Apple to Move to Intel Chips
 

Subject line says it all:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4611505.stm

Personally, I'll be dissapointed if this is true as it will bring us all one step closer to having no real choice when it comes to buying a PC.

Regards
I

It's still a rumour - check out the WWDC webcast tomorrow or Apple.com later the same night.

Just imagine an "Intel Inside" sticker on a PowerMac case! :eek: :eek: :eek:

Intel develops plenty of technology other than CPU's. For Apple to switch to an Intel CPU processor would not only be a significant amount of work on Apple's part (remember the switch from 680xx to PowerPC), but would not be a trivial matter for software developers who would have to make major changes to their applications as well. While I wouldn't rule out the use of Intel technology inside a Mac, I'm skeptical of a switch in CPU.

I guess we will have further insight to these developments tomorrow during Job's keynote at the WWDC, otherwise it's a media frenzy on an otherwise slow news day.

From http://www.macintouch.com
 

What hasn't been elaborated on in this dramatic shift is that Mac OS X has already made a transition to the x86 platform, in the previous incarnation known as NeXTstep. Over a decade ago, while Apple was fumbling around with Copland (the 'Longhorn' of the 90's), NeXT successfully ported their OS from Motorola chips to run on Sparc, HP-PA, and Pentium processors. For the most part developers only needed to recompile their code using NeXT's development tools to run on any or all platforms. Towards the end of NeXTstep's existence, most of the installations were already running on Intel machines.
Fast forward to Apple's purchase of NeXT after running into a dead-end with their own OS efforts. Not only did they get the robust foundation of what we now brag about in the form of Tiger, but the code had already gone through the arduous process of becoming multi-platform, even though that was not one of the original goals of future Macintosh OS development. It was mostly a hidden feature, just waiting for the right time to 'flip the switch' to turn it on.
I don't wish to oversimplify the task ahead of shifting the Mac over to a new processor, but the hard work has already been done. Certainly there will be potholes along the way as developers rewrite their code or in some cases abandon the platform altogether. But for any software firm that is committed to ongoing development of their applications anyway, adding support for x86 processors shouldn't be an extraordinary effort

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

They've been running on x86 processors for years. They just haven't been offering the commercial product.

This shift will not be anything like the shift to PowerPC - it's apples and oranges. I have developed software for OS X Server and gotten it to run on Darwin, and it is near trivial.

The fun part will be when "the hackers" get the OS hacked so it will run on your garden-variety Dell box.

Just because of it saying "Intel" doesnt mean x86...

I think this would be a moronic move by apple. I've been a customer a long time. But, if they force me to repurchase all my software I will leave them for Linux or maybe even Windows.

I can't believe that Jobs would even consider blowing away his installed base.

http://media.99mac.se/nyhetsbilder/se/imacintel2.jpg

Its true - APPLE IS MOVING TO INTEL. June 2006! Im in shock (macuser since 1988)

It absolutely does. The volume that Apple buys simply can't support the R&D bill required for modern processor development and even with IBM's games console sales of the PPC processor the selection of PPC processors available doesn't look good compared to Intel's range. If they had done this back when they started integrating the Next OS into the Mac product they would probably have more market share today!

It's official. I just watched the keynote.

All your software will work seamlessly on an Intel version of OS X when the boxes come out. No need to repurchase. It will not take full advantage of the performance possible from the processor, but, seeing as how the Intel chips will run faster than a PPC would anyway, it will be a wash.

Steve said that developers will be able to port their PowerPC software fairly painlessly and can produce hybrid binaries (able to run on either PPC or Intel) using XCode easily.

One of the demos during the keynote was Mathematica running on an Intel Mac. The representative from Wolfram Research, which produces Mathematica, said that they ported the OS X version this weekend to Intel in two hours.

I'm sure there will be some snags, and not all will go as smoothly as presented today, but considering that a production-ready, Intel version of OS X has been developed in parallel with the PPC version for each and every release of OS X (5 in the past 5 years), it's not coming out of the blue. It's been in the back pocket now since the beginning, as Steve said, "just in case."

There will probably be a webcast of the keynote available later today. I'll post a link as soon as I see it.

My Powerbook G4 and Power Macintosh G5 will be worth as much as a AMIGA or a Beta videoplayer next fall :D

Frankly I think it is a great move. As noted, OS X is pretty much hardware agnostic and the few apps that work in PowerPC Assembler should be able to be ported over.

This will allow Apple to offer more powerful desktops and laptops, and since most current-generation Macs already use the same I/O interfaces as Windows/Unix/Linux PCs do, the move should be far more seamless then the 680x0 to PowerPC switch was - and Apple handled that quite well from the software side.

What type of Intel chip wasn't really talked about in the keynote, but I would assume they'll be using whatever Intel is already developing/producing. They didn't mention any plans to begin producing PPC processors, and, in fact, Steve said that the PPC roadmap simply won't meet Apple's needs down the line, particularly with respect to the expected power-to-performance ratio.

Considering they already had a box running at the keynote I doubt there is any new processor in the works. I notice also that members of the Mac dev community can pick up a new intel box for a grand, presumably fairly soon.

What, o what, will the poor fanboys and sycophants do now? The PowerPC is way faster than Intel! Just look at the <insert random oddly-weighted benchmark here>! Gaussian blur is 4% faster!"

LOL

PPC doesn't even meet their needs today and I'm sure developments like the Pentium M must have increased the level of frustration at Apple HQ. Apple users can expect some more power efficient laptops in future! IBM seems to have done a better job of producing an attractive price/performance product for games consoles than they have for Apple's range.

I'll be interested to see what they do. Maybe I'll buy a Mac again at some point! I abandoned them years ago in favor of ugly boxes that had orders of magnitude more software available. :D

I can't wait to have a Mac that will dual boot in OS X and Longhorn...Virtual PC is okay but this may be a much better solution. :D I know Apple won't officially support such a set-up, but I'm sure someone will.

The legal repercussions of Intel creating PowerPCs were probably too great (there is a lot of intellectual property that IBM would not want Intel to have direct access to).

Also, the PowerPC - like the Pentium 4 - "broke" at the 90nm process, which is why both require exotic cooling solutions for higher speeds.

Apple will use the same Pentium D (dual-core) and Pentium M (mobile) chips that the rest of the world will go.

The only other choice would be Itanium2, and that is even more laughable for a PowerBook then a water-cooled G5 is. ;)

which is a pretty small number

And who bought into the case and the software - not the hardware inside. :)

installed base is 16%

Market share is now 3%

Apple is 5th overall in marketshare in most studies.

Reasons for discrepancy between installed base and market share:
- Mac users usually keep their machines longer
- Macs are functional longer and hold their value longer, and many buy used instead of new
- PC market share is skewed, as PCs are much more often than Macs used in industry functions, such as cash registers, kiosks, etc, which may not be factored into installed base figures but may be factored into market share


Also worth noting: CPU sales at Apple have grown by 45% over the past 2 quarters. Growth is expected to continue as iPod halo effect takes hold and malware continues to effect PCs while the impact on Macs has been nil.

There has yet to be a report of a virus infiltrating OS X in in the 5 years since its release. A number of vulnerabilities have been found, but not even one virus has been produced that has infected any systems. Spyware is virtually nonexistent. Sure, installed base is smaller, so OS X is a smaller target, but it's a heck of a lot bigger than the Linux installed base, and there are hundreds of viruses out there for Linux.

As more people become aware of the fact that the Mac offers the most secure platform, and as more people become fed up with malware on other platforms, I expect this to be the second halo for Apple.

When questioned what laptop they will be buying next, 75% of college students said it would be a Mac.

This is why the stock price has nearly quintupled in the last year and a half.

I wouldn't underestimate the numbers.

Since there are so few major manufacturers nowadays that figure is meaningless, after Dell, HP, IBM and Gateway it isn't hard to be 5th. Consolidation has helped Apple here.

Meaningless too, a sale is a sale is a sale... Apple would be thrilled to get into these markets, I'm sure HP and IBM don't care that a large percentage of their machines are sold as embedded units. Of course this is just another excuse for Apple to claim that it isn't as bad as it seems. Embedded machines probably last even longer than the usual Mac does, POS and other devices usually stay in the same place for over 9-12 years.

Typical Apple marketing talk, I am in this industry, and have yet to hear of a single person that bought a Mac because of PC spyware. As for "100's of viruses" for Linux, I ask you to provide a source. The core of Linux is just a *nix clone, just like for OS X, any proparly configured Linux box will be totally safe when it comes to a virus. As for OS X having a "heck of a lot bigger" installed base than Linux; 3% VS 1% (the 3% includes ALL Apple OS versions so it is probably more 2%-1%), not "a heck of a lot bigger" when the Microsoft domination is at 93%. As for the whole ipod>mac link, the ipod has been around since 2001 and the marketshare of Mac desktops has grown very little, the mac mini has probably helped it a bit, but there certainly isn't much demand for people buying an ipod and then moving to a mac, and why would they, itunes on Windows should work just as well as on a mac, shouldn't it???


Of course they SAY that, it is just a shame they the don't follow through. When they enter the local bestbuy and can buy a $699 laptop that is just as tricked out than a $1399 Apple and is even faster then what do you think they will purchase?


I would. It is all about the ipod. Sooner or later that bubble will burst and the market will be saturated, you can only sell so many ipods.

In the end this whole move to Intel is hilarious. Mac fans have been foaming at the mouth for years about how awesome their G3, G4 and G5 chips are (were) when in the end it all turns out to be BS as Intel is the clear winner. This is extremely humiliating for IBM and every website out there that heralded the G5 as the "winner".

In a few years the MacOS will be nothing more than an add-on pack to Windows Longhorn. :D

I'm not too sure about this, there are reports that Apple will be using the CPUID and DRM functions in the Intel chips to prevent people from trying this.

I'm pretty sure Apple will do what they can to prevent people from buying a $399 Dell to run OS X instead of a shiny $2000 mac which will be identical on the inside...

How many bytes do you reckon that patch will be? :)

Oh absolutely. I'm sure it will be hacked in a week. If they don't play their cards right then this is the end of the Apple desktop as we know it, why would someone drop $2000 on a box that Dell or HP can sell for half that...

Even if Mac OS X ran on my box I'm not sure I would use it...

While no doubt hacks will be released to allow at least Windows on the Mac and perhaps OS X on non-Apple hardware, I would not expect hundreds of thousands, much less millions, of users to run out and do so anytime soon after the capability is announced.

If the hacks are even remotely "complicated" or "involved", you'll be looking at only the "hard-core" types doing this. I mean even dual-booting two versions of Windows took some effort in the early days. ;)

apples and oranges. The $500 Mac Mini is comparable to a $399 Dell. Apple's $2K desktops are not identical on the inside to Dell's $399 desktops. Dell's $1500 dekstops may approach resembling Apple's in specs, but not in design.

Time will tell what difference a cheaper chip with less demands for power consumption and heat dispersion will do to lower the price of the boxes.

Marketing talk...

For $499 all I get from Apple is:
1.25GHz PowerPC G4
256MB DDR333 SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB DDR video memory
40GB Ultra ATA hard drive
Combo drive
DVI or VGA video output

For $399 this afternoon Dell will sell me:
a 3.0GHz machine (around 3 times more powerful than the slow G4 in the cheapest Mini)
512Mb memory
80Gb HDD
DVD-R drive

Plus they will throw in a 15" Flat panel LCD monitor. Sure, it doesn't look as cute, but money talks.

The $1499 cheapest G5 has these specs:

1.8GHz PowerPC G5
600MHz frontside bus
512K L2 cache
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
Expandable to 4GB SDRAM
80GB Serial ATA
8x SuperDrive
Three PCI Slots
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem

So, with the exception of the 56k modem ($19) this $1499 has the same specs on paper as the $399 Dell, which even comes with a monitor and more memory.

I simply don't beleive that Apple boxes are so expensive because of a cheaper chip and heat dispersion, the best cooling fan out there is just $20 so Apple must be paying a fortune for G5's...

Apples and oranges indeed.

But...it doesn't look like a kitchen appliance! It doesn't have a halo! People want design!

There are some pretty slick-looking small form factor PC designs coming out.

Admittedly not as slick as the Mac Mini or iMac, but a lot better then the "big beige box".

And some of the boutique aluminium tower PC cases will give the G5 Towers a run for their money.

Acer has a replica of the Mac Mini for those that want design ;)

And yes, some of the case mods out there are amazing, try that on a mac :D

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~neilk/macquarium.html

And even more useful than it was before!

I don't have time to list all of the things I'd like to, but you're leaving out a lot of specs on the Mac side: DVI support, non-integrated video RAM (vs shared for the Dell), higher maximum resolution supported. Also, in the case of the G5 tower, dual display support, gigabit ethernet, bluetooth built-in, expandable to 4 GB (vs 512 limit on the dell), the superdrive is actually 16x, 600 MHz bus (vs 400 MHz in the dell), gigabit ethernet, system-controlled ultraquiet fans, FireWire 800 (vs no Firewire at all on the Dell), etc.

All this is not to mention that the dell is made with low-bid components, and Apple ranks far better than them in customer support and offers much more in software than what's available with the Dell, including native OS support of things like Apache/Perl/PHP, native PDF support, X11, Native scripting with either AppleScript or Automator, Automatic networking with Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous), etc. All of this must be added on to achieve a comparable Dell system.

This site does pretty well at comparing Macs to Dell equivalents.

oh yeah: don't forget the $100 Dell charges for shipping. Sometimes they run promos, but usually you get stuck with it.

Well, there we go; the whole "heat" thing Apple has been bragging about turns out to be total BS.

Here is an Intel Mac:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000740046045/

(Note, just one small fan on the chip)

And here is a G5 Mac:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/

(Note the massive coolers on the chips)

The board looks very standard to me...

Adding Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet and a powerful videocard would cost no more than $200. Apache, Perl and PHP are useless for the average PC user, and useless for the average Mac user too. Besides that, they are opensource and can be installed on any PC. Adding it would be no more than a 5 minute download.

Still don't see where the massive price differences come from.

Anyhow, now Apple has moved to the better chip we'll be in a better position to compare. The fact that they can sell the Intel Mac to developers for just $999 is very very telling, and I suspect that is the way we will be heading.

I actually don't think that price point is telling anything. They need to get the hacked up Intel Mac into the hands of developers, and $999 is a compelling enough price point to do it. It's a development-only box, though, and Apple will require the return of it at the end of 2006. So they're really only leasing them for $999. Not that I think it would have any value left in it after that. I think the price point is agressive so that developers will take them up on the offer.

I don't really expect Intel processors to make for lower priced Macs. With the enclosures that Apple typically makes, they'll likely continue to use custom logic board designs and such which contribute to the cost. And I keep hearing that Apple was already getting PowerPC processors for less than the cost of some of these newfangled Intel units that Apple is expected to use. Okay, maybe we're only seeing the initial run costs of the Intel processors and those prices quickly drop? I dunno. Either way, I don't think the move is about cost.

^

Can you cite the sources where you have heard Apple bragging about the heat thing?

Heat sinks have been huge since the G5 was introduced. Even the later G4s had massive heat sinks. Both generations of machines had substantial cooling systems and multiple fans. In the later G4s, this was an issue, as the fans generated lots of noise. It was solved in the G5s by creating multiple thermal zones, with a total of 5 fans throughout, all controlled and coordinated by the machine to maximize efficiency and reduce noise.

When the G4 Powerbook was introduced, Apple went to 70 watt power adapters, due to the machine needing to pull more power than previous models.

There was a time when the PowerPC was much more efficient than comparable Wintel models, but that hasn't been for a few years, and it hasn't been a marketing point in some time.

It's kind of unfair to cite marketing from many years and 1.5 major chip revs ago as conflicting with the company's planned course of direction two years from now.

Pentiums have been the laughing stock of every Mac owner for years, they were "slow", "power hungry", "warm" etc... Hence my having to laugh at the current situation.

FWIW, I understand that the mobo in the ADC dev machines is is made by no other than.... INTEL :D

An Intel chip, and an Intel board, it doesn't get any better than that.

The speed always depended on what the user was doing.

Power hungry- Pentiums did require a great deal more juice at one time and were a lot warmer at one time. That hasn't been the case for a while, which is why those are benefits that are no longer promoted and haven't been for years.

It's no surprise that the boards are made by Intel. First, they're development machines, Apple would need to partner with Intel's engineering teams on motherboard design, and it's only one more progression to see them manufactured by Intel. Second, The more manufacturers that are disclosed to the partnership prior to announcement the greater the chance that the news would have leaked sooner than it did. Having the board built by another party would have increased this risk.

To me this partnership is analogous to the one Apple forged with IBM for the G5 processor. Both companies were both bitter rivals but leveraged each other when it benefited them mutually.

We see similar competition/cooperation relationships in other partners of Apple, including Sony, Microsoft, HP, Adobe, even Dell, which once sold iPods prior to coming out with the DJ.

Companies do it all the time. Toyota licensed its hybrid technology to Ford a couple of years ago, and Ford brought a hybrid SUV to the US market before Toyota rolled theirs out.

It's an interesting change in direction, yes, but it's not totally unexpected either. It's been fairly common knowledge that x86 versions of OS X have continued to be developed since NextStep was acquired by Apple.