[Skypat]

After this very small 200 mhz update, the question can be raised.

What do you think ? Could this be technically possible ? Are Tiger and other mac apps ready to run on an AMD chip for example ?

Apple needs to leave IBM and choose AMD ... well I know it must be more complex than that, that's just my feeling

[discotronic]

I seriously doubt that Apple is going to be leaving IBM anytime soon.

[fibroptikl]

Could OS X be ported over to an x86 platform? Yes, shouldn't be too hard. Will they? Probably never.

[solbo]

Even aside from the fact that this would be a technical and compatibility nightmare, why would they bother? If you are basing this "need" to switch to another platform on Ghz then AMDs top processors are only around 2.6 Ghz (could be higher now). If you are willing to pay an insane amount of money you can get a 3.7 Ghz Pentium, but as we should all know by now Ghz aren't everything. Even Intel is getting slapped in the face hard with that realization.

The whole microprocessor industry has currently hit the wall on leaps and bounds in clockspeed increases. Things you are going to start seeing are more multicore chips and more creative marketing such as what AMD has done with numbering their chips instead of displaying clockspeed.

[Skypat]

Originally Posted by fibroptikl

Could OS X be ported over to an x86 platform? Yes, shouldn't be too hard. Will they? Probably never.

Why not ? They would finally have decent processor upgrades ... of course they would have to share the chips with other competitors, but at least they would have lower prices ...

[solbo]

Originally Posted by Skypat

Why not ? They would finally have decent processor upgrades ... of course they would have to share the chips with other competitors, but at least they would have lower prices ...

I seriously doubt processor cost is why Apple machines are so expensive. If they went with x86-64, they are certainly not going to pass any cost savings on to you. Seriously though, the price difference is probably negligible.

[Don Pickett]

Silly boy! Everyone knows Apple is going Z-80!

[OreoCookie]

The G5 is a fast CPU, and the 64 bit transition would never be so smooth on an x86-64 CPU. They don't have a hybrid mode like the PowerPCs (they can switch between 32 bit and 64 bit mode on the fly), so Apple would either have the choice to rewrite basically everything in 64 bit (that would include ALL drivers!) or stay 32 bit. No apps would work, except if you would use emulation (like under win64).

IBM's PowerPCs are chosen to be the basis for ALL future consoles which means IBM has a vested interest in developing cheap, fast, and new PowerPCs. This means, Apple would receive fast, cheap CPUs for the next couple of years.

[stuffedmonkey]

1984 called, it wants it's troll back.

[kw14]

Pshaw! 6502, baby!!!

[chabig]

The performance charts on the Powermac pages at Apple show the machines to be almost twice as fast as dual 2.6 GHz Opteron systems. So why would Apple want to switch?

[Leonard]

Hahahahaha - nice joke. Apple going Intel or AMD. Hahahaha.

Not happening anytime soon. There's a better chance of Microsoft going PowerPC - oh wait, that already happened.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by kw14

Pshaw! 6502, baby!!!

Kewl! All my old Apple // programs will run natively!

[freakboy2]

man if apple sold a machine that could run OSX and windows on the same hardware that would rock. They wouldn't need to sell a PC version of OSX, just the hardware.

[gururafiki]

Seems like this came up right before the G5's were introduced. Now with the G5's, there is no need to go to x86. Although we have not yet seen a dual core G5, I am sure they are not far away either. G5's are fast and slowly catching up to the fastest intel chip. At this point, there is NO need for OS X or the Mac Platform itself to go x86.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by Skypat

. . . the question can be raised . . .

No. It really can't.

[Lateralus]

Nope.