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Apple Switching to Intel
Posted by
pudge
on Mon Jun 06, 2005 12:54 PM
from the but-but-but-but dept.
from the but-but-but-but dept.
Steve Jobs announced at the WWDC keynote today that Apple is switching to Intel processors. MacNN has live coverage. The bottom line is that Mac OS X for the last five years has been running on Intel, the switch is expected to be complete in two years, and Rosetta will allow PPC apps to run on Intel-based Macs, transparently. If you're using Xcode, it is small changes and a recompile; otherwise, you might be seeing a lot of work ahead of you. You will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today.
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where's the lawsuit against c|net? (Score:5, Insightful)
From: http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/0
Perhaps they wanted it... (Score:5, Insightful)
A good example of how this can work, if information came out on the shuffle well in advance of release, you'd see lots of reviews picking it apart for it's lack of a display, etc. So, before it ever hit the streets there would be a certain image of the device that could hurt their sales. But when Apple released it, they managed to spin the lack of display as a sort of feature. That the shuffle is about random playing, not picking songs out of a large library.
As far as this change goes, it doesn't really need to be handled in any particular way. They needed to keep it officially secret as a publicly traded company, but practically speaking I don't think they really cared. Ultimately the people most effected by it, ISV's, seem to have had some awareness ahead of time under NDA's (at least the bigger ones).
The end users of macs, for the most part, won't even understand what this means, or care. As long as the next mac they buy runs the software they have now and works as well as what they have now, they won't care.
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Um (Score:5, Funny)
So here it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that big of a surprise (Score:5, Funny)
I also have been agreeing with the industry analysts who said Apple would be running on Intel chips before long, and I've been vindicated.
Now, if my prediction that Microsoft will have a Linux or other UNIX-like kernel in Windows by 2015 holds up I'll consider myself the Nostradomus of IT.
Dave Thorup, eat your hat! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple getting out of hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, nice, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
Collect on all that debt, baby! (Score:5, Funny)
Over the years, I've made a ton of bets with Mac fans who swore up and down that Apple would never, ever switch to Intel processors.
I am now owed several kegs of beer and some free fancy dinners. A couple people owe me a million bucks.
Business strategy:
1. Make wagers with Apple people.
2.
3. Profit! Steve Jobs will make the announcement for you.
Yeah, except now you can have a fast mobile (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I can get back to a 4-5hr runtime like the first generation Tibook had..
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Re:This is bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This is bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this is bullshit. There's an extremely viable benefit to consumers: Apple will still be relevant in three years.
Why do you think Apple is doing this? It's not for shits and giggles. Those mobile G5s everyone's been waiting for, the one's that were going to save Apple's portable line from irrelevancy? It should be pretty obvious at this point that IBM has told Apple they aren't coming. Freescale dropped the ball, the G4 line is miles behind the times and Freescale lacks the ability to bring it up to date.
"Consumers don't benefit"? Bullshit. Consumers benefit because this is the only way Apple can keep their portables competitive. Laptops are the fastest growing segment of the market place, and Apple finally hitting 2Ghz with a G4 and its you've-got-to-be-shitting-me slow bus sometime next year wasn't going to cut it. Laptop sales fall, software makers lose interest, Apple fails, Apple's customers lose.
I'd rather they bet it all on a transition to keep the company relevant, rather than keep Freescale's incompetency and IBM's disinterest in laptop-suitable engineering as an anchor to hold them back in the market place until sheer inevitability kills the platform.
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Re:This is bullshit. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This is bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
And WINE/VirtualPC running so well may be the biggest disaster for MacOS -- why should Microsoft continue to support MSOffice/Mac when you can just run the Windows version in WINE? Why should Adobe build Acrobat for MacOS, when the Windows version (runs just as fast in WINE!) has more features and costs less??
Good Windows emulation is probably what killed OS/2, it can kill OS X too...
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Re:Have a taste... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Have a taste... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is adopting Intel, but is not "ditching" IBM.
New G5 towers will still be around for at least another year, and probably at least two. Intel is probably going to start by replacing the G4 CPUs in Powerbooks and minis.
At the Stevenote, he informed devs that they would be supporting both platforms for a long time to come.
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Re:Have a taste... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, just seemed appropriate.
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Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Informative)
Dispel any remaining doubts; we are now living in the evil mirror universe.
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Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Funny)
I'll believe that when the Red Sox win the World Series!
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Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Funny)
I'll believe that when the Red Sox win the World Series!
Yeah, right -- that's about as likely as finding out who Deep Throat is.
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In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
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It makes sense though... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it. We don't have a G5 Powerbook because we hear about the massive heat issues. Hell, just recently, I am having to take back my recently aquired G4 Powerbook because they are catching on bloody fire.
Secondly, I understand that Adobe is not making Photoshop and their other products for the Mac *first*. They are going to the PC, and then the Mac.
I mean, this quote says it all:
"I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven't been able to deliver that to you," said Jobs. "But as we look ahead, and though we've got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap,"
So they go Intel. Who cares? Most of us are using Linux on x86, and we couldn't care less. The only thing that alarmed me was that they didn't choose AMD64, but thats just me. Hopefully, this will influence developers to port their stuff over to OS X now (which would benifit Linux indirectly imo). So hopefully we'll get a ton more games (yay!... games are a wasteland on the Mac) and apps because of this switch.
Things are abotu to get interesting now. Its like Jobs saying, "OK, Gates... lets fight in your ring."
++Om
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Re:You know what this means, Power PC Apple Users? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Paste from Macworld..read before flaming (Score:5, Informative)
Rosetta keeps old apps running
Jobs also discussed a new technology called Rosetta, that he described as "a dynamic binary translator." It runs existing PowerPC applications on the Intel platform, he said. Jobs described Rosetta as "lightweight," and said "it's nothing like Classic."
Jobs demonstrated Rosetta by running Microsoft Office applications, Quicken and Photoshop CS 2 -- all unmodified PowerPC-binary versions, unlike Mathematica -- on the new Intel-based hardware.
"So that is Rosetta, Jobs concluded. "These PowerPC apps just run. And that's what we're going to have for our users, because every app isn't going to be there for our users on day one."
Microsoft's Roz Ho and Adobe's Bruce Chizen both took the stage to reaffirm their commitment to the Macintosh platform. Ho said that Microsoft has been "working with Apple for some time" to create future versions of Office using Apple's Xcode tools, and will create universal binaries accordingly." Chizen called Apple's decision to move to Intel "great," and gently chided Steve Jobs: "What took you so long?"
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Re:Why buy a mac then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for the OS? I'm wondering.
Yes.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
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