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joltguy · Jun 9, 2005, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by AKcrab

What? Universal Binaries won't run on PPC? I'm so confused.

What the hell are you talking about? Did you even read my post? You are confused.

Randman · Jun 9, 2005, 12:03 PM

Originally Posted by joltguy

I understand what you're saying. What it boils down to is that things were just taking too long to happen with IBM as the chip supplier. However, "never" is an overstatement. Great things will happen with the Power architecture. When they do, we'll be stuck on the sidelines now with the rest of the PC industry. I guess the main disappointment for me is that although we will get upgraded Macs on a more frequent basis, the Mac hardware of the future will only ever be as fast as the Dell hardware or the HP hardware or the Sony hardware. We'll be just as good, never better. The possibility of being better than the rest was the edge that Apple had courtesy of the PowerPC. Now that edge and its glorious possibilities have been sacrificed, all in the name of impatience. In my books, that's not a good enough reason to warrant a sacrifice of this magnitude.

Except Intel Macs will run OSX.

joltguy · 08:47 AM

Originally Posted by Randman

Except Intel Macs will run OSX.

Yep, and that will be their saving grace. OS X will keep people from switching away from Apple because there is really nothing better out there.

Originally Posted by joltguy

We'll be just as good, never better.

What I really should've said in my post was that we will only be just as fast as the other PC vendors, never faster. I guess the reverse is also true though... we'll never be slower.

mitchell_pgh · Jun 9, 2005, 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by joltguy

What I really should've said in my post was that we will only be just as fast as the other PC vendors, never faster. I guess the reverse is also true though... we'll never be slower.

I think that's a good thing. I always feel like we are lagging behind. Sure every generation, we jump in to the front, but it only lasts a few months... I'll be happy being "just as fast" as the PC world.

olePigeon · Jun 9, 2005, 02:28 PM

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

I think that's a good thing. I always feel like we are lagging behind. Sure every generation, we jump in to the front, but it only lasts a few months... I'll be happy being "just as fast" as the PC world.

It's going to boil down to an OS war. I think Mac users will be just as fanatic about their products as they've always been, they'll just refocus their fanatcism.

zerostar · Jun 9, 2005, 02:41 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

It's going to boil down to an OS war. I think Mac users will be just as fanatic about their products as they've always been, they'll just refocus their fanatcism.

And that might just be a good thing, the Mac OS experience is about the system quality, the integration and the OS.

If you went to your G5 right now and pulled the heat sink off, and you saw the Intel logo would your experience with your G5 change one bit? I have yet to see what is so great about the PPC of TODAY...

zerostar · Jun 9, 2005, 02:46 PM

This: http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1123

Is what has me excited about an intel move, a 15" Dual Core 2.16 GHz Powerbook with 667FSB and the possibility of 6-8 hours of real battery. Talk about mobile editing,

As far as the PowerMacs I would like to see dual workstation-level chips in there, possibly Xeon2 type chips at least 3.6GHz ea. :-)

Randman · Jun 9, 2005, 02:53 PM

At a press conference, Intel said the chip's twin cores will increase multitasking performance in notebook-based systems, but also help extend battery life. A feature called Dynamic Power Coordination will allow Yonah's two cores to be power-managed independently, making it possible to shut down one of the cores to aid in power consumption. It will also allow for on-the-fly changes to the chip's voltage and frequency, the company said.

Another major feature of Yonah is Digital Media Boost, a dual-part update delivering improvements the chips SSE instructions for multimedia and Floating Point unit. Together, Intel says the updates will improve everything from digital photo manipulation to video editing, gaming, and music.

Yonah will also sport a new shared memory 2MB level 2 cache, dubbed "Smart Cache," which will keep data in close proximity to the processor cores for faster access. This feature is a prime component of Yonah's enhanced power management because it allows a single core to access the chip's entire memory cache when the other core is switched off.

joltguy · Jun 9, 2005, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by zerostar

If you went to your G5 right now and pulled the heat sink off, and you saw the Intel logo would your experience with your G5 change one bit? I have yet to see what is so great about the PPC of TODAY...

Of course something as silly as that wouldn't change the experience. Jeez, all the fuss about the CPU change isn't about brand, at least not as far as I'm concerned. I've got no beef with Intel specifically. It's what's inside the CPU, how it works. In this regard, the PPC is more elegant than the x86. Elegant is intrinsic to Macintosh. I'm not going through this all over again. If you are still confused as to the virtues of the PowerPC, go to Apple's PowerMac G5 page and read through some of the technical stuff there. Sure, there is great marketing fluff there, but there are technical details to be had (white paper, etc). You can also look at power.org, and I'm sure IBM has some material too.

joltguy · Jun 9, 2005, 02:58 PM

Originally Posted by zerostar

This: http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1123

Is what has me excited about an intel move, a 15" Dual Core 2.16 GHz Powerbook with 667FSB and the possibility of 6-8 hours of real battery. Talk about mobile editing,

Okay, now that is exciting.

zerostar · Jun 9, 2005, 03:12 PM

Originally Posted by joltguy

If you are still confused as to the virtues of the PowerPC, go to Apple's PowerMac G5 page and read through some of the technical stuff there. Sure, there is great marketing fluff there, but there are technical details to be had (white paper, etc). You can also look at power.org, and I'm sure IBM has some material too.

I am not confused, sure some stuff is excellent design for sure.

The purpose of the processor is to process the info, I don't care if someone can take a decroded camel turd and pump my information through it at 6GHz, if it is faster than the last gen. then thats is what Ill use.

Being technologically better is one thing, using that for future advancements is another, the G5 was ONLY the chip Apple needed a the time. The Motorola line would probably have been better suited for future Mini's, PowerBooks and the like, Motorola had other ideas for the architecture and that is the unfortunate part. Luckily the G5 came along and allowed Apple to continue and sell computers and REFINE the OS to where it is now, and NOW is the time to move to what they need, unfortunately only Intel/AMD are available to fill the void, right now Intel was the better choice, perhaps AMD will be a better choice in the future.

el chupacabra · 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by Maccare

....
Even if you believe Apple is not "planing" on allowing other Intel PC run Apple's OS...... How is Apple going to protect itself from hackers or Moders from running Apple OS on a Dell or HP?

It may be possible to hack the system and do that but Apple can make it so its not worth the effort. If macintels are cheap enough, people will just buy a macintel if they want the OS, not dell, especially if it can run windows too which steve said it should.

Apple is a company; it exists to profit not stay loyal to some idealism that so far no one really wants to support (the ppc). The PPC had its chance to take over the world and instead Intel did. While many people think the mac hardware is what sold the reality is the majority of apple's customers don't even know or care what a Gx is. this supposedly superior hardware hasn't made their market share go up. Last I looked it was less than 2%. It used to be 5 Nobody but us (the few) cares. Many people I've talked to said they'd buy an apple if it was running on an Intel cuz that’s 'the-brand'. This move by apple opens all kinds of doors as to what technology will be readily available now. Graphics cards and everything will be ready for mac much faster. What other than the PPC was superior about the mac hardware?

I think Apple wil still continue to be a leader in hardware and innovation...companies before like dell exploited Apple by copying their design and by holding monopolies on the PC market; this will be much more difficult now 'cuase apple has brought competition to Dell's doorstep, if the new mac really can run windows. If you think about it apple can't lose only Dell can. Dell is not going to take anymore market share away from Apple than it already has. Apple has survived for 20-30 something years with higher prices and arguably fewer options. Now that mac will have more options and lower prices and matching clock speeds...well...

Think about it...this is like inserting a hypothetical PC maker along side Apple to help them out, say we call it Hell PC that is just another PC but that has Mac OS preinstalled.... (to convert users). Except Apple is this PC maker. Apple will continue to sell their Hardware and the OS and the hardware will be better than ever...and even its not, they will still win.

The only other argument I can see is if ones opinion was that macs truly had superior hardware that was used as a selling point. I like the PPC but I disagree with the rest of the hardware being superior.

justinkim · Jun 9, 2005, 03:55 PM

Honestly, I can't understand why anyone would feel "less special" over this. Unless you spend a lot of time coding at a level where you're tweaking assembler, no one's user experience should differ much at all.

In fact, as a Powerbook user, I'm looking forward to my user experience getting a whole lot faster. I'm also looking forward to having a Windows emulator that doesn't crawl like a snail.

So far, Steve's hits are outnumbering his misses. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about how smooth the transition will be. I also think that, between the slow speed increases of the G5 and the lack of a portable G5 option, the move to Intel bodes very well for the competitiveness of the Mac in the future.

Maccare · Jun 9, 2005, 04:14 PM

Question: Apple using Intel Chips :How will Apple protect itself from hackers or reverse engineering?

Chuckit · Jun 9, 2005, 04:27 PM

Answer redux: It does not need to, because people capable of hacking on the level that Apple would likely put its security features in are few and far between, and any company that tries to reverse engineer Apple's security may as well just go ahead and hand over all its money to Apple's lawyers and save itself the trouble of appearing in court.

IFLY2HIGH · Jun 9, 2005, 04:51 PM

Apple's had this plan or back-up plan working on for 5 years now, this seems to be a well playing hand or a hand they needed to play to impove the tech and buisness, and if can improve the computer industry, everyone will benifit. Everyone can have their opionions and speculations, but untill the first machine rolls out noone knows what's gona happen. We're talking about a 1-2 year in the making, they have been doing this for 5 years already, and what kind of technology really could await us in the new Macs in 1-2 years, time will only tell. Maybee they have some new processor that no one knows about yet that Intel and Apple have been working on. They kept one hell of a secret about OSX working on MacTel systems for 5 years, what else could they be hiding.

Me personally, I can't wait to see what hits the market next, and when they do I'll be ready to buy.

el chupacabra · Jun 9, 2005, 05:36 PM

Originally Posted by IFLY2HIGH

.... Maybee they have some new processor that no one knows about yet that Intel and Apple have been working on.
They kept one hell of a secret about OSX working on MacTel systems for 5 years, what else could they be hiding.

Me personally, I can't wait to see what hits the market next, and when they do I'll be ready to buy.

Well a link on the macnn page quoted Phil as saying we could just follow the Intel road map and get an idea of whats comming, I don't think there will be anything too secret about the future procs. Also I was sure Steve mentioned a year or 2 ago that they kept an OS X build up to date for the x86 platform "just in case". I was actually suprised to hear him say in the recent keynote that OS X was leading a secret double life (of course it was). I tried to do a forum search for this but the search here never works well.

Maccare · Jun 10, 2005, 05:52 AM

Originally Posted by joltguy

You're so right about that, because most of the Mac users around here (yourself included) think that that the baggage-laden x86 chip is a wonderful replacement for the PowerPC. Ignorance, indeed.

Actually, if anything's ignorant about this thread its the derogatory references to children in special education. Grow up.

I agree with joltguy......... I think a person who make fun of children or an adults because they a in Special Education is a sick person....... I guess it makes them feel powerful.......

Randman and Zimphire get professional help........

Zimphire · Jun 10, 2005, 06:46 AM

Maccare actually my pic was making fun of Mac users...

but ok.

If you could point out who I was actually making fun of I would appreciate it.

Scooterboy · Jun 10, 2005, 10:53 PM

Apple will be the leader of box design. The insides are going to be designed by Intel, pretty much like most other PC's.

Macs won't be cheaper as Intel CPU's (except Celerons) are more expensive than PPC CPU's, unless Apple is getting a huge price break from Intel.

Many, many, many PC users will complain that OX isn't made widely available for every PC now that the Mac hardware is the same as PC hardware. DRM hardware or software to lock down OS X86 will be viewed as unfair and more importantly as creating a precedent leading to all PC's being locked into specific OS's, reducing operating system choice and stagnating the industry. If all the boxes are the same, OS choice shouldn't mean the user must buy a different box (though the boxes are the same internally) to run a different OS. This could, if you use some imagination, lead to regulation, if not by US authorities, by EU or Asian regulatory bodies.