Apple to move to Intel

[gsnedders]

Yup, the rumors are true, Apple is switching to Intel, announed 14 hours ago by Steve Jobs onstage at WWDC.

For the past 5 years, Mac OS X has been living "a secret double life." It's been running on Intel since Mac OS 10.0 - In fact, the demo systems onstage were Intels - Steve's one was a Intel Pentium 4 3.6GHz. Nobody even thought it was until he brought up "About This Mac."

Mac OS 10.4 seems to run fine on Intel processors, and with a technology called Rosetta, PPC applications are dyncamicly translated to x86, you wouldn't know ;) Office 2004 and PS CS2 seemed to run pretty fast (although slower than on PPC) although Adobe has promised to have it's CS running on Intel from day 1.

The transion is starting in 2006, and they hope to have it completed by 2007 - It must be noted that this change is less than the OS 9 - OS X move, as Xcode 2.1 (currently not in Software Update) supports Universal Binaries, ones that run on OS X for PPC and Intel. Mathamatic, for example, sent there elite standby team (aka. 1 person) down to 1 Infinite Loop, and they didn't know what, or even why he had to go, except Apple had something new. Within 2 hours, he had changed 20 lines of code and recompiled and it ran on Intel...

There's "One More Thing" when it comes to WWDC, Mac OS 10.5 is called Leopard.

[JamieR]

ut oh......moving to eitther x64 or x86 I see :eek:

[jkd]

There was a leak a long time ago that Apple was sustaining an x86-compatible version of OSX which lead to much speculation to precisely this. The only real news is that Apple didn't sue the pants off anyone for leaking this information a year ago.

[whackaxe]

about Steve Jobs saying they've never made the 3ghz mark, why would they when they have this:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/

the thought of having an INTEL INSIDE sticker on a mac saddens me. i was going to buy a mac, but now i'm not so shure, because i want it to last more than a few years.

Nice foot shooting steve. I wonder what AMD have to say

[gsnedders]

about Steve Jobs saying they've never made the 3ghz mark, why would they when they have this:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/

the thought of having an INTEL INSIDE sticker on a mac saddens me. i was going to buy a mac, but now i'm not so shure, because i want it to last more than a few years.

Nice foot shooting steve. I wonder what AMD have to say
Remember they have announced any of the details yet... As for the sticker... When was the last time Macs had a processor sticker on them - AFAIK, never. They aren't gonna start now.

[JamieR]

Remember they have announced any of the details yet...

Doesn't make sense :confused:

We won't have the Intel processors in there before 2007, so we got some time to wait ;)

[whackaxe]

True Error 404, and i have faith in Apple. but when steve says "We've been running OS X on Intel all morning", and considering the page i linked about performance I'm not very reasured. I just hope that intel wron't just give Apple some x86 Pentiums and will use this opertunity to make the most of modern architectures

[JamieR]

Why don't Apple just make their own processors? :p

[Bill Posters]

[off-topic]

Remember they have announced any of the details yet... As for the sticker... When was the last time Macs had a processor sticker on them - AFAIK, never. They aren't gonna start now.

Iirc, some (all?) pre-G3 Macs had a PowerPC 'badge' on their facia.

[/off-topic]

[gsnedders]

Well, you might as well put x86 on every Windows computer :p

[Bill Posters]

Eh?
You asked, I answered.

[jkd]

Some lesser known news: Windows will probably run on this hardware. And an Apple higher-up said they wouldn't do anything to stop that possibility. Dual-booting OSX and Windows Longhorn will be a reality soon enough.

[JamieR]

Dual-booting OSX and Windows Longhorn will be a reality soon enough.

I don't want it to be...

[Grant Palin]

The possibility of having Windows and Mac OS X on the same computer is intriguing, but I don't Imagine I would bother, myself. I have plenty of software that works fine on Windows, but qould be surprised if they worked on OS X (e.g. Visual Studio, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Starcraft, etc). That's the major deterrent, and what's keeping me from moving to Linux. So for now I'm dual-booting with Windows XP and Mandrake, and spending some time tinkering with the Linux OS, learning what I can.

And even then, I'm not sure of the purpose of having more than one operating system on the same computer, other than learning purposes, as in my case.

Would anyone else have a similar or opposed opinion?

[jkd]

I don't want it to be...

Name one good reason why the consumer doesn't stand to benefit. If Apple is competing against Microsoft for the operating system on their own hardware, then prices will go down.

[JamieR]

Well true, however I've always thought of OS X being one type of platform on one type of computer and then Windows being one type of platform on either x86 or 86 systems. :)

[whackaxe]

we already know that OSX wron't run on NON apple boxes, but what would stop microsoft from stopping Windows being installed ON apple boxes? I doubt MS will just stand there and let their hardware advantage just disapear

[jkd]

we already know that OSX wron't run on NON apple boxes, but what would stop microsoft from stopping Windows being installed ON apple boxes? I doubt MS will just stand there and let their hardware advantage just disapear

Microsoft is a software company, not a hardware company. It makes sense to run on as much hardware as they can. And Apple on Intel is just a free gimme for them, as Windows would probably run without even recompiling.

Consumers stand to win. Before they could only install MacOS and the *nixes on their Apple. Now they can install those and Windows, at no additional cost (and perhaps even less cost). I don't understand why anybody could possibly be against that. I would like to dual-boot Windows on my Powerbook. That would be convenient.

[gsnedders]

Another thing that'll do is kill Mac gaming, apart from that, nobody loses.

Also, Apple have said they won't supply or support Windows.

[Grant Palin]

Another thing that'll do is kill Mac gaming
How's that? Couldn't games be written more easily for both Windows and Mac OS if they use the same hardware?

[gsnedders]

No, the OSes are still completely different. As for the killing, it's because people will just boot Windows to play games, get the games a year earlier, and kill off all the ports, as for the games that are originally for Macintosh... That's a different matter all together...

[jkd]

I wouldn't say killing of Mac gaming is necessarily a bad thing... you really wouldn't miss much. And you still have the Apple OS for the rare game that doesn't run on Windows.

[evo]

Switching between OSs on the same machine that is a godsend, not only in terms of graphic design and networking, but also programming.

Imagine being able to manage both OSs without different servers. Switching between OSs for different uses... graphics on one, general purpose design on the other.

Heh, wouldn't need to buy Adobe Acrobat anymore that is for certain.


btw, for those who have wondered where I have been, I just got married.

[gsnedders]

Agreed. I can use Windows for games, and Mac OS for everything else, all on one machine :) Well, in 2010... (When I get a new computer :p)

[whackaxe]

Congrats Evo!

i hope your other half is codingforums 1.0 compliant or you'll might get incompatability problems and "you spend all your time on the computer!" errors :D

[liorean]

... probably killing off the second best alternative to the x86 platform. Makes me sad. PPC has the better ISA.

[redhead]

Hmmm... What does the switch to intel processors mean for those considering buying an Apple computer between now and 2007? I've heard rumours that IBM havent been able to make G5 chips small and fast enough for portable uses, would waiting the extra year mean a G5 rather than G4 powerbook / ibook?

I would like to dual-boot Windows on my Powerbook. That would be convenient.I get your point, but windows running on a Mac just seems so... criminal...

[jkd]

I get your point, but windows running on a Mac just seems so... criminal...

That's the Jobs Distortion Aura talking. :)

[redhead]

That's the Jobs Distortion Aura talking. :)
Hehe, so true! :)