidth bottlenecks. They are ALL processor agnostic. I’d say server companies pushed for these more. Oh, and SLI isn’t even properly standardized. ATI and nVidia both do it completely differently. The ONLY thing x86 provided was an acid test platform so that companies could say “it works with this, so it’s ready for primetime”.
If these technologies weren’t around, Apple would have invented something and submitted it as a standard (see Firewire).
–JM
Earlier…before I heard the news, I did a websearch for live coverage of WWDC. I ended up finding someone’s notes from the 2003 event, and–lo and behold–there was Poppa Steve proclaiming the G5 to be the best processor on the planet.
Ha ha ha….way to go Poppa Steve.
This doesn’t change anything for me…my 6 month old eMac is still slow and Tiger is still buggy.
I really really really love watching the Mac faithful squirm.
I don’t think I agree. Apple doesn’t have to support OS X on whitebox machines to allow it to run. Apple’s core market won’t use OS X on whitebox’s anyway (if its unsupported and unadvertised), but they would be able to build up their geek niche a bit, a contingent that’s always been good for evangelism. Plus, with OS X releases $129 apiece and people seeming happy to buy a new one every year, it’d help their software sales a bit too.
Also, I don’t think the hardware support thing is as easy as its made out to be. These days, most of the “incompatible” hardware is USB or Firewire peripherals. Even if you keep people from putting in new PCI cards, they’ll still have the support issues of people wondering why their Logitech USB Camera won’t work.
“We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.”
I think Apple is too used to the “I just point, click and print” crowd they’ve always had. I give it a month after the release before their work is reverse engineered.
As an original Mac user for more than 12 years now, I am really sorry for all the fans. :-((((((
I really didn’t expect this!!
:-(((((((((((
“I felt a great disturbance in the mac world, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. …”
Couldn’t you be a little more creative? This comment was posted on Slashdot as well.
Hmmm, any ressemblance anyone?
I think it is a good move for Apple. Now I just hope they will also use AMD processors WHICH are the only speed-king!
Rayiner, you are wrong here. It is all about PERCEPTION. When BeOS was not able to run well on all PPCs and all x86s and the reply from Be was “buy a BeBox instead”, these people HATED BeOS. They thought that it was “a bad OS, it just doesn’t work”. No matter if it was running perfectly on the hardware it was supposed to: the BeBox.
Apple will NOT want to risk people get a bad Mac experience whatsoever. Locking-in Mac OS X to Apple PCs is the right solution.
Why would Apple intentionally cut out 100% of the currently running x86 systems from running OSX. Seems like a bizzare move on the part of Apple! I guess they have to keep their secret cult motif?
I’m not a big Mac person.. I mean I love Mac OS X but, I’ve only owned 1 Mac and that’s the G3 B/W I’m using right now(Running Tiger).. I got it off ebay a while back. I love it because of how simple everything is. Considering, old apps will run on the new boxes, we’ll see faster machines, especially for the laptops, and potentially lower prices(especially for Video Card upgrades?). What’s the problem? It sounds good to me, as long as they get the developers working to release the native stuff.
>Couldn’t you be a little more creative? This comment was posted on Slashdot as well.
Not really, I posted it here first, then on slashdot prior anyone else, you can look at the time frame.
BFG: “I guess they have to keep their secret cult motif?”
They also don’t want to have to support all the people buying $300 PCs and expecting them to just work with OS X.
What in the hell are you babbling about?
honestly, you had a premade tirade already and just needed an excuse to let loose, but you didnt even address what i said, rather just got out knocking x86 even though i am fairly certain you havent written anything that it would matter which architecture you are on.
next time, respond to what people wrote, not what you think they should have said so you can say what you origianlyl wanted to
… to run osx un my xbox
“They also don’t want to have to support all the people buying $300 PCs and expecting them to just work with OS X.”
What’s there to support? Printers work, digital cameras, scanners, Nvidia and ATI video cards all work. It’s up to the hardware manufacturers to release drivers with thier products. Not every piece of hardware I own works out of the box with Windows and it isn’t an issue.
That is a good point, but I see no reason for there to be a technical lockout keeping OS X on Apple machines. Apple’s party line can easily be “OS X only works on Apple x86”, it doesn’t actually have to be technically true.
At the end of the day, OS X will run on whitebox PCs. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of how long. Apple can do it the easy way, and get them some points from a small but important market niche, or they can do it the hard way.
And to be completely honest, it is reasonable that OS X should work on any PC. Ford doesn’t tell you where you can drive your car, and Apple shouldn’t be able to tell you where you can use your OS. Once money has changed hands, the relationship is over — I’ve got my one copy license, and I’m going to do whatever I want with it, save copy it further. Now, Apple is entirely within their rights to put up barriers to uses it doesn’t want, but similarly, I’m entirely within my rights to circumvent those barriers.
I ain’t wainting for the bug ridden conversion process to end.
I’ll be buying 1 last Apple now, and wait it out for the dust to settle.
We’ll see if all this software runs flawlessly.
Oh, and one last time: Screw you IBM.
Sorry for the angry sounding title, but I wanted the chance to try OS X without having to buy antother system, oh well I have AMD anyway/
What are you smoking ?
Where are the “thousands” of peripherals that Apple will have to support ? The most important ones (videocards, soundcards, printers etc) are already supported. As long as there exist opensource drivers (from freebsd, linux, whatever) support for OSX will be trivial.
No matter what you say, there is no way in hell that OsX
will *not* run on commodity hardware. At first it will
probably be through firmware bypassing hacks etc (trivial)
but sooner rather than later it will be painless for someone
to install it on any “standard pc” of his choice.
Nextstep and Openstep were both operating systems “tailored”
for a specific “x86”. This didnt stop anyone developing
extra drivers. The result: Nextstep and Openstep run on
pretty much anything these days. This proves that
the ridiculus facts that some ppl in here love to proclaim
(custom chipsets and the whole lot) are trivial to
circumvent.
The real point is that since OsX will run on x86, Steve
would be stupid not to take on Microsoft. I believe that
this is exactly his long term plan. Slowly shift focus
to x86 and then “open the gates” and officially allow OsX
to run on everything. There is no way in hell that Jobs
being the ambitious man that he is, will feel satisfied
with the tiny market share that a locked-down Mac solution
would offer. With the announcement today, he is working
towards that goal.
It is time to forget all you ever knew about the power pc!
Wow that didnt take long.
So finally, at last, we will be able to own cool looking computers with a safe virus free OS without having to run our software at one third the speed of the neighbours windows infested three hundred pound dell.
One of the big reasons I have been a Mac user is they are different. PowerPC not Intel or AMD! The PowerPC has been the chip since I was studying computer architecture in college in the early 90’s. It was superior in design then and still is. Stevo you have been trumpeting the greatness of PowerPC over Intel for years with numerous commercials, presentations, etc. and now you go to the dark side. I am wondering how anyone could possibly believe you anymore. I have to say I am pretty disgusted and wondering if I should even stick with Apple systems in the future. OS X just blows Windows away and that may be strong enough to keep me going but man I am not a happy camper right now and Apple you are going to have to do something incredible to dig yourselves out of this hole you just dug for yourselves.
“We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.”
phew, one more virus Windows users don’t have to worry about.
Seriously, I see no reason anymore to ever buy a mac. Linux has everything the Mac does, and it’s completely free. And the above quote means that Mac will always be relegated to last place, below even Linux, since Windows users cannot simply “switch” to the Mac OS without buying Apple’s expensive hardware.
You are really wrong. You are the one who is smoking stuff and have no idea about the hardware compatibility nightmares. Ever stumbled onto freaked up BIOS and buggy chipsets on x86? Probably not. But most of us have. They are impossible to get the work right. Apple will kill itself if they open OSX.
>Steve would be stupid not to take on Microsoft.
Steve would be stupid if he actually will.
I had TWO companies dying before my eyes for taking on MS. One was the one I was working for and one my husband was (Be). I have enough industry knowledge and experience competing with MS in the OS dpt. It’s stupid to even think about it.
>Why would Apple intentionally cut out 100% of the currently running x86 systems from running OSX. Seems like a bizzare move on the part of Apple! I guess they have to keep their secret cult motif?
Because it allows them to move forward, but without changing the companies existing strategies. Apple sells a computing experience. The user should not care about what is in the box, just what is on the screen. That is what Apple does now, this is what they want to do in the future. Maybe somewhere down the road they may decide to open things up, but for now, this is just another step down the same road.
Why do you think Red Hat does not care about Linux on the *common* desktop? Because they realize the impossibility — their engineers have said that MANY times in their blogs.
Apple has a better chance, but DIRECT competition is NOT in favor of Apple or anyone else’s for that matter.
Please do not take the above comment out of context. It was meant to be part of my earlier reply to Mexican. Reading it “alone” it won’t give the correct picture of what I am trying to illustrate.
The real question is, will I be able to dual boot Mac OSX on Mac hardware with Windows or Linux?
I believe the G5 PPC’s use more power and are watercooled?
No, G5’s use FAR less power than P4’s. The problem was that the G5’s Apple was getting were not rated at the speed they wanted, so they overclocked then. The more you cool a chip, the more you can overclock it. The watercooling of the G5 has nothing to do with power and everything to do with increasing the clockrate.
Things change. IBM was blowing smoke up Steve’s ass about what he could expect in the future. Steve went and repeated the lies, thinking they were truth. It doesn’t matter a bit if PPC is “superior” in some way to X86 if the PPC can’t keep up with X86 in the real world.
Should Apple just keep using obsolete G4s in the Powerbook line forever? Or should they just throw out the sleek Powerbook design and kludge together a big ugly monster that can dissipate the heat from a G5? Then it wouldn’t be a Powerbook anymore, would it?
What should Jobs do? Just keep spouting the IBM propaganda, now that it’s been PROVEN false, and hope that if he ignores the problem then maybe it’ll all just go away or the design fairy will leave a 3Ghz G5 under his pillow?
Only an idiot stays the course no matter what just because “that’s what I said and I’m sticking to it.” Things changed, Jobs adapted. Why that’s so horrifying to so many people is a real mystery to me.
This is a sad day! – To think that only 4months ago I bought a brand new top of the range Powerbook only to find it will be obsolete within the next year. It will probably have very litte resale value and will end up as a collector’s item. I can understand why they had to do it, it’s just disappointed me.
I made a switch from Microsoft to Apple over a year ago and so far have been trouble free, but this has angered me and for once I am grateful I still have my AMD64 Windows PC – which will we fast enough to run Windows Longhorn. It will also run the 64bit version of Windows XP and Longhorn and is backward compatible right through to Windows 95. It sounds likely that Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 will not be compiled for PowerPC and therefore my powerbook will never see any improvements beyond Tiger.
I can’t understand, why a P4? surely this means no more 64bit support, forget adding extra RAM, forget all about the advantages of Altivec. Surely they should of used x86_64, this seems like a very large step backwards for Apple in a time when the wintel world is slowly moving to 64bit.
Mac OS X will be cracked in no time to run on a standard PC, this is obvious. As for Windows, why would anyone buy a more expensive Macintosh just to run Windows.
That really is an excellent point. Apple exists at the pleasure of Microsoft. They cannot survive competing with them. However, can they really survive without competing with them? Apple can never get “too good”, or else Microsoft will take them out. It’s like being a lawyer for the mob. It’s a cushy job, but as soon as you outlive your usefulness you’re gone. with Tiger shaping up to be everything Longhorn wanted to be, but won’t be, how long will Apple stay on Microsoft’s good side?
Yes, the chip WAS fastest (in many benchmarks) when Steve said it was fastest.
Yes, PPC is a better design.
But, if no one can make PPC go any faster in enough quantity without requiring a watercooler then it doesn’t matter. If IBM couldn’t (or wouldn’t) then it isn’t going to happen.
Steve and Co. didn’t switch out of spite, they made a business and technical decision based on the track records and roadmaps of PPC and x86 chips. Right now, PPC looks like it is almost at a dead end. Would you rather not have OSX at all?
Actually, the evidence points to Apple increasing the voltage in the process of overclocking the chip. That increases the power a lot. Indications are that the 2.7GHz G5s do run quite hot, suggesting that their power usage really isn’t all that much better than x86 chips running at similar voltages/clock-rates. Might be better than the Prescott P4s, but I doubt its better than the new San Diego core Athlon FX.
Does todays announcement really change anything? Mac OS X will still only run on Apple hardware. The user experience will stay on the same course. Most if not all applications will not see a difference. Apple will probably keep the price high although it will now be easier to compare what you are getting vs. what you are paying for.
For me, the only thing I am excited about is emulating Windows will be much faster.
Why don’t you wake up? The point is, is that people who have just invested in a new Mac have now found out that there machines will be obsolete in only a year and will more than likely never see a major OS upgrade.
Does anyone know if the GOD DAMNED Steve Jobs plans to support AMDs too or not? Shit! They were advertising for years that OSX is a 64-bit OS and now they’re running it on 32-bit P4s! God damn you Steve! Now they’ve decided to switch because PowerPCs are not as expected, no problem; but why the hell they chose Intel over AMD? God damned decision makers…
There are plenty of EM64T P4’s around, and have been for a good while now. The P4 is as 64-bit as the G5 and the AMD64 (which it’s 100% compatible with). Intel and AMD have very broad patent sharing, which is why Intel gets AMD’s 64 bit extensions and AMD gets Intel’s SIMD stuff (SSE, etc.).
Tiger currently runs on everything from the humble G3 to the G5 and is 64-bit when it can be and 32-bit otherwise. All Intel CPUs in the future will be 64-bit, and no Intel Macs will exist until that future is here anyway. So what exactly are you complaining about?
I don’t understand how this apps build for 64bit could be run (even with Rosetta) on a 32bit P4 processor.
Can somebody explain this ?
I mean, if Apple has chosen x86 instead of ia64 or x64, that means a backward step!! isn’t it ?
The P4’s AMD64 implementation blows. It’s not nearly as good as AMD’s x86-64 and certainly not as good as the G5’s implementation. On the P4, 64-bit code often gets slower, while on the AMD chips, 64-bit code is almost always faster.
I am uncertain as of whether they are using the EM64T P4 or a standard P4. Maybe we will know more when the first developer macs are shipped.
I am only complaining because I’ve spent alot of money on a piece of hardware that will not be phased out.
I don’t care what chip Apple uses as long as I have OS X. It wasn’t like I was going to Switch to Windows of they moved Windows to a G5. OS X is the reason I like Apple computers. I could care less what CPU they use.
As for white, brown, pink, whatever boxes. Unless it is an Apple box you won’t be able to run OS X.
Why are they changing from IBM Gx CPUs to Intel? Because IBM isn’t able to or is unwilling to deliver them at increased speeds soon enough (RE: no promised 3ghz CPUs last year or even yet).
Exactly!
And it might even be possible to run Windows natively on a Mac, not just emulate it faster.
Other than that, nothing much has really changed.
Why does everyone seem to think the P4 is 32-bit only? The new P4s are 100% compatible with AMD64.
As to your question, it looks like Apple is pulling a Dell and only intends to create Intel Macs, not Generic X86_64 Macs. However, when the community hacks OS X so that it will run on commodity hardware whether Apple wants it to or not, it should run on AMD machines as happily as on Intel ones.
Intel has been known to have quantity & availability problems in the past, though. Who knows, maybe the first time Apple doesn’t get a shipment of Intel processors on time Steve might pitch a fit and call AMD. The OS would run fine on either from a technical standpoint.
But you can bet Intel has sweetened the pot for Jobs — so long as Macs are exclusively “Intel Inside” machines.
This has got to be one of the bigger IBM blunders out there.
Where are they going to grow programmers for thier PowerPC line? They aren’t selling any cheap PowerPC servers last time I looked. Did they lose the WILL to WIN?
should of said phased out not will not be phased out
heh.. the mac se/30 was *not* the pinnacle of anything.
the Turbo cube was though. killer systems
I own a NeXT Station Turbo.. loves it!
> Why don’t you wake up? The point is, is that people who have just invested in a new Mac have now found out that there machines will be obsolete in only a year and will more than likely never see a major OS upgrade.
For the record, I am one of the people who just bought a new Mac 2 months ago. My Mac would have been obsolete in 2 years whether they made this announcement or not. Also, when the Intel Macs come out, software and any new OS will still work on the PPC machines. That was the whole reason for the binaries that work on both x86 and PPC.
Your machine would have been phased out anyway, even if only by a faster, newer version of the same architecture. Jobs made it clear that Apple isn’t going to drop support for the PPC line anytime soon.
Watch and see. When the next iteration of OS X appears it’ll install just as happily on your PPC machine as it will on a new X86 machine, just as the next version of MS Office will be suitable for either archtecture, just as the next version of Adobe-Macromedia’s stuff will be.
Apple might be many things, but they are rarely stupid and/or self-destructive.
> It is all about PERCEPTION. When BeOS was not able to run
> well on all PPCs and all x86s and the reply from Be was “buy
> a BeBox instead”, these people HATED BeOS. They thought
> that it was “a bad OS, it just doesn’t work”. No matter if
> it was running perfectly on the hardware it was supposed to:
> the BeBox.
By the time BeOS/x86 existed, the BeBox was dead. The reason BeOS failed on the x86 was that it just wasn’t really good for anything. It supported a handful of mediocre devices and had no large industry partners to provide software or drivers for things people actually wanted. Be could have built x86 computers that used what little hardware it supported on the x86 side, and tried to sell them as “BeBoxes” and no one would have bought them. The BeBox failed, BeOS/PPC failed, and BeOS/x86 failed and none of it was because BeOS tried to salvage itself by selling on generic x86 machines. Be was already dead when they moved to IA32.
Apple on the other hand has a product that people actually want to buy, and industry support from IHVs and ISVs. They are completely incompatible scenarios.
“We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.” I don’t know – this sounds like the worst of both worlds. Now you have proprietary HW plus weirdo CPU.
> Does anyone know if the GOD DAMNED Steve Jobs plans to support AMDs too or not? Shit!
No. Intel provides a complete solution (motherboard and cpu). AMD only can supply the CPU.
> They were advertising for years that OSX is a 64-bit OS and now they’re running it on 32-bit P4s! God damn you Steve! Now they’ve decided to switch because PowerPCs are not as expected, no problem; but why the hell they chose Intel over AMD? God damned decision makers…
Umm… Intel CPU’s are 64 bit as well. Pretty much the exact same as the AMD ones.
I think that by releasing OS X for commodity X86 boxes Apple could do what Linux has long failed at: knock a serious dent in Microsoft’s desktop dominance.
But I can’t see why they would want to do that … it’s not what they are about.
“We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.”
Ha, I would like to see them try. Good move in the long run, going x86 that is.
not 2000
Thomas Howell. He’s a young kid
Think about it this way: Apple releasing OS X for commodity hardware would be like an exclusive clothing designer in Paris deciding to make his work available on the bargain rack at K-Mart. What would be his motivation?
I think I may develop a FireFox plugin that allows one to filter out posts by trolls, idiots, fanboys, and any other type of freak.
Some of the post here are informative and/or insightful, but most are a waste of bandwidth [including this one].
Most of the P4’s being sold at places like Best Buy are already 64bit (all P4 6xx are 64bit). They just don’t advertise the fact since they ship with XP Home which is not 64bit capable. Supposedly before the end of the year even the Celerons will all be 64bit.
“We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.”
As an aside to this, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple decided to make and sell a PC virtualization environment for windows that supports MacOSX along with a bundled macosx that has been customized to work in the virtualized environment ala xen or colinux. It would not work as a stand alone os outside of the virtualization environment. Apple wouldn’t have to worry about supporting every piece of hardware under the sun, and would still retain control over the platform. Brand it a “VirtualMac” or a “vMac” and sell it for $250. I don’t know if I would buy it, but I’m sure many would….
Just one random thought. Yes, Apple will probably lose some sales between now and 6/06 as potential customers defer their purchases. On the other hand, had Apple instead decided to stay with PPC, it would have surely lost a fair bit of the laptop market: even if one believes that currently there is parity between the G4 Powerbooks and comparable WinTel laptops (which is probably too generous an assessment), there is little on the horizon to suggest that Apple could have regained the lead over the next year or so.
Just my $.000002….
it wont be long after the initial release before some hackers get a hold of OS X/x86 and we will all be able to running it on white box PCs. It will happen. Yeah, Apple will _probably_ put some custom chips on their motherboards to lock the OS into their PCs, but, we all know custom chips _can_ be emulated in software and there are plenty of people out there samrt enough to write the code.
I’m afraid that whether or not there’s any incentive for Apple to actually target OS X to generic PCs has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Eugenia’s insistance that Be’s failings have any relevance to Apple’s future makes any sense.
“Mac users” aren’t going to buy generic PCs to run OS X, because they exist in another plane of existence where Apple sells them an “experience” that is more valuable to them than price-performance efficiency. Apple could license OS X to Dell and they would still buy Apple’s computers–modern Macs differ from “PCs” in custom motherboards and a different processor architecture, neither of which are inherently superior. They have no intrinsic custom quality that surpasses what’s available elsewhere, but they have a very dedicated market just the same.
Other people aren’t going to spend $1.5-3k on a desktop that doesn’t really offer them any real advantages, and that’s why they go and buy all of those “crappy” PCs that “Mac users” chastise so regularly in their comparisons between their computers as BMWs. They might shell out $130 for the “OS X experience” if it means most spyware isn’t yet going to affect them and they might not, but they aren’t going to shell out $1.5-3k for a Mac that uses Intel processors, either. So there might be some advantage to Apple not making OS X completely impossible to run on generic PCs, and there might not; it depends largely on what the fickle public decides that it wants in the long run.
But whether or not it makes sense has basically nothing to do with Be’s failings. Apple, much unlike Be, can actually get companies to write their own drivers for their platform. ISVs, too.
“The fact remains: Apple has removed the biggest obstacle
to running Osx on commodity pc’s. My guess is, shortly
after Osx/x86 is released, everyone will be able to run it
(no support of course) on any pc of his choice. Then,
Apple will seriously have to reconsider its “official”
Osx-lockdown policy. And no “custom chipset” or firmware
or similar ingenuity is going to prevent that. The future
looks bright. ”
Despite what you think, Apple isn’t stupid. And no you aren’t going to be to easily, if at all, run Mac OS X on commodity pcs. There is no chance of this.
VMWare could make $$$ by providing virtual layer for MacOSX.
Your machine would have been phased out anyway, even if only by a faster, newer version of the same architecture. Jobs made it clear that Apple isn’t going to drop support for the PPC line anytime soon.
Watch and see. When the next iteration of OS X appears it’ll install just as happily on your PPC machine as it will on a new X86 machine, just as the next version of MS Office will be suitable for either archtecture, just as the next version of Adobe-Macromedia’s stuff will be.
Do you remember how long fat binaries supporting the 68K and PPC were around? About one revision of all major packages. PPC owners can now expect most PPC software not already finished to be left unfinished, and no more than one or two more upgrades to existing packages.
No matter what Jobs says in his speech, third-party vendors will realize the money is in the new machines. By not releasing an update (which makes little money) you force people into buying an all new package (for a lot more money). That is what happened during the switch from 68K to PPC, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t be the same now.
Even Apple only supported three revisions to the OS after the switch to PPC – 7.6, 8.0 and 8.1. It will be no different now. PPC owners will get two or three OS updates, and then dropped completely, even by Apple.
Despite what you think, Apple isn’t stupid. And no you aren’t going to be to easily, if at all, run Mac OS X on commodity pcs. There is no chance of this.
It’s not a matter of Apple being stupid or not. It’s just not possible to make something unbreakable. Heck, if Apple came up with technology that would prevent you from running OS X on whitebox machines, they could apply the same technology to making unpiratable software. They could then get out of the OS business entirely, because they’d make so much money selling that technology. But it ain’t going to happen. Hollywood with its billions of dollars couldn’t make CSS unbreakable. Microsoft hasn’t been able to keep people from running custom code on their XBox. The PSP has already been hacked. To paraphrase Ian Malcom: “[geeks] will find a way…”
“Yeah right. What are you going to buy instead?”
Well that’s _exactly_ the question. It’s a lose-lose situation. Really. Macs where the best choice out there. Now (architecture-wise) they are down the road to become the least bad one. I can’t believe what happened.
I’m still pissed at IBM.
Where am I going to get my dual-core PowerPC?
But, a dual-core Apple/Intel PowerBook would be really nice.
IBM screwed up because?
1) Apples xServe took sales away from the Power line?
2) Microsoft added a Poison clause to the game contract.
( Kill Apple with high priced power chips and slow speeds. )
( Bill at his old tricks? )
It’s not a matter of Apple being stupid or not. It’s just not possible to make something unbreakable.
It certainly isn’t, and I just wonder what Apple have released here. Their threats, EULAs and their frequent running for lawsuits isn’t going to help them. If one thing from the last umpteen years of development on x86 has taught us, you can’t prevent anyone from doing anything. Whether they like it or not, Apple has joined the white-box club.
Intel is also the worst possible choice they could have made if they wanted to differentiate themselves in the x86 world. They should have picked AMD, supply or no supply problems. Hell, even Sun recognised that one.
If they don’t allow commodity x86-based hardware to run on their new Macs then this little escapade will have been for nothing. They need to grow their market desperately, and they can now do that through the large supply of the x86 market. If they do then it’s possible they may be able to navigate the waters carefully, but given Apple’s past record for heavy-handedness and throwing lawsuits around I’d say we’ve seen the beginning of the death of Apple. I hope for his sake that Steve realises this isn’t just a chip change because they need a strategy for handling this.
Despite what you think, Apple isn’t stupid. And no you aren’t going to be to easily, if at all, run Mac OS X on commodity pcs. There is no chance of this.
Wasn’t it a couple of days ago when people said that Mac
and x86 were simply *not* going to happen ? The Mac minions
have for a long time been deluding themselves sprouting
out the same crap over and over again. A couple of
“open-sores” guys managed to implement a powerpc emulator
and run Osx on x86 when everyone thought it was impossible.
And NOW, NOW that Osx will run natively on x86 you want me
to believe your bullshit that Apple somehow is going to make
it impossible for it to run on every pc in existence ?
In a few years i will be laughing at all you minions and
your religious bigotry.
Why are you angry with IBM? Apple was a small market, what did you expect them to do, waste a lot of money fighting against technical barriers that have been affecting all of the major players for Apple? Why? Why does there have to be a big conspiracy, when IBM just rightly devotes its energies to projects that will make it money?
The webcast will be here, if no one has posted the url yet:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/