Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips **Updated 6/7** x86 Mac systems *should* run Windows

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: PowerMacG5

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
How about if Intel makes an Itanium chip for Apple? That would allow Apple to remain segregated from PCs and allow Intel to finally start pushing IA64 into the desktop space. Makes sense strategically for both groups, Intel gets to increase market penetration of the Itanium and Apple gets to use Intel's manufacturing capabilities.

Itanium is a lot more expensive than the G5.

Also, to anyone mentioning Apple trying to beat MS for the OS marketshare, remember that Apple is a hardware company. If they allow OS X to run on any hardware other than thre own, there profits plummet.

ahhh.. NO. Their profits would go through the roof. Hardware cost money to reproduce. Software is just copy... copy... copy... and rakes in the money. Hence why MS makes so much.
All apple would need is a couple OEM;s to pick up X. But yea I see intel selling them a Itanium over a x86 so that way they get apples business and keep MS happy at the same time. Also would keep AMD's chips from working on Apples X os

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: PowerMacG5
Itanium is a lot more expensive than the G5.
Also, to anyone mentioning Apple trying to beat MS for the OS marketshare, remember that Apple is a hardware company. If they allow OS X to run on any hardware other than thre own, there profits plummet.

Well current Itaniums are really aimed at workstation and servers. Intel could do what IBM did with the Power series and just cut them down for the desktop.

 

[PowerMacG5]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: PowerMacG5

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
How about if Intel makes an Itanium chip for Apple? That would allow Apple to remain segregated from PCs and allow Intel to finally start pushing IA64 into the desktop space. Makes sense strategically for both groups, Intel gets to increase market penetration of the Itanium and Apple gets to use Intel's manufacturing capabilities.

Itanium is a lot more expensive than the G5.

Also, to anyone mentioning Apple trying to beat MS for the OS marketshare, remember that Apple is a hardware company. If they allow OS X to run on any hardware other than thre own, there profits plummet.

ahhh.. NO. Their profits would go through the roof. Hardware cost money to reproduce. Software is just copy... copy... copy... and rakes in the money. Hence why MS makes so much.
All apple would need is a couple OEM;s to pick up X. But yea I see intel selling them a Itanium over a x86 so that way they get apples business and keep MS happy at the same time. Also would keep AMD's chips from working on Apples X os

You don't understand how it works.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: PowerMacG5

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: PowerMacG5

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
How about if Intel makes an Itanium chip for Apple? That would allow Apple to remain segregated from PCs and allow Intel to finally start pushing IA64 into the desktop space. Makes sense strategically for both groups, Intel gets to increase market penetration of the Itanium and Apple gets to use Intel's manufacturing capabilities.

Itanium is a lot more expensive than the G5.

Also, to anyone mentioning Apple trying to beat MS for the OS marketshare, remember that Apple is a hardware company. If they allow OS X to run on any hardware other than thre own, there profits plummet.

ahhh.. NO. Their profits would go through the roof. Hardware cost money to reproduce. Software is just copy... copy... copy... and rakes in the money. Hence why MS makes so much.
All apple would need is a couple OEM;s to pick up X. But yea I see intel selling them a Itanium over a x86 so that way they get apples business and keep MS happy at the same time. Also would keep AMD's chips from working on Apples X os

You don't understand how it works.

Ahh yea I do. Software and support is where most money is made. hardware is not.

 

Hmmm...

 

[UNCjigga]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
How about if Intel makes an Itanium chip for Apple? That would allow Apple to remain segregated from PCs and allow Intel to finally start pushing IA64 into the desktop space. Makes sense strategically for both groups, Intel gets to increase market penetration of the Itanium and Apple gets to use Intel's manufacturing capabilities.

No no no, that would defeat much of the purpose of this move. I think Apple is finally seeing the light.

Why is Apple the butt of all geeks' jokes? Because for all their great technology, they've always been slower.

Why have they been slower? Blame the chips!

Why aren't the chips faster? Because IBM's primary concern is servers and workstations. This market has longer product lifecycles. MHz are not important. While Intel and AMD are competing furiously in the x86 market, IBM can take it easy. Chips aren't even their primary business (though interesting that now IBM's main consumer CPU will be the Cell and XBox and Revolution CPUs.)

So if Apple jumps on the x86 bandwagon, they advance as fast as the latest PC when it comes to chips. Once the initial development hurdles are crossed, it might be a lot easier to port code between two different OSes on same platform than two different OSes on different platforms (isn't this true for Windows vs. x86 Linux?)

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

what you've stated makes perfect sense from a consumer point of view, but makes absolutely no sense for Apple. For one thing, if this happens then OS X would be x86 compatible and there would be nothing to stop you from running OS X on an AMD rig. Why the hell would Apple have to confer with either Intel to move to x86? They could just release all their software for x86 and be done with it. The fact that they are in talks with Intel and the fact that x86 makes no sense for their hardware group, I don't think they'll go to x86

 

[rh71]

look what just came on /.

Also, IBM fans can take solace:

IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership, but it can take consolation in that it's designing and manufacturing the Power family processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Ninendo, said Clay Ryder, a Sageza Group analyst.

"I would think in the sheer volume, all the stuff they're doing with the game consoles would be bigger. But anytime you lose a high-profile customer, that hurts in ways that are not quantifiable but that still hurt," Ryder said.

Indeed, IBM has a "Power Everywhere" marketing campaign to tout the wide use of its Power processors. The chips show up in everything from networking equipment to IBM servers to the most powerful supercomputer, Blue Gene/L.

 

[Goosemaster]

Apple has two unique things going for it.

The PPC chip and the Darwin-based OS.

If this new CPU isn't unique they are fvked. The PC market has such a massive volume that without those two Apple has no chance of survival.

 

[ToeJam13]

Originally posted by: UNCjigga
So if Apple jumps on the x86 bandwagon, they advance as fast as the latest PC when it comes to chips. Once the initial development hurdles are crossed, it might be a lot easier to port code between two different OSes on same platform than two different OSes on different platforms (isn't this true for Windows vs. x86 Linux?)

This may have been the case ten years ago when people still hand coded x86 ASM by hand, but its not done anymore because programming ASM for superscalar CPUs bites hard. Most everyone these days uses some form of C for application programming so that the compiler can worry about how to order instructions.

When programming for C, the largest problem becomes the API. You could write POSIX compliant code and compile it fairly easy for NT, however you'd still be up a creek over your GUI code. Converting X11 API calls to GDI or DirectX is not fun.

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
First we have Roger Waters getting together with a united pink floyd, then we have this!!!!????!!

WHAT IS NEXT???? SKYWALKER66 GETTING A GIRLFRIEND?

Pffft, that's just crazy talk.

 

[TitanDiddly]

Originally posted by: Deadtrees
Ah, Xbox ditching Intel, switching to IBM. Apple ditching IBM, switching to Intel. Quite an interesting world, isn't it?

Sounds like something happened behind closed doors.

 

[ToeJam13]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
They could just release all their software for x86 and be done with it. The fact that they are in talks with Intel and the fact that x86 makes no sense for their hardware group, I don't think they'll go to x86

That's not an easy task. There is a lot of current code out for OS-X right now. It would take years to port it all.

Furthermore, CPU emulation is a messy buisness. I used to run FX!32 on my DEC Alpha "Miata" workstation back when it ran NT4. Even when Microsoft bundled FX!32 into Windows 2000 for Alpha, the system chugged when running Win/IA32 apps.

I also remember the fight within Apple when they moved from 680x0 to PPC. Although I wasn't an Apple user, those of us in the Amiga community were watching because we knew we were next. There were all sorts of fights over how many registers to keep reserved for 680x0 emulation, processor sandboxes and all sorts of junk in the trunk. Of course, Amiga went to the 68060 instead of the PPC before Amiga dyed out, so that battle never played out.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: ToeJam13

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
They could just release all their software for x86 and be done with it. The fact that they are in talks with Intel and the fact that x86 makes no sense for their hardware group, I don't think they'll go to x86

That's not an easy task. There is a lot of current code out for OS-X right now. It would take years to port it all.

Furthermore, CPU emulation is a messy buisness. I used to run FX!32 on my DEC Alpha "Miata" workstation back when it ran NT4. Even when Microsoft bundled FX!32 into Windows 2000 for Alpha, the system chugged when running Win/IA32 apps.

I also remember the fight within Apple when they moved from 680x0 to PPC. Although I wasn't an Apple user, those of us in the Amiga community were watching because we knew we were next. There were all sorts of fights over how many registers to keep reserved for 680x0 emulation, processor sandboxes and all sorts of junk in the trunk. Of course, Amiga went to the 68060 instead of the PPC before Amiga dyed out, so that battle never played out.

You missed my point. Unless if Intel starts making PPC chips, Apple is going to have to port their software to something anyway. If they were just going to x86, why would they bother asking Intel about it?

 

[Safeway]

=O

 

[Philippine Mango]

I'm BACK! Anyways I think this will help immensly in letting users know whether or not the apple platform allows for better performance than the windows platform. The comparisons have been fairly vague since it's inception because the architectures are fairly different. Now I wonder if apple will run it's legacy applications in a virtual mode or force intel to make special processor for them.
I just find it terribly funny that mac fanboi's have been touting how wonderful IBM's RISC processor is and now apple is dropping the processor for an intel one. It seems that apple does a poor job of learning it's lesson because in this stage, it's AMD's Athlon 64 that are kicking ass and not intels.. Possibly AMD is unable to handle apple's demands for processors who knows.. Headline: "Apple computer changes processors from intel to AMD" After 7 years with being with intel, apple once agian changes it's processors that are bundled in their machines to AMD processors.

 

[TitanDiddly]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
I'm BACK! Anyways... blah blah blah

:thumbsdown:

 

[EvilYoda]

Nevermind then...

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
I'm BACK! Anyways... blah blah blah

BAN!

 

[Adul]

hell hath frozen over.


that explains the cool temps in phoenix

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: PhasmatisNox

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
I'm BACK! Anyways... blah blah blah

:thumbsdown:

:thumbsdown: Sorry mr. bible thumper but yes I'm back.

 

[EyeMWing]

Hold on, someone's at the door.

The third horseman of the apocalypse has arrived. Now NKD, M4H and myself must destroy the world. I hope you've enjoyed your stay.

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Yeah, but Apple/IBM/Intel refused to comment on it. Nothing is final till you see the official press release

Refusal to comment = we're gonna do it, we just havn't cleared it with our lawyers yet.

Flat out no = no.

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
How about if Intel makes an Itanium chip for Apple? That would allow Apple to remain segregated from PCs and allow Intel to finally start pushing IA64 into the desktop space. Makes sense strategically for both groups, Intel gets to increase market penetration of the Itanium and Apple gets to use Intel's manufacturing capabilities.

IA64 is a broken architecture. Apple adopting that would be like buying a sunken submarine to replace your Honda Civic as your daily driver.

 

[gsaldivar]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS FINALLLY!!!! :beer: