Dear Apple, I am among the many switchers you successfully brought to your platform. And now I plan to switch back. Simply put, after reading this press release, I no more think the Mac has any future as an interesting hardware or software platform. I further believe that you have made such a bafflingly shortsighted decision that I worry about the sanity of your management staff, enough to dread more of these moves. I also disbelieve most of the claims that have been made today as purely hilarious.I do not expect you to keep reading beyond the latest paragraph but I’ll keep typing anyway.
First of all, you’re making an unnecessary shift. Were mentioned two previous transitions, both were painful but necessary; this one is not only even more painful but completely superfluous. In a period where the PC market falls into a seemingly bottomless bit, sales of Apple’s computers are rising. You’re gaining market share. Want to gamble everything when you have nothing to win and everything to lose? Some would claim neither IBM or Motorola could deliver for the notebooks but is Intel’s offering any better? I’ll elaborate on this fallacy later on.
I do not believe either fat binaries or dynamic recompilation will solve compatibility issues between architectures:
I just learned that dynamic recompilation won’t work if the executable requires a G4, G5 or Altivec (among other things). Great, meaning most assembly code must be rewritten for x86 as well as many optimized binaries. How about device drivers? Must third parties write two versions of their drivers to be compatible with Macs? Weren’t they already scared away from the platform because of lack of market share?
Aren’t you worried that dynamic recompilation, working only one way, will leave current PPC users in the dust? I am worried that in a year from now third parties will start releasing Intel-only binaries because it’s less hassle. It is particularly worrisome since many will start porting their applications to the Mac because of this transition. Right now I wouldn’t think of buying a PPC Mac. I believe your sales will crash starting from now. Besides, that’s not the only reason why it will happen: potential customers approving the switch will obviously wait while those ambivalent or disapproving will still prefer to stay away from an architecture that has been announced will become obsolete.
You’re claiming that recompiling PPC binaries on the fly for x86 processors is fast enough. My personal experience with such recompilation prevents me from believing such a thing. It’s going to be awfully slow, probably just as much as Java, or any software that runs in a virtual machine. Apart from that, loading time will be atrociously slow. Caching recompiled code might be an option, but then it will break any applications that internally generate code (like most emulators) or modify their own code segment (many useful anti-debugger tricks are based on that principle), while requiring even more disk space.
The use of fat binaries is an inelegant bloat. That means twice the required disk space and twice the download time (at the very least). As for developers, that also means twice the assembly code (as mentioned above; for many applications, that means almost twice the development time), twice the compiler glitches (as a programmer, I can attest there will be quite many), severe endianness issues (data on file must be read by platforms with different byte ordering, meaning many patches), and more frustrating surprises.
What’s the point of choosing Intel as a partner anyway? A company having so little vision that it has bet its future on the infamous Itanic and is now left with no long-term alternative? You claimed that IBM couldn’t deliver its 3GHz G5 but isn’t Intel having the same problem? Where is the 4GHz Pentium 4? Can you really believe its notable absence is due to a “marketing decision” as they claim? You claimed that Intel chips are faster but then how about your previous claims about the Megahertz myth (which is truly a myth anyway)? You claimed that Intel could provide faster, low-power chips for laptops but aren’t they using low-performance Pentium M‘s, Centrinos (performance being especially bad when it comes to integer computation and many multimedia tasks like DivX encoding, and what to say of the fact that the benchmarks giving it an edge, even for day to day applications use Pentium 4’s with at most 1Mb L2 cache while newest ones have 2Mb)? Because Pentium 4’s in notebooks heat so much that the fan must blow continuously — forget thin, quiet laptops. By the way, how about your shift to 64-bit machines? What’s the point of switching Powerbooks to Pentium M’s, a 32-bit processor, since your original complaint is that you couldn’t put a G5 in, a 64-bit processor? Or if you plan to use real P4’s in Powerbooks, I wish you luck. Speaking of 64-bit, don’t you mind at all that Intel, once owning its own architecture, is now following AMD’s lead by copying x86-64? By the way, aren’t you a bit worried about the fact that Intel is losing ground to AMD in the desktop processors market (since last year) just like nVidia is against ATI in the graphics chipsets market (thes two companies have a lot in common by the way) and that you may have to divorce from them even before marriage has been consumed? Oh, and how to explain that x86 processors are so much better than PPC (that can’t be further from the truth) given that everyone else is switching to the latter architecture, even Microsoft with the XBOX 360? Do you really feel the need to run counter-mainstream at all costs, enough not to learn of the mistakes of others?
You claimed that Mac OS X will never run on generic PC’s. You wanna bet? How about I predict that whatever scheme you have in mind to prevent this will be defeated almost immediately by hobbyists, may it be engraved into the BIOS or otherwise? That software like VMWare (or better, upcoming Linux kernel versions) running an operating system on top of another may easily support the Mac? If it’s so much about the OS like many Mac users claim, why would they bother buying Apple hardware when they can just copy the OS and crack it? Or do you plan to introduce such insane amounts of DRM into your operating system that it will alienate even legitimate users?
Aren’t you awfully worried that Wine will be ported for the Mac? And then that switchers will keep using Windows applications on their new machines? Far from being good news as a transitional help, that means a far less reliable platform overall. Gone will be the days of the secure operating system with solid applications — a Mac will just be another PC, with the same awful reputation than Wintel machines (actually, it will even run Windows — even if not officially supported). Give a warm welcome to mail worms (or do you seriously think people will abandon Outlook, even those switching to Mac OS X?), Internet Explorer security issues, and more.
On top of that, all of this is bound to make the system more complex, therefore inherently less reliable and secure. And what to say about the memory usage, which is obviously bound to rise significantlty? Isn’t that going to deter performance even more than it already does?
I guess you didn’t think of the fact that making so many transitions every now and then may also scare many potential customers and partners away, if only because they worry about you making more of such reckless transitions or simply out of frustration. Or perhaps having to pay an extra $999 for your Developer Transition Kit will do the trick.
Let’s summarize the above: this transition means a likely dark period of low sales, plenty of nasty software issues for both users and developers, hardware issues for laptops (supposedly the main reason for the transition), your reputation sinking rock bottom over time for all the reasons mentioned above, a complete absence of vision just as characteristic of your new partner, and overall a move just so devoid of meaning that I couldn’t believe the rumors until I read the press releases. In short, so long Apple. It was good while it lasted.
About the author:
I am a low-level, embedded computer programmer who started like many on a Windows desktop, then switched to Linux, then switched to the Mac. And plans to switch back to Linux before long.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
I disagree with you on many points. Apple’s machine will be known throughout the industry as the system that ‘just works’.
I don’t think Apple made this move without thinking and deliberating over it.
I only see good things coming from this.
Seriously, what’s the fuss? I own two Powerbooks and I am happy with them. At the end of the day, as long as Intel Macs look good, have a good build quality and run Mac OS X, I will be happy.
To the guy who wrote the article, Go back to Linux, it’s your loss, somehow you believe your Mac is suddenly useless. It’s software that counts, Mac OS X will remain exactly the same operating system no matter what CPU architecture it runs on. Being a Linux user, surely you would understand this?
It will be years before PPC macs disappear, and by then, something else will probably come along. Next year will be extremely interesting and costly on the wallet. We will have Longhorn (hopefully), KDE 4, and possibly Mac OS X Leopard by the end of the year, and this time, they can all be benchmarked on machines with the same hardware specifications. Compatibility will be so much easier with projects line WINE.
Just one thing though, shouldn’t Apple remove the references to G5 vs P4 on their Powermac site, seems a but hypocritical now!.
It was quite some time since i last read something this full of sh1t …how can this be frontpage on OSNEWS ?? this world is falling apart…
Are you sure that’s really the word you’re looking for?
Man, some of you people are waaay too damn precious about which processor is being used in a *tool*.
PPC and x86 both have their pros and cons. If IBM couldn’t deliver the CPUs that Apple needed to *stay* in business, then they made the right choice by going to a vendor that could.
While I’m no fan of Intel either, I prefer AMD myself, this move makes sense from a business point of view. Also, this move could potentially open up a wider market for Apple.
Once the hackers get a hold of OS X/x86 and crack the Apple-only protection, which they *will*, millions of others will get to experience OS X for themselves. Who knows? Some of them may actually go out and buy aa Apple IntelMac because of it. I might. Or Apple could be really smart about it and offer a generic PC version of their OS and keep certain packages as premiums for their own IntelMac line.
As for the ‘user experience’ some of you all are screaming and crying about, I’m certain it will be the same. The same exterior for the box, the same nice LCD panels, the same nice keyboard, same nice mouse and same beautifully presented OS X. How many of you actually have even opened your PowerMac’s to even look at the processor anyway? Oh, I forgot, you couldn’t even if you wanted to without removing that massive heatsink the thing has on top of it.
These things are just tools, I’d suggest that anyone not cling to them so preciously as to cause themselves suffering.
Basically, the writer of this open letter is an idiot!
Disclaimer: I do not use Apple products, but few of my friends do, several for professional reasons, one because he likes its GUI better than windows. None of them cares about what kind of chip is inside. They care about usability and functionality.
Of course, it can be expected that few of the apple users use apply for no other reasons but to feel ‘special’ and ‘different than others’. For those – good luck in your lifelong search for something more exotic using which makes you so special, at least in your eyes.
” Worms/virii”
Plural of virus is, well, viruses – not virii FYI
“How can you say Rosetta will be slow when it was demoed running the PCU intensive Photoshop at what seemed a perfectly acceptable speed.”
Because a lot of so-called “experts” here @ OSNews talk out of their a**es.
Hii, i truly agree with the author of the article!
also, i think this imho stupid and bisness suicidal move was whispered in Jobs’ ears and, had himself convinced in a time he lost his otherwise smart and great business instincts, by an implanted guy at the Apple fruitbag from M$oft to kill off them! goodnight all at Apple! sleepwell and tight.
I think it’s funny to hear all the recent ‘switchers’ moaning that the Intel switch makes their machines ‘obsolete’. No developer is going to write Intel Only software unless there is an extraordinary technical reason to do so, and guess what? With Core Image and Core Audio and other development frameworks doing much of the heavy lifting, there are few reasons to do that. Most useful apps aren’t written by fools. Fat Binaries are simple, and they will be the reality for every new app. Drive space is cheap. Smart installers might even strip out the code not needed by your CPU.
Classic apps are history. Good riddance. Used machines are readily available and cheap, and few apps that old see much performance benefit in the newest hardware anyway. I have yet to meet a ‘switcher’ who even has a classic app other than an occasional six year old bootleg copy of Quark XPress (which they shouldn’t have anyway).
Take a valium, switchers. Practically all new software will run on your old machine for many many years. Your ‘obsolete’ macs will do you right.
> I just bought a 20′ iMac G5 and was going to buy the next release of the PowerBook. With the transition announcement, I’ve decided to buy a new Pentium M/Centrino laptop instead. It’s not a good feeling when you know the machine you just bought will be phased out in 2 years time. Will never buy another Apple again.
You are the exactly who I am talking about. I can understand if you need a laptop right now, and you bought a Centrino, but why will you never buy another Apple? In two years, when everything new from Apple is Intel, why would you not buy an Apple then? What made you want an Apple now that changes with this announcement?
I think we are going to see the new Macs within the next 6-8 months. Apple hardware will crash because new potential customera are going to wait for the new ones since the PPC arquitecture is already obsolete. Let see when his market shares start to sink…..
-2501
I’m using a Mac right now. You’re wacko.
Please explain yourself. Unless you can discern what chip is inside based on your usage of the machine, what do you care? Tell me how the programs you use you can tell what’s you what’s inside the machine.
I could be wrong, of course, but the timelines in the articles kind of
support Apple’s “low end Macs in ’06, the high end Macs by 2007”
intel chip timeline. Recommend interested folks check out the article
links or google “Conroe”, “Merom”, or “Woodcrest” with the word “intel”
placed before each chip’s name.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23055
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5697088.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-5181256.html
http://www.endian.net/details.asp?ItemNo=3883
Have a good one…
Zen
This guy makes a good point that is often ignored. People who whine and wail about backward compatibility, are more often than not people who are running old, un-upgradeable warez. if you spent £1000 on licensed professional software, and are used to spending regular money on application upgrades anyway for good professional software upgrades. then what do you care that the highly paid people who write the software you use are going to have to spend a few extra man hours tweaking the software you pay for to run on your newest mac, thats why you’re spending the big bucks, you know it and so to the guys making a nice living selling you the software.
if it runs os x, then stfu.
What will be Apple’s position on this? AMD being a huge investor of it, along-side Apple, makes a better fit.
Has anyone any concrete proof which Intel CPUs will be used? Sure the demo and dev systems have a P4 in them but will these off-the-shelf CPUs be the ones used in Intel based Macs? The keynote didn’t even mention any specific chips that will ship in these new systems, just “Intel chips”. Could there custom
chip for Apple Macs based on x86?
I get a good laugh from reading this article and all the comments. What a bunch of maroons! Get a life, why don’t you?
“You are the exactly who I am talking about. I can understand if you need a laptop right now, and you bought a Centrino, but why will you never buy another Apple?”
Because most people in this world are stupid and irrational with poor reasoning skills! I haven’t read a single intelligent article or thread from an OMFG the sky is falling and I’ll never look at an Apple again because Steve Jobs did this without any thought and the end of Apple will be me switching back to Intel person.
They just aren’t credible.
“I switched a month ago, and now I’m switching back to Windows”
Why? The machine you bought hasn’t changed. Yes, it’s going to be obsolete in a few years, but unless you bought the top of the line PowerMac and expected Apple to cease all hardware development, then it was going to be obsolete anyway!
My iBook still runs OS X, and if I listen closely to the little fan (on those rare moments it comes on) I don’t hear any fear that it’s going to be replaced any time soon. Of course, I’m anthropomorphising here, but it probably thinks I’m not so logical so what do you do?
And when the change happens, there won’t be bands of Apple engineers roaming the planet, clubbing old Macs to death with terminated SCSI cords and forcing people to upgrade or die.
No, there’ll be an extended transition for a few years where users can migrate as they naturally upgrade their machines. During that time, the only developers who will release OS X86-only binaries will be the ones who don’t want to profit on the large PPC installed base. That’s not good business sense – it makes far more sense to support both and keep track of what type of Mac your users have.
It’s a massive change, but not necessarily a cause for the sort of fear I’ve been seeing.
“I was thinking of getting a new dual 2.7GHz PowerMac, but after this news I’ve decided to bomb Apple headquarters, burn down all the Apple Stores, hack the iTunes web site and beat every single Apple user on the planet to death. No way are Apple getting a single cent from me now! And I’m vitally important to them like no other user is!”
… I’m probably mis-characterising some complaints though…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_(plural)
“In the English language, the normal plural of virus is viruses. This form of the plural is correct, and used most frequently, both when referring to a biological virus and when referring to a computer virus. The forms viri and virii are also used as a plural, although less frequently. There is disagreement among users of the Internet over whether these forms should be considered correct. No reputable printed dictionary includes them as correct forms.
The plural virii is frequently perceived to be founded on a misunderstanding of Latin plurals such as radii. It may have originated as whimsical usage on BBSs (see also: leet). The virii form is used most frequently, although not exclusively, among crackers and computer virus writers with reference to computer viruses. Most computer professionals unaffiliated with the warez, crackers, and virus writing scenes use the viruses form instead of the virii form.”
By the way “virii” would be the plural of “viri” – this means men and is already the plural of “vir”. Hackers and warez people are just plain ol’ wrong.
Enjoy your linux. You obviously don’t have a clue.
No, virii would be the plural of *virius.
The latin plural of virus, if ever there was one, is not known. The word virus is irregular so it can’t be simply deduced from the declension class.
The english may as well do what it does to popular -us words, which is to build a -uses plural.
Take a word such as bus – it’s from omnibus, ‘for-all-ones’. It (-ibus) is a dative plural, it has no latin plural whatever that might mean in latin. It works as an adjective and if used to mean bus, the plural would be on the qualified noun (vehicle, for one, now path); since that is ommitted, it might as well be grafted onto the word, giving (in english) bus + es — which, just guess, it how it’s done.
If anyone has experience in transitions from processors it is Steve Jobs and Apple. Between NeXT and Apple all of this is well-covered ground. They know the pros and cons. What mistakes were made and what they should do to avoid some of them. Hindsight is indeed 20/20 and they have the unique position of actually putting that wisdom to use here.
You will bet there are deals already inked that are appropriate for Intel and Apple in this new venture. I know an Intel-based Mac would be relatively useless if it shipped tomorrow. Unless you want to run most apps in emulation. The funny thing is, with the speed increase they’re seeing. I don’t doubt some emulated PPC apps will run faster than on a native PPC soon.
That said, it will be interesting to see what they’re shipping by the holidays. They’ll need to be offering something. I could see the first Intel Macs popping up then. I’m in the market for a new machine, but I guess I’m holding off a bit to see what pops up.
The Apple Macintosh is much more than the PowerPC CPU. Apple is an attitude, a beleif, and a mindset. It doesn’t matter if it is 5% of the market or 95% of the market. The CPU never made a platform, but CPUs have always ended with a platform. Remember the Apple // line? Needed better CPUs. Maybe it was always that we needed more power.
But I have been waiting for a nice shiny G5 PowerPC PowerMac…and I don’t think it would ever see the light of day with the power drain and heat that CPU produces.
The original posting indicated a move from Windows, to Linux, to Mac. Isn’t it true that Linux is a mindset, an attitude, and not bound by a SINGLE CPU? Linux is about an alternative that is different (imho better) than the Windows alternative. I don’t buy the OS based on the CPU. I buy the CPU based on the OS. I bet most of you do too.
Counsel
Maybe the G5 hit a brick wall with respect to portables. Maybe.
If so, changing processors makes sense.
I won’t mind a bit having a nicely designed fast intel powerbook running OSX.
What worries people is that the future usability of their current system may be diminished: in, say, 3 years, the current G5 and powerbook hardware will still be used and work okay. Applications, and the system, may be stuck at 2007. You may not be able to run the latest photoshop because it will no longer be available for you. Improvements to the system may be reduced to a trickle or even stop altogether.
It’s not a certainty, but it’s worrisome.
You’re being completely irrational. The days when a Mac was a Mac were over a decade ago. At one time, Macs had their own busses (NuBus, ADB), their own CPUs and motherboards, high-end SCSI drives, etc. That hasn’t been true for a very long time. The G5s have the same AGP/PCI combo PCs have, the same cheapo IDE drives, the same DVI connectors. The only thing different is the CPU and motherboard, and even that is very similar to a PC motherboard (same dual-channel DDR400, same northbridge/southbridge arrangement, etc). Now, Apple is just completing the transformation, replacing the last non-PC parts of the Macs with PC-parts. People don’t seem to have cared up till now, I don’t see why they should care now.
I’m curios about comments by some people about Rosetta not supporting AltiVec. Considering that we will not see an Intel based Mac until sometime next year I would imagine that Rosetta will get its own updates. I’m also surprised that no one has raised the point of Apple’s involvement in designing the processors that go into Macs. I personally feel that the processor(s) that end up in future Macs will be co-designed by Apple and manufactured by Intel. They’ll be something that we have not even heard of yet.
If youve ever spoken to apple support or anyone who works in their sales department. You should know they dont care what the customer thinks. So dont write letters, if you like ppc hardware get an amiga
well hopefully the (even unsupported) ability to run windows on a mac will mean that the laptops gain the second mousebutton that has been missing for years
I have to agree with him in most ways. Ever since I herd of the switch I was completly turned off by the mac and do not plan on buying one any more, so yes this switch will greatly effect them since many buyers see every new mac as obselete and wont probably buy them. I know I wont touch them anymore and I expect many more to feel the same way.
As a user of the first gen of PowerPC 601 computers, I remember all the wierd problems and glitches. I remember having to decipher what software vendors meant with fat binary. Now this. So, are we going to be subjected to the infamous “ERROR Type 11” or is it going to say “Reboot baby!”? The migration to Intel does not bode well.
They’ve been doing that for several years now.
Darwin.
What will it do with a quarter of a billion orders?
————————————————–
I dont think the XBox 360 will sell that much. The PS2 just recently hit 80 million units shipped. And thats for the 4 years its been out.
What makes people think the new macs will run windows? Yeah somebody at apple said it would “probably” happen but he is trying to sell something. I wouldn’t believe a thing he said on this topic. I don’t see how they will run windows without microsoft’s help.
Anybody who thinks macs will be cheaper after the switch is a stupid mac zealot. Apple will always charge a premium over a dell or hp or even a DIY PC. The change in processor will in no way affect what they charge for their computers they will still cost more than dell and everybody else just like today. If you want macos then you are going to have to pay a premium just like today.
Having used windows, linux and macos I think the premium is probably worth it compared to windows but IMO macos has nothing on linux. The only reason I have a mac is to run the software that you can only run on a mac like iLife.
.. you should rip them for transitioning to PPC in the first place. The 680×0->PPC transition was purely done because of RISC hype at the time. Unlike the G5 today, the 680×0 _had_ a future when Apple decided to transition. Motorola was plugging forward with 68060 at the time that PPC came around.
This transition actually has far more rationale, like trying to get a decent chip supplier, some decent chips for laptops, and being on an instruction set that has little chance of dying on the desktop in the next couple decades.
I agree that fat binaries suck. However, it sucks a lot less than not having a decent Apple Powerbook anytime soon. For every 10 people Apple loses like you back to Linux, they’re going to gain 100 new users because they have competitive hardware that will likely also run Windows.
Recall your memory, how long does it take for our G4 finally push to 1Ghz? And while IBM save us from the nightmare with the G5 in 2003, but obviously it fail us again. IBM can produce Cell for Sony, triple core 3.2GHZ for Microsoft, but we what have NOW is single core 2.7GHZ G5 and we are still using the aging G4 for our laptop.
We have to realize this can’t happen forever. We don’t know the full picture behind, but from what Steve have said on the keynote, G5 on Powerbook and faster and more advanced G5 won’t arrive anytime soon.
PowerPC may be a more advanced technology. It may really crush the Pentium 3 processor back in many years ago. MHZ myth may be true due to the difference in processor architecture, plus Apple Computer did a kick ass job in software optimization to overcome the lag of raw power. But sometimes you need REAL horsepower for performance. And it can’t be DEAD ON ARRIVE. No matter how good look in paper, it is useless if it doesn’t deliver on time.
Some people crack the OS X and run on their generic PC and Mac Clone business is too things. If some geeks like us crack it and run os x, this will increase market share and won’t do a big loss to Apple since we are talking very very little amount of money here. But letting other company release a “Mac” is another issue. As we see in 10 years ago, they keep pushing the price lower and giving higher peformance, and so Apple can’t sell its own hardware. Apple won’t allow this happen. If some company dare to do so Apple will simply sue them.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
What worries people is that the future usability of their current system may be diminished: in, say, 3 years, the current G5 and powerbook hardware will still be used and work okay. Applications, and the system, may be stuck at 2007. You may not be able to run the latest photoshop because it will no longer be available for you. Improvements to the system may be reduced to a trickle or even stop altogether.
Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at with this too. I remember the 68040 to PowerPC jump and the fat binaries. I remember accidentally buying a PowerPC only version of software, bit of a headache. Obviously I returned it. The thing was, that that started happening more and more where certain companies just said the heck with it and only released for PowerPC. The old machines quickly became second class citizens when it came to new software releases.
Obviously, this will start to happen. It just makes sense that companies would start to put their resources into the newer platform. Course, Jobs wasn’t around back then running Apple and you could only wonder how he would have went about things. He may have even gone with Intel back then. Such a very small world in Silicon Valley.
If your switching back you probably don’t appreciate the Mac in the first place. This so-called open letter appears to me to be a FUD.
I have many Macs of different vintages spanning the last twenty years. All of them are wonderful. The first Mac I bought in 1984 was a revelation to me after the impersonal character based environments of that time. Apple replaced the command line with visual metaphors and put computers in the hands of the rest of us. Not only for purposes of commerce, but also, self-expression. It took Steve Jobs to understand the universal potential of that 1st transition from the Apple II to the Macintosh. Shall I say it, “It changed the world”.
And now, we have the incomparable elegance of OS X.4. Mac Users will continue with the Mac because it’s the best thing going regardless of the hardware manufacturer.
The author of this letter is exactly right. I just switched to Mac, thanks to the Mac Mini. I liked 10.3.9, and am still reserved on 10.4. [I liked 10.3.9 better.]
Now, Apple will be just another beige box builder. OK, so their boxes will be pretty, white instead of beige, look cool, and cost a premium.
Do you think this will save them? I didn’t think they needed saving until they made this move. Think about it. Now they have good hardware and a good OS. When the switch is finished, they’ll be comparable to Dell, HP, and any of the other thousands of x86 box builders, only it’ll be an “Apple”. [Intel inside of an Apple computer will be an “Apple” in name only.] OK, so let’s take this to the obvious next step:
Mid-to-high range Dell computer (Dimension 8400), 3.6 gig P4, 1 gig RAM, no monitor, 128 meg video card, 80 gig HD, 16x CD/DVD Burner, keyboard, mouse, XP Pro: $1,508 today. [XP Pro just to raise the price another $80]
Now let’s look at Apple, Entry level G5 1.8 gig, 1 gig RAM, no monitor, 128 meg video card, 80 gig HD 8x CD/DVD Burner, keyboard, mouse, OS X: $1,724 today.
But, you say, you are comparing Apples and Oranges. Yes, I am, because the systems are different enough that I can’t just compare the exact same thing. OK, fast forward a year or two, now both boxes use the exact same processor. That would mean you are paying a premium price for the Apple name, the Mac OS, and a slower CD/DVD rom drive, and I know it because I can now look at two computers side by side and directly compare everything from HD to processor to memory.
The thing that made Apple unique, the bit that made them just different enough that you couldn’t compare a Mac directly with an Intel box is now eliminated.
In true, As Seen on TV fashion, but wait, there’s more!
Now, I can’t find chip prices for PowerPC G5 processors, but I bet the price difference between the 1.8 gig G5 and the Intel 3.6 gig is at least a couple of hundred dollars. Maybe I’m wrong here, I’m going out on a limb because I can’t find corroborating information on the G5 prices quickly. And you know, that’s kind of my point.
Apple must make a small to medium margin on their computers. If the chips from Intel are not the same price as the chips from IBM, then Apple will have to raise prices in order to maintain their margins. That means the difference in prices would be even greater than just a couple of hundred dollars.
Look at the prices for extra memory when you order the Apple or Dell. The same 1gig 2×512 option is $175 from Apple, and only $90 from Dell. Plus, you can go to places like Crucial to buy quality memory for reasonable prices. A lot of people don’t buy their memory from Apple because the price difference between what Apple sells and what others have is so great.
With it more difficult to find the price of processors for the G5, it is harder for people to really consider the price differences between systems. Intel prices are quoted all over the place. They are a commodity item, so it’s easy to find their prices. The price differences between an “Apple” and a beige box will be even more obvious.
In the end, Steve is doing it again. He’s doing to Apple what he did to NeXT. And I’m really sorry to see it. Because, when he ruins Apple like he did to NeXT at the end, he won’t have an Apple to go to and sell it. [Unless Pixar buys Apple?]
NeXT was ahead of its time. Too far ahead I’m afraid. And it was a beautiful system. In fact, my appreciation for NeXT and many of it’s core features now in the Mac is the primary reason I went ahead and got the Mac Mini. However, when the hardware started struggling, he took the company to a software only platform. And then, a few short couple of years later, things appeared to have gotten pretty grim, until Apple bought NeXT.
This time, instead of stopping the hardware altogether, he’s cheapening the hardware. I only see this backfiring on Apple, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.
I hope I’m wrong. But, I’ll probably be going back to my Linux desktop. Until more time passes, Apple is a company in stasis, and I’m not willing to invest more of my money in software or hardware until I see real progress somewhere. It’s a shame too. I like Mac OS X, the Mac Mini, and the Power PC.
BTW – I’ve yet to hear the fan on my Mac Mini. I guarantee an Intel powered Mac Mini would NOT be this quiet. Or cool to the touch. The external harddrive sitting next to the Mac Mini is warmer.
Irony is defined as a Mac users who raves about the elegance of PowerPC, then starts harping about “Itanic”.
LOL, too true.
The sad part is, Itanium IS a nice architecture; I would have *LOVED* to see a Itanium based Mac – imagine all that raw FPU power
the sad part is, Intel would never reduce the price of the CPU as to allow volume sales, and grow the market.
What Itanium needed was a champinion, the fact is, Intel priced its CPU’s TOO high, and there is a complete and utter lack of applications for it – both the technical workstation market AND server.
I wonder why people always think about switching from one OS to another as a major move. I switch from Linux to Windows and backwards at least once every day.
You didn’t read or listen to anything Apple said, did you? Full of marketing-speak, yes, they were. But factual was your reply? Not.
1. IBM doesn’t want to deliver a laptop CPU, since only Apple needs it and Apple is too small a customer for IBM compared to the console business. ”
And so what ? Freescale will have the dual core G4 (e600) at autumn, 2Ghz with DDR2, PCI-Express support high FSB and low consumption. and the G4 64 bit early in 2006.
But the fact is, Motorola/Freescale have repeatedly failed to deliver everytime they’ve been asked to. IBM was the last ditch attempt to get to the holy grail of finally, continuously out flank Intel. The fact remains that neither Freescale or IBM are willing to put the big dollar into processor development – it *COULD* have happened had IBM bought Freescale off Motorola, and folded the business into IBMs chip fabbing side, but the fact still remains, IBM is concerned about other things at the moment.
As for the alternative, what else is there? SPARC64? In an ideal world, SUN would put their ass into high gear and actually producing some damn chips that weren’t such a damn joke, but thats just a dream – so the only alternative was Intel, more correctly, x86.
Even if this guy is right, he’s talking like a troll. Poor writing and bad tone.
I’ve only read the first page of comments, so maybe the responders have wised-up, but I’ll mention this just in case.
Why, exactly, are you all pandering to this mental case? What we have here is a classic example of a profoundly disfunctional personality type, that would refuse to accept that the sky is blue if such a fact got in the way of his bizarre view of thngs. He clearly has such a tenuous and delicate grasp on his delusional view of reality, that even the slightest disruption sends him reeling. Frankly, as I was readng his “manifesto”, on more than one occasion found myself thinking, ‘This guy belongs in a mental hospital.’ Seriously. I mean, his entire point of view is not grounded in the reality I or any other sane person I know of knows, not to metion his… utterly disproportionate? (and viscerally personal)… reaction to a simple business decision by a company from which he merely buys a product.
Finally I can’t help but ask OS News WTH they were thinking when they decided to run this whack-job rant. Really.
Maybe IBM just wasn’t willing to invest in a processor line which doesn’t meant much profit to them. To go with Intel was a painful but necessary decision. At least there’s still some competition in the x86-64 market (AMD).
What’s going to give me a good laugh is when Apple’s critics end up coming crawling back to MacOS X when the Intel version ends up kicking Windows XP’s teeth in. I would be shocked if Apple doesn’t do some good price dropping to reflect the savings from switching to x86. I have a feeling that this is going to be the watershed moment in Apple’s history that gets Apple’s marketshare to go back up to double digits. With Macs becoming closer in price to Dell PCs, it’ll be a bad era for many PC vendors.
I think what would be even better would be if Apple delivered exactly what Dell offers, but only $50 more. Imagine users going, “gee, and for $50 more, we can have an operating system that isn’t painful to use”
Considering that Apple don’t assemble their hardware (they outsourced that, along with iPod product a LONG time ago), their over all cost structure should be ALOT cheaper, couple that with the fact Intel will be designing the *WHOLE* machine, Intel everything, EFI firmware (for obvious reasons, the current developer machines are BIOS because of the limited time frame they had to ramp up production of developer machines, hence the reason to return them afterwards they’re not going to truely reflect what is going to be offered), the works.
Apple will basically have a group designing the hardware – send the designs out to the assemblers, they’ll do all the hard work, and the only thing that Apple will be doing in house will be software development. Over all, Apple is a pretty efficient company.
As for margins; I’m sure Steve WANTED to increase sales, but the fact is, he couldn’t due to the mediocre CPU supply; now that they *KNOW* that there is a company who can provide as much as they need, when they need it, they can start ramping up production to high gear, push down the price, and start going for volume.
Luposian, you have gone off the deep end. Get a GRIP. Like the other person responded to you. Where is the ADB and all the ports of the first Macs? They have been gone for years. Time marches on. Who wants all those old things? You bash jobs and Apple but did you ever look at why he went to Intel? Like your favorite company IBM screwing Jobs over time and time again? Where is the 3.0Ghz IBM Promised Jobs? Where is the G5 Laptop CPU? Jobs got fed up with their lies and false promises. People are sick of a G4 in a $3000 Powerbook. Every Wintel system out there uses the latest CPU except Apple and why? because IBM will not give Apple what they promised. Funny though they give Microsoft a 3-Core 3.2Ghz for their new Xbox. I feel that is what caused Jobs to blow. Apple needs more speed and IBM either will not or Can not give it to them, so jobs did the best thing he could. As long as they don’t make OSX run on a DELL I am fine with it.
I wish they went with AMD but AMD can NOT keep up with the supply Apple will need.
Seriously. I mean, his entire point of view is not grounded in the reality I or any other sane person I know of knows, not to metion his… utterly disproportionate? (and viscerally personal)… reaction to a simple business decision by a company from which he merely buys a product.
hear hear.
My 5 year old 400MHz iMac is nearing retirement (even though Tiger runs better than Panther on it), I think will be buying a new PPC Mac before then.
If I buy a Mac now (I’m undecided on whether it’ll be desktop laptop or mini) or wait for the next PPC upgrade cycle, and enjoy it for the next five years before I decide it’s time to upgrade again. In that way my trend will be to buy a new Apple computer every other generation; G3 > G5 > Intel (Rev.2)
I hardly noticed the 68k to PPC transition, I survived the Mac OS 9 to OS X migration and I’m pretty sure this chip-switch isn’t going to affect me much either.
Am I the only one who thinks great a new source for new more easily convertable drivers for hardware that will never get drivers for Linux, like broadcom wireless (on my hp nx9105 laptop running Gentoo) and airport extreme. Drivers based on a Unix background, more easily to run on linux by some sort of interface layer (like ndiswrapper does for windows drivers).
And maybe, jus maybe, if they write a driver for Mac X they take the little extra effort to make it run on Linux and OpenSolaris.
Whatever good points the writer has are diminished by his comments on the shortsightedness of Apple to make the switch.
By what stretch of the imagination is a company who has planned for this for 5 years, just in case, shortsighted?
This man may be able to code, he has no experience in senior management decision making processes. The shareholder wants value, the company must sell computers. IBM does not want to or does not care to deliver the parts that Apple requires to build its products.
What do you want Steve Jobs to do? Go to IBM’s CEO and ask him “pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top spend some money on developing a new chip for me. PPPPLLLLLleeeaase?”. I would have loved seeing a G6-processor, but if IBM won’t build them what do you want Apple to do, close the door on One Infinite Loop?
This has been very carefully planned. The demo was on an Intel box, for chrissakes, the tools to make the transition are already there. There WILL be bumps and bruises, but it should not be an upset. It is part of a very sensible, necessary, step that Apple would not have taken if they were not forced to, but they show all signs of executing this in a smooth, responsible and well-supported manner. I see no reason to call this shortsighted, quite the contrary.
And on top of all that, the Leopard is going to be released without delays, you bet on that. And this is after an architecture change.
Redmond can’t get the cow out of the barn and Apple tells us when the next OS is going to be released, after a processor make-over.
You call that shortsighted, dear unwashed writer, I call that an amazing piece of engineering, right there.
Do go back to your Linux box, don’t call yourself a Mac driver. Enjoy prying the motherboard out of a defunct Barbie doll house and installing Kunbuntu on it with drivers you wrote for it. You can run the Congo national switchboard on it. It’ll be as relevant as anything else you do.
“Do go back to your Linux box, don’t call yourself a Mac driver. Enjoy prying the motherboard out of a defunct Barbie doll house and installing Kunbuntu on it with drivers you wrote for it. You can run the Congo national switchboard on it. It’ll be as relevant as anything else you do.”
The funniest comment I ve read in a long time.
i can go back to work now.
Thank you so much. So well said. I wish I could have worded it like that. All very true.
Looks like Steve got caught in his own RDF!
Well, I personally don’t think it is a short sighted decision. A lot of sound decisions can be found for moving away from PPC to x86-64 based chip. (Albeit perhaps slightly different).
I would really have liked to see a Cell processor based Mac in the future, now that is seemingly unlikely. it seems the Cell is going to screetch along at high speed. However with IBMs over hyping of previous processors I can understand Apple doubt about it. The Cell just has so much uncertainty, whilst the x86-64 appears to have a very concrete future at lower costs.
Its a pity, I like diversity.
Excellent article: the whole truth about Steve’s switch (pun intended) and the consequences to the Mac users (I’m one too + Linux at home, and Win at work), hardware (64 bit future?, extreme heat and noise of Pentium, even M’s, aka P 3’s mobility-optimized: great progress, right, over totally silent, cool (phisically) all the way, 4 hour+ batt. life and quicker-than-u-need G4 iBook’s) and software-like, for the future. What amazes me is the technical ignorance/reactions of many of the comments here: your “faith” and worship in Steve’s sayings and actions plus a blind’s attitude of “if it has an Apple logo then can only be good” won’t save you from all the insightfull points of the article.
Thanks, Martin, for the courage of putting out so accurately all the technical truth, at the expense of not beeing understood/believed (now!) by the big croud. So, for all of you unbelievers and non-whiners out there, just print the article for future reference when you’ll be enjoying Steve’s MacIntel vision of future performance/best computing experience on desktop P4/Xeon descendants noise and free room heating, not to forget laptop leg burning and non-stop iTunes fans…
Increasingly I’m begining the doubt the veractiy of those little “I am a super-de-duper programmer” blurbs at the bottom of these adolescent rants (Moderate away!)
First off, what’s with the emphasis on assembly?! Almost no-one uses it anymore: even a lot of embedded software design these days is done on unhosted C. With regard to G4, G5 and Altivec, most compilers compiled in these extra instructions as an optional aside, there’s code that the application will fall back on when the extra features are not available (see the docs for Intel’s compiler on how this is done). This is how Adobe Photoshop CS was able to run on the virtual machine when it makes huge use of Altivec normally – there is a fall-back code path for legacy processors.
With regard to IBM, as is being increasingly reported, Apple was a tiny market for them, and came second to the console business. IBM were unable to deliver the kind of processors Apple needed, and finding itself bound to another under-performing chipset maker must have been frustrating in the extreme.
It’s important to remember that Apple is switching to x86, and that they’ve chosen Intel as their manufacturer. Once established, they will be free to move to AMD as their manufacturer as circumstances dictate. This gives them huge lee-way. It’s also important to note that the huge competition in x86 space is driving innovation, creating chips that, while certainly less elegant, perform better.
Your issue about 64-bit is valid, and it is worrying how little Apple has said about that. I would hope that ultimately, Apple will move to x86-64. It’s worth remembering that at the moment Apple ships 32-bit systems (iBooks, Powerbooks, eMacs and MacMini’s) and 64-bit systems (iMac, PowerMac). In the near future I think it’s going to remain that way. I expect the existing 32-bit systems to switch to 32-bit Intel chips (except now it’ll be a Pentium M instead of an aging G4). The last two computers to switch will be the iMac and PowerMac: by 2007 there will be dual-core 64-bit x86-64 Intel chips available for Apple to use (note that 2007 is the planned launch date for Intel’s “Meron” chip).
And in 2010, if Intel isn’t delivering the goods, Apple can switch to AMD chips without any worries for developers.
As for Rosetta, the launch time looked pretty fast on the demo. You’re confusing it with the JVM, which has to load and link the whole Java library when it starts. Rosetta has no such library to worry about. As regards speed, given the event driven nature of GUI applications, I imagine the use of a translation buffer will lead to impressively usable performance.
You’re comments about PPC compatibility were really off the wall though, and make me doubt your technical abilities (and even your attention span). In one paragraph you pan Rosetta as being slow (which I’ve debunked). You then complain about the size of universal binaries. Finally, you say that PPC is left out in the cold as Rosetta doesn’t work both ways except……
All code right now works for PPC, and universal binaries mean all code written in the next three to four years will continue to work on PPC.
Doh!
After three to four years, it’s unlikely there will be code that, even if it were written for PPC, a PPC chip could handle at appropriate speeds (and you do seem rather concerned with performance). As regards disk space, I would direct your attention to the 80GB and 160GB hard-disks being shipped with Apple’s budget eMac line. I somehow doubt people will find their application binaries chewing up that space; in fact it’s far more likely that photos and music files will do the damage first.
As for getting WINE to work on Macs, I don’t see how this could hurt Apple. “Run Windows apps on your Mac” would bring even more switchers over. However given WINE’s eternal beta status, I don’t see Apple advertising this. And only the most infantile ill-informed adolescent would blame Apple for the failure of an application Apples neither ships nor endorses.
So I must conclude that OSNews has once again damaged their reputation by posting, on their front-page no less, an uninformed, inconsistent rant by an author whose bona fides – given his lack of technical knowledge and particularly a sense of balance – I find myself doubting. The Intel switch will hurt Apple in the short term, but will set it up for huge gains in the long term.
“What worries people is that the future usability of their current system may be diminished: in, say, 3 years, the current G5 and powerbook hardware will still be used and work okay. Applications, and the system, may be stuck at 2007. You may not be able to run the latest photoshop because it will no longer be available for you. Improvements to the system may be reduced to a trickle or even stop altogether.
Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at with this too.”
No, no, no!
PPC software will be produced for many years to come. Some estimate there are 40 million Macs in use at this moment. How long do you think it will take 40 million Mac users to upgrade?
Apple sells 3.5 Macs per year. If that continued the current Mac install base would take 11 years to fully convert to Intel. It will be AT LEAST 4-6 years from the time all shipping Macs have Intel CPUs before Mactels become a majority of macs.
Developers will cater to the larger PPC install base for years to come!
YOUR PPC INVESTMENT IS SAFE FOR THE NEXT 6-8 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“I would really have liked to see a Cell processor based Mac in the future, now that is seemingly unlikely.”
Does anyone read anymore? THE CELL PROCESSOR SUCKS AS A DESKTOP CPU! REPEAT AFTER ME – DUE TO IT’S POOR OUT OF ORDER EXECUTION ALMOST ALL CURRENT OSX CODE INCLUDING ALL SOFTWARE WOULD HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY REWRITTEN AND THIS WOULD BE A MUCH LARGER PROBLEM THAN MOVING TO INTEL!
CELL != REALLY FAST DESKTOP CPU!!!!!!!
As long as macos X is being used be the enduser, no one cares about the hardware.
It is the software that counts.
//Rickard
Hey,
Would this count as a focus shift? Seriously, sort of like the one Be Inc. did?
😉
Hardware is not using Mac’s specific hardware(not in Mac format when it was using PowerPC already), then software is Unix with nice front-end, you can call Mac-desktop-environment like you call KDE or Gnome, but what about the machine that comes with the OS you bought from Apple? it is not Mac anymore. It is:
Intel + Unix + Mac-custom-made-desktop-environment
Where is Mac? it’s already dead. You bought products from Futureshop doesn’t mean that it’s a product built by Futureshop. You’ve bought a car from GM doesn’t mean that the car is built-by GM.
So is it a Mac? or it’s Apple computer? I believe the latter.
As long as macos X is being used be the enduser, no one cares about the hardware.
It is the software that counts.
That is exactly why Next failed. Really, who cares what the machine looks like? Any two bit company can make hardware that looks half decent. And what the software runs on? Does anyone really care aside from fanatics? Nope. It’s all about the software.
I’m still buying a mac mini next month. For the hardware? Hell no! For MacOSX. As has been stated by many, I think this is a complete non issue outside of the “biz” realm. End users won’t even notice or care.
Apple is doing this that Intel has nicer stickers to go with their chips – “Intel Inside” beats the crap out of any “G5 – It’s Alive!” or “G4 – Coolest Core” that IBM might have come up with.
Joke aside, you all seem to willingly accept that a company hides their intentions from you for 5 years (albeit not entirely succesfully), touts the strengths of their cpu’s above the competitors, then suddenly switches to that very competitor’s chips, thus invalidating their own claims, leaving the people who bought their machines in good faith to their own (read: “We lied to you before you bought the machine, please buy a new machine in a years time”).
To me, all market scam, corporate bullshit.
Where’s the quad G5? If the guys http://www.orionmulti.com/
can make something like this, why can’t you, Jobs?
Where’s the removal of the biglock on Mac OS X? Why does the spinning ball appear to LOCK my Mac still today – 2005?
And to all you people shouting “Linux will be dead in a year or two”: What do you think will be running on those millions of PPC-based dust collectors in 5 years time? And that’s an install base of about 20 million – left behind by Apple for Linux to invade.
And about the PPC being an archaic architecture with no future – I won’t point to the game consoles, but to the servers: I know of a company that runs 10.000 simultanous clients on an IBM server with a G3 and LOTS of cache. And my PowerMac 7300/200 still feels more responsive with BeOS on it than my dual G5 running Mac OS X 10.3.9.
Go with the flow, Apple, don’t innovate or stand your ground. You never did.
I completely agree. I’ve used and still use Windows and, while it has its strengths, many upgrades can leave users out in the cold.
I remember when 2000 and XP was released and many new users found out that their antivirus, many games, and cd burning software was no longer compatible. There was no attempt from MS to include an emulator for backwards compatibility (probably couldn’t realistically be done for those apps). And that was not even a platform change. Apple seems determined not to abandon their userbase and just knowing that they are putting great effort into making sure apps are compatible a year before the new platform is release puts me at ease.
Most users never even realize what processor is in their machine. I know that my iBook has a G4 in it but, except for the G4 mark on it, I wouldn’t know. It just works and that’s what I need. The only people who are acutely aware of what processor is in their machines are scientists and developers. Apple/Mac is still Apple/Mac and an Apple with an Intel processor is still an Apple (and a Mac).
Zealots can truly kill a good thing.
Steve jobs or someone at apple know that laptop and tablet pc is the future. so they need that centrino, something that ibm just can’t deliver. as simple as that.
and we know apple laptop design is just so damn cool with no equal, what lack is cpu power, so with intel they will offered the best laptop ever.
i believe the future is good for apple, even they osx for intel mac only. but if i were steve jobs i will release osx for all.
I had cause to go to the Apple store in London this morning. When it opened 6 months ago I was walking by, and there were queues of people round the block. It took hours for that queue to die down once the shop was open. (According to TV news, people had been sleeping out over night in front of the store – and this was a winter’s night). Well, I’ve made a few visits back there in the last 6 months, and every time (to my astonishment) the queue for the cash registers was a long and snaked through the shop (contained by barriers). But not today – I was in the shop for about 15 minutes, and there was never more than 1 person in the queue. This doesn’t look good for Apple. (For what it’s worth, I did actually make a £600 purchase…) Like the guy who wrote the article, I was a switcher. I have bought 3 Apple computers in as many years, and I care more for the silence and low-heat of my mac mini than I care about CPU speed per se. I hope Apple is doing the right thing, but it doesn’t seem so to me.
talk about short sighted. fool. i can’t imagine why whiney rants like yours get coverage here. completely lame.
This guy’s articale only shows his own ignorance. Too bad. While I perfer the PPC – Apple is right Intel, has a better road map for the PC market in terms of PC desktops and laptops. Freescale and IBM are not interested in producing PPC chips for those markets. I can’t wait to get my Intel Inside Mac and have the x86 *nix worlds open to me. This is better for everyone and Apple will gain strength in the long term becuase of it.
Now if Apple would only do something about the native screen resolution on their laptops, many of us could safely “switch.”
have OSX run on Intel, AMD, and PowerPC? I mean Windows supports both Intel and AMD.
What’s the big deal? (other than Steve’s ego)
http://rjdohnert.blogspot.com/2005/06/mac-retailers-reactions-to-in…
Joke aside, you all seem to willingly accept that a company hides their intentions from you for 5 years (albeit not entirely succesfully), touts the strengths of their cpu’s above the competitors, then suddenly switches to that very competitor’s chips, thus invalidating their own claims, leaving the people who bought their machines in good faith to their own (read: “We lied to you before you bought the machine, please buy a new machine in a years time”).
You’re pretty far off base there Primal. Their claims about the power chips current or past performance have absolutely nothing to do with their future or IBM’s ability to produce what they require. This move is a move for the future. And they will NOT require you to buy a new machine next year. They don’t even plan to have the power chips completely phased out of their own product line for another year and a half.
Go with the flow, Apple, don’t innovate or stand your ground. You never did.
Apple has been the most innovative consumer grade computer maker in history. I’d like to hear one software or hardware company that can match them. Their problem has stemmed from management, including their lack of ability to get off the classic mac os years ago. Aside from that, they have always innovated.
You sound like you have an intense hate for apple for no particular reason. I don’t even own a mac and I don’t think this is a big deal to the consumer. It’s Jobs positioning the company for the future.
“I don’t like mac on intel because it’s not an interesting hardware platform so I’m going to switch back to…” um… PCs which are neither an interesting hardware or software platform.
Not only that but your logic, although seductive is flawed. You should switch to pen and paper, that’ll match your expecations every time. Just don’t buy A4 by mistake!
I thought the entire idea behind Apple is “Think Different”.
I think they are doing just that! Who would have expected Apple to trash thier successful “niche market” strategy and modernize the hardware that they are using?
Also, the fact that the long-term strategy appears to be “volume sales” is way different for them.
I’m happy that Apple is thinking different, because it will give Microsoft the kick in the pants it needs to create a superior product…well, either that or I’ll get OS XI!
We can’t tell you anything about XI yet. It would kind of embarrass a number of people.
But we like the way you think, though
I bet that Apple will get exclusive CUSTOM CPUS from Intel. Something like Yonah plus Altivec.
Yonah by itself will be vastly superior to Intel’s current dual-core kludges (crap) because it will be designed for dual-core from scratch. This is for Dells and other PC makers.
Yonah+Altivec will be for Apple exclusively. This will add another roadblock to running Mac OS X on a cheaper Dell PC. There’s a small chance that there might be additional currently unannounced improvements to Yonah that only Apple will receive–most likely improvements that help with PPC hardware emulation that Apple is unwilling to disclose at this time.
Apple gets a better CPU than standard PC desktops/laptops. Intel gets experience producing Altivec which can help them with SSE4.
People need to buy Apple to run Mac OS X at full speed due to Altivec.
How many people will buy a Mac 2007 if:
1. it has Yonah+Altivec+secretsauce
2. it can run OS X, Windows XP & Longhorn, Linux, FreeBSD, …
3. it doesn’t have all the x86 baggage in the mobo chipset so that it outperforms even the most expensive gaming PC from Alienware?
Get a clue.
Altivec is IBM property, intel can’t include that in a processor.
The new Apple’s will probably be standard pc hardware in a nice case and at a premium price.
Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot if they had a new processor or extensions that are hidden from everyone. All of the developer kits for Mac on Intel would be incorrect and all developers upgrading to the new architecture would then have to redevelop once these “mystery” chips surface when the first Intel Macs are shipped.
Its off-the-shelf hardware running an exceptional OS. Nothing more and nothing less.
Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot if they had a new processor or extensions that are hidden from everyone. All of the developer kits for Mac on Intel would be incorrect and all developers upgrading to the new architecture would then have to redevelop once these “mystery” chips surface when the first Intel Macs are shipped.
Its off-the-shelf hardware running an exceptional OS. Nothing more and nothing less.
The only people that have reason to worry are those that wish to use legacy apps on the new Intel hardware via Rosetta, correct?
Those running Intel or PPC Macs w/ newer software that includes both binaries will be fine, and won’t suffer a conversion performance hit.
So, why are people whining? I don’t complain that legacy software doesn’t run well in XP; I upgraded, and dealt with it. Yeah it sucks to spend more money, but such is the nature of the computing world, at least IMHO.
A: The processor/architecture doesn’t matter.
Mac OS (etc) will work just fine on Mac/Intel hardware.
People don’t care, and wouldn’t understand the difference even if you tried to explain it to them.
B: The processor/architecture does matter.
x86 may be fairly open, well-documented and cheap, but I’d prefer to have something that was -also- good, sane, modern, clean – easier to code for, system-level.
No, application writers mostly don’t have to care about assembly. HOWEVER, the low-level aspects of a platform are more important than ever, since that’s where all your 3D game and DVD ripping (etc) power come from. – Try using a modern PC with harddisk DMA turned off, without video card 2D/3D acceleration, or completely without drivers since nobody cared to write them for your OS. It almost as “fun” as using a 28.800 bps modem.
There are thousands and thousands of people writing low-level system code, and to them the architecture does matter, but they often get paid to cope with crap hardware.
Personally I hope the Cell processor and [BSD|Linux|Haiku|whatever] will bring a new era of personal computing that doesn’t suck. Getting a second-hand Mac with Linux, today, is probably a good start on getting up to speed on coding for Cells, but don’t take my word for it.
Anyway, don’t slag the PowerPC. I’m thinking Mac OS X’s strange kernel makes the hardware look bad, and the GUI effects + app runtime also add to the perceived less snappy user experience. (On the other hand, my G3 -is- old.
macs will have a bios and irq numbers (hello conflicts)
The author of this article, and everybody reading it, either wants to buy a computer now or doesn’t. Similarly, everybody will either buy a computer sometime in the next two years or they won’t.
If you’re not going to buy a computer in the next two years anyway, this move doesn’t really concern you, because who knows how things will be then anyway.
If you’re planning on buying a computer right now, then keep in mind that G4-based Apple laptops and G5-based Apple desktops are still very competitive with their PC counterparts. Apple’s own website claims that the Power Mac G5 creams the Pentium 4 in Photoshop tests. Sure, in two years, the new Macs (which will almost definitely not use Pentium 4s) will be faster, but that would be true whether or not Apple switched architectures.
If you’ll be buying a new computer a year or two from now, then you don’t have to worry about the Intel switch yet. When you’re actually in the market for a computer, then you can compare Apple’s offerings with everyone else, and you’ll have the advantage of being able to configure a Mac and a Dell with the exact same processor. In fact, the Mac might only be marginally more expensive, since Apple will be able to use mass-produced Intel chipsets, but without the southbridge, the BIOS, and other legacy parts that add cost and complexity.
If you’re considering buying a computer now, but aren’t sure if you want to make the switch to Mac, then feel free to wait until the Intel ones come out; they’ll make your switch easier. But if you’re already a Mac user, and you want a computer now, there’s no point in waiting. No matter when you buy a computer, a year later, there will be better ones out, and your computer might not be able to run some of the applications that the new one will.
If you’re pissed off at Apple for switching from PPC, it would be very stupid to go out and buy an AMD box out of spite. After all, you’re still not getting PPC. Luckily, your PPC Mac won’t stop working for a long time. I recently installed Tiger on my dad’s G3 Pismo laptop, and it still works great. If Apple eventually stops supporting PPC, then just switch to Linux. And if there finally comes a day when you need a more powerful computer, then decide how powerful a computer you want, look at how much Apple would charge for it, and consider that Apple’s computer design will be much more elegant than any other x86 box you’d by—and isn’t elegance why you liked PPC in the first place?
Finally, if you’re pissed off at Apple for being an evil corporation, I can’t really criticize you; every corporation is evil, and Apple is no exception. If you want to avoid supporting evil companies, though, you either have to hold on to the computer you have, or only buy used. Or, if you just think Apple’s evil, you can build a new Intel-based computer… wait, aren’t they building DRM into the Pentium D? You can build a computer with an AMD processor and an nForce chipset… wait, hasn’t AMD been working with Microsoft since the early 90s, and wasn’t nVidia the first company to make a DirectX-only graphics chip? Okay, maybe you can build a computer with Via’s C7… although you’ll be buying from a foreign company, and thus supporting the process of globalization that is impoverishing the world’s poor. (All of the most successful countries in history, the US included, grew up under protectionism.) Hmm… maybe you could just buy the computer that works best?
I love the smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning.
Apple’s marketing department took you for a ride, buddy. Suck it up and get over it.
what the hell is he whining about? switch back to what? the amigaos?
That melody from Adam Sandler song is buzzing in my head after I read that article.
Ah, what a wonderful Song, and Adam Sandler sure deserves lots of credit for giving it to the world. I still favor Kelly Osborne (“Papa don’t preach”) and Sid Vicious (“My Way”) though…
they have the best people and smartest people, and just incase you don’t know – eh uhm…
they’ve worked on this 5 yrs ago, and since…. it’s running pretty well.
so stop your whining.. i’m waiting for it.
you are a moron.
that is all.
That’s a lot of “exclusive to osnews” FUD to digest. /me rolls eyes.
The truth about the business world is that perception is everything. I am a recent Mac Mini purchaser (w/ Tiger) and my initial reaction is that I just “took the bait” and switched to a Mac. That was what I understood the Mac Mini to be all about. Now Apple is pulling the rug out from under me and my Mac Mini may not be supported much longer. Again, it may not be entirely true, but it’s a common perception. And, although I might be a little more informed than other Mac Mini users, the less informed are going to be very P.O’ed.
Another perception is that long time Mac users with Power PC machines feel the Intel based machines are going to dilute the quality of Macs and make them just another PC. I could go on, but the point is that it’s all about perception. That perception will drive the market, not necessarily reality. I see alot of articles, expecially on cnet, trying to prop up the Intel Macs. Why not AMD Macs? AMD has better chips for a better price. Most people I know buy AMD because that’s what they can afford. And the Bushies are only going to make it harder to afford Intel.
Well, that’s MY perception. You want to know who really will have a good view on this issue? The Mac User Groups.
You sir, are an idiot.
IBM did not meet its commitments nor did they have any plans to work on a mobile chip to replace the G4.
What alternatives did Apple have with prospects drying up? The Cell? It is useless as a general purpose CPU as it lacks out of order instruction execution and other important CPU features.
Freecell? They have some decent chips in the pipeline but they are un-proven and were originally part of Motorola. Remember them?
The Pentium M is not the “hot” chip like the Netburst based Pentium 4 but rather a very efficient core which Intel can build upon.
OS X is what made me switch to macs. The hardware is cool but I look forward to a future with Apple as a vibrant company rather than a company fading into obscurity without a supplier of CPU chips that it can depend on.
“Think Different” is now out the window… the Mac way started dying when Winblows could do all the creative work (DTP), then OS X threw the interface guidelines out, and now this hardware assimilation. Just another PC hardware company, just another Unix-on-Intel (OS X; I’ll stay with Linux, thank you, which offers the plus of freedom). Nothing more to see, move along, move along…
http://eclecticsatyr.hostultra.com/intelmin.htm (“Intelminated!” commentary article)
During my career I have used both MAC and PC based computers. I have always felt the Apple product was superior in many ways but the “world belonged to the PC” so I have spend most of my money and time working with PCs. A couple of months ago, out of frustation with the WinTel dynasty, I started seriously looking at MAC. You had me hooked with the MAC Mini and the new Tiger OS. I was going to make my purchase the next day when I read Apple’s offical announcement to move to Intel. Well, I had heard the rumors but had written them off as being crazy because that would be the end of Apple. Shocked by the annoucement I put my $500 back in my pocket and am looking at Linux and AMD Athlon64.
I guess Apple is now just another PC that will be priced above its competitors with very little to justify the additional cost. The people I feel sorry for are the faithful MAC supporters who now must feel betrayed. They were like disciples preaching the truth in the PC wilderness winning converts one-at-a-time. For those faithful, I salute you. Perhaps its time to introduce a White and Black Ribbon inscribed “Honoring the life and death of a legend. We will miss you Apple” on my bumper.