wgnoyes Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 Okay, so what do all the Apple people out there think of THIS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 Lots of different directions they could go with it. It'll be interesting to see how it falls out and how much they leverage the PC design, good and bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRe Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 It cuts the need for a lot of R&D from their budget. Apple's SW (OS, apps) is really the only thing that they've got that differentiates them from the PC world - you can easily get everything that they slap into one of their machines on a PC, after all. It is a big step, though - this basically means that all their vendors are going to have to compile and support yet one more version of their products to handle the new HW - going an emulator route is a losing proposition... It *does* concern me a little bit that the world seems to be putting its eggs into one basket... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckS Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 One little, two little, three little Endians... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pisgahrifle Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 No like-o at all-o. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 Handle the BIOS properly and this could be a great way to run a really nice OS on X86 hardware. I would love to see Tiger running on a pair of radically overclocked XEON's ;-) Anyone remember the "fat apps" from the 68oh switchover a ways back? App's had to have both sets of code in them. Not looking forward to doing that again. I am thinking that a lot of the shjt under the hood with Tiger may have been paving the way. In that regard, Steve in no idiot. My guess is that Tiger will be able to run native on X86 without much hassle by the time all is said and done. That would also mean that if you have productivity apps that run fine in Tiger now, you will just need to re-install them on the X86 version of Tiger right from the same CD's you used on the G3/4/5 version. Like I said, Steve is no dummy. I will bet this move was planned in Tandem with the Tiger "under the hood" changes. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael_aos Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 I've heard "Intel" -- does that absolutely mean x86? Or are we talking IA64 / Itanium 2? Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 One of the stated claims was to improve laptop development, so Itanium is out. 64-bit, probably eventually. Apple's had test versions of their OS on x86 CPUs for years.. The driver folks can grab a little Linux code and a little PC code and be almost done. Most all of them already have PC product shipping so that's not a big deal. I was sorta hoping they'd toss some of the PC legacy baggage, but it looks like that comes too. What will be ugly is trying to emulate a PPC on an x86. That code will run slooow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
outerlimits Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 i have this really sick feeling....but i'll sleep fine tonight...never owned an intel chip and don't plan on it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 As far as emulators go here is a quote from part of the Apple press release on the subject: In addition, as we speculated, Apple will provide a revolutionary PowerPC translation system, which it calls "Rosetta", to run existing applications on the Intel platform, supposedly without great performance penalties. (Transitive Corp., the creator of that unique technology, just happens to have former NeXT President Peter van Cuylenburg as the chairman of its board of directors....) I don't think an emulator is going to be that necessary anyway. Most apps will re-port without too much fuss. and a number of the API's (Java, Cocoa, etc..) won't even change. I am excited about this prospect. I want to be able to run OSX on any hardware I want to. I also think running XP natively on my next PowerBook when I need to would be the shjt. Apple may not want these things to happen, but they are gonna happen whether they like it, or not. I'll be right there helping to make it happen in any way I can ;-) -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 Unless you write compilers or write in assembler, the processor under the hood should be relatively transparent. I'll bet ya a cup of Joe that Metrowerks already has the compiler written. If Apple basically ports their OS over to PC hardware with it's stone-age architechture, there won't be much point left to buying an Apple. Can you imagine what had to have been going on with IBM in order to drive Apple to this? Shudder... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 I think the thing I am looking forward to is the possibility of choosing/building the hardware config "I" want and then being able to choose the OS "I" want to use on that hardware (cake and eat it). Previously, the Mac OS got the nod so I went along with the hardware lock-in that required. I always felt the PC/XT hardware base was a more flexible choice if you like to build and upgrade/tweak things. The real problem with the Intel architecture has always been the lack of a great OS and the resultant reliability issues what is available has saddled us with. If the processor is fast and the components are robust and well integrated, any hardware is great hardware. The personality of a system is the OS and Apple might just be making the perfect move here after all, even if they don't realize it yet ;-) -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 IMHO the key tipping point would be if Apple decides to become a software company and starts licensing the OS to other builders. That would rock. Otherwise, it's going to be a different verse of the same proprietary-hardware song. They could keep selling high-end designs to one end of the market and snag a ton of OS share from Microsoft at the low-end. But, I don't think they can do it alone-- they'd have to sign up the Dell's and HP's of the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 Here is a good info blog at O'Reilly where the Mac info is usually a cut above the rest: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7201 I believe Apple just might wind up in the OS business bigtime if everyone else plays their cards wrong (as most folks in computer industry history always have) ;-) -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heath Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 I don't think that Apple is going to get out of the hardware business any time soon. They don't benefit from allowing MacOS to run on commodity PC hardware and the hardware that they do make is appealing enough that they can continue to sell and profit from it regardless of the processor that they use. That coupled with the fact that they have a spiffy OS to go with their spiffy hardware should insure their success for some time to come. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmccrock Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 I'll bet ya a cup of Joe that Metrowerks already has the compiler written. They had a functional Windows compiler several years ago. But that was before the Moto acquisition. Has there been an announcement whether Apple will design their own motherboards, or use commodity hardware? Generally the press has said "Intel chips". Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heath Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 I'm pretty sure that Jobs mentioned that they've been compiling OSX on Intel for several years now. I also suspect that they will design all of their own motherboards. They can build what they want about as cheaply as they could buy commodity boards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 Apple has been concurrently compiling in x86 for quite a while now. They could make it all run on any wintel box tomorrow "if" they wanted to. They want to make sure the developers are ready to supply dual install discs before they do anything more than announce. I am sure the hardware is already in the pipeline (production pre-planning is 14-18 months). -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 9, 2005 Share Posted June 9, 2005 Robert Cringley (Accidental Empires) has a very good take on what is going on here. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html Maybe a little ambitious in his vision, but not at all far-fetched compared to what has already really happened in this industry back in the day ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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