Apple to use Intell Chips!

[stubeeef]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20050605/bs_nm/tech_apple_intel_dc

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) is expected to announce Monday that it will begin shifting its Macintosh computer line next year to Intel Corp. chips, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Sunday, citing people familiar with the situation.

The move would be a major change in strategy by Apple, a high-profile win for Intel (Nasdaq:INTC - news) and a blow to International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news). and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE:FSL - news), suppliers of the PowerPC chips long used in its Macintosh systems.

I'm a hardcore apple user, and this has a lot of the apple boards going crazy

 

[f16fan12]

We've finally converted them!

 

[stubeeef]

Well the P4 is a larger less effecient chip. In fact the new Xbox uses a variant of the apple chip, they used apple computers at the last gaming show conference to have their games playing.
Apple is getting more popular and IBM has not been able to produce enough of the chips. They promised they would have more powerful ones years ago and have not produced them still.
The MacOS is Unix (Darwin) and will easily run on x86 chips now, the programs will be a bit of a bear to port over.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/zd/20050605/tc_zd/153466

"It's a bunch of bull," Peter Glaskowsky, analyst for The Envisioneering Group, in Seaford, N.Y., told Ziff Davis Internet News. "Firstly, Apple certainly pays much less for IBM and Freescale processors than Intel charges for comparable chips. Probably less than half as much on average. The G5 is a smaller, more efficient chip than the Pentium 4, and IBM has no other customers willing to buy large quantities."

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/13/xbox360/index.php

Looking further into the guts of the box, the Xbox 360 features a 500MHz graphics chip developed by ATI, the same company that makes graphics hardware for leading PC manufacturers including Apple. The chip features 48 pixel shader pipelines — enough to produce dazzling special effects that we haven’t yet seen on consoles or PCs.

Another startling similarity with Apple’s Macintosh systems: At the core of the Xbox 360 is a set of three symmetrical IBM PowerPC processor cores, each running at 3.2GHz. The chips are custom-designed, but they’re clocked faster than the fastest Mac. The Xbox 360 significantly outpaces the single 733MHz Intel processor that graces its predecessor. That brute-force CPU power will come in handy as Xbox game developers boost polygon counts in characters and create even more realistic looking environments for their games.

See, Microsoft has been demo'ing the games on a mac.

 

[zoziw]

On Sunday, May 22, 2005 Steve Jobs was asked about the Intel rumours. He replied "We've had talks with Intel and that is about it".

None of the reliable Apple rumour sites have had a story on this. Basically, this is based on some speculation in the financial world and one story on Cnet.

The G5 cooling problem is a major one that is slowing the upgrades of the iBook so that it doesn't catch the PowerBook in ghz. You can add bells and whistles to a PowerBook but in the end most people are fixated on ghz.

Unless IBM has come back to Apple saying that the G5 won't be laptop material for the foreseeable future, I can't see Apple making this switch.

However, if that is the case, Apple is going to have to go somewhere to kick up it's laptops and the Intel Pentium M would be a logical move.

I have heard of the Marklar project which is a version of OS X that runs on x86 boxes so making a switch on the OS side of things might be pretty easy. The transition for other developers might be more tricky.

Still, if the laptop scenario forces a switch, you might as well migrate the whole company over to Intel to prevent having to run emulators or forcing your developers to compile everything for two platforms.

I guess we will know tomorrow.

 

[Abuna]

whats the fastest Ghz a PC can run with ?

 

[WalksWithChrist]

I'll try to hold onto my non-Intel PowerBook for as long as I can!

 

[Abuna]

who makes the best notebooks?

 

[Illuminatus]

So, MS has transitioned over to the PPC architecture for the XBox, and Apple's coming to x86? Excuse me, I must be under the influence of a hallucinogen. This is far too weird.

 

[Jeremy Evans]

Why would they do that? Apple's chips totally pwn!! I'm a die hard AMD fan and I can even admit that the Apple G-whatevers kick butt!!! This saddens me... WE MUST DESTROY INTEL!!!

 

[cwdlmdd]

After reading the newest book out about Steve Jobs. It is hard to put much trust in what he says. He has big ideas but dosn't have the know how. He relies on his employees to come through with what he wants.

At least that is what I am getting out of the book and it is only a book so I don't know how much of it is true.

 

[rdale]

So, MS has transitioned over to the PPC architecture for the XBox, and Apple's coming to x86? Excuse me, I must be under the influence of a hallucinogen. This is far too weird.

Ok... this might sound a little funny... but when Adobe bought out Macromedia a short while back, literally the first thought that came to mind as I was reading about it was "So, the battle for middle earth has begun". Now this. Strange things happening... Microsoft said that the next version of Office will save files in XML format to make their offerings more compatible, interoperable (non-proprietory), see ---> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/06/03/_office_xml/ and http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/004960.html

Funny, today on Rush Limbaugh's show, (the show is podcast if you're a subscriber, I'm not), someone getting back into photography/computers, asked Rush, since he is such a huge (pun-unintended) Mac fan, should he get a Mac now or wait for the new ones to come out with the Intel processor?. Said that he is a Mac-blog reader and had heard lots of buzz, but an amalagamation of what he's heard left him with the following "feelings" about the business side of Apple's decision:

The chip will have some sort of digital ID (possibly something similar to what they did on a "previous" version. Was it Pentium 2 or 3?)

Apple sells boatloads of music at 99¢ each, ipods out the kazoo, a future version of itunes will be expanded to enable digital downloads of movies (iflix ?)

Apple is serious about piracy.

With some sort of digital ID attached to an Apple version of an Intel chip, coupled with broadband getting even broader... they could use this technology to satisfy the Hollywood Lawyer types in agreeing to allow Apple to safely offer iFlix or similar, securely.

Who knows... but things,... they're a changin...

 

[Illuminatus]

After reading the newest book out about Steve Jobs. It is hard to put much trust in what he says. He has big ideas but dosn't have the know how. He relies on his employees to come through with what he wants.

That's why he's a visionary, and not an engineer. Still, Jobs has made a (mostly) successful career out of seemingly insane actions like this. (Remember when the iPod came out? Who on earth would spend $400 on a big, bulky MP3 player? Oops...silly me. ) As I think about it more, it makes a tad more sense.

 

[FatBurger]

That's why he's a visionary, and not an engineer. Still, Jobs has made a (mostly) successful career out of seemingly insane actions like this. (Remember when the iPod came out? Who on earth would spend $400 on a big, bulky MP3 player? Oops...silly me. ) As I think about it more, it makes a tad more sense.

Yes, but the iPod was also touted as something that would change everyone's lives. At least it's better than the Segway...

iPods are great, but not THAT great

 

[FatBurger]

I'm still trying to think through all the implications of this move. I'm with the two that said it before; I feel like I'm living in some bizarro world.

EDIT:
I wonder if there will be supply problems for the Xbox 360, as there have been for the G5s?

 

[Illuminatus]

I wonder if there will be supply problems for the Xbox 360, as there have been for the G5s?

I doubt it. I'm sure MS has had IBM pumping those suckers out for months now.

 

[Illuminatus]

iPods are great, but not THAT great

I agree, but they still saved Apple's ASCII.

 

[zoziw]

I bought my Mac to occasionally get away from Windows, not Intel (my PC runs on an Athlon).

Still, I don't think I will be investing too heavily in upgrading my G4.

I like to start a new OS with a new system and with Longhorn being an estimated year and a half away I might as well stretch out my 1600+ for a bit longer and consider the new Apple hardware and new Windows OS around Christmas 2006.

That would make my Athlon 1600+ 5 years old which isn't bad for a PC.

I have to wonder how Apple sales will be over the next year. Who wants to buy a computer that will be forced into emulation in 12 months?

 

[stubeeef]

there is a lot more about this from steve. I watched it last night (up with the kids in a thunderstorm, yea) and it did clear up one or two things. Go to http://www.apple.com and click on the WWDC (worldwide developers conference) streaming video on the bottom left (Quicktime required).
I know much will be more difficult than it looked (he ended up running it on an intel chip) but it does seem that this has been thought out. They have been running it on an intel chip for the last 5 OS's. For 5 years just in case.
The chip for the xbox is slightly different, not as capable as the G5 itself, but the G5 can run the programs for MS's demos.
Apple has developed some great tools for the developers, xcode translators, that should make much of the process simpler, infact only a few hours for some, to transfer over to the x86.
They also have a program, rosetta, that will launch without being asked, when it detects a program needing it. It will run those programs with little notice to the user.
I, like many Mac faithful will hold off software and hardware purchases till more is known, or has already happened-smoothly too.

 

[FatBurger]

I agree, but they still saved Apple's ASCII.

I think OSX has helped a great deal too, but it's mostly the iPod and the iTunes music store.

 

[WalksWithChrist]

I agree, but they still saved Apple's ASCII.

ROTFL