Fat (they call them "universal") binaries, and a decent library/kernel interface for the few things that need to be emulated, mean that most users won't notice the difference as far as use goes. OPENSTEP ran on four different platforms (and two other operating systems as well), and we didn't worry about it unless some jackass didn't compile his stuff fat.

What would be a bigger deal, and I'm not clear on, is if they plan to support non-Apple Intel-based machines. That would be a completely different ballgame.

We'll see.

 

itunes market share is over 80%... selling over a half billion songs per year

 

I wonder how Motorola and IBM feel...

 

I'm not sure if IBM cares beyond just the PR effect.

IBM is focused on the gaming market with their processors right now. That's probably half reason for this move anyway... Apple needs constant attention.

 

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/20.../index.x?pg=14

note that this is total system power consumption, but they have the same video card and other parts. I'm looking for an article concentrating on the cpu's alone

 

I would assume Motorola doesnt feel much at this point. They knew they were being phased out as soon as apple went with ibm for the towers....they would be gone by now if apple had been able to get the ibm chips into the laptops.

course......this whole intel thing probably wouldnt be happening right now if ibm chips had been able to do a lot of things they obviously arent...

 

I bet Freescale is probably shitting their pants...

 

Is keynote going to be webcasted?
If so, where can I get it?

 

Wonder if apple will stick with the "G" monickers or go with a whole new naming system.

 

you should be able to find it on quicktime later today or tomorrow.

 

id watch for the keynote on quicktime.com later today. they'll be sure to have it as the first thing all the windows users see when they upgrade to QT7 tonight.

 

I don't know on a per watt basis. Which means a lot for notebooks.

But CPU vs. CPU AMD wins hands down right now. No comparison even.

 

im curious about the timing of this. why did they make the announcement now?

if i had a nickel for everytime i heard someone say "i was going to buy a mac soon but now im waiting until next year" today, i'd be rich.

certainly you wont find many "switchers" for the next 12-14 months.

this could have a big impact considering how many people are already in the perpetual "waiting for the next apple" state with the powerbook G5 rumours that have been circling forever

 

will they ever disable the window that pops up everytime i load QT asking if I wanna buy it?

 

i know this ibm intel move is pretty big, but I would have hoped to hear some more new releases from apple....i still wonder if something is going to change with .mac....

 

man that is annoying, that is the main reason i pirate qt pro.

 

I do believe OS stability will be sacrificed here.

Because now OSX has to support a MUCH larger set of chipsets/ram/video cards/hardware. And all of their flaws along with it...

It's easier to get stability when you only have a small subset of hardware to support.

 

like what?

 

right i dont think anyone would dispute that. i think the "per watt" was key statement, although diegos post seems to disprove that.

 

dont we all just walk into a mac store and get the reg code off one of the machines on display....been doing it for years

 

purely specualtion, but there have been talked about more disk space and other small changes.

I just expected a little more than the x86 news.

 

more space at same cost would be nice..im starting to fill mine up...and i dont want to take anything down....so might have to purchase more space

I was hoping for some new products my self such as the rumored HD iSite camera.


Sidenote OT: anyone noticing Tiger acting buggy? mine has been having little things here and there.....I may attempt another clean instal in a few days when I get back from big bear to test it out. its odd things like my programs sounds just stop working after awhile everything i reboot. Or anytime i want to expand a compressed file its opens the disk utility program and not stuffit expander (which i have the full version laoded) The expansion thing may just be how it is with tiger now, and i didnt know it.

but the audio thing is weird....sound works....just not with the programs (like the ichat noises, or new mail sound)

 

having trouble finding an article that isolates a p4's power consumption, although its typically quoted as being in excess as 100w even by intel themselves

here is AMD's latest stepping, 8w idle power consumption, 30w under load. mind you this is a DESKTOP chip running at 2.4ghz with power consumption virtually as good as a pentium-m
http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/amd_venice/7.shtml

and here's another article comparing total system power consumption between intel and AMD, and this is using a slightly older and more power hungry version of the athlon64
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2389

 

The Pentium M chips are amazing in terms of power usage and CPU speed. Or so i've been told, i don't own a machine with a Pentium M chip in it.

Does it? Just because Apple is going Intel, doesn't mean they're going to offer support for every piece of PC hardware now. I'm sure OS X will only run on Apple-specific motherboards (unless they've said otherwise).

 

its running great on my dual G5, but my 12" powerbook (867) is a little weird, and that was from a clean install, the G5 was an upgrade. The keyboard and mouse are nonresponive for like 45 sec after it wakes from sleep and I think Mail kinda sucks. I dont know if the OS is a little too much of a pig for the 867 or what. I need to get some more ram.

 

I gotta believe Apple will limit the hardware they support... Otherwise it opens up running OS X on a Dell, etc...

 

I don't code so forgive my ignorance in this question. Won't the key to developer success be how easy it will be to code for Windoze vs. OSX as opposed to x86 vs. PPC?

From the end user perspective, how many times have you heard the same old mantra "OSX is clearly the better OS. I'd switch if I didn't have to buy my all my software over again." IMO, Apple will have a real shot at capturing some more market share if, when the transition is complete, an end user can pick up one box off the shelf that will install on either Windoze or OSX. Is there anything in today's announcements that point to this sort of possibility down the road? From what little development knowledge I do have, it doesn't really seem like it.

 

That won't happen with this change. However, this does leave the door (kinda) open for projects like WINE to let you run Windows software off the shelf on your Mac without slow emulation.

 

yes, they said it would run on both AMD and intel. Which means support for both intel and via chipsets. Not to mention IDE controllers/SCSI... i could go on all day here...

reality is the more you add in, the more chance for bugs/errors.

The powerPC stuff was all the same HW. Easy to make drivers for a *SMALL* subset of HW devices.

 

So I might be able to one day install OS X on my 939 Athlon 64 Shuttle?!

 

I'm sure 1st release will be for a small subset of HW. And will grow with time...

 

At the very least we'll probably see hacked darwin kernels that'll let you put OS X on anything. Everything above that is platform independent anyways...

I just made a mess in my pants.

 

and it should really allow you to run an os x emulation (virtual pc, etc.) on your windows box

 

It won't even be emulation - it'll just be a virtual machine, which is MUCH faster.

Check out the WINE project if you want more info on that kinda stuff.

 

Don't know if this was posted already...

but did Hollywood make them do it?

www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html

 

Very interesting....I wonder how accurate he will end up becoming?

 

There already is a PowerPC/Mac emulator for windows and linux.
http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

edited: updated link, doh

 

huh?

OSX has supported X86 all along they claim. they confirmed the existence of the Marklar project which we mentioned from 2002.

in production, assuming Apple still controls the hardware, they won't have to worry about supporting additional video cards / etc.

all that will change is the motherboard/cpu (which is significant) but apparently they can handle that as they seem to have been doing so all along.

i guess only time will tell, i highly doubt stability will be an issue though.

the only question mark i see is how well the PPC emulation will be for legacy apps. it looks good at the keynote but i cant imagine a PPC emulator being "as good as if the app were natively compiled".

but again, well see. they ship the dev kits in two weeks and then they have a year to let developers tweak and tinker alongside another osx revision that they can improve in any which way they like...

thats alot of time to get it right. especially in mac land where changes tend to come quick..

 

I wonder how apples sales for computers will be affected for the next 2 years as they make this changeover.

guess they are expected to take a hit for a hope in larger gains.

I wonder if this risk would even possible without the success of the ipod and itunes.

 

no no... they said it COULD run on AMD. didn't say it would. sorry if i caused confusion.

it's most likely things will remain just as they are now except instead of buying your Mini with a PowerPC from Apple.com you'll buy your Mini with a Centrino from Apple.com.

i'm sure there will be some sort of DRM to prevent OSX from running on anything other than an Apple approved, Intel made, X86.