Apple to swith to intel processors [Archive]

Mac

06-04-2005, 12:47 PM

I've been following this on Engadget for a bit and they're making quite the big deal out of this - one guy even called it the "IT Event of the Decade". Now, I'm not sure if it's quite as big as that, but it's big news, assuming it actually happens.

My question would be - does this mean Apple's could, possibly, run Windows software in some situations now that they're on the x86 platform?

ElectricMonk

06-04-2005, 01:06 PM

it would at least make porting a lot easier.

DefeatEd

06-04-2005, 01:09 PM

Darwin, the BSD engine behind OSX, already runs on x86. http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

sTubbs

06-04-2005, 01:31 PM

This has been a rumour for so long that I will believe it only when Steve Jobs himself comes to my house and tells me to my face. Well, at least until he makes an official announcement.

mister_slim

06-04-2005, 01:33 PM

The cats out of the bag (http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html)

if apple switches to x86, i wonder how long it will take for a grad student to port mac os to the pc.
Umm, where do you get "x86" from? Even if Apple were to switch to some sort of Intel chips, a Mac would still be very different hardware from a PC.

bobbler

06-04-2005, 01:40 PM

chechenepiphany

06-04-2005, 01:46 PM

sorry slim, it(x86) was mentioned in a few other articles, but i guess not this one. ill dig up some links.

B_Money

06-04-2005, 01:46 PM

Well, if the article is right and Apple plans to switch some computers by next year... it will have to be x86. Intel would need a couple years to put together an entirely foreign (to them) chip design similar to what Apple is used to.

So, it's a safe bet, if this rumor is true, that we'll be seeing x86 Macs.

Intel aleady has a non x86 chip design, thier 64 bit one, Iatinum or whatever it's called. Apple is most likely moving to that. i don't see Apple moving to Intel chipsets just so they can stick with 32 bit.

KarmaGhost

06-04-2005, 01:58 PM

Please check your news posts before submitting. Having "Apple to swith to intel processors" on the front page is a little embarrassing.

Taco

06-04-2005, 02:03 PM

Why would Intel agree to reinvent the wheel for Apple, especially when they currently have their hands full keeping AMD in their place. What's the incentive, add .5% to their market share? If they go Intel it WILL be x86.

I don't see it happening, Apple is just playing IBM.

chechenepiphany

06-04-2005, 02:07 PM

Intel aleady has a non x86 chip design, thier 64 bit one, Iatinum or whatever it's called. Apple is most likely moving to that. i don't see Apple moving to Intel chipsets just so they can stick with 32 bit.
i dont know, theyve been having problems with that for years. im not sure if that chip even runs win64 yet. on the other hand, im not sure i can see them being so bold as to use a chip with "pentium" anywhere in the name. considering the sales platform over the last two decades has consisted largely of "the powerpc is better than the pentium" and "look, certain photoshop filters werk faster" etc, i dont think they would be so brash.

president_fred

06-04-2005, 02:08 PM

For more information feel free to check www.appleinsider.com and www.macrumours.com personally I think we should wait until WWDC on monday and Steve Jobs keynote speech before assuming things. I think Mac may switch to intel but personally I would be very surprised if that meant x86, but thats just me. We will see.

Nimos

06-04-2005, 03:16 PM

If thats real, i really hope they won't be using x86 technology. I mean come on.... will they be switching from powerpc970, a 64bit RISC altivec CPU, to a Pentium4 32bit CISC crap processor ? That would be the worst move in Apple history evar !

Mondopest

06-04-2005, 03:20 PM

bobbler

06-04-2005, 03:38 PM

Intel aleady has a non x86 chip design, thier 64 bit one, Iatinum or whatever it's called. Apple is most likely moving to that. i don't see Apple moving to Intel chipsets just so they can stick with 32 bit.

Common misconception... The Itanium is actually a pretty big failure as a CPU -- it's only good at some very select tasks (even then for the cost it's usually not worth it), the Xeon/Opterons beat it in almost everything (Opteron's clean the floor with it). It is also very different from the PowerPC archetecture apple is used to, so it wouldn't be any better than switching to x86.

Itanium is very expensive, has very low yields, and the ones that perform worth anything are 500mil+ transistors -- Did I mention they are really bad at most tasks? That isn't going into the mac mini, that's for sure.

It's about time they switch; I'm getting sick of people claiming that the G5s are so superior to Athlon 64s/P4s (or xeons/opterons). It's just flat out not true, real world tests almost always side with Opterons and the Xeons are usually about equal to G5s (those benchmarks Apple releases are worse than anything Sony and MS have released on their next gen consoles). Apple will be better off with an x86 archetecture, they are far more widely spread (thus cheaper) and theres a ton more support out there (programmer wise) -- It would be a good decision on their part if they move to it, and stop being so hostile with keeping their platform closed.

Nimos

06-04-2005, 04:07 PM

Apple will be better off with an x86 archetecture, they are far more widely spread (thus cheaper) and theres a ton more support out there (programmer wise) -- It would be a good decision on their part if they move to it, and stop being so hostile with keeping their platform closed.

Ehm actually no, you are dead wrong. There is a reason they keep their platform closed, it's because they want people to buy THEIR machines not the cheaper compatible ones . Now you can argue about apple's low market share, but the truth is that if apple opens up to the x86 architecture and ports their sleek os to x86 platform, people will stop buying their expensive computers and apple's profits will hit rock bottom.
You weren't around the disastrous (to apple) apple/mac clones era , were you ?

Mason

06-04-2005, 04:17 PM

Nimos, I was just about to say that, why would Apple switch from what really sets their computers apart (the 64bit RISC) processor to a std 32bit CISC processor? It takes away the major benefit those machines have.

To be honest, Apple's situation is probably worse than you think. Their continued relevance is based entirely on the willingness of IBM to keep their processors competitive. Given what a tiny sliver of the market is actually buying these CPUs, it isn't that surprising to see the pace of development to be far behind the curve Intel and AMD have set.

Apple has hung onto its unique hardware platform out of stupid adherence to ideology. The PC revolution has always left them behind, and no amount of design innovations or marketing genius (how many non-Mac computers do you see in shows or movies?) has let them keep pace. In spite of its many shortcomings, the open PC platform wins. Always has, and hopefully always will, as the alternative to an open platform is not a pleasant thing.

I don't think they've given up on their ideology, though. A closed platform with Intel chips is just as closed, they're most likely just blaming their failure on their CPU provider, yet again. If OSX were porting over to PC hardware and acting as a direct competitor to Microsoft, instead of the whole PC platform, I honestly think that we'd see Apple's market share increase ten-fold. Consumers would be easily wooed away from MS if it didn't require them to throw away their PCs.

But that won't happen. Apple is the only remaining "evil empire" of personal computing, and I think they intend to sit on their irrelevant 3.7% market share until the sun explodes.

Mason

06-04-2005, 04:19 PM

Ehm actually no, you are dead wrong. There is a reason they keep their platform closed, it's because they want people to buy THEIR machines not the cheaper compatible ones . Now you can argue about apple's low market share, but the truth is that if apple opens up to the x86 architecture and ports their sleek os to x86 platform, people will stop buying their expensive computers and apple's profits will hit rock bottom.
You weren't around the disastrous (to apple) apple/mac clones era , were you ?

Do they want to exist as a successful software company or a marginal hardware company? It's pretty much time to choose.

emjoi

06-04-2005, 05:46 PM

Taco

06-04-2005, 05:49 PM

I'd at the very least dual boot Mac OS on my system if it was possible. That'd be slick.

Taco

06-04-2005, 05:51 PM

Do they want to exist as a successful software company or a marginal hardware company? It's pretty much time to choose.

The iPod is single handily driving their profit margins right now, so I'd say they are a successful hardware company. I'd expect them to branch pretty heavily out to cell phones and PDA's. I'm rather surpised that haven't tried a PDA out, now would be the time.

bobbler

06-04-2005, 05:59 PM

The Power PC has lagged because its fairly low volume compared to Pentiums, but with the next consoles all being PPC, you'd think Apple & IBM would be overjoyed they stuck with it.

The Intel switch also had the problem that suddenly you wouldnt need to buy Apple hardware to run MacOS. And the money-honey is in the Hardware.

Maybe Apple has had a shift in attitude, and wants to sell MacOS X to PC users. Going into attack, rather than being on the Defensive from the Microsoft gorrilla.

I'm sure Apple will think of something. Either they keep their closed platform, but x86 inside instead of PPC or they open it up a bit and start selling their OS on the x86 platform and turn their comp selling department into something like Dell or HP (it doesn't seem like Apple is willing to do that though -- that's a major shift for a company to make). Mason pretty well summed it up though.

I know a lot of people who love the Mac OS but hate the restricted and limited nature of the platform (being closed and all). I know approximately 1 mac user, but several who would buy the OS, if only to have it as a normal user OS (dual boot probably).

ElectricMonk

06-04-2005, 08:03 PM

if apple ends up using the same cpu as the xbox 360 ibm's low volume chip selling problems may not apply

chechenepiphany

06-04-2005, 08:29 PM

Im interested to see how they play this. it could easily kill them or drive them to new heights. they cant sell musical hard drives forever. as much as i dislike apple, i wouldnt mind having a dual boot at all. ilife, final cut, and some other stuff would be nice to have.

mister_slim

06-04-2005, 09:04 PM

I don't think they've given up on their ideology, though. A closed platform with Intel chips is just as closed, they're most likely just blaming their failure on their CPU provider, yet again. If OSX were porting over to PC hardware and acting as a direct competitor to Microsoft, instead of the whole PC platform, I honestly think that we'd see Apple's market share increase ten-fold. Consumers would be easily wooed away from MS if it didn't require them to throw away their PCs.
You would also see hardware incompatibility and technical problems go up more than ten-fold. I don't think you understand that Apple sells a complete solution, tool, and experience, not just a shiny interface.

Kentor

06-05-2005, 02:41 AM

The Power PC has lagged because its fairly low volume compared to Pentiums, but with the next consoles all being PPC, you'd think Apple & IBM would be overjoyed they stuck with it.
Why would Apple be happy about IBM obtaining the 3 largest Power core contracts in Power's history? It suddenly makes Apple's Power970 orders with IBM somewhat marginal reducing any slim influence Apple might have had over IBM. At this point, Apple cannot bargin with IBM over prices or production since they basically have no leverage.

bobbler

06-05-2005, 02:57 AM

Why would Apple be happy about IBM obtaining the 3 largest Power core contracts in Power's history? It suddenly makes Apple's Power970 orders with IBM somewhat marginal reducing any slim influence Apple might have had over IBM. At this point, Apple cannot bargin with IBM over prices or production since they basically have no leverage.

Heh... IBM is going to be busy over the next 5+ years. ~2.5-3 million CPUs a month on average to satisfy the next generation consoles, all coming from IBM. It seems IBM wins the next gen console war -- It'd be a good time to start keeping an eye on IBM stock; thats a lot of gauranteed sales over the next 5 years (I'm not sure how many fabs IBM has, but I imagine 2.5 million ~200m transistor CPUs is going to be a significant portion of their total production).

Apple is better off with Intel and IBM is better off without Apple (in the next 5 years at least).

Kentor

06-05-2005, 03:13 AM

The iPod is single handily driving their profit margins right now, so I'd say they are a successful hardware company. I'd expect them to branch pretty heavily out to cell phones and PDA's. I'm rather surpised that haven't tried a PDA out, now would be the time.
Two things:
1) Almost the entire iPod design was done by third parties, including all of the underlying hardware and software and even the idea of iTunes. Most notably, PortalPlayer approached many companies looking to sell the idea of a better portable music player coupled with an online music service in 2001. Apple was one of a handful of companies that didn't turn down their idea. PortablePlayer was responsible for virtually all of the design and development for the first generation iPod along with introducing the basic design and idea of iTunes to Apple. Even now, PortablePlayer is responsible for almost all of the underlying hardware and firmware that drives iPods. Without PortablePlayer there would be no iPod and no iTunes.

2) Cellular phones and PDAs are at least an order of magnitude more complex and expensive to develop. A typical cellular phone R&D division employs at least 5 times the number of employees at PortalPlayer in development staff alone. Developing a product like iPod might cost on the order of tens of millions of dollars -- wireless handset development typically costs hundreds of millions. It literally takes half a decade of rather expensive work for specialists to develop a competent wireless handset from scratch.

EDIT
-last sentence of 1) read "With..." instead of "Without..."

Carnifex

06-05-2005, 04:13 AM

You would also see hardware incompatibility and technical problems go up more than ten-fold. I don't think you understand that Apple sells a complete solution, tool, and experience, not just a shiny interface.
Apple could still set hardware restrictions or requirements for their OS, and let everything else be unsupported, maybe even unusable. If I have understood it correctly, this is what they do with graphic cards on Macs. Only some models are certified and supported.

Personally I'd love to see Mac OS on x86 and x86-64. Microsoft needs the competition. Competition is good :)

SaintArnold

06-05-2005, 07:24 AM

Itanium is a failure, Apple will *not* switch to that. It is the laughingstock of the computer industry.

Montgomery_Python

06-05-2005, 08:05 AM

cat's.......

chechenepiphany

06-05-2005, 08:24 AM

cat's.......
another day, another thread saved by the grammar patrol.

Thenetcase

06-05-2005, 09:33 AM

I think that part of the "major news" here is the fact they are dumping the RISC archetecture and going wit hthe x86 archetecture. There's a pretty huge difference between the two. Or is there?
With Pear OS running on my computer (Athlon 64 3200+) I can get the exact same results as a POWERMAC G5 DUAL 1.8GHZ. What's with that? IF the RISC processor is so all-powerful how can my x86 chip do this? Maybe Apple finally realized that it wasn't all that different anymore and decided to switch. The X86 processors are definitely cheaper and easier to make.
This is a great choice for Apple. THey can now have more compatability with regular software titles (a simple emulator will work wonders now) and to top it off, they can lower their prices again and start being extremely competative.

But the big question is: Can they actually produce non-buggy software for this platform or will they lower their standards for third party software and have their OS riddled with bugs and viruses now? They are taking a risk here as far as that's concerned. It could end up backfiring and hurting them alot if they aren't careful.

-TNC-

chechenepiphany

06-05-2005, 09:50 AM

Skookum

06-05-2005, 10:28 AM

With Pear OS running on my computer (Athlon 64 3200+) I can get the exact same results as a POWERMAC G5 DUAL 1.8GHZ.
-TNC-

You've actually done this? Or are you just claiming it can be done? PearOs is still in beta as far as I can see. I'd be booting up Tiger on my machine right now if I could get ahold of a working copy of PearOS.

Thenetcase

06-05-2005, 12:57 PM

Yeah, I've actually done it.
So has a friend of mine.
It's pretty freaking buggy, but it can be done!

thFOOL

06-05-2005, 01:07 PM

I'm sorry, but 'pretty freaking buggy' does not equal 'the exact same results'.

In any event, I predict this is all bullshit. We've been hearing some variation of this rumor for years now, and Apple isn't about to slow down the momentum that the G5 line and Tiger has given them. I guess we'll find out this week, huh?