Apple:- Intel computers and more news

[The Grim Squeaker]

Stock jumps 7% as Apple CEO unveils new Intel-based computers.

SAN FRANCISCO (CNNMoney.com) - Apple CEO Steve Jobs Tuesday unveiled the first Apple computers ever to use an Intel processor.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini was also on hand to introduce the iMac Core Duo desktop computer and the MacBook Pro notebook, a new product line for Apple, unveiled during Jobs' keynote at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Jobs unveiled a new TV commercial to introduce the line.

"The Intel chip... for years been trapped inside PCs, performing dull little tasks when it could have been doing so much more," the ad said. "Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free and get to live life inside a Mac. Imagine the possibilities."

The Intel-based iMac G5 will be two to three times faster than earlier G5's, according to Apple, while the MacBook Pro notebook will be more than four times faster than its predecessors.

Apple will offer two iMac G5 models: one with a 17-inch monitor for $1,299 and one with a 20-inch monitor and a faster processor for $1,699.

In February, it will debut the MacBook Pro, which features two processors, in two varieties -- a model with a 1.67GHz processor for $1,999 and a 1.83GHz processor for $2,499.

Jobs said that Apple's entire product line will be transitioned to use Intel (Research) chips by the end of this year.

The Apple CEO also announced Tuesday that the company posted $5.7 billion in revenue last quarter, in part based on strong sales of 14 million iPods in the holiday quarter alone.

Speaking to the Apple faithful at Macworld, Jobs said Apple sold 32 million iPods for all of 2005, and that Apple's 135 retail stores drew 26 million visitors during the holiday quarter.

Shares of the Apple (up $4.25 to $80.30, Research) jumped nearly 6 percent in heavy trading on Nasdaq. By mid-afternoon about 56 million shares had changed hands, more than twice the average daily volume.

Jobs also unveiled a new accessory for the iPod, a remote control that attaches to iPod headphones and includes an FM tuner -- a move to answer critics who complained that some competing MP3 devices have tuners, unlike the iPod. The device goes on sale today for $49.

In addition, he announced that Chrysler will seamlessly integrate the iPod into many of its Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler models for 2006.

And he said there will be new content for the iTunes music store -- customers can now buy archived skits from NBC Universal's "Saturday Night Live" for $1.99 each.

The fourth-quarter iPod sales were up sharply from a year earlier, and easily topped forecasts by a number of analysts who had been expecting sales of 10 million to 11 million units in the quarter.

Apple stock has been on a tear since the start of 2004, largely on the strength of the iPod and the company's digital music business.

For some reason, the 2-3 or 3-4 times as fast line reminds me of the lines involved with the PS2/3 or XBOX 360, as in inflated and unrealistic for real world operations
Pity, I was expecting a better iPod that could actually play video worth a damn

[Ace Pace]

Fix your goddamn links by

Code: Select all

[quote="[url=http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/10/technology/apple/?cnn=yes]link[/url]"]
*snip*
[/quote]

And if you think Yonah isn't 2-3 times as fast as current Mac notebooks, please look around, Yonah is definetly(by far) the best preforming Mobile CPU.

[Durandal]

The Yonah beats the shit out of the G4. 4x faster isn't exactly an unrealistic claim. Nor is saying that a dual-core Yonah is twice as fast as a single-core G5.

By the way, Apple has an excellent new ad on the Intel switch, with everyone's favorite counter-terrorist agent doing the voice-over.

http://www.apple.com/intel/ads/

[Ace Pace]

The Yonah beats the shit out of the G4. 4x faster isn't exactly an unrealistic claim. Nor is saying that a dual-core Yonah is twice as fast as a single-core G5.

Just so I can do a rough comparison, are there any benchmarks for the G4 that use the same programs as PC benchmarks?

[Pezzoni]

Interesting, and certainly tempting, although bloody expensive. Especially since I only actually want one as they look pretty: All mac software would get nuked in favor of windows.

[Jew]

Interesting, and certainly tempting, although bloody expensive. Especially since I only actually want one as they look pretty: All mac software would get nuked in favor of windows.

Just because it has an Intel processor doesn't necessarily mean it can run Windows. The differences between a PC and a Mac are greater than simply the processor architecture. Certainly an Intel processor makes it easier to imagine Windows on an Apple computer, but it's not a given, and it may require some updates to the installation and boot process.

But we can all just wait a week or two and find out, because as soon as Apple can deliver the Intel iMacs, someone will try to install Windows.

[Praxis]

Apple has said they will do nothing to prevent the user from installing Windows.

Developers have installed Windows on the dev machines. Only problem was with the graphics drivers- they were restricted to 800x600.

Mac OS X for Intel appears to run fine on standard PC hardware if you hack it to run (because it refuses to boot on non-Mac hardware, usually, due to Apple's safeguards).

*hopefully* all that'll be needed is some hacked drivers to use most of the hardware (like the iSight and graphics card). It's possible it might be more, but hopefully we'll have hacked drivers soon.

Oh yeah- and this is utterly unprecedented. ThinkSecret was outright wrong. I'm very surprised.

I wonder though if Intel iBooks might come in the next month...occasionally, ThinkSecret will report something for an Expo, and Apple considered it too minor to take the spotlight and released it a week or two after. Such as the 2.7 GHz PowerMac speed bump- Stevie knew he'd get booed off the stage when he promised 3 GHz a year ago and was announcing a 2.7 GHz machine.

[Uraniun235]

The Yonah beats the shit out of the G4. 4x faster isn't exactly an unrealistic claim. Nor is saying that a dual-core Yonah is twice as fast as a single-core G5.

By the way, Apple has an excellent new ad on the Intel switch, with everyone's favorite counter-terrorist agent doing the voice-over.

http://www.apple.com/intel/ads/

For some reason Firefox is gagging on that page.

...odd, so does IE. I guess it's the plug-in...

[Praxis]

Do you have QuickTime 7, the one with H.264 support? If you have 6 or earlier, it won't play the H.264 format.

[Uraniun235]

Yes, I do.

[Praxis]

Then that's just weird.

[Namarie]

Just bought the new IMac at the Apple student website/store thingy. ^_^

[Praxis]

Just bought the new IMac at the Apple student website/store thingy. ^_^

I hate you.

Gah. My Pismo had a nasty encounter with the ground today. If they had released Intel iBooks as ThinkSecret said...I could replace it... :'( I can't afford the MacBook Pro (whoever thought of that name should be shot, immediately).

I woulda considered buying a new iMac, but if I can't fix my Pismo, I need a new laptop

[phongn]

QT7 is not exactly stable on Windows.

[Zac Naloen]

Because these new macs are using intel chips does that mean we are more likely to see Mac games now?

[Netko]

Not really, no. The real issue with porting application is the API it is based on, which is provided by the OS (I'm mangleing the description a bit here in the intrests of clarity of the issue). Considering how widespread usage of DirectX (which is Windows only of course) is in PC game production these days its likely that porting will not be significantly helped by the transition. There are some issues which will go away do to the transiton (diffrent endianness between PPC and x86 for example) however they are minor compared to the issue of diffrent APIs.

Now, there are some games that are more portable then others. Games that use OpenGL (which is supported on both PC and mac) instead of Direct3D for display for example. Most of those games (except those from really small publishers) get ported even now tho and the transition will maybe slightly speed up the time needed to port.

Basicly, the problem is you have to rip out all the connections between your program and the underlying OS and replace them with correct ones. Since the OS is the one that manages the actual hardware, for games to run on OSX the difficulty of doing ports will be reduced very slightly, especialy in the case of games based heavily on DirectX.

What may help Mac gaming is that now software run in windows emulation software will run with some 10%-20% loss in speed compared to running in windows on the same machine compared to utterly pitfull speeds before (since the emulator had to translate calls between both APIs and processor architectures before - costly - while now it will only have to translate API calls) which means that it may be possible to run windows games emulated with acceptable speed.

[Xon]

For some reason, the 2-3 or 3-4 times as fast line reminds me of the lines involved with the PS2/3 or XBOX 360, as in inflated and unrealistic for real world operations

Most Macs are crippled with horrifyingly slow frontside bus speeds.

Also OpenGL preformance under MacOS X sucks compared to the PC due to design choices made by Apple. Moving from PPC to x86 isnt going to change that.

[Ace Pace]

For some reason, the 2-3 or 3-4 times as fast line reminds me of the lines involved with the PS2/3 or XBOX 360, as in inflated and unrealistic for real world operations

Most Macs are crippled with horrifyingly slow frontside bus speeds.

How slow? Under 433MHZ(Old P4 if I recall correctly)?

[Xon]

How slow? Under 433MHZ(Old P4 if I recall correctly)?

400mhz. I'm positive thats the highest speed you can see from the G3 or maybe the G4 processor line (aka what they have in the laptops now).

The problem with G4/G5, which do preform well compared to the x86, output too much heat to be viable in a laptop design.

[Netko]

Also OpenGL preformance under MacOS X sucks compared to the PC due to design choices made by Apple. Moving from PPC to x86 isnt going to change that.

Correct, and in Windows Vista there will be some crippling of OpenGL on the Windows side (basicly the new-oooh-shiny 3d compositer won't work with OpenGL except if the app uses the Microsoft supplied, now hardware accelerated implementation, which is based on OpenGL 1.4, while the implementations based on 2.0, likely to be supplied with video drivers, will kill the "shiny" effects and drop Vista to XP visual quality) which will probably cause it to start getting phased out of 3d modelling apps.

Now, that won't effect full-screen apps like games, however it is yet another incentive for gaming houses to move away from OpenGL to Direct3d (which is supported on both Xboxes as well as Windows!), again causing porting to be less likely.

[Durandal]

Most Macs are crippled with horrifyingly slow frontside bus speeds.

That was true of Mac laptops. But most models are now either G5- or Intel-based, so that's not true anymore.

What may help Mac gaming is that now software run in windows emulation software will run with some 10%-20% loss in speed compared to running in windows on the same machine compared to utterly pitfull speeds before (since the emulator had to translate calls between both APIs and processor architectures before - costly - while now it will only have to translate API calls) which means that it may be possible to run windows games emulated with acceptable speed.

I seriously doubt it. Virtual machines have never been acceptable solutions for gaming because they still have to emulate graphics hardware. Back in the old days, VirtualPC 2.0 for Mac actually did this. If you had a Voodoo card in your Mac, VPC would actually show the emulated Windows operating system a Voodoo. On the fastest G3's at the time, people could actually run Quake 2 at decent speeds under VPC. But it was a whole lot more work to maintain that feature than it was worth, so it was dropped.

Apple has said they will do nothing to prevent the user from installing Windows.

The word from the floor is EFI. That opens up a whole new can of worms, since apparently the new Macs don't use BIOS. I know that EFI can emulate BIOS, but I have no idea whether or not it'd be possible to get Windows booting on one. Further, HFS and NTFS use different partition tables, so you'd need two physical hard drives to pull off a dual-boot system.

Now, it might be possible to simply wipe the single drive in the new Macs and install Windows, but dual-booting is a different beast entirely. I imagine some enterprising Linux users will replace the default bootloader with their own to facilitate that, but it won't be easy.

[Netko]

What may help Mac gaming is that now software run in windows emulation software will run with some 10%-20% loss in speed compared to running in windows on the same machine compared to utterly pitfull speeds before (since the emulator had to translate calls between both APIs and processor architectures before - costly - while now it will only have to translate API calls) which means that it may be possible to run windows games emulated with acceptable speed.

I seriously doubt it. Virtual machines have never been acceptable solutions for gaming because they still have to emulate graphics hardware. Back in the old days, VirtualPC 2.0 for Mac actually did this. If you had a Voodoo card in your Mac, VPC would actually show the emulated Windows operating system a Voodoo. On the fastest G3's at the time, people could actually run Quake 2 at decent speeds under VPC. But it was a whole lot more work to maintain that feature than it was worth, so it was dropped.

I was thinking more in line with current linux emulation attempts, except with some more money and attention thrown into making the emulation work then previous mac attempts. It will likely never work with graphicly intensive games (at least at acceptable speed) but possibly stuff like strategy games and similar which use 2d or simpler 3d graphics could.

[Ace Pace]

The word from the floor is EFI. That opens up a whole new can of worms, since apparently the new Macs don't use BIOS. I know that EFI can emulate BIOS, but I have no idea whether or not it'd be possible to get Windows booting on one. Further, HFS and NTFS use different partition tables, so you'd need two physical hard drives to pull off a dual-boot system.

Now, it might be possible to simply wipe the single drive in the new Macs and install Windows, but dual-booting is a different beast entirely. I imagine some enterprising Linux users will replace the default bootloader with their own to facilitate that, but it won't be easy.

From what I understood on EFI, its compatible with Windows, I'm not sure of the details(havn't read the article in a long time), but it works.

The partioning however would be a killer.

[InnocentBystander]

Why don't they use a BIOS..?

[Ace Pace]

Why don't they use a BIOS..?

Because its a dying peice of antiquated 80's software that was never built to handle SATA, SLI or resolutions in excess of 640x480?