Microsoft to buy Apple (again)


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If Longhorn runs on Power PC, what need for Intel?

A domino theory for our day

By Esther Tigre: Wednesday 03 March 2004, 20:02

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14497

Yet if Microsoft decides that Longhorn runs not only on future Xboxes but on the Power PC platform as well, there's plenty of room to speculate that the Vole could acquire Apple and dump Intel, without the antitrust forces getting too excited.

Because Linux currently has more market share than Apple.

The Power PC licence Microsoft has could allow it to take designs from IBM to Samsung or other big fabrication centres and play the foundry game to its heart content.

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Total BS right there. Honestly, it's the same reason we'll never see OSX on an x86 platform: it's too hard to move your existing software base to a new architecture. Gathered, it's easier to emulate x86 on PPC than the reverse, but it still doesn't seem economical at this point. I'll just wait for Darwine to develop :p

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Ok, the Inquirer is such a waste of web space.

How do we go from Longhorn running on IBM chips to MS buying Apple? And why would MS need to buy Apple to dump Intel? The Inquirer makes it sound like the chip maker (IBM) and the computer maker (Apple) are one and the same, and if your software runs on the chip, you might as well buy out the computer maker?

That's complete BS. Microsoft runs on Intel chips. Dell makes computers that use Intel chips. Is MS going to buy Dell? Uh....no.

What a worthless article.

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Total BS right there. Honestly, it's the same reason we'll never see OSX on an x86 platform: it's too hard to move your existing software base to a new architecture. Gathered, it's easier to emulate x86 on PPC than the reverse, but it still doesn't seem economical at this point. I'll just wait for Darwine to develop :p

But why is the XBox2 going to run on a PowerPC chip then?

Surely it would have been easier to run it on an x86 unless they wanted to prove a point to Intel.

Microsoft is sittings on tons of cash. I'm sure they've thought about cutting Intel out of the loop and doing things themselves. Perhaps the XBox2 is a testbed.

It may not be very likely. But it is fun to speculate.

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But why is the XBox2 going to run on a PowerPC chip then?

Surely it would have been easier to run it on an x86 unless they wanted to prove a point to Intel.

Perhaps for better cost and performance? Or, more likely, to curb the incredible moding scene that we have out there for the XBox. Many fewer people have the extensive knowledge of PPC that they do of x86.

Microsoft would never switch over to solely PPC chips. They would lose their entire market to Linux if they dumped their x86 support. However, they could have both versions, much as Apple could release an x86 version of OS X without dumping the PPC.

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