Apple Computer will likely shift to using Intel chips, while circumstances exist that could well push Dell Computer and Sun Microsystems into a friendly embrace, predicted Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff. More and more analysts, editors and even users are getting smoother to the idea that Apple might have to make the jump to x86, simply because IBM/Motorola are not interested anymore in fullfilling Apple’s CPU needs. I wrote an editorial about it two weeks ago (a pretty successful article I might add, judging from the outrageous number of hits received). That article seemed to have re-ignite a number of similar articles on the web since then to several tech news sites.
Analysts Says Apple to Lie Down with x86
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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they could come out with the first x86-64 compatible platform.
it would be a great idea just because they no longer need to spend scarce R&D costs on development.
they can have nvidia, via, sis, etc. shoulder the cost of chipset development, and intel/amd to shoulder the cost of cpu.
they can focus on what apple does best: make great software.
their overhead would be reduced. also, they know of the platform’s stability and performance.
>More than 50 seconds for a browser to load? Whoa.
It takes 3-4 seconds here.
is to bring back the clones, powercomputing and daystarr among them!
nice job jobs! by killing off the clones you killed off any incentives to improve PPC
Anonymous, Apple was about to tank when the clones were out. The clones hardware was cheaper and so the prices were lower. The way Apple is set up, they have to make money on hardware.
By the way, I did have a Radius clone. It was really a Mac 8100 with a Radius case and monitor. It was nice.
I’d like to see OSX on Intel, AMD processors. Not only will Apple be able to take advantage of faster processors but MP architecture is as good or better but RAM, BUS and Video architecture is much faster. I wouldn’t associate Intel with other OSes. Most users don’t know about OS/2, BeOs. Besides, Intel also makes PIII’s for the Xbox and Linux and the BSDs are open architecture anyways.
Most users really care about 3 things: Applications, Value for money (which might be assoc cost for *some) and support. You could add to the list expand that for techincal users as well stability and expandability (stability is realted to value in some way). There are buyers on a budget who only need word processing and Internet machines, but many overspend anyways and get a PIV 2.6 GHz with 512 MB Ram, a burner and an 80 Gig HD.
For me, choosing between a PC and a MAC is almost trivial now. Apple has made a Unix/BSD desktop which looks nice is easy to use and I can use/port most if not all the Linux and Unix open source programs I want. The problem I have with Windows is that you end up buying a lot of programs after. I can get all the apps/utils I want easily: Mozilla, Pine, Perl, Apache, SSH, grep and GCC quite easily. Plus all developer tools are included.
Apple will have to make proprietary hard ware. Someone might hack the BIOS. So what. They won’t sell it or publish it prominently or Apple will definately sue. I’d pay more money for really good hardware, a stable platform and OS. I’ve build my own systems in the past, I just want some amount customizablilty. I’d just like to see some of the uncertainty clear out, namely I want to make sure Apple will be around for a while and to answer some part of that I’d like them to change to an architecture with a future with more power behind it. Don’t read this the wrong way, please, I’m not bashing the G4. I mean that its evident Motorola has given up on the G4 architecture, won’t be developing new chips and won’t be boosting the current batch of G4s in the forseeable future, if ever.
One of the respondents earlier said most ppl don’t care about computers faster than 800 Mhz. I don’t know about that. I have an 800 Mhz PIII and it is getting slow. I play videos, games, program and surf the Net like anyone else and create images with Photoshop etc. It would be nice to have a faster computer for these applications.
Apple does need a new supplier for processors, but i think they will not go to intel. Apple has always pridded itself on the quality it can achieve with using propietary hardware, if you know exactly what’s running your os, you can program for ultamate efficiency, whereas if your using generic (ie. x86, pc) components the variables of conflict rise and quality and stability goes down the drain (look at any M$ windowz product). The only reason Motorola is slowing ppc r&d is that they feel Apple’s demand is too small. As Apple gains more market, demand will rise, unfortunatly Motorola has slowed production too much, hence high costs and slow processor speeds. Apple will most likely try to get IBM to produce a refined version of Altivec (re-engineering motorola’s specs and designs no doubt), on a new processor. IBM would be able to provide the manufacturing and development support required by Apple. Motorola has lost interest in Apple and it shows. IBM had to step in to produce the G3 processor and did wonders. Apple still has a good relationship with IBM, and they will be the most likely candidate for a new processor. The only reason 1.5 GHz G3’s aren’t out is because Apple doesn’t want they’re new pride and joy G4 to look bad and outdated. IBM is willing to put out where motorola has lost intrest, I think it will not be very long until all is revealed and we see that the G5 will be here, most likely from IBM taking the best of the PPC and Power4 technologies and making a processor that works not just a processor that has fast clock speeds. Remember, it isn’t necessarily the speed that makes the diffence, it how well the CPU uses it and processes.
Prelude to something on the IBM front maybe?
check out this article:
http://news.com.com/2102-1001-947358.html
is exactly what apple has been looking for…now apple can hire up the engeneers that Moto droped and they can work in the IBM foundry to make the chips that apple designs!!!!
who the heck needs moto?
The IBM POWER cpu’s suck-up a lot of electricity and put off gobs of heat. I really don’t see Apple using the POWER series of CPU’s. Just look at the power they use and compare it to Moto’s PPC CPU’s.
Also, the Sparc chip from SUN, as far as I remember, doesn’t like to multi-thread. Multi-threading is kinda important in MP configurations I would assume. I am no hardware wiz, so I could be wrong here. If anybody knows sure, please post it. thanks
Didnt anyone remember there was Next x86 version? The reason they made that (which was pretty popular) was because it performed similar to the much more expensive NEXT workstations that were specifially designed.
I love all the mac ppl going on about Apple needing to “go 64 bit” .. worried that Apples benchmarks arent so convincing anymore? (finally how bloody long did it take to get the truth out)
Ok what are the choices .. the G5 according to rumour sites was released about 9 months ago now and subsequently another 5 times and its performance goes up and down by the day. So lets just assume this is the useualy complete BS from mac rumourville. The G5 is now just a G4++ (The + means longer pipeline).
Ok so the choices are.. (drum roll)
The G4+++ (over time they push it up to 1.3 then 1.4 then 1.45 Ghz each time making the pipeline longer .. wait this is reminding me of a RISC/ CISC debate.. hmm how come x86 scales so much better than RISC.. whats going on .. i guess this is more proof CISC won and RISC was all hype.)
Power4 What a great chip.. i love the idea of this being in Apple computers.. it runs hotter than the Itanium sucking in 10x an Ath or p4 … at 500 W. It runs slower than the Itanium 2 (see recent spec marks). Its 4 g3s whacked together with some glue logic. I love the talk of the “scaled down” version… how does that work.. hahah haha hahah.. oh wait.. haha .. .. hhaha .. *shakes head* .. mwahaha .. how is *that* supposed to work? divide it in 4 and have 1 g3? or in half and have 2 g3s at 250 W ?
gawd some ppl dont even TRY to imagine how their stupid ideas might work.
Itanium2 .. ahuh yup seems just like it was made for apple.. its 2 hot and apple makes desktop machiens not servers. (IE they arent going to bundle in a cpu from a whole other price category above into a useual mac)
x86 Athlon/P4 These are the industry leaders.. AMD and intel have killed of all competition by beating moore law every year.. in fact i believe these to companies have stayed above it .. but most chip companies stay on it or slightly below the line. AMD and intel didnt win because everyone left the market.. they won because they KILLED the market with awesome competition that Apple Sun.. and soon IBM (power4 just got beatn by Itanium 2) couldnt take.
IBM are going to make opteron servers to compete with there own power 4 ones.. and looking at the benchmarks when these new AMD babies are born there will be little reason to buy server systems anymore as finally x86 has taken over every market. Go the x86!
I predict over the next 2 years Itanium 2 and AMD finally take over the big clustered server market. Hey big buisness!!! welcome mass market competition
(perhaps apple computers would be faster if there was 2 different companies making chips for the same system WOW how cool would that be!)
Apples most obvious choice is for a dual cpu system.. a hybrid.. with 1 g4 and 1 x86. It would be possible if they were tricky and most importantly ppl would think its cool.. hey even i would.
“””Also, the Sparc chip from SUN, as far as I remember, doesn’t like to multi-thread. “””
Couldn’t be more wrong about this. Sun’s UltraSPARCs handle threading and MP incredibly well, much better than x86s.
> How about better FRIGGIN’ documentation on the CarbonLib???
Out of curiosity why Carbon over Cocoa?
> The Mac – in my eyes – is more of a consumer computer for
> the simple minded people, who just want to surf the web
> and check email.
I disagree. Mac has always been driven as the platform for Adobe apps. These are for creative people but I frankly see them as no more less “simple minded” than Excel/Word which drives the PC market.
> They have no need for 64 bit computing
Here I disagree. AFAICT Apple is going down the road of emulating on the desktop what SGI built in the 1990’s. A lot of SGI’s code for the Onyx I, Origin, O2 is 64 bit and would be very hard to port to 32 bit. Also if they are going to build super fast motherboards for distributed chips then they might as well go after the mid range database market on the server side. FileMaker pro is better than Access and with an Apple interface Postgres will be much better than SQL server. Through SGI style motherboards and it might just beat Oracle on <30k Suns.
Power4 What a great chip.. i love the idea of this being in Apple computers.. it runs hotter than the Itanium sucking in 10x an Ath or p4 … at 500 W. It runs slower than the Itanium 2 (see recent spec marks). Its 4 g3s whacked together with some glue logic. I love the talk of the “scaled down” version… how does that work.. hahah haha hahah.. oh wait.. haha .. .. hhaha .. *shakes head* .. mwahaha .. how is *that* supposed to work? divide it in 4 and have 1 g3? or in half and have 2 g3s at 250 W ?
gawd some ppl dont even TRY to imagine how their stupid ideas might work.
Thing you’re missing is Power4 currently isn’t a chip It’s a set of 4 dual core CPUs and cache chips housed in a Multi chip module, thats why it’s so expensive.
It could easily be scaled down to a single chip with one code and an external cache and still perform exactly the same (benchmarks refer to a single core).
If Apple were willing to drop there margins they could afford to put one of these chips (with cache) into a PowerMac and you’d have a dual CPU system capable of outperforming an Itanium 2 (never mind x86!) at a similar price to existing Macs.
It already looks like Apple are trying to rely less on hardware margins by charging for OS X and .mac.
This is making a lot of sense, if they want SGIs old market they’ll need lots of raw power and it isn’t as price sensitive as commodity PCs.
Out of curiosity why Carbon over Cocoa?
1. As easy as Objective-C may be to learn, I’m just more comfortable with C/C++.
2. I spent $500 for CodeWarrior 8 which claims to support the Cocoa framework and has an Objective-C compiler, but the code editior doesn’t recognize the syntax therefore there are no shortcuts to quickly get to a method of a class.
3. No HTML view class in Cocoa, no classes to do HTTP programming in Cocoa. At least none that I could find.
I disagree. Mac has always been driven as the platform for Adobe apps. These are for creative people but I frankly see them as no more less “simple minded” than Excel/Word which drives the PC market.
I knew people were going to come back and kick me in the ass for that comment. I know people feel differently, but me personally I can’t find one thing the Mac can do that a PC can’t do, and most of the time the PC does better, just my opinion.
With regard to 64 bit computing, I just don’t think Apple is a large enough company to be doing this. I’m suprised Microsoft hasn’t rolled out their own proprietary platform because they actaully have the money to do it.
What you are suggesting is that Apple will eventually move into the market of large corporations and serious businesses. The XServe is a sure sign that Apple is going in that direction, but my original comment was with regards to the desktop consumer systems. Many people who reply to this thread are shouting for 64 bit CPUs in a consumer system and I’m just saying that’s not necessary.
I the short run, it will be interesting to see how 10.2 runs. If there are across the board speed increases of varying degrees (depending on what kind of video card you have, etc.), then Apple could probably get away with using dual and quad processors, faster bus and RAM while they decide what to do long term. I think when we see 10.2, that will make part of the picture clearer. But, we won’t be able to see the whole picture until Apple comes out with the next hardware upgrades.
I knew people were going to come back and kick me in the ass for that comment. I know people feel differently, but me personally I can’t find one thing the Mac can do that a PC can’t do, and most of the time the PC does better, just my opinion.
I’m not gonna “kick you in the ass” over this because it’s basically true. But really, is there anything you can do on a PC that you can’t on a Mac? And aren’t there things you can do better on a Mac? They’re both just computers in the end.
I think Apple should partner with IBM and work closley together. Both are big, innovative companies with 1 common rival so i’m sure they could come up with something juicy.
It makes sence to me but i’m just a user.
I’m not so sure Apple is going to ditch powerPC for x86. If this were true, then who is going to plunk down $1000.00 to $4000.00 dollars on a new PowerPC computer in the next year of so? These people will only be throwing their money away.
And, how is Apple going to suceed when IBM could not with OS/2 on Intel?
TLY –
Thanks for the response on the Cocoa / Carbon issue. That makes sense.
In terms of the SGI features I actually think that is for the desktop user. Imagine a 3D photoshop where the program uses the focus levels to determine distance so you can sharpen up the background and everything is in focus or you darken at different points away from you or…
Or even for simple video editing Macs handle one stream fine but try and use 4 at once. I’m not artsy enough to know exactly what the SGI workstation users are getting but
I could go on an on. I don’t expect fiberchannel raids; but mainstream hard drives with direct hard drive controller card to memory writes OTOH seems to be the direction they are moving in.
32 bits creates problems starting about about 1/2 gig of ram and these get very bad by 4 gigs. For a desktop unit 1 gig of ram is not unreasonable and 1/2 gig for an inexpensive unit. We are already starting to hit the bottlenecks.
> And, how is Apple going to suceed when IBM could not with
> OS/2 on Intel?
I don’t think its fair to say IBM couldn’t succeed with OS/2. After the split with Microsoft they never really tried. They never shipped systems with OS/2. They never heavily promoted OS/2. They made it very difficult for retail stores to carry OS/2 during the 2.0 days (they wouldn’t work through Ingram for example).
Heck by OS/2 3.0 they could have given the system away. At that time the price compitition was fierce and every box shop was looking for anyway possible to cut costs
(while “GNU style” opensource wasn’t popular outside of Unix freeware was a very well known concept).
IBM had the better product, had much worse marketing knew this was the situation and did nothing radical to try and avoid the inevitable.
jbolden1517-
For video editing, there’s a lot more to it than just an absurd amount of RAM. Virtual memory is not so bad if you have high performance hard drives. It’s easy to overlook one important factor with regards to hard drives – the filesystem. I’ve heard many people say that HFS+ is long overdue for an update. Most modern filesystems today can support an unlimited filesize (for example FAT32 and older had a file size cap of 4 Gigs, NTFS has no limit) but limitations of the memory a CPU can address imposes another limit on the filesize. AVI files in windows have a limit of 2 gigs, this makes it difficult to edit uncompressed video on the Windows platform.
Until the software is capable of addressing larger files, there is little need for butt loads of RAM. But in order to add that capability to the software, the platform hardware needs to be capable. But there are simpler and cheaper solutions for editing high quality video and at really good performance. Use MPEG format for video codec, I don’t think it has any kind of limitation as far as filesize is concerned. The problem with MPEG is performance and bandwidth. There are add-on video cards to aid in editing MPEG files in real time. For virtual memory, you’d need the fast hard drives and interface (SCSI) available, and a good multimedia oriented filesystem (XFS).
I don’t know what the future requirements of software are going to look like, all I’m saying is that there are so many ways Apple can improve on their products and satisfy more people, rather than doing something dramatic like switch to a 64 bit CPU.
I don’t have money to buy a Mac but my P4 is waiting for the x86 version of OSWhatever. Thanks apple. Although this shift is to infuriate many loyal Mac users, I’m happy Apple thinks of intel users too…
Cypress
But BeOS is sill the best OS I’ve ever used…
I go away to Paris, France for a few days and return to the same FUD spread last week!
It’s not going to happen folks, plain and simple! Helk next thing you know, Sun Microsystems will drop SPARC and go totally Intel… I can smell the conspiracy theory brewing now 🙂
Out of curiosity why Carbon over Cocoa?
Perhaps someone would like to target most of the Mac market, not just 2 million of it. Or maybe that somebody wants to port a classic Mac OS app.
I disagree. Mac has always been driven as the platform for Adobe apps. These are for creative people but I frankly see them as no more less “simple minded” than Excel/Word which drives the PC market.
Believe it or not, PCs aren’t limited to Excel/Word. In fact, PCs fill a lot of niches you probably never heard of.
Here I disagree. AFAICT Apple is going down the road of emulating on the desktop what SGI built in the 1990’s.
For what? So that Apple could use 5GB of RAM in their machines?
FileMaker pro is better than Access and with an Apple interface Postgres will be much better than SQL server.
I have seen people claiming FMP is easier to use than Access, but I have never seen anyone claiming that it is more powerful than Access. You probably are comparing with pre-SQL Access.
As for Postgre SQL, I find it difficult to imagine how it could be more powerful than SQL Server. Faster? no. Feature-loaded? No.
… then Apple could probably get away with using dual and quad processors, faster bus and RAM while they decide what to do long term.
On the long term basis, this would be stupid, cause a quad processor PowerMac for example would cost the same as a quad processor Xeon or Athlon MP which could outperform it.
Also, changing the bus speed and RAM isn’t as easy as Xserve, unless you don’t want to maximize it. The processor itself must be design to take advantage of the increase speed.
But really, is there anything you can do on a PC that you can’t on a Mac?
High end 3D animation, for example.
And aren’t there things you can do better on a Mac?
Graphics designing for print.
They’re both just computers in the end.
What’s the difference between a calculator an a 8 processor mainframe? They’re both just computers in the end.
I think Apple should partner with IBM and work closley together. Both are big, innovative companies with 1 common rival so i’m sure they could come up with something juicy.
I wonder, what’s their one common rival? Surely not Intel, otherwise why the heck is IBM making Intel-based machines. Surely not Microsoft’s Windows division because cause IBM uses it, not Microsoft’s Server and BackOffice and Office division, cause APple don’t compete with them.
If this were true, then who is going to plunk down $1000.00 to $4000.00 dollars on a new PowerPC computer in the next year of so?
Why do you think Apple didn’t say a word about it, extra a small sentence long hint? Why do you think on the front page of Apple.com there isn’t a big sign saying “This year G4, next year P5”?
And, how is Apple going to suceed when IBM could not with OS/2 on Intel?
OS/2 was plain bad marketing from the start. Besides, IBM wanted OS/2 to be the current Windows, not the current mac OS. Apple seems happy with its niche player status. OS/2 would fail no matter what platform it ran on.
32 bits creates problems starting about about 1/2 gig of ram and these get very bad by 4 gigs. For a desktop unit 1 gig of ram is not unreasonable and 1/2 gig for an inexpensive unit. We are already starting to hit the bottlenecks.
There aren’t problems with 0.5GB to 4GB. The problem is because of the chipset itself, don’t blame it on 32-bit. And besides, tell me when you are ready to buy 4GBs of RAM for a machine… (You probably don’t need that much right now)
I don’t have money to buy a Mac but my P4 is waiting for the x86 version of OSWhatever. Thanks apple. Although this shift is to infuriate many loyal Mac users, I’m happy Apple thinks of intel users too…
LOL, you most likely won’t be able to buy OS X for your machine, and would have to buy a Apple branded one later.
If Apple were going to be a software company, they’d keep the Windows versions of the software they’ve bought. More money. It is only if they are going to remain a hardware company that they’d cancel some revenue.
So Apple buys a bunch of high-end audio and video software:
And Apple cancels the Windows versions.
All that is left are the OS X versions.
Apple releases new x86-based hardware running OSX86.
They have an office suite, Final Cut Pro, iTunes, iDVD, high end media products, Logic Audio, etc.
There is a solid software base on X86 for their OS and users can buy the new machines without waiting.
So Apple is on X86. Then they buy Maya and then shitcan the Windows version. And then they buy more software and shitcan the Windows versions.
Slowly but surely, Apple has established a beach head on X86. They are on the performance forefront again, but with a great OS and great apps. They are in pole position to dominate the technical workstation market.
Of course this scenario would work well for Itanium as well because Windows runs there also.
#m
“… then Apple could probably get away with using dual and quad processors, faster bus and RAM while they decide what to do long term.”
“On the long term basis, this would be stupid, cause a quad processor PowerMac for example would cost the same as a quad processor Xeon or Athlon MP which could outperform it.”
rajan, that’s what I was saying – only on a short term basis could Apple get away with this (if the PPC only has small, incremental speed increases).
Michael: “all your dollar are belong to apple”.
That’d be more like:
$apple = “select * from customers”;
😛
🙂
Sorry if this is redundant, I haven’t read the entire thread here.
If there is to be a transition, it will need to be a little bit later than sooner. The reasoning is that Apple will need to make sure its development base has converted fully to the new OS.
They started by essentially killing off OS 9, from a development point of view.
But, the developers still need to get their products off of Mac OS Classic and onto the new platform before a solid transition can happen.
When They(tm) did this with NeXTSTEP to OPENSTEP, and went multi-architecture, many of the developers were able to port to completely disparate architectures fairly quickly (Black Hardware, SPARC, PA-RISC and Intel). When you’re just talking to high-level structures like PDF/PostScript, and listening to mouse events rather than trying to talk to video cards, your software becomes much more hardware agnostic.
In truth, I think that this is an inner fantasy of Microsoft as well. When I first heard about the CLR within .NET, I was thinking that it was a very ingenious move by MS. If MS can get a majority of the applications written for its platform into something like the CLR, and even a major portion of it OS into CLR, then it’s that much closer to being able to more easily make a platform leap.
Multi-platform NT died because not everyone was porting everything to the different platforms. Sure, I could get SQL Server for NT on Alpha, but not, say, Quicken. But if the development community is writing to this third, “ideal” CLR platform, then the final hardware becomes much less important.
In some sense, this is what Java is supposed to provide, but Java defines an byte-code interpreted machine, whereas .NET specifies a mid-level assembly language and calling semantics that must still be compiled before executed. Java CAN be compiled, but does not have to be, whereas CLR MUST be compiled.
Oberon has another take on this process by distributing, essentially, the final part of the compiler tree before optimizations, letting the platform do the final compile, with processor optimizations, upon delivery of the software.
NS/OS developers were writing to high level APIs, and had the cross compilers built in to the system to enable them to ship “Fat” binaries, but it was still up to the developer to make sure they actually worked and were tested on the different platforms.
Apple has done this before, they called their virtual machine “68000”. The native intermixing of the old 68K code within the new PPC code was a brilliant maneuver. Sure, it cost performance, but it was easier than rebooting Apple from scratch with a new platform and no installed base, and a hoard of abandon, pissed off users.
Now doing it again can be very expensive. We’ve already switched architecture once, why should we do it again? In that light, I think they should commit to making their systems as architecture independant as possible. Make it possible for software developers to become much more architecture agnostic, so that their software will work with current machines, and future machines.
I think it would be very nice to have the same software that works on a current Mac to work on an Intel Mac, or even an ARM based Pocket Mac.
I don’t really care about whether I can build a Mac out of a slew of white box parts from anonymous vendors. But having flexibility in architecture makes for a more robust application space.
I did this in the early ’90s with the Informix database, and their 4GL which has a compiled and VM version. It gave us as vendors great flexibility to run our application on beige box PCs running SCO to 32+ processor Sequents. There is a lot of power as vendors and as customers when hardware is much more commoditized. We had one client dump its PC based solution for a 4 processor Data General solution. The time involved was copying the data and code over and firing it up. Heck, even the terminals were on terminal servers, and moved over with the change of an IP address.
Java is the only mainstream, popular platform today that gives us that kind of portability.
It would be interesting for Apple to try moving the entire system in a similar direction, so that they’d never again have to change the architecture enough to break all of the software.
This is just another CISC/RISC fight.
68k/Pentium
SPARC/x86
PPC/x86
Alpha/MIPS/your mamma
blah blah blah. Whatever. Once you get past the instruction decoders these chips all start to look the same.
At some points in history some have been faster than others.
The real question here is what is Apple going to do now that Motorola dropped the ball. And don’t say they haven’t, they have.
Several options come to mind.
The first option is to switch platforms alltogether. Alpha, x86, x86-64, IA-64, MIPS, arm, yadda yadda yadda. It isn’t going to happen. Binary compatibility, porting, developers yelling, ouch. Sure it could be done, but it would be a Samson and a jawbone kind of miracle if they survived it.
The next option is sticking it out with Motorolla. Once Motorolla gets through their current crisis they might come back.
Another option is Apple takes the G4/G5 guys and decides to go into making their own processors. Apple as a fabless cpu designer, like Transmeta only faster. Heck they could even buy a fab with all that cash they have floating in their coffers,
Wait, they still buy the G3 from IBM. IBM makes the Power4, the G3, the Gecko (Nintendo Gamecube), the Playstation 3, etc, etc. They just opened a big fancy fab, and they have a lot of cpu designers designing PowerPC chips. It is a no brainer that if Motorolla falls through IBM picks up its role. OK, somebody might mention Altivec. Whatever, keep it, throw it away, either way it is a much smaller move than going to another platform. The G3 doesn’t have altivec, and Apple still sells original iMacs and ibooks. If the perormance of altivec is made up for nobody will miss it.
Let’s save the platform wars for slashdot.
Michael, you’re as stupid and unsupportive of your drivel as ever. I invite you to join this list so you can have the snot beat out of you:
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
>> Out of curiosity why Carbon over Cocoa?
> Perhaps someone would like to target most of the Mac
> market, not just 2 million of it. Or maybe that somebody
> wants to port a classic Mac OS app.
The original author mentioned problems with Objective C and Codewarrier support with syntax and HTML. People who aren’t upgrading their OS are probably not the best software customers either.
> >I disagree. Mac has always been driven as the platform
> >for Adobe apps. These are for creative people but I
> > frankly see them as no more less “simple minded” than
> > Excel/Word which drives the PC market.
> Believe it or not, PCs aren’t limited to Excel/Word. In
> fact, PCs fill a lot of niches you probably never heard
> of.
I have no doubt they fill niches I haven’t heard of. That doesn’t change the fact that most platforms have core apps. Office is the core app of the Windows platform; Adobe software the core app of the Mac platform; Oracle the core app for Solaris….
>> Here I disagree. AFAICT Apple is going down the road of
>> emulating on the desktop what SGI built in the 1990’s.
> For what? So that Apple could use 5GB of RAM in their
> machines?
Full 3D support, multiple video channels. In addition to 3D content creation, you get scientific visualization, medical imaging… Go to http://www.sgi.com and take a look at what SGI’s are doing that PCs and Macs aren’t.
> > FileMaker pro is better than Access and with an Apple >>interface Postgres will be much better than SQL server.
> I have seen people claiming FMP is easier to use than
> Access, but I have never seen anyone claiming that it is
> more powerful than Access. You probably are comparing
> with pre-SQL Access.
I didn’t say anything about power. I’d agree that Access is more powerful than FileMaker. Clarion (IMHO) does a better job of offering a real light database development environment than Access for someone who knows enough to use Access. What Filemaker offers is the ability for people who don’t know Access to get about 80% of the features very easily. Access sits almost unused on way too many desktops I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen stuff done in Excel that should have been done in Access.
> As for Postgre SQL, I find it difficult to imagine how it
> could be more powerful than SQL Server. Faster? no.
> Feature-loaded? No.
As for postgres vs. SQL Server again I said “will be”. At this point SQL server is the better product. Postgres has the advantage of years of experience of 64 bit platforms, which SQL server won’t have because the operating environment is still the x86. Further given the GNU style development you are far more likely to see libraries for Postgres that exist for Oracle but not for SQL server and that Microsoft is likely to never provide.
Mac–inner-upset-rageful-flower-d00d… just love your little white fungus dome.
If it gives you so much juicy loving, there’s no need to carry that hate around.
Just warm your toes in the soft and gentle warmth of that mellow and slow FlowerPC processor.
And let the warm air waft those “Please, Apple, take more money, take all my money! Please Apple!” spores right into your cranium.
Oh, if you haven’t caught up with computers in a while, I’d suggest the following websites:
http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.intel.com
If you are interested in the #1 computer for education:
http://www.dell.com/us/en/edu/misc/segmenter_edu.htm
I’d invite you to the real world to take a look around at the state of Mac:
2.4% global share and dropping like a stone.
10% OS X upgrade percentage and acceleration = 0.
#m
I’m starting to develop the opinion that Apple really should take over CPU development for the Mac platform. Then they can decided 32 bit or 64 bit on their own and not be restricted with what’s currently available. No one else seems to want to do it – and by no one I mean Motorola and IBM – and since Apple is all about proprietary designs and hardware, why not take it to the extreme and take control of CPU development.
Most important of all is that Apple will be able to maintain binary compatibility with existing software. People will take Apple more seriously for pushing OSX as the next big thing, I know I would. Mac users seem to praise the Mac for its “superior software.” The Mac would not be what it is today if it wasn’t for the efforts of 3rd party developers and the cooperation of larger software firms such as Adobe. When it’s all said and done, Apple needs to please the software developers a little more than the actual users.
Alpha, x86, x86-64, IA-64, MIPS, arm, yadda yadda yadda. It isn’t going to happen. Binary compatibility, porting, developers yelling, ouch.
The same way they moved from 68k to PPC. So binary compatiblity could be kept with hardware emulation of PPC. Sure it would be slower, when Apple moved to PPC from 68k, the new PPC machines was mcuh slower than the 68k machines because even the OS is emulated. It would be better than back then because the OS don’t have to be emulated, only applications.
The next option is sticking it out with Motorolla. Once Motorolla gets through their current crisis they might come back.
Apple’s market share is going more and more down. x86 machines outperform Macs more and more. Microsoft and third party developers are making better software – soon there wouldn’t be any sane reason to buy a Mac.
Another option is Apple takes the G4/G5 guys and decides to go into making their own processors.
They risking all their money on a fab? Sounds insane. Besides, sure they can hire the G4/G5 guys, but what about the IP about these processors? Plus, how is Apple gonna compete with Intel and AMD when both companies has much more R&D money than Apple, and can pump out faster processors faster?
Wait, they still buy the G3 from IBM. IBM makes the Power4, the G3, the Gecko (Nintendo Gamecube), the Playstation 3, etc, etc.
Nice, after spending so much money on a marketing campaign to push for consumers to dump G3s and buy G4s. Gecko isn’t suitable for a desktop/ workstation. POWER4 emits too much heat and consumes too much power, and comes in an insanely high price. To bring it down to something that gives out less heat, consumes less power and to bring down the price, POWER4’s features over G4s would be gone, and it would be no faster, in fact probably slower, that current G4s.
The original author mentioned problems with Objective C and Codewarrier support with syntax and HTML. People who aren’t upgrading their OS are probably not the best software customers either.
I read that later, but didn’t feel like deleting my comment.
But not everyone needs OS X. In fact a lot of people can’t use OS X, some don’t have hardware capable of using it, others don’t have their applications running on OS X and so on. 2 million users is not a big market.
Office is the core app of the Windows platform; Adobe software the core app of the Mac platform; Oracle the core app for Solaris….
Most Windows users I know don’t have Office…. but never mind, I get your point.
>>If you are interested in the #1 computer for education:
http://www.dell.com/us/en/edu/misc/segmenter_edu.htm<<
Michael,
Unless there has been some sort of ‘sudden’ shift, Apple still retains the #1 spot in education which took back from Dell last year!
http://www.apple.com/education/
>>I’d invite you to the real world to take a look around at the state of Mac:
2.4% global share and dropping like a stone.
10% OS X upgrade percentage and acceleration = 0.<<
Yeah and that is why Apple’s marketshare is rising in both the US and Europe (2 of the most important markets in the world, so you take a look around! Apple is making profits, while other companies like Gateway are losing money, you do the math!
Your armchair CEO talk wont get you beyond your ‘lazyboy’ throne… furthermore, your philosophy is way off target concerning Apple or the Mac. Why do you even waste your time in here if you don’t even like Macs in the first place?!
The funniest thing I’ve read here is M# calling a mac user a “fanboy”.–pot calling kettle black (this happens so much it should be, PCKB)
I am real tired of his MS evangalism (well it isn’t exactly evangalism when he degrades and insults ad nauseum).
—–In 2 weeks the mac will be on a performance par with the PC.—–
Sorry, but they still won’t be able to compete with intel. The research & development budget of intel is about $4 billion, almost exactly the same as Apple’s TOTAL revenues, and a factor 10 larger than Apple’s total research budget.
It has 2 1800 or 1600MHz G4’s, with 512k on chip L2, and 4MB L3 – a double pumped 333MHz , 266MHz ( it supports both, plus
the current 133, and other slow things )….ATA-100 RAID support –no start up penalty even with 2
GB DDR DRAM – Dual 80GB drives make a nice RAID .
I agree with you there. The R&D budget is much greater for Intel, plus, they just have to focus on making processors. Apples focus is much more than just that one focus. That’s a race they can’t win. They have to focus on being in overall performance range close and bringing those prices in line to be compeditive. Being a few hundred dollars in range is a bit more acceptable than over a thousand we all will agree I’m sure.
All the more reason why Apple is dooming themselves by keeping the system design closed.
t has 2 1800 or 1600MHz G4’s, with 512k on chip L2, and 4MB L3 – a double pumped 333MHz , 266MHz ( it supports both, plus
the current 133, and other slow things )….ATA-100 RAID support –no start up penalty even with 2
GB DDR DRAM – Dual 80GB drives make a nice RAID .
Are you talking about the updated PowerMacs that Apple might release at the end of August?
I’ll eat my left shoe of the release a 1.8GHz CPU. You don’t think they would have been able to produce a 1.6 GHz or 1.4 GHz CPU a month ago if they can produce a 1.8 GHz now? Of course, perhaps they just stuck a 1 GHz CPU in the XServe for fun to be able to update it later.
Check your facts – the G4 CPU doesn’t support a DDR bus (that’s right. Check the XServe carefully and you’ll find that you only get DDR speed between memory and the system bus, not between memory and CPU which is the most important path…. talk about Apple marketing). Sure, they will probably still use DDR, but don’t expect any significant speedup when the CPU-memory connection is throttled…
All I can say is in 2 weeks, a lot of the discusssion here will be moot.
didn’t mean to cut off-not trying to be coy, but those are the specs I heard from an unimpeachable source from the non-marketing part of the united fruit company.
It figures that they’d do something like this. I loathe x86 systems in a myriad of ways. I finally bought a Mac — because it wasn’t an x86 box. If Apple does go to an x86 platform, I’ll not be buying any more of those.
I really need to get my house paid off so I can retire. I do not look forward to being forced to use PoS CPUs.
Are you talking about the updated PowerMacs that Apple might release at the end of August?
I’ll eat my left shoe of the release a 1.8GHz CPU.
They sound pretty much in line with what I’ve been reading at several sites except the clockspeed. Last I hear they had problems producing 1.4GHz in decent volumes.
Check your facts – the G4 CPU doesn’t support a DDR bus
Correct, but…
There have been several variants of the G4 all with different specs (just as there are various versions of Althlon P4 etc.)
Motorola have already added DDR to some PPC chips so it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see it on a new G4 variant – it would be about time they did it…
We’ll find out soon enough.
RE: Apple taking over PPC development
Apple apparantly have an option to do this but I once read the amount they put into “CPU design” and it was tens or hundreds of million of dollars. So they may already be designing their own CPUs.
I know they worked on Altivec and I’ve also read rumours that they did a lot of work on the G5.
This is of course speculation but is it really that far fetched considering the company had been involved with CPU companys for may years (i.e. ARM, Exponential).
As for taking over PPC development they would certainly have the resources for it and two more then capable PPC partners to help out (IBM, Motorola). Intel etc. may be much bigger but remember Intel produce a lot of different products and these all cost money to develop, Intel also make chips and this is vastly more expensive then designing them, fabs cost well into the $billions these days.
Notably Apple is making a profit but their turnover is much, much higher than the actual profit – apart from buying up companies Apple is spending a lot of money on something.
didn’t mean to cut off-not trying to be coy, but those are the specs I heard from an unimpeachable source from the non-marketing part of the united fruit company.
Actually, I have a pretty good & close relationship with Apple software and hardware engineers as a developer, but most of them don’t have the slightest idea about upcoming products until the very last minute, and Apple is VERY good at keeping secrets. As much as I would love to be proven wrong, I simply don’t believe they are going to increase the CPU frequency by 80%.
As for taking over PPC development they would certainly have the resources for it and two more then capable PPC partners to help out (IBM, Motorola). Intel etc. may be much bigger but remember Intel produce a lot of different products and these all cost money to develop, Intel also make chips and this is vastly more expensive then designing them, fabs cost well into the $billions these days.
Well, they have those partners now too, but not much is happening, is it? The whole idea with taking over things would be if Apple is willing to do something that Motorola isn’t, and then they wouldn’t get much help.
Of course Intel also makes chips, and you are right that those fabs cost $billions, but that’s not part of their R&D budget. Intel are spending $4 billion on R&D annually, and 95% of that is CPU stuff. That’s almost exactly the same as Apple’s total amount of sales (not earnings, *sales*). AMD are having huge trouble keeping up with Intel, and they still have a 5-10 times larger market than Apple!
Well I will believe it when I see it. I am admit that I am a MAC NUT, but get real, 1.8 G4. Man I have been searching for months to find the next generation and have come up with nothing. I usually can find something somewhere(I dont go to the rumor sites they suck), usually in the UK for some reason. I even posted what I was expecting(hoping really) at MWNY on my website. http://www.maccomputers.com (see wierd mac nut).
I have finally gave up and after repairing all my buddies PC for the last 10 yerars I made myself an ATHLON system. Still use my ibook for most things though.
I refuse to buy another MAC product until they start producing “close” to PC performance. I dont expect them to beat it, but really if you are a Apple fan, you should be just as mad as I am with 1Ghz chips for a how long now. Please….
It figures that they’d do something like this. I loathe x86 systems in a myriad of ways. I finally bought a Mac — because it wasn’t an x86 box. If Apple does go to an x86 platform, I’ll not be buying any more of those.
I really need to get my house paid off so I can retire. I do not look forward to being forced to use PoS CPUs.
What is it about x86 that you dislike so much? Do you hand feed instructions to the CPU? I’m not trying to pick on you. If you don’t like x86 because of Windows, then you have chosen a poor excuse because there are other options. So I’m lead to believe that your gripe is with the OS and not really the hardware platform, unless you can explain otherwise.
I don’t see how paying off your house has anything to do with computer hardware. I fail to see how buying more expensive Macs will aid in your retirement plan. Finally, you are entitled to your opinion, so I respect your opinion that x86 is a PoS CPU, however in the past 4 months I’ve been looking for a reason to keep my iMac. I have yet to find a meaningful benchmark or test that shows the “superior performance” the PPC Mac platform has over the Wintel platform.
>>I have yet to find a meaningful benchmark or test that shows the “superior performance” the PPC Mac platform has over the Wintel platform.<<
I have yet to find the opposite!
Look at the benchmarks on Macs verses PCs since the birth of the PowerPC in the early 90s and you’ll see that Intel was been behind Moto/IBM for at least 10 years, it wasn’t until last summer that Intel started to get the upperhand, and that was due to Motorola being stuck at 500Mhz for so long!
My source might be on the money–look at
http://www.macrumors.com/
and look at my post up a bit….
I don’t hold rumor sites to any sort of validity, but it’s interesting that their story this AM has the 333 and 266 that I posted yesterday ( and I heard it form source a couple of days ago)