http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67767,00.html


"SAN FRANCISCO -- The news that Apple Computer is switching to Intel has not been met with wailing and gnashing of teeth, as many had predicted, nor did any Mac fans throw themselves in front of a trolley car.
...
Mike Matas, president of Delicious Library, said he was utterly unconcerned by the switch to Intel chips.

"If it's fast and it fits in my laptop, that's good for me," he said.

Matas said he was also intrigued by the idea of running Windows on a Mac laptop, though there's been no indication from Apple that would be possible. Nor was there any hint that current Intel-based computers would run forthcoming versions of OS X.
...
During his speech, Jobs told the crowd of several thousand programmers that translating software from one platform to another would be quick and simple for those employing Apple's XCode, a programming environment.

To demonstrate, Jobs said he contacted Wolfram Research last Wednesday evening. Wolfram -- the publisher of a gigantic and fiendishly complex math environment called Mathematica -- flew out a single engineer the following day with code for a future version of the software. "This is not a little toy app -- it's a beast," said Wolfram co-founder Theo Gray, who joined Jobs onstage. "But not to worry -- (he) put a little tick in this checkbox (in Apple's XCode programming tool) ... and two hours later, he had a copy of Mathematica running. Two hours."
...
To ease the transition for users, many of whom have invested heavily in Mac software, Jobs showed off a new system called Rosetta, which will allow software written for PowerPC processors to run unchanged on future Intel-based Macs.

Jobs said Rosetta -- which may or may not be based on Transitive's QuickTransit emulator -- was "awesome technology" that will be "totally transparent" to users as it works. Launch any Mac software written for the PowerPC, and Rosetta translates it on the fly.

You're right. They should have designed a completely new board, contracted out the fabbing, tested and debugged to create a chipset supporting a processor that they'll never use in a production system. After all, they'll probably send out a couple thousand of these dev machines. How sad.

Yes, that would have been a better thing to do.

I used NeXTStep on a 150 MHZ Pentium some/exactly 10 years ago now. Was faster than the 68000 NeXT machines. I do remember that there was a fairly-narrow list of approved equipment that would work with the OS. Do you think Apple would use some proprietary component for a vital function, such as display card, to prevent the OS being used on generic Intel boxes?

From what I understand it will be a combination of a special BIOS and the DRM protection built into the Pentium chips. This would also mean that you can't buy a 2GHz Pentium mac and then add any generic (read: cheaper) 3GHz chip, the OS woul require "Apple certified Intel chips"...

Apple and Intel to Merge
 

Interesting questions from Cringely...

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

There's really no telling. The production machines won't even be shipping for a year.

Currently, pretty much anything but the processor can be upgraded with non-Apple-Certified add-ons. (e.g. RAM, video card, PCI cards, hard drives, etc)

There are even companies who sell processor upgrades for macs, but they run in addition to the existing one, I believe -- not completely replacing it. macmods.com lists projects for overclocking and water cooling Mac processors, so already some tweaking can be done. But, as far as I know, the one limiting factor has been outright replacement.

This is a new deal though. We'll just have to see what comes down the way.

That column is silly. He asks five questions that he can't answer. There's easy answers to all of them.

Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
A) Jobs is angry they missed the 3 ghz chip he promised.
B) IBM has demonstrated no ability to produce reasonable laptop chips. The current powerbook's performance vs. the pentium M is embarassing. Nearly half of Apple's mac sales are laptops, and that percentage is growing.


Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Umm, nothing. The chips Apple will use will certainly support x86-64.

Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
Supply constrained. Apple doesn't want to choose a cpu supplier who can't produce enough chips. Also, Intels laptop offerings are much more impressive than AMD's. The Pentium 4 Netburst arch sucks, but I don't think we'll see it in any Mac other than the dev machines. PowerMacs will get Intel when the Pentium M - derived desktop chips are ready.

Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
So that developers can start porting? Many (most?) devs will not have too difficult a time, but there's still plenty of coding and testing to be done. I don't agree that Mac sales will crater now. My daughter wants an iBook for graduation. She doesn't care that it'll have a fast pentium M in a year - she wants a laptop now. I suspect many purchasers feel this way. Why should we care who made the silicon that's processing the bits?

Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
No. It may be somewhat about DRM (think ITMS with movies), but it's mostly about not reliving the G4/Motorola debacle.

Am I the only one that read where Jobs was touting the move to Intel primarily because their chips are "more efficient per watt"?

If that's the case then why aren't they partnering with AMD whose chips are far more efficient per watt than are Intel's and less expensive to boot.

Sorry, but my daily PC use [formZ, Maya, 3DS, LightWave, etc.] is just about as demanding as it gets outside of large-scale cinematic animation and large number theory and I chose AMD [and have for quite a while now] because it was simply the fastest option out there.

Me-thinks that these two companies in this venture are seeking to prop-up if you will each other's weaknesses. Fine, but what's with all this "efficiency-per-watt" talk to a bunch of computer nerds who know that Intel runs a distant second in this area?

I would have to disagree with this.

AMD had no trouble simultaneously supplying Gateway, Tiny, Quantex, Cybermax, Micron, MidwestMicro, and, for a time, IBM.

This represent[ed] total annual production some 7 or 8 times that of Apple's current annual production.

I would also disagree with the notebook comment. I think that AMDs current notebook offerings are every bit a good as Intel's [M series] not to mention that they run cooler and provide measurably better battery life as well.

I may be alone in this, so-to-speak, but as long as Centrino includes de-balled graphics it will always be a performance joke.

FWIW, OS X for x86 leaked onto the web tonight, no idea if it is legit or not, but some screenshots have appeared and there is a chance that it is. Of course, this is illegal so I certainly do not advise anyone trying to find it.

Heard an interesting tale from a well-placed source at Freescale (the spin-off from Motorolla that makes the Apple chips). Apparently, Freescale had decided to stop developing the Apple chips prior to this announcement!

Motorola hasn't made Apple CPU's for years, the G5's are IBM chips.

AMD is having issues making large batches of their higher-end 64-bit chips. Now, with a twelve month lead time, AMD should have the fab capacity in place to meet Apple's needs.

Also, AMD's chips use many of IBM's process technologies (like SOI). And with IBM hitting the wall with the G5, their is fear that AMD will hit the same wall with their chips as they try and push clock-speeds higher. Also, AMD has not had to worry too much about power consumption since they have been able to run their CPUs at a lower clock then Intel for similar performance. SOI starts to collapse big-time as you push into the 3+GHz range and it is not just cooling (even with water, IBM can't get 3GHz out of a G5 and many AMD overclockers are failing to get any more out of their chips even with exotic liquid nitrogen cooling systems).

So Intel is the safer bet, both in terms of sourcing chips and in those chips being able to maintain decent power consumption and heat dissipation issues thanks to Intel's hard work on lowering both in their Pentium M design, facets of which are now moving to their desktop/sever lines, as well.

Freescale builds the G4 chips used in the Powerbook, iBook, and Mac Mini.