Did Apple make a mistake by switching to Intel? We may never know, but Apple had more options than has been previously reported, The Register can exclusively reveal. A chip start-up that created a high performance, low power processor compatible with existing Mac software had been working closely with the computer company for many months. “PA Semi was counting on that deal,” said one source. “They had lots of guys walking around in a daze when Apple went to Intel. They had no idea that would actually happen.” Ars’s Hannibal, criticaster of Apple’s reasoning to switch to Intel, also expressed his thoughts on this issue.
You mean Apple decided to go with the oldest and biggest chip maker who has a stable supply chain and great images with consumers (that’s consumers, not geeks) instead of going with a no name start up with big promises, no production product, no production line….. and so forth. What was apple thinking???
Seriously, how could anyone think they would go with the small start up even if they did promise big stuff. I’m sure their better then Atom with their CDrom and hot glue technology, but still. Apple has been held back for years because they go with freak chips with a bad supply chain. Intel will let them sell as many macs as they want with no constraints. Even if they aren’t the ideal chip, they are their and won’t hold Apple back.
Now who knows, maybe their will be hope for these people over time for something like a Webpad or the likes.
Sound business plan trumps all. Going with the little guy chip maker, not a good move. If Apple was into that, they could have gone AMD, but even AMD would not be able to meet Apples needs for supply.
Yes, some people never tired beating the dead horse. Hannibal including. Just read the whole thread on Ars.
its a pity they couldn’t have done both, but that strategy has never worked in the past
“but even AMD would not be able to meet Apples needs for supply.”
yet they don’t seem to have a problem in their relationship supplying chips for HP/Compaq, Sun, IBM, Gateway, tons of other consumer PCs/laptops and now Dell yet Apple and their 5% would have been too much? hmm…
The 5% is off the computer market not of manufacturers, I think in those terms, Apple is only just behind Dell as the biggest manufacturer
But I guess you know that already…..
“The 5% is off the computer market not of manufacturers, I think in those terms, Apple is only just behind Dell as the biggest manufacturer”
Not 5%. 2.2 or 2.3% globally according to Gartner and IDC, for 2005. Source: Mike Langberg in March of this year in SiliconValley.com. So around one seventh the size of Dell in shipments.
However, Dell is only going to AMD for servers, Opterons. Whether AMD could supply to the desktop even at Apple’s volumes might be a different story. Also remember that Apple had the chance to find out things we do not know about Intel futures. And finally they probably do not want to dual source, in order to keep costs down. An essential part of the strategy is keeping the number of different parts as small as possible. So if you were going to bet the company on supply from just one company, you’d pick Intel over AMD too.
Not to mention, you get all the main board support thrown in.
Its a pretty hard decision to criticise.
Sun, IBM and now DELL sells SERVERS and WORKSTATION with AMD processors, not DESKTOP.
The sales of desktop are much more bigger than servers.
Moreover IBM has Power and Intel, Sun has Sparc and DELL/HP Intel … they do not sell only AMD.
If AMD can’t supply them for a while (it can happens), they can sell other products.
If Apple had chosen AMD instead of Intel as a unique supplier and AMD were not able to supply them for a while, Apple should have lost sales (as they did with IBM/Motorola).
So Apple chose the only one able to supply their needs and able to provide the BEST laptop processor (the apple best seller).
Edited 2006-05-22 07:22
And beyond that you have fast virtualization running on Intel, being able to leverage GCC’s work on x86, the ability to move to AMD at another time, porting software is easier…
But I’m sure Apple is kicking themselves now because they didn’t listen to Hannibal or The Register.
I tottally agree with Brad.
Anyway, since Apple announced the swith, the PowerPC industry started revealing bogus news about upcoming super-solutions, super-chips, running at super-speed with super-performance per watt… give me a break! Who believes them anymore? They may be fine for servers or game consoles but they are not suited for the common/home user. Too little, too late.
Edited 2006-05-22 00:21
It doesn’t seem that most folks do not realize that the ‘PC’ whether Apple or IBM clone is an entry level piece of hardware. The Apple PC vs the Intel debate does’t really mean much in the bigger picture of computing.Cheap is just the only factor that seems to resonate with many users.
The PPC that apple used was a detuned Power chip from IBM, or the prooposed roadmap was anyway. IBM does have all those newer, faster, deeper, harder.. etc. Power chips , but most ‘PC’ users can’t afford and don’t need the horsepower.
The processoer is not the bottleneck anyway, tune the whole system, not just add GHz.
As Apple has been touting for a while they are talking about performance per watt and product timelines. I am sure AMD can give the quantities that apple wants just as much as Intel. But I think Apple is actually being honest with us on this. Performance/Watt so they can offer high speed chips that run on low energy systems, And they are able to give a predictable timeline of how fast and how much energy they will use in the future. I am sure AMD produces faster chips but they are designed for servers but put in a laptop it will just use a Ton of power, or you will need to slow it down to below intells speed when on battery. Unlike many geeks think there is not one Processor to rule them all they all have different key points that make them useful. Apple Macs are primarily Laptops and iMacs, and Mac Minis. The PowerMac are the only systems that really could use a different chip. But for the others you need small and fast processors vs. Big Power Hungry, and Uber Fast processors.
> Apple has been held back for years because they go with freak
> chips with a bad supply chain.
umm… freak chips with a back supply chain?
The Motorola 68k series on the earler Macs is only one of the most popular processors ever produced, and is in far more systems than Intel chips are. Because unlike Intel, the 68k found its way into console gaming systems, coin op arcade machines, and many other devices.
And as far as PowerPC? Well, PowerPC chips power IBM’s most powerful line of systems, and have been used for years in IBM’s workstations and servers. Not to mention that PowerPC is arguably a superior design to the x86.
So I don’t where you get off with saying these are “freak” chips.
Edited 2006-05-22 16:31
The 68K series certainly started out strong, but it failed to keep up with the x86 chips. By the time it was 040 vs 486, the 040 had a slight performance advantage. By DX2 it lost it, and the roadmap taking Apple to 060 land or 880000 land was petering out, hence the PowerPC transition in the Pentium era. Again, PowerPC started off much stronger than the x86 of its generation. IBM certainly optimized the POWER processor for their high performance server and workstations, they are the workhorse of the fastest supercomputers, but the PowerPC alliance (related not the same) started running out of steam years ago. It was dying on the vine under Motorola, and mildly resuscitated by IBM with the G5. The PPC is a great chip for embedded markets, but it does not have the power of the modern dual core x86 chips made by Intel and AMD. None of these hold a candle to the latest POWER chips either, but we aren’t talking about starting price points in the $5K to $10K range, are we?
> The PPC is a great chip for embedded markets, but it does not have
> the power of the modern dual core x86 chips made by Intel and
> AMD.
I don’t agree with that. The 64 bit dual core G5s are more powerful than anything Intel is offering right now (with the possible exception of Itanium, which for all practical purposes, just isn’t catching on.) This is, I suspect, the reason Apple has not converted the PowerMacs yet. They simply don’t have an Intel chip that can match the current performance of a dual core 64 bit G5. (That and they are at Adobe’s mercy. They can’t convert until Adobe releases Universal binaries of what are often consideded to be the mainstay Mac apps).
The only real reason I think for Apple to have switched to x86 was to lower costs since the x86 chips can be purchased cheaper than the PowerPC chips. Unfortunateely, however, in a typical bone headed Apple move, Apple chose not to pass those savings on to their customers by lowering their system prices to be competitive with comparable PC offerings. In fact, they actually raised their prices, despite the fact that their costs went down… So the move to x86 isn’t going to do anything to stop Mac’s continuing decline in market share.
Edited 2006-05-22 18:47
You say that Apple hasn’t passed on the lower costs of switching to x86. When I look for a PC that looks more like the kind of stylish PC Apple makes such as the Mini or all in one panel with cpu, I don’t see anything by comparison from other vendors except possibly Sony.
I keep looking for small form factor, quiet, cool models and all I see is the MiniMac and mostly ugly Taiwanese MiniMac wannabes that actually cost far more and have less features. I am still waiting to see if more interesting CoreDuo SFF boxes come out. Apple doesn’t make beige boxes to make the more expensive comparison stick.
I pretty much agree with the mainstream that Apple made the right decision on Intel, and PA Semi will have to make its way in the embedded space where alternate architectures are well accepted. The Altivec extension will look out of place in a router though.
> When I look for a PC that looks more like the kind of stylish PC
> Apple makes such as the Mini or all in one panel with cpu,
> I don’t see anything by comparison from other vendors except
> possibly Sony.
Except that’s not what most people want. Most people don’t want to have no upgrade path. And that’s basically what the Mini and the iMac give you: No upgrade path at all. Most people want “boring boxes” as Apple calls them. Cause with those boring boxes, if I later want a better video card for example, I just open it up and pop it in.
Now, when it comes to systems that provide upgrade potential, the only option Apple offers is the PowerMac. And those start at $1,999… And for $1,999, what you get is not very impressive. You could buy an equivalent PC for half that price.
Same with the MacBook Pros. An equivalent PC laptop would be a lot less than what Apple is charging.
The main reason Apple is losing marketshare is simple: Price, price, and price. While every other manufacturer has lowered their prices as the market becomes more competitive and cost of manufacturing goes down, Apple has been raising prices.
The days where Apple could compete based on having a better user interface and being easier to use are simply gone. OS X offers little to no advantage over recent versions of Windows in either department. And it certainly does not offer enough advantage to justify a $500 – $1000 premium price increase. And the average consumer is well aware of that fact. Computers are commodities these days. And that is something Apple is either going to have to accept, and start playing the game based on that fact, or face having the Mac join virtually every other computer that tried to survive the cheap PC revolution.
Edited 2006-05-22 20:15
Most people don’t want to have no upgrade path. And that’s basically what the Mini and the iMac give you: No upgrade path at all.
All of Apple’s machines let you upgrade the RAM and the HDD, and that’s all most users ever get around to upgrading. You think Joe Blow knows how to upgrade his motherboard? Why do you think Intel is the single biggest video chip vendor despite only shipping non-upgradable integrated graphics?
And for $1,999, what you get is not very impressive. You could buy an equivalent PC for half that price.
Because the PowerMac hasn’t been Intel-ized yet. Apple’s track record witht he Intel switch has been to bring the “Mac premium” down to a few hundred dollars at most, compared to well-equipped PCs. Compare the $2000 PowerMac to what you can get from Boxx for that price. Heck, even as it is, the PM is a reasonable competitor, and if Apple sticks a Woodcrest chip in there, it’d easily achieve price/performance parity.
The days where Apple could compete based on having a better user interface and being easier to use are simply gone. OS X offers little to no advantage over recent versions of Windows in either department.
Bullshit. I’ve spent the last two weeks alternating between a Win XP machine (to run Word), and an iMac (to run everything else). If I had to use the XP machine all the time, I’d probably just stop using computers and take up another hobby.
Even something brainlessly simple like ejecting a USB key is a traumatic event for XP. I’ve got to go hit this tiny eject icon in the corner of the screen, make sure I don’t accidentally eject my network card instead (which is in the same tiny menu), and even then half the time it still things the damn thing is busy, despite my closing every single window on the screen. On the Mac, I hit eject, and it works every time. On the PC, my Palm will randomly refuse to sync. The USB stack will just decide not to pass the Hotsync signal on. This never happens on the Mac. On top of everything are just the random glitches you encounter. Changing network settings gives XP seizures. The network configurator will stop responding for awhile during the change, and a good percentage of the time, it freezes entirely. One machine I have just randomly decided to stop logging one user in entirely, for absolutely no reason.
Oh, and its insecure. The Mac I’m typing this on is still running 10.4.4. I haven’t updated or applied any patches on this machine (gasp!) since I took it out of the box. The XP machine has a clean install, barely two weeks old, and has already contracted half a dozen cases of spyware. I understand that there is a risk in running an unpatched machine, but if your OS is that insecure out of the box, it really should never have been released! Using Windows means being perpetually vigilent, keeping up with your virus scanner definitions and your adware definitions. I don’t have time for that bullshit. And you can’t let Windows Update handle things for you, oh no, because once in awhile Microsoft botches the update and does something like hose networking on all your machines. Of course, updating manually means keeping around somebody who knows something about computers. My mom gets confused when somebody changes her start page in Firefox (she asks, “what happened to Google?”). You think I’m going to teach her how to use Windows Update???
I used to be a sap too. I babied my Windows installation. I updated it every week, and reinstalled once a month (this was Windows 95). I was very careful about the software I installed. It ran well. Then I realized that I was wasting my time taking care of a glorified toaster. Since switching to Linux and OS X, I’ve been able to treat my machine like an appliance. I don’t update unless I feel like it, I install random software just to try it out, and I don’t reinstall, period. I don’t have to deal with random glitches, the ugly Windows UI, or the infernally bad behavior of Windows software (no, I couldn’t care less what it says in your notification bubble, and if I wanted to update the software I would’ve done it myself!)
> Why do you think Intel is the single biggest video chip vendor
> despite only shipping non-upgradable integrated graphics?
Because Intel has agreements with a large number of motherboard manufactuerers to include integrated video on their boards–even though in many systems, that integrated video is not even being used. It’s hard to find motherboards these days that don’t have integrated video. Whether you intend to use it or not, you often get stuck paying for it anyway.
> Because the PowerMac hasn’t been Intel-ized yet. Apple’s track
> record witht he Intel switch has been to bring the “Mac premium”
> down to a few hundred dollars at most
Since when? Apple’s track record so far with the Intel switch has been tgo RAISE prices. Not lower them. Both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook saw price increases after the switch. Not decreases. I don’t remembeer if they raised the prices on the iMac and Mac Mini or not, but I do know for sure that they did not lower them. So In not one case so far, has Apple’s track record on the Intel switch been to reduce the “Mac premium” to a few hundred dollars at most. In all cases, prices have either stayed the same, and in at least half the cases, prices have gone up.
>Compare the $2000 PowerMac to what you can get from Boxx
> for that price.
Now compare it to what you can get from Dell for that price. The $2,000 PowerMac comes with a skimpy 512 Mb of RAM, a relatively small 160 Gb hard disk, and only a mid-range video card with only 128 Mb of RAM. It’s not an impressive system for the price tag. For that same price tag, you could buy a PC that would have quadruple the RAM, double the hard disk space, double the video RAM (plus a better card. you could get the nVidia 7900 instead of the 6600), and a processor that is at least as fast, if not faster (if you go with AMD).
> Bullshit. I’ve spent the last two weeks alternating between a
> Win XP machine (to run Word), and an iMac
> (to run everything else)
Says you. but not so say most analysts and consumers. Apple’s ease of use and better UI have largely disappeared as Windows has made great strides in usability.
> Oh, and its insecure. The Mac I’m typing this on is still
> running 10.4.4. I haven’t updated or applied any patches on
> this machine (gasp!) since I took it out of the box.
Ah… So I guess the more than 70 security holes that have been discovered in MacOS since 10.4.4 don’t concern you then? Those Quicktime arbitrary code execution flaws, or jpeg image handler holes, or Safari holes don’t bother you? You realize many of those holes are considerd to be highly critical right?
You are living in a fantasy realm if you think your Mac OS X 10.4.4 install out of the box not insecure. There are at least 70 security holes in it, many of which are considered to be highly critical. And some of which can be exploited by doing nothing more than displaying a malicious jpeg file in your Web browser, which can be embedded in any web page you might happen to hit.
Edited 2006-05-23 15:29
It’s hard to find motherboards these days that don’t have integrated video. Whether you intend to use it or not, you often get stuck paying for it anyway.
BS. Most motherboards these days do *not* come with integrated video. Open up a Dell PC with a discrete graphics chip and tell me if you see a 945G chipset in there. The chipsets with integrated video do cost more than the chipsets without it. Vendors aren’t going to spend the extra money on it unless they’re going to use it.
Face it, people, in general, don’t upgrade their graphics cards, or their motherboards. Especially given that doing something like that will invalidate your tech support!
Since when? Apple’s track record so far with the Intel switch has been tgo RAISE prices. Not lower them. Both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook saw price increases after the switch. Not decreases.
Apple didn’t lower the prices on the machines, but what they did do was include a lot of CPU and GPU for the given pricepoints. I’m sitting at a 20″ iMac. It’s got a dual-core 2.0 GHz processor and a 128MB X1600. A comparably specced XPS200 (to account for the SFF factor) costs $2000. Even if we neglect the whole form factor and noise aspect, an XPS 600 (with 1GB RAM and a 256MB graphics card) costs $1870, and that’s because Dell is running a special on 20″ monitors.
The same thing for the Macbook. An E1405 specced with a 1.83 GHz processor and Bluetooth is a grand total of $43 cheaper than the $1100 Macbook.
The simple fact is that Apple did an excellent job pricing the Intel machines. Whereas the affordable Apple models in the past used bargain-basement chips that couldn’t compete with the mid-range CPUs of its competitors, now almost all of them have Core Duos, at clockspeeds comparable to the ones found in other machines in their price classes.
Now compare it to what you can get from Dell for that price.
Apples and oranges. The PowerMac is a workstation line, not a PC line. In any case, its the CPU that keeps its performance in the PC realm. With the Intel switch, Apple will very likely move the PowerMac to Woodcrest, making the comparison with consumer machines even more meaningless.
Says you. but not so say most analysts and consumers. Apple’s ease of use and better UI have largely disappeared as Windows has made great strides in usability.
What analysts are saying that “Windows has made great strides in usability”? Nobody I’ve met hates their Windows machines any less these days, not surprising, since the UI hasn’t changed since barely a year after OS X came out!
Ah… So I guess the more than 70 security holes that have been discovered in MacOS since 10.4.4 don’t concern you then? Those Quicktime arbitrary code execution flaws, or jpeg image handler holes, or Safari holes don’t bother you? You realize many of those holes are considerd to be highly critical right?
Blah blah blah. All I know is, my Windows box has a spyware icon blinking at me in the systray, while the Mac has been running just fine. Potential exploits are different from those in the wild, and arbitrary code execution is a lot less dangerous when the privlege model of the OS isn’t braindead to start with.
> BS. Most motherboards these days do *not* come with integrated
> video. Open up a Dell PC with a discrete graphics chip and tell me
> if you see a 945G chipset in there.
Go motherboard shopping and then come back and tell me it is BS. Most of the motherboards you can buy have integrated video these days.
> The same thing for the Macbook. An E1405 specced with a
> 1.83 GHz processor and Bluetooth is a grand total of $43
> cheaper than the $1100 Macbook.
And the Dell comes with double the RAM, a larger screen, and a bigger hard disk. And it also comes with useful office software (Works + MS Word). Instead of just a trial version of iLife (which is really not very useful as a word processor anyway.)
> Apples and oranges. The PowerMac is a workstation line,
> not a PC line.
Not apples and oranges at all. The simple fact is I can buy or build a much more capable PC system than what Apple is selling for $2,000, and still have money left over. And the word “workstation” is a buzz word. nothing more. Ask most people what constitutes a workstation. There are plenty of home desktop systems out there that are more poewerful than the so called “workstations.” And there are many so called “workstations” that are basically stripped down because they are designed for simple work tasks and not gaming and such. So the word “workstation” is a totally relative word that does not justify in any way the inflated PowerMac prices for specs that just aren’t very impressive.
> What analysts are saying that “Windows has made great strides
> in usability”? Nobody I’ve met hates their Windows machines
> any less these days, not surprising, since the UI hasn’t changed
> since barely a year after OS X came out!
Are you honestly trying to tell me that Windows XP is not a lot more usable than Windows 3.1? Or even Windows 95?
And Steve Jobs has always cared more about trendy aesthetics then real functionality and usability–ever since the Apple III days when he forced designers to work with impossible specs and told them they couldn’t use a cooling fan because it was noisy and aesthetically unpleasing–which resulted in Apple IIIs that ran so hot they warped their motherboards and popped their chips out of socket. Apple’s concern with aesthetics over funtionality and usability has not changed to this day, and is shows up in many glaring ways in their UI. Want a short list of annoying things with Apple’s UI?
– No task bar
– I can’t look at minimized apps on the dock and determine which is which if I ahve multiple windows open for the same application
– If multiple windows from the same app are open on the desktop, only one of them shows up in the dock, which means the others are not easily accessible if they are burried behind other windows.
– No easy way to access all the applications I have installed if the desktop is covered
– That red bubble in the left corner of the window is stupid. It doesn’t do something intuitive like exit the application… No… it only closes the window but leaves the app running, wasting system resources. Except for sometimes when it really does close the app.. It’s not even consistant in its bad behavior.
– That green bubble is even worse. Resize to “best fit”, which is an arbitrary value for many applications. What is “best fit” for something like an IRC window? Except in some cases, where this button acts like a maximize button. Again, inconsistancy.
– There is no maximize button, except in the case where the green bubble behaves like one.
– The bubbles are in the left upper corner of the window… In a world where 80% of people are right handed and find buttons in the upper right corner of the window to be more natural.
– The shared menu bar at the top of the screen makes it hard to associate menus with applications sometimes. Plus it means I often have to to move the mouse an unecessarly large distance to access the menu.
– Is Apple ever going to get with the program and add a thumbnail view to their file browser? To this day I still can’t go into a directory containing jpegs and view thumbnails in the file browser… And they say they are better and easier for life tasks? That one fact alone wastes a lot of my time when searching for an image.
– If they aren’t going to provide thumbnail view, could they at least provide an image preview window? Nope. They couldn’t do that either.
– Mac gives me virtually no way to customize the UI. I can’t even change the color of the title bar if I don’t like that boring bland gray they give me.
Gee… Remind me again how Mac is so much easier to use than Windows? And such a superior UI design?
Edited 2006-05-23 21:41
Go motherboard shopping and then come back and tell me it is BS. Most of the motherboards you can buy have integrated video these days.
Newegg.com category search: on Intel boards, integrated video has a slight edge at 119 with and 103 without. AMD boards have it clearly in the minority at 92 with and 164 without. 44% in total have onboard video. It’s much higher than it was just a year ago, but I suspect that’s to do with the increasing popularity of small, cheap computers as AV appliances, so let’s investigate. On full ATX form factor, 17 / 128 Intel boards (13%) and 1 / 174 (yes, ONE) AMD boards (0.5%) have it. That’s 6% total, not “most” by any stretch of the imagination.
But wasn’t that your point to begin with? That PCs are upgradeable and Macs aren’t? Why would you just make something up that doesn’t even support your point?
Oh wait, it’s because you’re a troll.
> Oh wait, it’s because you’re a troll.
Hah… I love it when people resort to “the troll defense” instead of actually address the real points. That shows you must have very low debating skills.
Ok, so I didn’t check Newegg. I admit that parts was off.
But you failed to address any of the rest of my claims and only addressed the one you could come up with a defense for.
Oh. And I love how people think they can just redefine the word “troll” on this forum… Like in your case:
atsureki’s definition of troll: Anyone who doesn’t agree with me and whom I can’t address the real points with.
Hah… I love it when people resort to “the troll defense” instead of actually address the real points.
There’s no such thing as the troll defense. I’ve never been called a troll on here. Most people haven’t. Just because someone says it doesn’t mean it’s true, but if you get called a troll every time you post, I’d start to suspect…
Ok, so I didn’t check Newegg. I admit that parts was off.
But you failed to address any of the rest of my claims and only addressed the one you could come up with a defense for.
Oh. And I love how people think they can just redefine the word “troll” on this forum… Like in your case:
atsureki’s definition of troll: Anyone who doesn’t agree with me and whom I can’t address the real points with.
It’s not my responsibility to argue with everything you say, nor does it become my responsibility to take on your entire post when I choose to reply to it. We’re not complete opposites or blood adversaries simply because I find your conduct distasteful and your claims ridiculous.
I called you a troll because your posts contain made-up facts in apparent non-sequiturs, which seem to accomplish no other purpose than to be adversarial. I stopped at the integrated video topic because I felt it was a prime example easily demonstrated with numbers and straightforward reasoning. Why say most motherboards have switched to integrated video if your claim is that most customers demand an upgrade path? Neither part is true, and they make less sense together, but you appeared to be disagreeing with the other guy, so I guess mission accomplished.
You’ve seen the Warner Bros. cartoons with reflexive arguments, right? Buggs gets Elmer to change his mind just by reversing what he’s saying. That’s part of what makes these threads last so long. If I concerned myself with addressing every word of your post, I’d lose perspective and fall into the troll trap. It’s not that trolls are malicious. They take bait just like everyone else. I understand the contest mentality, but it doesn’t belong here. It belongs on Usenet.
> I called you a troll because your posts contain made-up facts
> in apparent non-sequiturs, which seem to accomplish no other
> purpose than to be adversarial.
Except the fact wwas not made up. It was just a mistake based on the fact that the sites I had checked carried an overwhelming majority of boards that had integrated video. I hadn’t checked Newegg. So accusing me of making up facts and calling me a troll because of it is dishonest on your part. I admitted it was an error.
The rest of my points were valid.
The G5 is certainly no slouch, but that was an ad-hoc downgrade of a POWER4 processor. The Opteron is capable of out-performing the G5, and while the G5 could trump all x86 chips produced by Intel when it first came out, its stagnant clock speed probably has had it matched or out-performed by the modern multi-core chips. It’s the same thing like the PPC 601 days, where initially they had twice the floating point and up to ten times the integer performance of the Pentium, but over time they couldn’t keep up. Meanwhile, you can’t put a G5 into a laptop form factor, and Apple was impatiently waiting on either a reduced power G5 or a souped up G4; neither of which were coming with any certainty any time soon. The G5 workstation will be necessary until Adobe and others go to native code because the Intel machines can’t run that code through Rosetta fast enough, therefore there would be a performance hit for those machines. That, and the G5 was at least on the same level as a modern Intel chip, whereas the G4 was a dog.
Meanwhile, the power-performance ratio of the PowerPC for applications that don’t require maximum umph is quite good. Hence I said it is more suited for the embedded market, which is probably too specific a term for what I meant.
I like the POWER architecture, and its PowerPC younger cousin. I wish they could have kept out-pacing x86 with their consumer chips (the PPC). They didn’t. Apple had to make a decision that made business sense. This does. If IBM and PA start blowing the doors off x86 in raw power and power-performance ratio so that the PPC chip is a viable option for the entire gamut of computers, then Apple can always switch back. Those are big if’s however, and it would be imprudent to gamble the whole company on them.
> The Opteron is capable of out-performing the G5, and while the
> G5 could trump all x86 chips produced by Intel when it first came out
The Opteron can outperform the G5, sure. But that was Apple’s other mistake. If they were going to switch to x86, they should have gone with AMD. Or at least not locked themseelves exclusively into Intel like they did. The Athlon x2 and the Opterons would have given them a time tested and ecnomical line of 64 bit chips they could replace the G5 with.
As far as Intel, I dont think Intel has anything right now that can outperform the G5… At least nothing that people are actually using.
PA Semi may have been counting on the Apple deal to stay afloat. It’s not easy to make it into this field unless one has deep pockets and lots of friends in the business. But all is not lost. The current computing model is on its dying breath. People are beginning to figure out that this 150-year old paradigm (started by Lady Ada and Charles Babbage) is about to go the way of the dinausaurs, as it should. It has served us well but it has also brought us face to face with a monumental crisis: software is not reliable. Change to a non-algorithmic, synchronous, signal-based software model and the problem will disappear. Current processors are optimized for the algorithm and therein lies the golden opportunity of a lifetime for companies like PA Semi. Invest all your passion and remaining resources into the synchronous model and the rest of the industry (Intel, AMD and the others) won’t know what hit them until it’s too late. I’d give the same advice to SUN Microsystems or SGI. Don’t say you weren’t warned. ahahaha…
Stop spamming that “rebelscience” drivel everywhere.
I think it would have been great to go with PA Semi or with the IBM Cell, but lets be honest, its the stuff of dreams, it wouldn’t work, Apple has tried it all through its life to be different in regards to chips and usually its led to dead ends.
I think Semi could have being wonderful but it was risky the choice was open for a middle of the road, but reliable chip or continue down the road of uncertainty – IBM couldn’t supply the amount of chips or speed them up enough so what chance would semi have?
At least Apple can now guarantee they are never going to be left behind, they are using Intel at the moment but if need be it’d be a very small step to switch to AMD
Well, the good news is once all software is Universal for Mac OS X, Apple can just as easily switch back to PowerPC once its original contract with Intel expires, if the PowerPC becomes king once again. In fact, by not limiting itself to one architecture, it is able to choose the best processors regardless of instruction set, which will give them an advantage when deciding what to use. Of course, for now they are most likely locked into an Intel-only contract for some time to come, but after that they’re free to do anything they want again.
Myrd said: “Well, the good news is once all software is Universal for Mac OS X, Apple can just as easily switch back to PowerPC once its original contract with Intel expires, if the PowerPC becomes king once again. In fact, by not limiting itself to one architecture, it is able to choose the best processors regardless of instruction set, which will give them an advantage when deciding what to use. Of course, for now they are most likely locked into an Intel-only contract for some time to come, but after that they’re free to do anything they want again.”
That is a good point – but I doubt it will happen. IBM’s happy with supplying the consoles, and Apple is very happy to have some decent chips in its notebooks again.
And I’m especially happy about the new MacBooks!
1000 SPECint at 2.0 ghz is the work of a superstar chip?
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1000 SPECint at 2.0 ghz is the work of a superstar chip?
I have nothing to compare it with. What’s normal for 2.0 GHz?
With the entire personal computing market except for Apple using Intel chips (or chips from other companies using the x86 instruction set), they were a safe bet. Apple wouldn’t be able to ship more powerful machines than their PC competitors, but that’s not why people bought Macs anyway. Using Intel chips meant that they were in the same boat as the PC manufacturers. This start-up might have turned out amazing or they might have been another G5 – amazing, but constantly coming out 18 months past when promised.
While using x86 chips means that Apple can never beat Dell, HP or whoever in the CPU department, it does mean that Apple can’t loose to them in that department either.
then no one can. While I agree that Intel (or AMD for that matter) was a safer bet in terms of capacity, reputation, business stability, etc., microprocessor technology and the consumer have both lost out big time. While Intel and AMD make fine processors and continue to improve their technology at a good pace, sometimes it takes fresh thinking and some guts in order to really make a difference.
PA not only had fresh thinking and guts, it had accomplished engineers and boat loads of venture capital as well. They had all of the ingredients necessary to create a big jump in performance-per-watt-per-dollar, and best of all, it’s compatible with Apple’s binaries. If this wasn’t enough to impress Apple and win the contract, then every microprocessor company besides Intel, AMD, and possibly IBM should just stop right now, apologize to the investors, and concede that the mainstream microprocessor market has infinite barriers to entry.
I bet that PA’s CEO was thinking the same thing: what else could they have done to win the deal? Was the whole concept doomed from the start? Would they have had to give their processors to Apple for free (or a small fraction of Intel’s price) in order to even have a shot at gaining some share of Apple’s production (think Linux and its struggle to gain marketshare despite being free)?
Unfortunately, things like this happen all the time. Natural market forces don’t always tend towards superior products/services becoming successful. It’s depressing to think about all of the progress in various industries that has been squandered because the small guy got pushed out of the market space.
it had accomplished engineers and boat loads of venture capital as well.
I suspect that people not close to the industry don’t realize how capital intensive new CPU development is. I haven’t checked in a few years, but once upon a time, Intel was spending more than $250 million on the R&D costs of each new processor generation.
And it isn’t at all unusual for them to spend a couple hundred million to a billion on a fab line.
So, if you’re a new chip maker and you want to compete head to head with Intel in the performance end of the pool, “boat loads” means around a billion dollars.
The move to x86 was wise, and is obviously already paying off. Apple has been burned on promised chips too many times in the past. The 88000, the 68060, more recently the speed bumps in the G4’s and G5’s. Two of the industry’s big chip makers, Motorola and IBM, couldn’t meet aggressive deadlines with the PPC architecture. Would it be smart to gamble a multi-billion dollar company on a startup? All signs point to no. Even in the article it is clear that the startup wasn’t showing Apple working silicon, but projected designs. It was far too unacceptable for Apple to absorb yet another disappointment in processor performance.
I wish those guys well though. While IBM may be going after the ultra-high performance market with their POWER and Cell processors, there is still room to grow the 64-bit PPC in the lower end. I don’t envy their position in trying to take on the x86 consumer market however.
“The move to x86 was wise, and is obviously already paying off. Apple has been burned on promised chips too many times in the past. The 88000, the 68060, more recently the speed bumps in the G4’s and G5’s. Two of the industry’s big chip makers, Motorola and IBM, couldn’t meet aggressive deadlines with the PPC architecture. Would it be smart to gamble a multi-billion dollar company on a startup? All signs point to no. Even in the article it is clear that the startup wasn’t showing Apple working silicon, but projected designs. It was far too unacceptable for Apple to absorb yet another disappointment in processor performance.”
Moron.
Absolute raving moron.
Let me quote it one more time just for fun:
“The move to x86 was wise, and is obviously already paying off.”
Oh god!
Apple Switched for it’s mobile computers, nearly everybody except for the most crazy AMD fanboys will admit Intel has been smoking AMD for years on the mobile pc front.
I for one would love to see Apple use AMD for thier desktops or at least for their PowerMac’s (or whatever they are going to call them) but that remains to be seen.
I believe AMD is capable of supplying Apple with the needed ammount of processors but Apple did not go with them because they did not offer a full solution, Intel did.
All of that having been said, there is no way you could convince me that Apple would have gone with some little start up manufacturer, I know AMD is small compared to intel, but it is still a large company with a lot of money to revamp manufacturing facilities as needed.
I think this (“superstar chip manufacturer”) may be the bomb, but from the standpoint of a large successful company depending on them, it sounds crazy….. I would almost wonder if Apple was thinking of possibly buying this company and doing everything in house….. that would be my guess (and if that is the case, they decided against it).
Edited 2006-05-22 03:11
How suddenly they claim core duo macs to be 3-4 times faster (!) than equvalent G5, while they were previously claiming that G5 beats crap out of the Intel P4.
I’m not sure it is either way.
The core duo kicks the crap out of the P4, too. It’s not that funny. The P4 was all about clock speed, not performance.
No, Apple claims that the Core Duo is much faster than the G4, which is hardly a surprise.
My goodness.
“The move to x86 was wise, and is obviously already paying off.”
Insofar as Apple has, or will soon, cease to be a systems company and will instead focus entirely on shoddy, tawdry, overpriced consumerist geegaws. The company that invented the personal computer, now using the personal computer to move a functional clone of the Sony Walkman. They’ve made money on this, but it is a very different sort of business than the one they were in only five years ago.
True dat, if you want to shift boxes, shifting Intel boxes is guaranteed volume. I give the OSNeXTStep another three years before they ditch it for an Mac-branded Vista theme. It might work well enough for people doing glossy ads in Wired, but doesn’t “well enough” represent a miserable horizon-lowering on the part of people who have done real invention in the past? I think they can do better than “our boxes run something like Windows, but with 15% less crap to worry about”.
But then, I’ve been harshing on Apple since they ditched NuBus.
The reality of The apple move was that it was delivery issues that was the biggest issue for apple when dealing with IBM. The reality of that is the move to intel should sure up a supply chain yes. But the PASEMI stuff is really designed for high performance network/storage stuff which is not where the mac stuff is. Reading through their web page it constantly states routers/storage markets where the PowerPC arch is very strong.
Apple has plenty reasons to go with Intel:
– Intel has good processors for mobile or slim boxes segment, that is crucial for Apple;
– it has a promising roadmap too (in the segment that Apple needs) and a lot of money for R&D;
– being this segment crucial for Intel too, Intel cannot afford to miss to many targets on the roadmap, while the main problem in past years for Apple was to be a custom consumer of third part R&D of companies often not focused in the same segment of interest of Apple;
– Intel is a reliable company, it is not about leaving businness in next years, nor to shifting it’s interest to something other not suitable to Apple machines like other produces may do to get better marginality with niche or high level products;
– Intel can give to Apple a full solution, from CPU to mobo to integrated graphics and a lot of integrated stuff, that means basically more stability, easier support, reliability of hardware availability etc…
– Intel is a big semiconductor producer, so can offer to Apple a lot of good deals apart from computers, ranging form memories, non x86 low power processors, controllers etc…
For a company like Apple, needing a reliable parthner, ease of support and a guaranteed roadmap, Intel is rather an ideal parthner and moreover non-x86 tech Intel can offer, may be an interesting trade in the near future for both Intel and Apple.
So this chip company is a Superstar right? Big as moto? Sounds like they are……I don’t believe their processor “road map” looks very well in terms of products and demand.
Intels better already.
First) As long as Steve Jobs USES a computer, it will be an Apple. Control freaks want to control their product, it’s development and quality.
Second) OS X is ahead of Vista, forcing Microsoft to at least attempt to match OS X features in Vista. PC users can thank Apple by buying an Apple product( Ipod nano… )
Third) You ain’t seen nothin yet: Wait for 10.5.
PC users have a strange WISH Apple would go away, but, you are BENEFITING from Apple. And your smart OS dreams actually come true by having Apple AROUND.
Apple may never dominate the desktop but steady growth benefits Microsoft users.
4) I liked the PowerPC, and I like to see that APPLE did extensive research to stay on PPC. But, PC users keep forgetting Apple DID NOT move to the P4. Apple moved to the Core Duo. A far better cpu.
As long as Jobs uses a computer, it will be shiny and say “Macintosh” on it somewhere. How the technology is marketed is irrelevent to its nature. Which brings me to my second point; namely, OSX is now distinguished from Windows by users by what?
1.) A better aesthetic (it looks prettier than XP, notice I did not say easier to use)
2.) Untroubled by spyware
3.) Runs only on one vendor’s products.
I’m sure there are a few others (and no doubt someone will add to those) but I hold that this level of distinction is insufficient to make maintaining their own OS a worthwhile investment for Apple.
With a Mac-branded Windows Vista, they could take full advantage of the options available on their new hardware platform (all Windows devices would now work), they could reap the benefit of a modern, machine-independent runtime & development environment (.NET), and still make money off selling hardware to people who believe they’re making some sort of “lifestyle accessory” purchase.
Why do I think this is going to happen? Because Apple isn’t in the systems business anymore. They are making PCs. This isn’t just about using an Intel chip instead of a Power derivative (both Sun and SGI have done this, with limited success, in certain products), it is about ceasing their involvement in the design of microprocesors, interconnects, boot firmware, form-factors etc.
The PC platform, which lots of underinformed people blasphemously refer to as “open” and “industry-standard”, has been a Microsoft fiefdom since IBM’s PS/2 debacle, if not longer. Intel needs MS far, far, more than it needs Apple, so major decisions about the future direction of Apple’s hardware will more likely be announced at WinHEC than MacWorld.
If you believe that the specifics of the underlying hardware are integral to understanding the capabilities of the OS running on it, then you must agree that Apple has now limited its operating system to doing no more than what Microsoft might be able to do with Windows on the same hardware. Is that a tenable competitive position? It is, provided your user base just wants something “like Windows, but slightly better/hipper”.
Helluva lot more lucrative than actually paying hw engineers, or trying to make software that can’t be easily aped by MS during their next Service Pack cycle.
Universal binaries (or dual binaries actually) are a great start, but I’d love to see Apple switch to an architecture independant bytecode like java or the .net clr. Then we could have real competition not just between Operating Systems, and x86 chip companies, but also between chip architectures. This would also help out new promising technology like Itanium, Transmeta’s Efficeon and Crusoe, and PA Semi’s chip, and others, since it would remove a substantial barrior to entry.
…that AMD seemed to be a more Apple-esque vendor. They are considered an ‘Under Dog’ in the CPU industry (maybe not anymore), akin to Apple’s “Think Different” slogan. This would have also saved-face for one ‘Steve J’ that said “never Intel” for so long. They are more efficient chips (even the Core design is barely able to match the Athlon64FX’s performance), and with authentic* support for the 64-bit upgrade path (versus the hacked-up EM64T’s) the upcoming Opteron lines would be gravy for Apple’s marketing armada. Having premium-grade Opteron server CPUs in their future lineup would be a major win for Apple. And I don’t buy in to the idea that AMD wouldn’t have been able to meet the quantity demands for Apple, as far as I’ve seen AMD has done well in this respect for a long time.
* I say ‘authentic’, in that AMD designed the 64-bit extensions – Intel just backstepped, copied the specs, and implemented them on a design that didn’t have 64 in mind.
But, in retrospect – I don’t know that it was really all that great of an idea to move off of the PPC chipset when there are several new developments already being produced. I’m not a huge fan of PPC, but dragging the entire user-base to a new chipset is quite a task (and not a very graceful one at that). Many apps simply won’t port easily (Adobe?), and there are hardware dependencies that will quietly (or not so quietly) rear their heads (issues regarding endian-ness, and other not-so-obvious details). To me, I think Apple made this move too early – they should have waited for OS X.5 or higher to jump-chip. (Ha! Pun! Jump CHIP! whoo…)
But they’ve gone the conservative route with Intel, probably not a bad move for investors – but not the greatest move they could have made. IMHO
Apple already support JAVA to great extent, so isn’t your dream already kinda… fulfiled?
Not really just yet. Apple still doesn’t put it’s weight behind the idea by making parts of its OS use Java bytecode, like they do when they jump architectures as one example.
They have also switched their entire product line to the new architecture, where if they were going to aggressively support the architecture independant angle, they might have emphisized the Java bytecode a bit more, and kept the RISC architecture around for a while longer along side Intel.
Of course there are reasons to market the switch, even if they do decide later on down the road to push the independance angle, such as appeasing the darn media, who probably wouldn’t understand the value of architecture independence. The idea is way outside of the norm, but could definately be called “thinking differently”.
After thinking about it, there are couple of things that would have to happen. Something like being able to compile Cocoa apps written in Objective-C and many other languages into Java bytecode would be necessary (which off the bat makes Mono seem like a better choice, but if I’m not mistaken, Java has similar language independance which could be made more prominent – switching XCode to Eclipse wouldn’t hurt either).
Also, Java has it’s own brand presence, I would think Apple would want to create it’s own branding for whatever layer they put on top of the Java bytecode (or/and Mono – though Java stands in better contrast with Microsoft’s .NET), and attempt to play down the underlying architecture (in the marketting, there’s no reason to play it down in dev circles), although the thought of developing with Cocoa Beans, or Mocha Latte isn’t so bad, if a bit cheezy. 🙂 For the performance criticle apps, make sure to always mention that Universal Binary thingy.
And if Intel doesn’t like the idea of competing with other architectures (actually, this would provide a way in for their Itanium line), I’m sure AMD would be willing to help out.
> (which off the bat makes Mono seem like a better choice, but if I’m
> not mistaken, Java has similar language
Java would be a better choice because it already is well supported on Mac; and Apple has done an excellent job with their Swing L&F such that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a Java Swing application and a native Mac application. Mono would take a lot of work to get it to a point where it is truly usable on Mac to write full featured desktop applications and such, especially in the GUI support department. (Gtk has no OS X port outside of the one that requires X). And yes, Java is language independant. There are a few languages which run ontop of the JVM already including a version of Python, a ruby interpretor written in Java, and a php interpretor written in Java.
> Also, Java has it’s own brand presence, I would think Apple would
> want to create it’s own branding for whatever layer they put
> on top of the Java bytecode
That depends. Yes, Java has its own brand presence, but it’s such a powerful brand presence that it might work in Apple’s favor not to try to dilute it with their own branding.
Edited 2006-05-22 23:33
I wonder if Apple has got Itanium somewhere on it’s roadmap. Itanium PowerMacs? They could if they wanted to. I’m sure Intel would be happy.