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vdrummer · Mar 26, 2003, 01:41 AM

As stated by John Dvorak in the current issue of PC Magazine:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,939867,00.asp

"Prediction: Apple Computer Corp. will switch to Intel processors within the next 12 to 18 months.

The story starts with January's Intel sales conference. The surprise keynote speaker was Steve Jobs. And then, in the front row of Steve Jobs's keynote address at the last Macworld Expo were top Intel executives. Shortly thereafter, Pixar announced that it would become an Intel shop. That was all step one. Step two is coming.

Apple has been concerned about Motorola dragging its heels in the processor wars and failing to achieve clock speeds that are even half of what AMD and Intel are achieving. "

Quoteth the Specials:
this is the dawning . . of a new -ew -ew -ew era . . .

:haripu: · Mar 26, 2003, 02:00 AM

i can't see it happen. apple telling adobe and quark and macromedia to rewrite all their products once more? naaaaaaah.

D'Espice · Mar 26, 2003, 09:20 AM

Just proves once again that Dvorak is an brainless moronic prick.

bradoesch · Mar 26, 2003, 09:57 AM

There's another thread on this topin in the OS X forum if you're interested.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ht=John+Dvorak

slider · Mar 26, 2003, 02:15 PM

You know, Apple has surprised me quite offend and this would certainly be one it they did. But one of the things you need to know about Steve Jobs is that he thinks quite highly of himself and sees few others as his equal, visionaries. I think the guy that started intel (don't know his name off had) is one of these people. I am offering a possible explainaltion as to the appearances. Or perhaps Apple wants Intel to include firewire on their chip set.

I don't understand all the technical reasons why Apple won't switch, but I have read previous post and understand one of the problems is that it is such a huge undertaking for thrid party software companies to completely rewrite their software after having just done so for OSX. But it would be one headache Apple could just get rid of if they did make the switch, they would no longer need to compete with with intel and constantly be beat down and in speed by there own suppliers, Apple would be as fast as the lastest PC hardware wise. Then we really could see who had the fastest OS. I wonder if Apple ever just consider Intel just making a special chip for them. Anyways I don't think it would happen, I am betting on the IBM 970.

gururafiki · Mar 27, 2003, 04:28 AM

Originally posted by haripu
i can't see it happen. apple telling adobe and quark and macromedia to rewrite all their products once more? naaaaaaah.

I agree. Apple would alienate a lot of developers if they switch to intel.

Originally posted by slider
Or perhaps Apple wants Intel to include firewire on their chip set.

Does apple own firewire technology and license it out to other computer companies?

real · Mar 27, 2003, 03:19 PM

John C. Dvorak

He's well er....... a troll

Agent69 · Mar 27, 2003, 05:41 PM

Why not make a sticky thread for this?

Athens · Mar 28, 2003, 02:05 AM

going from PPC to x86 wouldnt be that hard for software developers, they would just have to recompile there software and change a few things.

Simon · 03:09 AM

Originally posted by Athens:
going from PPC to x86 wouldnt be that hard for software developers, they would just have to recompile there software and change a few things.

No. It's not "just a few things". Remeber when Apple said going from the Mac OS 9 API to Carbon needed just a 5% code modification. Well, Quark hasn't been able to do these 5% up to now and many devs mentioned that sometimes changing 5% of the code can take up tons of time.

Besides, even if it would require only a re-compile by devs, that would mean that Apple would have to port all the APIs to other hardrware plattforms. I know with Cocoa this is feasible (like NeXTStep -> x86 OpenStep) and I know about their fat binary packages, but have you thought about how little of the Mac experience that can be in some environments? Think of Carbon. Even our Finder is written in Carbon and as far as I know nobody has mentioned that it is even possible to re-write the entire Carbon API for x86 or any other hardware plattform.

Either the entire Carbon API would have to be re-written for new hardware or everything has to go Cocoa. Try selling that to devs. Even Apple would need tons of resources to re-write all their Carbon apps to Cocoa. Just think of how long it took them to go from a working Mac OS 9 API Finder to a working Carbon OS X Finder - and it's still got bugs BTW...

I think those are just facts that can't be neglected when it comes to this issue.

bradoesch · Mar 28, 2003, 09:44 AM

Originally posted by Athens:
going from PPC to x86 wouldnt be that hard for software developers, they would just have to recompile there software and change a few things.

If things were that easy, I'm sure we'd see tons more Mac software.

ChrisB · Mar 28, 2003, 01:18 PM

A few things:

1) Back in the System 7.1.1 days, Apple had a version of it ported to x86, sitting in it's basement. It stayed in the basement...

2) There is a version of Mac OS X that Apple ported to x86...again, it seems to have stayed in the basement.

Apple is always researching what their product might do on another CPU platform, but maybe there's a reason why it always stays in the basement...

Superchicken · Mar 28, 2003, 07:27 PM

Apple has the PPC 970 comming down the pipe and it will allow for greater amounts of RAM in work stations for video, it'll compete very well against even Intel's Xeons, so I gota ask you... why the heck they would jump across to another architecture when they are still ironing the bugs out of OS X? Trust me it ain't gona happen soon. While it could, Apple is not likely to becasue even to get apps with both x86 and PPC compiled parts in one while it's possible is not a timely thing. Most of the big apps have just finnally been ported to OS X, they're not gona ask anyone to recompiled their code and go through relreasing all their apps again any time soon... while it might be possible for say an Apple video editing work station, for the majority of the platform it's highly unlikely

rmendis · Mar 29, 2003, 07:12 AM

Originally posted by Simon:
I know with Cocoa this is feasible (like NeXTStep -> x86 OpenStep) and I know about their fat binary packages, but have you thought about how little of the Mac experience that can be in some environments? Think of Carbon...as far as I know nobody has mentioned that it is even possible to re-write the entire Carbon API for x86 or any other hardware plattform.

Carbon is a very portable API.

I believe the idea for Carbon developed from the portable subset of the Mac OS Toolbox that Apple used to port the QuickTime Player to Windows.

Apple Engineering must have thought why not factor out the largest such portable subset of the Mac OS API and that was what was refered to as Carbon.

So yes, it should indeed be very portable to other ISAs.

So technically there is nothing stopping Apple from doing so. I can't recall if there were unofficial builds of Mac OS X DP/PB that were compiled for Intel? And i'm not sure if it had the Carbon environment. Rhapsody for Intel sure did exist.