Apple will switch to Intel in 2006 (CONFIRMED!!!!one)

[MKSheppard]

LOL on ars technika:

Of course, given that status of every chip Apple's tried to use in the past five years that was supposed to be their savior, this could just as easily doom the x86 architecture to eternal stagnation. 18 months at 3.6 GHz?

and

Which brings me to an interesting point. How, oh how will they make new performance graphs now? Will Apple's 3.6GHz machines best Dell's 3.6GHz machines by 25%? I can hardly wait to find out.

New Apple Benchmarks

[Durandal]

Nice way to win over people who are considering jumping from Windows to OS X, "Hey, you'll have to buy a whole new computer!"

If you can come up with a better business plan for surviving, I'd love to hear it. Microsoft would eat Apple in a second if they took them on directly at this point. Beside that, the new computer people will get will be a Pentium computer at a reasonable price. It'll be just like making any other computer purchase.

Agreed; they should however make it capable of supporting the
most popular x86 hardware; ATI/NVIDIA video cards, Soundblaster
audio, and basically the most popular mobo manufacturers. Basically
big brand name hardware, not clones.

And who knows? Maybe they will. But for now, they have to stick to a specific set of parts.

And am I the only one who thinks that the days of PC sound cards are numbered? What does the Audigy really do that the built-in audio on most motherboards can't?

Apple also has a fairly decent cash flow from iPod; so they'd be able to afford such an attritional war for a bit.

You're talking hundreds of millions versus tens of billions. Trust me, there's no competition there. Microsoft knows it, and Apple knows it.

He is; he's been trashing the x86 core for almost 15 years, and now he says "Oops, I guess x86 is more powerful after all."

What he's said is that Intel's roadmap is more conducive to the future of desktop processing as Apple sees it. He didn't say anything which implied a retraction of Apple's published benchmarks. This is not an issue of which ISA is better. It's an issue of who can make chips for Apple for the price they want at the performance point they need.

[Praxis]

My ideal situation:

Apple continues selling BOTH PowerPC and x86 Macs for a long time (it's already been mentioned by Jobs they'll continue doing that for at least two years, if IBM does better with their processors hopefully they'll keep selling them).

I want an x86 Mac to install WINE, and of course I like the PowerPC architecture.


Due to fat binaries there would be no difference.

He is; he's been trashing the x86 core for almost 15 years, and now he
says "Oops, I guess x86 is more powerful after all."

Not quite. Steve Jobs isn't contradicting himself. He basicly said, "after we went G5, IBM failed to meet their promises, and failed to keep up with Intel, so now Intel fits us better". Remember, IBM said we'd be at 3 GHz a YEAR ago. We just hit 2.7 GHz. Steve Jobs is as mad as heck at IBM.

[MKSheppard]

If you can come up with a better business plan for surviving, I'd love to hear it.

Apple will always have legions of fanboi ready to buy everything, same
way Microsoft will always have legions of offices buying MS Office, so
I'm really not seeing any way Apple can lose any more than their
current dismisal market share.

And who knows? Maybe they will. But for now, they have to stick to a specific set of parts.

They've also EOLed the entire G5 line; no one will buy G5s now
at anything less than huge discounts, due to the fact that they're
running an obsolete code base now. Apple hardware sales are
going to take a huge hit now.

And am I the only one who thinks that the days of PC sound cards are numbered? What does the Audigy really do that the built-in audio on most motherboards can't?

Eh.

You're talking hundreds of millions versus tens of billions. Trust me, there's no competition there. Microsoft knows it, and Apple knows it.

If so, then why does Apple still exist, despite it being massively
outweighed by the Microsoft behemoth for quite a long time?

What he's said is that Intel's roadmap is more conducive to the future of desktop processing as Apple sees it.

Linka to Apple's Benchmarks

Got a question, Damien, If the G5 is something like 80-90% faster than
a comparible Intel chipset, then what the hell is the advantage of switching
over to the slower CPU, which according to your website, says:

The PowerPC G5 out-shoots the Pentium 4 in a battery of tests. But it’s in the rough-and-tumble of real-world performance that the G5 really shines — shredding the PC’s reputation in the process.

[Praxis]

For the benchmarks, you're right. But honestly, EVERY company exaggurates the benchmarks with the sole exception of Nintendo from what I've seen (and look where it got them in market share).


Microsoft and the XBox 360. Sony and the PS3. Intel's benchmarks. etc.


EDIT: Post #3000!

[MKSheppard]

The best thing Apple should do is simply abandon hardware
development completely; and focus on producing software like
H264 and pushing for it to be adopted for the next Generation
DVD format; the royalties from it would be big, big big.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The best thing Apple should do is simply abandon hardware

Dude, Apple IS Hardware. It is a fashion statment, a symbol, a CULT! The Mac Computers is what DEFINES Apple... And you want them to abandom manufacturing Computers? Seriously

[MKSheppard]

Dude, Apple IS Hardware. It is a fashion statment, a symbol, a CULT! The Mac Computers is what DEFINES Apple... And you want them to abandom manufacturing Computers? Seriously

Yeah. Profit margins on hardware are very low traditionally. Software
is where big profits are at; Apple's done a good job at presenting an
alternate UI environment to counter Windows, but in order to actually
use it, you have to be locked into quite a few proprietary hardware
devices.

[Ace Pace]

LOL on ars technika:

Of course, given that status of every chip Apple's tried to use in the past five years that was supposed to be their savior, this could just as easily doom the x86 architecture to eternal stagnation. 18 months at 3.6 GHz?

Is that supposed to be serious? From Ars posters?


On one hand, Apple made the right choice from a practical standpoint, but to Mac fans, its probebly a hit.

[Dahak]

If so, then why does Apple still exist, despite it being massively
outweighed by the Microsoft behemoth for quite a long time?

Because it looks nice to those fearing a cartel that you still have some competition.
Money-wise, Microsoft could do a lot things...

[Drewcifer]

I remember reading about Lisa. I have a 512k Mac that still boots System 3.5 from a 400K floppy. I'm posting this from Tiger. Think Different, indeed.

Fuck yeah, go Apple!

[phongn]

The best thing Apple should do is simply abandon hardware development completely; and focus on producing software like H264 and pushing for it to be adopted for the next Generation DVD format; the royalties from it would be big, big big.

H.264 is indeed one of the codecs included in the next-gen DVD formats. Microsoft's VC1 is the other one, both are roughly comparable to each other in terms of quality.

And am I the only one who thinks that the days of PC sound cards are numbered? What does the Audigy really do that the built-in audio on most motherboards can't?

Most onboard sound (excepting nForce 3) doesn't do acceleration (EAX, DS3D, etc) so there's still a demand for that. There's always the professional market as well.

[Durandal]

Apple will always have legions of fanboi ready to buy everything, same way Microsoft will always have legions of offices buying MS Office, so I'm really not seeing any way Apple can lose any more than their current dismisal market share.

This isn't about fanbois. It's about Apple maintaining their appeal to people fed up with Windows. Last quarter, the Mac platform showed some excellent growth compared to the rest of the industry. So people are interested in buying Macs. They don't care what processor is inside so long as it works. Apple has to survive this transition before they get bold, otherwise Microsoft will just stamp their initiative out of existence.

They've also EOLed the entire G5 line; no one will buy G5s now at anything less than huge discounts, due to the fact that they're running an obsolete code base now. Apple hardware sales are going to take a huge hit now.

Not necessarily. App vendors will be shipping fat binaries for years to come. There's no real disadvantage, at this point, to having Mac OS X running on a PowerPC. Yes, the clock is ticking on PowerPC, but it's still got at least a year left of Apple refreshes and another 4 to 5 in terms of vendor support.

So for people like me, there's no pressure to knuckle under and buy an Intel-based Mac or face obsolescence.

If so, then why does Apple still exist, despite it being massively outweighed by the Microsoft behemoth for quite a long time?

Because Apple lived in its own little sectioned off corner of the market. Their chips weren't competitive in terms of price/performance, so Microsoft sees no danger in allowing them to exist. Not to mention the fact that Mac software accounts for about 15% of Microsoft's revenue, last time I checked.

But if Apple starts threatening the Windows monopoly, you can bet your ass that Microsoft will respond accordingly.

Got a question, Damien, If the G5 is something like 80-90% faster than a comparible Intel chipset, then what the hell is the advantage of switching over to the slower CPU, which according to your website, says:

The PowerPC G5 out-shoots the Pentium 4 in a battery of tests. But it’s in the rough-and-tumble of real-world performance that the G5 really shines — shredding the PC’s reputation in the process.

As I said before, the advantage comes from looking at the Intel and IBM roadmaps. Jobs said as much in the keynote. Going with Intel, Apple would get more performance with lower power consumption in the future. In reality, the G5 and P4 are evenly-matched chips at 2.7 GHz vs. 3.6 GHz, respectively. This might be the case now, but the 970's roadmap doesn't look very attractive if you want to use it for any kind of desktop computing, especially mobile computing.

And also, switching to Intel just gives them a better mobile chip. The G4 needed to be retired, and neither Freescale nor IBM had an acceptable successor that could be delivered in a timely fashion. Don't kid yourself, the growing popularity of laptops was a big factor in this decision.

[Durandal]

LOL on ars technika:

Of course, given that status of every chip Apple's tried to use in the past five years that was supposed to be their savior, this could just as easily doom the x86 architecture to eternal stagnation. 18 months at 3.6 GHz?

Is that supposed to be serious? From Ars posters?

He's being facetious. Apple's last two chipmakers, Motorola and IBM have both made big promises about the scalability of their chips and utterly failed to deliver. Apple going with Intel might be a sign that Intel is dying.

[Mr Bean]

He's being facetious. Apple's last two chipmakers, Motorola and IBM have both made big promises about the scalability of their chips and utterly failed to deliver. Apple going with Intel might be a sign that Intel is dying.

In that case let me great our new chip lord and master AMD

Which would be funny if ten years down the road its AMD and Apple with the 90% market share

[The Grim Squeaker]

I would kill for a decent AMD processor,
problem is they only have a quarter of Intel's manufacturing capacity meaning they dont have access to to global market on the level wintel does.

[Durandal]

Eh, Apple's supply demands aren't exactly beyond AMD's capabilities. Apple may have talked with AMD about this, but Intel might have come along and made them an offer that AMD couldn't match in terms of price. We know that Intel has been pining for Apple's business for a while, and they could afford to give Apple some nice breaks on price.

[Ace Pace]

Mac Intel's will run Windows.

Apple has confirmed that their Intel based Macs should be able to run Windows, but you will not be able to run the x86 version of OS X on any hardware platform you choose. Obviously with the switch to Intel's architecture, it is going to be much more difficult for Apple to prevent users from circumventing any protection they may have implemented to run the x86 OS on their own hardware. Even if Apple's protection is cracked, you can expect driver support to be extremely limited for configurations outside of what Apple will be shipping.

http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2439

[His Divine Shadow]

I read about this in the paper today, a little notice there in a corner on the economy section, it made me laugh. And now I must goto arstechnica and see what happens there.

[Praxis]

Windows shmindows. I'm installing WINE

[His Divine Shadow]

Well this move is good since I can now see myself buying a mac in the distant future.

[His Divine Shadow]

By the way I guess it was only Intel that could give Apple the UNLIMITED POWER they required.

Haha!

[The Grim Squeaker]

Soon they will see the power of the AMD side.

[His Divine Shadow]

As a side-note, Mac OS X's "double life" is really a testament to the pragmatism buried underneath all that ideology at Apple. People think Jobs is so arrogant because he likes to come up on-stage and trash the competition. But behind the scenes, he can see the writing on the wall. Mac OS X really struts its stuff with this development. It turns out that the OS is very modular. Can you imagine how long it would take Microsoft to perform a similar feat with XP? It'd be a nightmare.

Microsoft have kept builds of XP and 2k running on PPC.

And at one time NT also ran on PPC, Dec Alpha and MIPS. The NT kernel was designed with modularity in mind.

[Durandal]

As a side-note, Mac OS X's "double life" is really a testament to the pragmatism buried underneath all that ideology at Apple. People think Jobs is so arrogant because he likes to come up on-stage and trash the competition. But behind the scenes, he can see the writing on the wall. Mac OS X really struts its stuff with this development. It turns out that the OS is very modular. Can you imagine how long it would take Microsoft to perform a similar feat with XP? It'd be a nightmare.

Microsoft have kept builds of XP and 2k running on PPC.

Since when? They ported a very stripped down version of the NT kernel to PowerPC for the Xbox360. Not quite the same thing as porting the entire OS. Hell, the x86-64 version of Windows XP took years to get right, and that wasn't even switching to a different architecture entirely.

And at one time NT also ran on PPC, Dec Alpha and MIPS. The NT kernel was designed with modularity in mind.

Yes, and those versions were canned before 4.0 went final.