Dvorak Thinks Apple Will Switch to Intel 440
SeanTobin was among several users who noted that Dvorak's latest column discusses the possibility of Apple going to Intel for future macs. Yeah, this rumor pops up pretty often, but I wonder how long before we'd get binary compatibility between other x86 unix OSs.
Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:3, Funny)
Hear hear, we all know that blathering is best left to the expert commenters (such as yourself) here at Slashtdolt.
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, he mis-understands Marklar. Apparently, this is a complete x86 Intel port of OS X. It acheives very little in targeting Itanium as a processor, as x86 is as much another slow emulation like PPC.
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:4, Funny)
but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 1983 I was working for Convergent Technologies, a company that originally specialized in Intel-based workstations. (I think they may even have coined the word.) Dvorak reported a rumor that we we're working on a Motorola 68000-based portable computer. He discounted the rumor, since everybody knew that we only did Intel boxes.
Dvorak was wrong in two different ways. First he or his source combined two different rumors. There was a portable computer, but it was based on a Hitachi 6303. There was a 68000-based computer, but that was a completely separate project.
Which I was hired to help document. The MegaFrame actually used both 68000 and 80186 processors in its Unix config. (It could also be configured as a workstation server using only 80186 processors.) So in fact we were not only not committed to 80x86 architecutre, we were into two other architectures.
(The 6303 was also a Motorola architecture, being based on the Motorola 6800. But that's completely different from the 68000, because Motorola decided to make a clean break when then went from 8-bit to 16-bit processors. Unlike Intel, which made the 8086 vaguely backward compatible with the 8080. Which is part of the reason Intel's chips are standard and Motorola's are dead. But I digress.)
Dvorak's other error seemd particularly stupid: the assumption that all programmers targeted specific CPUs. Which might have actually been true in the homebrew micro culture he came from, but was never true of programming in general.
Actually, Dvorak might be a very smart guy, behind all the stupid stuff he keeps saying. A lot of computer pundits are people who have some Big Insight that's either completely bogus or only valid in a certain context. They hold onto these ideas for years, against all logic. I guess they'd lose too much face by admitting they're wrong.
One example is Vernor Vinge, who used to be one of my favorite SF writers. But now he considers himself a computer expert, based on a lot of second hand knowledge, and some practical experience with things like client-server computing. The way his pseudo-knowledge dominates his stories completely destroys my ability to enjoy his work. Which is a shame -- in many ways he's grown a lot as a writer.
Another example is Neal Stephenson, who's still one of my favorites, despite all the non-sequiturs in books like Snowcrash. (Come on people, do you really think that you can design seriou VR in machine language???!!!) The Big Idea that really drives me crazy is Stephenson's belief that a Turing Machine is something you can actually build. (Neither Radio Shack nor CDW stock infinite-length tapes. I'll apologize if anybody can point me to a source.) So far, his work is original and creative enough to make me overlook crap like this. But give him time!
Dvorak always does this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dvorak always does this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reporting on the opinions of my retarded neighbour who collects roadkill and has an IQ somewhere under 70 would be just as accurate as Dvorak's rants.
Re:Dvorak always does this. (Score:5, Funny)
April Fools? (Score:5, Interesting)
So don't be surprised if there's a follow-up to this saying as such.
Re:April Fools? (Score:3, Funny)
Ironically, that Communications Decency Act came out about a year or two later and mad
x86? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x86? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x86? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple would be much better off going with AMD's Hammer, or IBM's upcoming PowerPC 970 chips, or even a P4/Athlon (not likely... I can see Jobs craving 64-bitness). I'd personnally choose Hammer because AMD is going to produce, and probably sell in volumes similar to the Athlon. Although, the 970 looks mighty tasty...
Re:x86? (Score:3, Insightful)
And furthermore, it seems like a ton of work to switch processor architectures, instead of using a new chip based on your platforms current architecture. Which would you choose, re-writing a HUGE portion of your OS, making new motherboards, huge marketing spin? Or making new motherboards for a chip your OS already runs on?
Re:x86? (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt Apple will go to any x86 varient because that will turn them into a software company and kill their business, unless they think that they will be able to make up the loss of profits off of hardware by increased OS sales. Apple's software is basically thier OS, and even M$ with their stronghold on the PC (and desktop in general) market makes mucho dinero off of apps like Office. I don't think that ppl want another PC OS, remember BeOS?
On a side note, its pretty much common knowledge that Dvorak is a moron, and articles here based on something that he says is usually flamebait from the getgo.
Re:x86? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x86? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:x86? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:x86? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:x86? (Score:5, Interesting)
-Apple will NOT switch to a chip that's not 64-bit. That's simply not an option. The costs of switching to a new platform will not be justifiable if they have to switch again in a few years.
-Apple will not abandon PowerPC until IBM's PowerPC 970 sinks or swims. It's a very mutually beneficial relationship, and while it may not keep up with x86's power, it won't be that far behind, and it *will* fit in the form factors that Apple needs. The really fast x86's put out way too much heat.
It'll be 5 or more years before they switch processor architechtures, maybe even longer, maybe never. x86 does not offer sufficient advantages to put up with the heat of the fast x86 processors. Apple is very strong with laptops, and they're only going to get stronger there. Even their desktop offerings are compact. Small is important, quiet is important, batteries are important, and x86 can not beat PPC in with these.
Re:x86? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:x86? (Score:5, Funny)
He's right, inasmuch as a zero user base would be considered really secure.
It's Alternate Reality Weekend on /. (Score:5, Funny)
If it did happen, it wouldn't be an x86 "Wintel" (Score:3, Insightful)
If they started using x86, it would mean possibly cheaper CPU's but also hotter ones (temperature) and less performance per-Mhz.
I don't see this happening anytime in the near future. They abandoned their x86 versions of OSX long ago. Doesn't seem to me like they would be willing to spend all the time, effort, and money on something that they don't really need to do.
Re:If it did happen, it wouldn't be an x86 "Wintel (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'll take my high clocked hot as hell Athlon over a Mac anyday.
The x86 chips are fast now a days. The gap has gotten a lot smaller in the performance per Mhz between them and Apple's PPC chips. And, via brute-force (lots more Mhz) they outperform the PPC chips.
However, this doesn't seem like a forward step IMO.
Plus, Dvorak said "Intel" and in this case he meant "Itanium." Was my misunderstanding. Either way
Re:If it did happen, it wouldn't be an x86 "Wintel (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless of the way you'd answer, a lot of people would answer the second way. So what's the benefit for Apple?
No mention of IBM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No mention of IBM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No mention of IBM? (Score:5, Insightful)
(and yes, it'll be rehashes of rumours the rest of us heard 6 months ago)
Itanium? (Score:5, Funny)
[/comicbookguyvoice]
Re:Itanium? (Score:4, Funny)
At least we're not IN SOVIET RUSSIA.
Dvorak is a Lunatic when it comes to Macs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dvorak is a Lunatic when it comes to Macs (Score:3)
Re:Dvorak is a Lunatic when it comes to Macs (Score:3, Informative)
Oh no, not again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh no, not again... (Score:5, Funny)
"What's this I hear about HP bringing out the successor to the iPaq next month? I think it's about time, the flat screen and metal arm design always looked like an orange attacking a sheet of paper.
Item! Steve Bellmar and the wacky crew at Apple Computer will be releasing their next computer, which will use Intel's Itanium processor. Careful, or that'll be a baked apple!"
Separated at birth? I think so.
What would MS reaction be to Intel Macs (Score:4, Interesting)
Since OS X runs on a BSD base, would MS change its tune regarding Linux?
Could be an interesting time!
Re:What would MS reaction be to Intel Macs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What would MS reaction be to Intel Macs (Score:4, Interesting)
The gist of my friends comments on Apple/Sony is that Sony will be phasing out Windows and moving to a UNIX OS. We already know they are using Linux for the PS2.
My feelings are either the Sony guy didn't know what he was talking about, or was blowing smoke up my friend's ass. The other possibility is Sony is looking at Darwin for future projects.
I think Apple will go IBM and not Intel.
What about powerbooks - itanium notebooks? (Score:3, Interesting)
Powerbooks are a huge part of Apple's market now, and even if their desktops fared the equal of a PC in pure grunt, would still be a major source of revenue.
Pick an option - Itanium all through the line including powerbooks, or PPC Powerbooks and Itanium desktops. It doesn't seem likely to me.
Then again, Itanium XServes doesn't sound quite as far-fetched.
Standard Rumors (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't make sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
Dvorak sounds like he is reporting on "over beer" discussions at some trade show.
Re:Doesn't make sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it happened in the late-1994, early-1995 time range.
Emulation was key - they had a very usable 68k emulator written into the PowerPC systems.
The PowerPC was so much faster than the 68k, it only took a year before the fastest "68k system" was a PowerPC running emulation code.
Strange, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the times the x86 was pointed at because of its lack of registers ? Recently read an pentium to-the-metal optimization guide, and discovered you had to recode your optimizations backwards to port them from p3 to p4 ?
I can't possibly understand how a switch to intel processors can possibly benefit Apple...
It's Dvorak. Move along. (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Dvorak: MORON (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple will go with Intel when Osama bin Laden converts to Judaism.
An "Intel" arch, but not x86 (Score:5, Insightful)
A better 64 bit choice, particularly for Apple, will be IBM's upcoming PPC 970, which doesn't require massive retooling.
Re:An "Intel" arch, but not x86 (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's only barely able to be used in a desktop because of cost, and the power requirements are high, Apple would either have to say goodbye to their iBook/Powerbook line, or continue supporting two architectures - PPC powerbooks and Itanium desktops. That sounds pretty messy and expensive for apple to even think about implementing at their current size.
Re:An "Intel" arch, but not x86 (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyways, Dvorak is silly. He knows he can write this kind of stuff and it doesn't matter if it comes true or not.
The Itanium, like you said, is just too expensive, and will remain so for a long time. Unless Apple wants to release a $19,000 workstation that nobody will buy and runs no old mac software (or runs old mac stuff slowly), I don't think this will happen anytime soon.
He says that they have been able to transition CPU architectures flawlessly in the past, which is true, but technology today it's a different story. The PPC was a LOT faster then the 68k processors, so emulation was pretty quick. Today, I'd like to see an Itanium emulate a modern PPC chip with any good speed. Yea, right.
The thing I found funny was when he writes "This new workstation will be optimized for Photoshop." Okay, since when does the mac user only use Photoshop?
I'm not a mac user, and I'm not even a mac fan. But even I can see the obvious flaws to his article.
Binary compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Using an Intel CPU doesn't mean they have to repeat all IBMs mistakes from the past. They have the oportunity to design a BIOS from scratch that doesn't have to be backwardcompatible. It can become a lot better from that. I hope, that if they really go Intel, at least they bitch realmode and go in protected mode as fast as possible. While an OS that runs on both platforms does not come for free, it shouldn't be a problem to reuse userspace code on very different hardwareplatforms, as long as the CPU is the same. Of course it requires a reasonable OS design. I bet it won't be a long time after such a Mac has been released before you can run Linux on it with all the binary executables you already have for x86. Even WMWare might work, which would be kind of interesting. I wonder how long time it will be before MS ships a Windows that runs natively on Mac. I also wonder how Apple feels about that possibility.
I however still wonder why anyone would design a new architecture with an obsolete CPU. A much better decission could be to use AMDs new soon to be released x86-64.
Or... (Score:5, Funny)
Such a wild conjecture probably has more validity than most Dvorak articles anyway.
Possible, but not to a PC architechture (Score:5, Insightful)
I can picture geeks buying x86Mac hardware to run Linux on as it should be more stable than current x86 hardware. I can also picture x86 virtualization software (VirtualPC) being useful. Apple no longer has to deal with the low clock speed stigma.
This sounds like it would be a good thing.
Inquirer (Score:5, Interesting)
"Hi, I'm John" (Score:5, Funny)
Why Apple won't switch to Intel (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Developer opinion. Dvorak is primarly a PC man -- I think he missed much of the outcry that occurred when we switched from 68K to PPC. For that matter, there's still bits of Carbon that date back to 68K, such as setting and unsetting the A5 world register for callback routines. Also consider that the killer apps of the Mac world (Adobe products, Quark, etc) are just now becoming native to OS X. The outcry if we had to switch to a new OS would be massive. There's also the fact that the PPC ISA is backwards compatible with the 68K -- all existing apps for Apple would have to be emulated. Can you say "fuck no," children?
3) Architecture differences. True, you can recompile the Darwin microkernel for Intel. There's a lot of differences though in the hardware -- for example, Macs directly work with the INT# lines on the PCI bus, they don't have IRQs. It would be incredibly costly for Apple to eschew the current standards in PC motherboard design and make their own chipset.
4) IBM. The PowerPC architecture is not slow in and of itself -- it's just a spec for a RISC instruction set. The problem lies in Motorola, who no longer relies on Apple for business now that their wireless division supports the company, and who has been dragging their heels on their PPC line. IBM's new PowerPC 970 is a desktop version of their Power5 server processor (including its unusual pipeline design) planned to debut at 1.8GHz on a 0.13 micron process. Yum.
There's also the point that Dvorak is known as a rumor-spouting gasbag... and one who has a chip on his shoulder for Apple. The guy used to write for MacWorld until he had a falling out with Apple management, and has become notorious for his anti-Apple bias ever since.
Speed 'gain' (Score:5, Insightful)
He makes a point that they could release a dual CPU machine with an Itanium and a PPC chip, but this would be slower than a single CPU model for most things (dual CPU where each CPU is a different architecture is tricky and leads to performance hits). Since all Apple's current top of the line models have 2 PPCs, the new machine would be slower than the old ones.
On the other hand, the PPC 970 is comming into production, a 64-bit PPC with 2GHz+ clock speeds. 64 is twice as big as 32, so marketing can claim it's as fast as a 4GHz Pentium 4 (actually it might be almost that fast, since the P4 is famous for high clock rates and low performance per clock). Being a PPC, this chip is also backwards comaptible. Oh, and it has 2 AltiVec units, so all that AltiVec code Apple has been pushing for the last couple of years should really sing. A 900MHz FSB reduces the old memory bottleneck present in current PPCs. I'm not sure how much the PPC970 will cost, but I doubt it will be much more than Itanium, and it's far more attractive from Apple's point of view. This Dvorak guy seems to have forgotten that the Apple IBM Motorola alliance had 3 members...
What what what? (Score:5, Funny)
Dvorak will switch... (Score:5, Funny)
In a development that will shock both the PC and pharmaceutical industries, PC pundit John Dvorkak will be "switching platforms."
Long known for his schizophrenic pronouncements concerning the Macintosh platform, sources close to him have confirmed Dvorak's musings have been caused by an adverse, though subtle reaction, to his psychotropic drug regimen.
"Yeah, he's said some crazy things in the past," quotes Dr. Sanghar Mumji, Dvorak's long-time psychiatrist. "You've got to cut him some slack though. Psychiatry isn't an exact science."
Industry analysts predict the dawn of a new day for Dvorak. One analyst, wishing to remain anonymous, remarks, "John has got a long road back, but I've got faith in him. I hear he's working on a Newton story."
Dvorak VS. Apple previously ridiculed by slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
still its interesting to speculate. TO keep up its tradition apple woul dneed to specify a reference platform considerably different than the usual bios driven, low end crap we are trapped in the intel world. So it would not just be a mac running on PC box. The interesting thing would be if PC manufactureres adopted the refernce platform on their high end units. by adotping a full featured platform with uniform specs there might be a breaktrhough in PC compatibility with its drivers making the world more mac-like
then we might have dual or tri-boot computers. (linux,mac,windows). Its hard to guess how that would shake out. I have no idea. one the one hand a lot of mac users might give in and become PC users now that the barrier is less. on the otherhand the reasons to use linux might vanish. Or maybe everyone would discover that the mac is the prefect compromise beteeen unix and ease of use. any one want to speculate? lots of room for disagreement
Flies in face of current information (Score:5, Insightful)
Current speculation in the Mac community is the use of the IBM PowerPC 970 processor which should debut soon at 1.8Ghz. IBM have clearly stated it will support AltiVec instructions - previously only implemented by Motorola with IBM having no plans to use this technology themselves. Couple this with the rumours that some Apple OEM partners claim to have seen PPC970 based motherboard designs...
And then we have Dvorak who goes out on his own to claim a switch to Intel Itanium with a PowerPC inside for backwards compatibility. Quite how the hardware and OS would cope with two totally different processors is quite beyond me but surely the important question is how this would fit with a laptop.
The Itanium processor is not available in laptop form. It's current form requring around 100W vs the PowerPC 7455 (G4 processor used in PowerBooks) mere 20W range and you'll see that just isn't happening. Put both in the same box as Dvorak suggest? The heat and power consumption alone would make it impossible.
Re:Flies in face of current information (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and one more thing. Apple's WWDC developer conference has been moved back to June.
The WWDC info page [apple.com] states "Get an in-depth look at the future of the Mac platform and a preview release of the next major version of Mac OS X, codenamed "Panther" "
Maybe we'll see exactly what direction they are taking the hardware in at that event...
Dvorak is ill-informed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple cannot uproot all its PowerPC code base, no matter what claims Dvorak makes about Apple's disregard for backward compatibility. They have to convince all Apple developers to recompile their applications. The lesson of the past 20 years of the software business is that its nearly impossible or at the very least extremely slow and costly to make developers recompile for a different platform. Apple knows this -- that's why they created a 68K emulator that ran on their PPC (which only worked because the emulator ran the 68K nearly as fast, or faster than the 68K itself) when they transitioned to the PPC in the first place.
IBM is about to release the PPC 970 which appears to have credible performance. The presentations of this CPU make it obvious that it was created/designed for one purpose: sell it to Apple. The only other possibility, that they want to upgrade Nintendo game cubes, is not credible/likely.
x86's are fast, and much faster than PPCs, however they are not so fast that you could run a PPC emulation at the same speed as a Power PC. (Unless they use Transmeta-like technology.) So they can't justify switching to x86 in the same way they moves from 68K to PPC. Though, this situation may change in a few years, when the performance gap inevitably increases to the point where emulation would be faster.
But Itanium? Even Apple must be aware of Intel's past foibles. Itanium follows the line of i432, i860, of past Intel disasters. As much marketting as Intel is putting behind Itanium, it just isn't taking. x86's perform so well, cost so much less, and leverage far more existing/mature infrastructure. Itanium has not proven itself, and objectively speaking, a long lasting company like Apple could not credibly bank its future on it.
Apple still sells over-priced systems, but they have been forced to get much better about that, and have scaled their architectures on the low end to sub-$1K systems (that used to be a very impressive bar to reach, BTW.) There is no way to scale the Itanium architecture to sub-$1K systems in the forseeable future.
Dvorak is correct that Motorola is about to lose this account, but it will go to IBM, not Intel.
Online Journo Click-based Remuneration? (Score:5, Insightful)
How are these online-journos rated for performance internally within their organisations? Number of page-views, how "popular" they are sounds like a reasonably-common metric. In which case, Mac-Fanatic-Baiting (akin to bear-baiting?) seems like a tactically-effective strategy - whip up something that will "excite" the Mac-faithful hordes, and wallah, you have instant 7-digit page-hits (or actual page-views). I guess it backfires somewhat if the article ends up here and you get slashdotted, but the "principle remains sound". Every now and then I hear of semi-ridiculous/provocative articles involving Macs/Apple and when I actually go there and read something totally nuts - nuts enough that the person writing it almost certainly knows what's being written is rubbish - I realise I've been tricked into upping someone's page-read's by one.
Maybe Dvorak is established enough that he doesn't need this kind of thing (in which case his article is just, well, him being him - anyone remember his IBM mouseball episode?), but, I dunno, how is PCMagazine subscriptions now that the web has arrived? I don't recall ever buying a PCMag since... Pretty Long Back.
Anyways to the substance of the article - IMHO I see several problems.
Why would Apple want to saddle themselves with the Itanic, for one thing? If it's a copy-protection issue, it seems pretty straightforward to require, say, a hardware dongle or PCI card with ROM chips etc. - a principle that much existing copy-protection for Win-x86 apps is based on already, and reasonably difficult to circumvent).
Unless Apple's revenue-model changes massively they're going to keep wanting to sell hardware ("PowerMac X at 2.4GHz!" which looks on the outside like any current-gen PMac but which has x86 innards) - in which case they won't have to worry about dongle-distribution or whatnot because the damn thing's going to be soldered onto the motherboard anyway (or maybe the motherboard components will be different enough - even if x86-based - that the OS wouldn't install on standard hardware anyway. But this is probably less likely because then they'd lose out on the benefits of using "standard" components).
In any case, until the requirement for running old-gen applications is moot (when people stop even bothering to install Classic?) they're not going to be able to move to x86 anyway. By which time x86-64 will be well on the scene and all these "calculations" will have to be rejiggered based on actual performance etc. And Apple has got the new IBM PPC970 on the way... if this thing has legs they may well stay with PPC for quite a while yet.
Would they really want to do this anyways???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of the average consumer walking into a retail store. Doesn't know the difference between a PC, MAC or a motherboard and a CPU. If you tell him that this Windows computer runs an Intel processor and so does the Mac but the PC is cheaper which would he buy? Why would a techie buy a MAC if they can get a desktop with the same/similar CPU for less and be able to run FreeBSD or Linux?
Apple needs to reduce the price of the Itaniums by producing larger quantities. If Apple wants to use it, they'll also have to lower the power consumption since Apple will have to sell it in Powerbooks. Never mind the potential software and OS incompatabilites.
Buying an Itanium leaves nothing for the lower budget consumer. I'd like to see them sell try t get the laptops still in the $1200 - $1500
range with an Itanium when they first enter market. And what of the iMacs?
The Good and Bad on Apple on Intel (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to switch my Linux box to a Mac OS X server box, mainly just to play around with another OS I haven't tried yet, and because I think it will be easier to maintain. For $1000 for an unlimited server licence, I could deal with that. (Yes, I could just go 10 for $500, but I'm evil that way.) The problem is that even finding an old Mac (like a G4 cube) is around $1000 even on Ebay.
The good part about OS X on Intel is that the machines would be damn cheap. I could probably take my current Windows P-800 machine and turn it into a decent - not great, but decent OS X server box. Cheap boxes with a great OS would be the true "Microsoft desktop killer" we've been waiting for. The operating system (OS X) is tried and true now, it's excellent, stable, and kicks Microsoft's ass all over the place.
But the problem in moving to the Intel platform is threefold:
1. Performance. Going from the PPC with all of its registers to Intel's platform will cost some performance - especially if some sort of PPC emulator is used to make all of the old apps run.
2. Drivers. Right now, Apple can ensure that every video card that's qualified to run on a Mac will run, and run without a problem. I've stuck all sorts of hardware into my Mac so far, and it all works flawlessly. Apple will lose that ability.
3. Cheap hardware. Yes, Apple's hardware costs more. And it depreciates a hell of a lot slower than just about any other PCs out there - look at my Cube situation again. These machines are like a rock - they run and run and run. A Compusa employee I once knew mentionted that he hated it when people came into his store and bought a Mac - because he never saw them again, while the Windows guys were in every few months because they "had" to upgrade. So you'll have hardware that won't last as long or as well.
Unless of course, Apple basically brands their own Intel based PCs and ensures that OS X only runs on "certified" machines. Remember - they make money from hardware, not software (though, if OS X became popular and runs on all Intel systems, they could become the next Microsoft in many ways, only with a decent desktop and server system).
I honestly don't believe that it's going to happen. Apple will most likely shift to IBM's new Power970 line - it's the most like the PPC, so no translators/emulators. IBM has a vested interest in making these chips fast and plentiful for their server systems, unlike Motorola which is making PPC chips for - well, pretty much Apple.
Anyway, there's my $0.02. And of course, I could be wrong.
Re:The Good and Bad on Apple on Intel (Score:3, Insightful)
and that's the problem. apple is a hardware company. every apple post, i have to repeat this. apple sells hardware. all the iapps, etc., help sell their hardware. this is where they make money. apple is a technology company. they are always pushing the envelope, especially with hardware. if they port to x86, or they move to an intel platform, they 1) open the door up for clones (they don't like mac clones) 2) they become a
And we believe him? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I am wrong, but Apple merged and did not die, there is no rt mac archiecture available (excepting some good hacks that no one would use for business critical processes), unix based servers dominate the internet and MS are scared stiff that an old fashioned unix-like os is going to fillet their business.
Mr Dvorak is as entitled as anyone else to make his predictions, but that doesn't mean he is any good at it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
The PPC 970 is practically a sure bet. (Score:3, Informative)
Dvorak (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't know the story, back in the days of the 286, a Taiwanese company claimed to be able to run 286's much faster than anyone else, it was called a "Chang modification". Dvorak touted it as a breakthrough technology. Of course anyone who understood technology realized the claim was ridiculous. It turned out all Chang was doing was reprogramming the timer chip so that it didn't keep time correctly - thus making benchmarks look more impressive.
In other words Dvorak's technical knowledge level is absurdly low. The man has great contempt for anyone who does have technical knowledge; he thinks we are inferior 'droids' to be ruled by assholes like him. He truly is the prototype of Dilbert's abysmally ignorant Pointy Haired Boss.
Dvorak really is dumb enough to think that Apple would change to Intel; the change from the 68000 to the Power PC almost destroyed Apple. Switching processor architecture destroys your software base - you have to run in place for years just to get back to where you were. That is the reason that Apple was in so much trouble after the processor change. Another change would be suicide.
And yes, I know that things are written in C these days, and we all know C is 'portable' so the change over 'running in place' period might only be 6 months to a year today. But 6 months to a year of additional progress lost by Apple would pretty much be the last nail in the coffin. Such a change would expose them to the ruthless pricing levels of the PC industry which Apple could never survive.
In other related news... (Score:5, Funny)
* Microsoft will soon source for Windows under OSS license
* A vaccine for AIDS will soon be available
Have a nice day.
E
Remember the source (Score:3, Informative)
Why would Apple get on the Itanic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Until the Itanium gets cheaper and demonstrates clear advantages over the P4, I don't see anyone adopting it in a widespread manner.
Very Misleading /. Headline (Score:5, Informative)
I was duped into believeing Dvorak might have a few good points to make, but it was really all an attempt to get his page Slashdotted and sell lots of banner ads. For once, shame on you people for actually R'ing TFA!
Check this out, Blockquothe the Article:This goes on to speculate Apple will use Itanium chips. Without even getting into endian issues (which make buses and shared disk & memory slow and a pain in the ass), this is a huge transition from their current invenstment in PPC-only motherboards, and I imagine it will be power hungry, hot, and probably noisy, considering that current Apple chips needed a special case for cooling and Intel's chips are still known for running hotter (Sidenote: I'm unsure if this applies to the Itanium).
And let's not leave out price? An Apple box with (by then I'd assume it to be) a G5 AND an Intel Itanium? This would sell for $16,000 with no hard drives at minimum. Itanium is too expensive, and at this point designing a dual-architecture mobo is just not worth the trouble. A high end machine to run Photoshop? Guess again, most Mac users don't use Photoshop or anything of the sort, and Apple sure doesn't center their design process around anything Adobe does. And does anyone remeber Marklar having anything to do with dual architecture? I thought it was a software port of the closed-source elements of OS X?
Never trust a guy named after a weird keyboard layout.
Interesting story to note, however: Apple has already made Intel x86 compatable machines! Check out Apple Technical Note 1076 [apple.com], last updated Oct. 1st, 1996. Most notable: Apple created Intel PCs on PCI and NuBus cards (which were at the time fast enough to be a reasonable design) and actually shipped one bundled with the PowerMac 7200. From the Technote:Apple might be researching this whole Intel thing, and they even have prior experience in the area. I believe, however, that any such effort is a backup plan, so when IBMs yields are low enough to make the 970 too expensive and Motorola starts pushing clock speeds into the high 2.7GHz range while each new chip they release gets progressively slower, Apple isn't up shit creek without a paddle.
My favorite Dvorak quote (Score:5, Funny)
Backwards compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most ridiculous thing in the whole article. Obviously he has forgotten the 68k emulator after the PowerPC changeover, as well as the Classic environment on OS X, both of which have worked perfectly in my experience.
Furthermore, I think there is a higher proportion of old Apple machines still running than equivalent old PC's. I saw an SE/30 doing a fine job as a mail server not that long ago. How many people are still using 286/386 vintage stuff?
-ccm
Dvorak's Predictions (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone remember his other predictions? (Score:3, Insightful)
My absolute favourite was in 1999, his prediction that Compaq and Intel were going to merge. He laid out some really bad logic, and I wish I had the article here to quote some of it.
Please, post some other ones I missed...
Not anytime soon (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple Hardware -- Apple Software (Score:3, Interesting)
Much like SGI using MIPS processors (although they did end up buying the company), and their official stance being whatever provides the best performance (be it Intel, MIPS, Sparc, PPC) is what they will in turn use.
OS X being direct descendant of OpenStep/NextStep, is a very portable OS (If you will recall it ran on x86, PPC, and Sparc Hardware). The only reason that I can argue that Apple has not gone to x86 compatible hardware up to this point is Microsoft's influence. Microsoft will not continue with Office for the Mac if it is going to lead to people choosing the Mac OS over Windows.
There is already some talk about Microsoft dropping Office for the Mac because of "low sales figures", which is fine by me as I tend to use OppenOffice.org anyway. Frankly as soon as Sun realizes the market for OpenOffice.org on MacOS, they will start marketing it under the StarOffice name and provide support, all at a price that Microsoft can not even begin to compete with.
If Apple does choose to go to an "x86" processor, it would be more than likely an offering from AMD (in the form of a Hammer) than Intel. Any thought of the Itanium processor is merely wishful thinking on the part of Intel (remember these things cost nearly $3000 per processor, and Apple has joined the SMP revolution).
If you were to see OS X on "Intel" hardware, I would expect that you would see it in a strange combination of technologies. For example, you would likely see is special PCI card which would be the boot media (Kernel in Flash) with special system identifiers in ROM, to insure that is is a Apple authorized installation. This would be the configuration of the "Clones". The "real" Apple hardware would have these components integrated into the mainboard. The real Apple hardware would not support booting Windows (much the same as you can not boot AIX on a Mac (except for the ANS) even though it is a compatible platform on which to do so. Obvious omissions from the firmware are noted.).
MacWhispers and IBM disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has bids out for PPC 970 mobos. Doesn't sound like they're switching to x86.
I'm not even going to bother reading the comments below. Apple's system is based on the PPC. Switching to x86 chips would be stupid. They're still trying to get developers and consumers switched to OS X, and to ask people to move to a completely different architecture so soon after a major OS change would be suicide.
Please, once and for all, Apple is not moving to the x86. It's a stupid rumor and only flames those idiots who say "I'd use OS X when it comes out for x86" and "I'll buy a Mac as soon as they use the faster x86 chip."
How about a post saying BSD's dead? Vi's better then emacs? RMS say something great/stupid?
Wild conjecture, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
It makes me wonder, and I haven't read any alternate theories.
Check out his site (Score:3, Informative)
How do I get a job like his? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not Possible (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider:
- Apple spends a lot of time and money and wastes a lot of goodwill doing "680X0->PPC II" by going to X86.
- Apple chooses "wrong" and goes with Itanium instead of Opteron.
- Apple chooses "wrong" and goes with the Opteron.
- Apple either has to do another major switch to the "winning" x86 64-bit architecture, or just go back to the 64-bit 970 PPC.
So the safest bet is to eliminate risk, reduce costs, leverage legacy of a clean modern ISA, and just go with the logical next step: IBM 970.Dvorak would have negative karma (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of a comment I read here sometime:
Rob: I'm bored I think ill start a flame war.
Users: We will take that flame war!
Just an observation. The person writing the article is the real story. Apple switching to Itanium has less credibility than Apple going back to Moto 68000's and doesn't really even warrant a response.
Your Mac Life has it right (Score:3, Interesting)
Dvorak has time and time again shot massive holes through his credibility when it comes to the topic of Macintosh and Apple. I'm surprised he's not so thoroughly embarrassed by this point to avoid the subject completely. It's likely he only put this column up to kick up hits to his column which is precisely why I'm not going to it.
Umm, no. (Score:5, Informative)
Similarly, while Apple and Motorola certainly haven't been getting along for a good while now, it doesn't make sense for Apple to switch to a CPU with an entirely new instruction set. Regardless of whether or not OS X runs on x86, all of the Mac OS X software would have to be ported.
What's more, Apple would lose a lot of their customer base, because there's a certain air of eliteness that comes with using a Mac (or, at least there is in the minds of some Mac users
And yet more still, it would be like SGI's Intel boxes: nobody wants to pay through the nose for x86 (c'mon SGI, $30 thousand for an Intel box? No thanks), especially when they can get it for cheaper by ordering it from Dell, HP, or building it themselves.
No, I think Dvorak is just being his usual idiot self. Besides, hasn't Apple already announced (maybe not officially) that they're going with IBM's 970 PPC processor? That would certainly make more sense, since Mac developers wouldn't have to port their software to a whole new architecture, and would only require a new motherboard and some small changes to the OS to handle the 64-bit pointers and such.
Re:Dont Buy the Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
The core of all common Intel and AMD processors is RISC now a days, it simply has the ability to work in a CISC-like way by handling the old instructions. But the actual computations done in the core are more RISC-like.
I would not say that RISC is Apple's big advantage, I'd say it has more to do with OSX, the iApps, the design of their machines, creative advertising, and great customer loyalty.
a market for the z80... (Score:5, Interesting)
heres a website with a lot of info on the z80 [geocities.com]
Re:Support nightmare? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple switching to x86 based processors is a much different scenerio then most people envision. Apple would not sell OS X to just run on any white-box hardware.
In fact, most people would not even realize that it was an x86-based processor. Apple would still only sell iMacs, iBooks, and the rest of their
Re:I think apple will switch to kde. (Score:5, Insightful)
KDE already runs on OSX
Under X11 emulation, that's far from being native
apple's using a huge load of kde code already
You're probably reffering to Safari. KHTML is not a huge load of code. Just take a look at Apple Cocoa and Carbon code, differences will
KDE is the best desktop enviroment in terms of architecture, customisability, flexiblity, applications , ease of use, i18n (over 80 languages!).
I'm a linux user, so I should be bashing OSX and Aqua (when it would be fair), but KDE has a long way to go.
Like first, spring cleaning of Menu and KControl, lack of support for handycaped persons, as long with other incosistances
Gnome on the other hand has this things but lacks of applications and being finalized on some points of usability. Maybe 2.4 or 2.8, but 2.2 has a way to go too.
So replace X11 with Quartz and you have one blazing system!
Replacing X11 with Quartz? Problems arise with hardware support. Apple uses Nvidia and Ati only so making some functions hardware accelerated is no problem, but it would become much larger problem with introducing larger ammount of different vendors. (I think XFree5 plans address this problems in the way Quartz does, hardware accelerated with soft emulation just like MesaGL-DRI-GLX are doing now)
As for the best, everybody has it's best. But to stay on topic. Apple's OS is the only reason to buy Apple machine, making it Intel based it would just bring a benchmark confrontation with other OS that run on the same hardware. Making it KDE this topic would become much more viable than CPU-only benchmark topic