I worked as an intern for IBM... a month into it I finally figured out they use little endian and not big endian.

 

Sure...

Let's see Adobe turn CS into Mac OS X on X86 architecture in under... say 6 months. It won't happen.

That code is so heavily optimized for the G4/G5 it'll take months for them to get it anywhere close to where it was on the PPC platform. Not to mention running akin to the Windows x86 code.

 

heh

tell me about it....

 

Its sad that Apple want to go x86. I can understand why they want to have Intel as their supplier, but why x86? This seems like a good opportunity to design a new (true RISC) ISA.

 

Its my brothers opinion that Intel will simply be the manufacturer of a PowerPC processor and it wont be x86.

 

Can they do that legally? Who owns the rights to the design?

 

IBM and Motorola from my understanding.

 

So Apple would have to buy the rights or Intel would have to pay a royalty. I don't see that happening.

 

No, I think you missed mine.

x86 is x86. Im just not a big Intel fan. AMD has done some good things recently. So if they port OSX to x86 I'd be excited to run it on a AMD dual core 64 bit processor.

From your response i was under the impression you think switching from powerPC to x86 is bad. This thread should s/intel/x86/g. Title is misleading... intel isn't the only player.

I don't see what the big deal would be. A dual core 64 bit AMD PCI-X bus running OSX at 1/2 the cost, but with a gain in speed. Where do I sign?


But I don't see it happening, same rumors were said last year and the year before.

Scrib has a point, it'd be a pain in the ass to recompile everything. But certainly doable.

my :wtf: was being sarcastic... you seem to have a thing out for me today. Were you out drinking last night? lol, your always moody after you do that.

Anyhoo maybe I misunderstood your reponse. Maybe you wouldn't mind a x86 OSX. If so then I appologize for my sarcastic WTF, but i don't think thats the case.

 

that'd be whacked...

 

Here is an interesting take from someone at slashdot:

You are close but your anger is clouding your vision. I will fix up your list.

- IBM and Apple sign a multi chip agreement with very specific clock speed, power usage, production quantities and target dates built into the contract. the first chip is the PPC970.

- Jobs and IBM publicly trumpets that the chip will hit 3GHz in a year's time which is actually well below the contractual promises IBM made.

- Jobs and IBM get humiliated by the fact they didn't even come close and still aren't there after 2 years.

- Jobs throws constant fits and points out that IBM has missed every metric they contractually promised to meet. Jobs also points out that the way the contract is structured that Apple now has a right to a significant chunk of IBM IP and the right to shop for a manufacturer who is able to produce any and all of the chips under the original agreement.

While this is unfolding, IBM has been making the same pie in the sky promises to Sony and MS. As with Apple, IBM begins significantly scaling back the promises made to Sony and MS.

- Jobs get jealous of the attention paid to said console manufacturers

- Jobs exercises the options available and IBM gets taken to the cleaners.

I will restate. The contract Apple has with IBM has a "Moto" contingency. There are extremely tough provisions in the contract that Apple insisted upon to prevent another Motorola scenario from happening. IBM had no problem with the provisions because they were positive the could beet the goals by two in half the time. IBM fucked up badly.

Apple now owns a large amount of PPC IP and Intel will now be manufacturing and designing PPC chips.


One last comment on the Altivec "debacle." Considering that 99% of the chips IBM will manufacture over the next five years will have Altivec or a close derivative, the debacle is IBM's blindness to the importance of vector processing for so long.

 

An interesting email from my buddy...

You see the latest bit on macrumors, cnet, wsj, etc? I was in total shock when I first read it. But it's seeming more and more like its true. I can't fucking believe it.

I bought the XL fortran compiler from IBM for my laptop, and a lot of traffic has been on the mailing list about tiger support, because tiger isn't supported. Of course most people, myself included, felt that it would come sooner or later, but then someone came on saying that XL fortran was going to be discontinued on mac. After pestering, one of the support guys came on and said that he wanted to but couldn't give any more information because of NDA. The way he said it kind of lent credence to the idea that ibm was dropping xlf and xlc, but holy fuck, what if it's because Apple is switching. Dayamn.

Monday is going to be an interesting day to say the least.

 

slashdot post is interesting and makes lots of sense. would be nuts though... staying tuned...

 

Oh great ... another thing to smack my IBM stock ... as an IBM'er ... I am watching this closely

By the way ... Power5 rocks on the server platform ... so this hit is a consumer and customer visible one, but IBM's server share is firmly held via the Power4/power5 platform

But again ... IBM ...

 

Meanwhile, in other news....

Apple Shares Dip on iPod Sales Reports
Saturday June 4, 10:34 pm ET
Apple Shares Dip Nearly 5 Percent on Reports That iPod Sales Appear to Be Slowing

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Shares of Apple Computer Inc. slid nearly 5 percent following reports that sales of its iPod digital music player appear to be slowing.

Investment firm Goldman Sachs said in a report Thursday that it expects shipments of Apple's digital music player to be flat this quarter. Internet news site AppleInsider also reported Thursday that Apple has a glut of most iPod models, especially the recently launched iPod Shuffle.

In afternoon trading Friday, Apple shares fell $1.80, or 4.5 percent, to close at $38.24 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have traded between $14.15 and $45.44 over the past year.

AppleInsider quoted unidentified sources who said that shipments of most iPod models are "flat or declining" for the first time since the device was launched in 2001.The report also said Apple was overstocked in some models of personal computers and other products.

"We don't comment on rumors and speculation," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling responded.

The iPod has seen increased competition from rival digital music players in recent months as well as the emergence of handhelds devices that perform multiple tasks, such as store photos, receive e-mail and play digital music files.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., has historically shipped more iPods to retailers than expected but Goldman Sachs analysts predicted that Apple would likely only meet expectations this quarter.

Also Friday, the company announced an iPod recycling program in which customers can bring the portable music players they no longer want to Apple's U.S. retail stores for environmentally-friendly disposal. Those who drop off an iPod will receive a 10 percent discount on a new one.

 

the suspense is killing me

 

http://daringfireball.net/2005/06/in..._odds_and_ends

 

http://www.macintouch.com/

Monday, June 6, 2005 10:10 EDT

It promises to be an interesting day today in the Macintosh world, as Steve Jobs addresses a smaller group of developers at WWDC 2005 than he saw last year, along with a select group of press representatives hand-selected by Apple. As we await his pronouncements, these are the critical questions we're framing (and we welcome relevant information):

* Will Apple continue to sell Macintosh computers?

* If so, what architecture will those computers use - PowerPC, x86, a future version of either, a hybrid of both, or something else entirely?

* Why, exactly, is Apple making this change?

* What effect will this change have on the current Macintosh community and platform?

* How will this affect Apple's financials - revenue, profit, expense, cash, etc.?

* What changes take place in Apple's corporate structure and/or partnerships?

* How will this affect non-Apple participants in the Mac market - customers, developers, resellers, educators, music publishers, etc.?

Here are a few things we've discussed here:

* Apple's PowerPC contracts with IBM and Motorola aren't public, and it's not clear what Apple could do with whatever PowerPC intellectual property it owns as an original partner in the IBM/Motorola/Apple PowerPC alliance (now defunct). Even if Apple has the rights to have Intel manufacture PowerPC CPUs, it seems entirely impractical from an economic viewpoint, given the mammoth costs of chip fabrication and the minimal market Apple enjoys.

* Apple has led personal computer manufacturers in a market swing from desktop to portable systems, with the overall ratio now more than half laptops. In this situation, a problem getting high-performance, low-power processors from IBM - such as a special new version of the "G5" - could be critical. Intel, meanwhile, has made great progress on low-power processor technology, an effort that will continue to be funded by its near monopoly on the personal computer market. IBM and Freescale (the Motorola spin-off) have no equivalent source of sales to fund such massive investments in chips, assuming that Apple can't use the same Cell technology IBM is producing in great quantity for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo game consoles.

* As noted here earlier, Steve Jobs has already made this transition in the past. He successfully moved NeXTstep, the foundation of Mac OS X, from Motorola to Intel (and other) hardware, giving up on his own NeXT computer systems, which were a financial failure. The technical transition doesn't seem to have been terribly traumatic. It has been widely reported that Apple has maintained x86 versions of Mac OS X, and Mac OS X's open-source "Darwin" core has long been available in x86 code.

* A wild card today is the magical, and so far untapped, potential of Transitive Corp.'s QuickTransit technology, which is supposed to provide transparent processor emulation with minimal performance penalty - a lot like Mac OS "Classic" running under Mac OS X....

* While the x86 and PowerPC architectures are very different, the differences mostly impact low-level programming - programs that control hardware and programs that are timing- or performance-sensitive. This encompasses all critical operating system functions, including networking, printing, data storage, user interaction, etc. "High-level" or "application" programs that go through standard operating system "APIs" (programming interfaces) should have an easier porting path. We can see examples of this issue in the simple transition from "Panther" to "Tiger", which involves minimal hardware changes but a lot of low-level programming.

* Today's Mac is far, far closer to a PC than past Macs, based on the same standards for memory, networking, data storage and peripherals (USB, PC Card, DVI) and using a lot of Unix code that also exists on x86 (e.g. Gimp printing, Apache, BSD libraries).

* There's a big media angle to the story, which may or may not play out today. With Apple now in the music business (despite the direct conflict and lawsuit with the Beatles), and Steve Jobs in the movie business (with Pixar), going to x86 architecture may be a critical factor for participating in content-control systems that dominate the future.

 

Adding a bit of fuel to the fire (pardon the pun), here is a screen grab from Apple's homepage in 1998:

 

i'm with scrib on this one, i don't think x86 is realistic. I would assume that Intel will just manufacture the PPC and incorporate low power tech. All other options are just dumb. If apple does have the IP for 64b arch then why switch to x86 based?

i'm speaking from somebody who follows but definitely not as in as some of the mods around here so :P if you think my opinion sux

 

i agree with you zap, it's becoming rather apparent that a move to x86 is unlikely. it seems Intel will be making PowerPC's... not so significant news for Apple... crazy news for Intel. whoa.

we could b wrong.

we'll see in 2 hours.

 

Intel's CEO arrived to WWDC Saturday night...

 

Apple scraps IBM, sidesteps Intel, switches to Sun chips!

 

 

 

Some funny stabs at M$ at WWDC...

 

holy shit

 

that's why i love.....love....apple

 

any G5 picture references at WWDC???

 

no.

but here's some G5 pr0n for you...

 

 

:ibsomeonephotochopspentiuminsteadofG5:

 

Latest rumour...

Powerbook G5 with Inkwell enabled screen today.

 

http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...0523apple.html

<snip>

Still, the technical reasons that might keep Apple from jumping from IBM to Intel chips are fewer than they have been in the past, but they're a reality.

"It used to be a much bigger deal to switch chip architectures than it is now," says Dean McCarron, analyst with Mercury Research of Cave Creek, Ariz. "It's not trivial, but it's not as if the software developers don't have the option to do it."

What might complicate that process, however, is the way the IBM chip handles complex computing for features like 3D graphics. The PowerPC chip has a feature that Apple calls the Velocity Engine. Intel's closest equivalent is a feature it calls SSE3. Adapting software developed for the Apple environment optimized for the Velocity Engine to work with Intel chips and the SSE3 extensions isn't going to be easy, Krewell says.

"Those features don't match up on a one-to-one basis," he says. "You can't bring them over without suffering a performance hit." Krewell says Intel would have to create a whole new set of extensions on its chips just for software designed to run on Apple systems.

</snip>

 

what chu' talkin' about Willis???

 

This guy says he will post pictures of himself naked atop his car in broad daylight if Apple switches to X86 chips.

 

it would mean a screen you could DRAW on using Inkwell technology.

similar to previous Sony's or Wacom's Cintiq

 

 

yih, i know what inkwell is... I was asking where in the hell you got this mountain of a rumor from...

Or did it come out with the morning constitution???

 

Wall Street weighs in on Apple-Intel rumors

By Kasper Jade
Published: 11:00 AM EST

With just a matter of hours remaining before Apple chief executive Steve Jobs takes center stage at Apple's annual developers conference, several Wall Street analysts have issued research notes commenting on rumors that the company may use the conference to announce a phased-transition to Intel-based Macs.

According to PiperJaffray, an investment and research firm which closely follows the Mac maker, there are several positives and negatives to a switch to Intel, but ultimately the long-termpositives will outweigh the negatives.

"There are clearly risks to transitioning to a different processor after more than a decade on the IBM platform," said Gene Munster, a senior analyst at the firm. "The most visible risk is that there could be some push back in the developer community, as the move would require programmers to rewrite some applications."

On the other hand, Munster listed three key reasons why Apple would benefit from a switch to Intel. First and foremost, the analyst believes Intel will afford Apple a more consistent supply of microprocessors. He notes: "Apple has encountered many instances in which the supply of IBM PowerPC processors has been inconsistent and resulted in inventory constraint issues for Macs."

Munster also said the move would help Apple become more competitive with its pricing in the PC market and possibly lead to a larger developer community. "Over time, we believe an Intel-based Mac would lead to a larger developer community, potentially providing for greater breadth of applications for the Mac."

However, not all analysts view Apple's potential move to Intel equally. Shaw Wu, an analyst for American Technology Research, maintains his belief that there is no material cost advantage in using Intel x86 chips over IBM's PowerPC. "We believe IBM has sacrificed profitability to drive price points attractive to customers that use PowerPC," the analyst reiterated in a research note released to clients today.

Additionally, Wu says Apple could risk alienating some of its loyal customer base and may cause a freeze in Mac purchasing while users evaluate the potential platform change. He noted: back in 1984 to 1986, Apple lost a lot of customers when it moved from the Apple II to the Mac. The same was true in 1994 when it moved from the Motorola 68000 family of processors to PowerPC.

For these reason, Wu believes a more likely scenario is for Apple to support both the PowerPC and x86 architectures. Either separately or in conjunction with an Intel-related announce, the analyst said Apple could potentially announce development and support of new dual-core G5 and G4 processors from IBM and Freescale, respectively.

Apple may also soon up the the standard memory in its new Mac mini desktop from 256 MB to 512MB, the analyst said. "We have heard many users complain about the low amount of included memory in the Mac mini and the difficulty in installing additional DRAM."

Neither PiperJaffray nor AmTech Research are jumping to change their fundamental view on Apple just yet. Both firms maintain their respective ratings on Apple of "outperform" and "hold." PiperJaffray has set Apple's price target at $51 a share while AmTech, concerned with high investor expectations, targets the stock at $40 a share.