Steve jobs hints at a switch to x86

[Dazzla Veteran]

This could be a hint, or it could be a scare tactic for Motorola to get their thumbs out of their asses:

Some analysts have also urged Apple to move to microchips from Intel Corp. INTC.O from those made by Motorola Inc. MOT.N and International Business Machines Corp. IBM.N to cut costs.

Asked about that possibility, Jobs said that first the company had to finish the transition to the OS X operating system, expected around the end of this year.

"Then we'll have options, and we like to have options," he said.

Link

[Spyder Veteran]

If this went through (ie. have Intel/AMD/whatever CPU's in macs), would this allow a greater volume of mac compatible software? would more games be ported? etc..

btw..had a look at an imac last nite. very sweet indeed.

[freeza]

would allow oSX to be on the PC would it not?

[Gator]

I think "we like to have options" sounds more of a wake up call for Motorola.

[Spyder Veteran]

Originally posted by freeza

would allow oSX to be on the PC would it not?

ooo i didnt even think of that! that'd be very nice...give ol' MS some more competition.

everyone say it together.. "competition is GOOD" hehe

[Guest deadzombie]

Even if Apple did switch to another chip manufacturer, it wouldn't insure a transition to an X86 line of chips. Almost every major chipmaker has different chip departments for different chip types. Intel is known for it's Pentium line up, but makes more than X86 chips.

[Dazzla Veteran]

Plus, a vast majority of applications won't run. Photoshop 7 for example.

Only cocoa apps will be able to be easily converted, Photoshop 7 and the majority or major apps are Carbon.

This is done to scare Motorola, there are plenty of other Chip manafacturers out there that can supply custom desktop chips to Apple.

IBM's Power 4 chip is a possibilty and it's a beast.

[threetonesun]

Originally posted by Dazzla

Only cocoa apps will be able to be easily converted, Photoshop 7 and the majority or major apps are Carbon.

Um...what does that mean? Never heard those terms before.

[Qarth]

This would be soooooooo cool...

[Tobbe]

Originally posted by Spyder

everyone say it together.. "competition is GOOD" hehe

competition is GOOD

:p

[Guest deadzombie]

Originally posted by Dazzla

Plus, a vast majority of applications won't run. Photoshop 7 for example.

Only cocoa apps will be able to be easily converted, Photoshop 7 and the majority or major apps are Carbon.

This is done to scare Motorola, there are plenty of other Chip manafacturers out there that can supply custom desktop chips to Apple.

IBM's Power 4 chip is a possibilty and it's a beast.

I'd sell every PC I own and jump on Apple if they switched to the Power4 chip...those things are awesome!

For those that don't know, it's a powerPC based chip with even shorter pipes, insane clock speeds, better floating point and beats the living crap out of almost any other chip available...The Power4 is to G4 as Pentium4 is to Pentium2.

[cerbero]

I'm sure chaning from Motorola to Intel does not mean a change to x86. Intel's manufacturing the G3 chips right now for Apple from what I understand... And the license for the PowerPC CPU architecture is owned by Apple, Motorola and Intel together.. Correct me if I'm wrong though. I just read an article a couple of days ago about this, can't remember where though..

[BroChaos Veteran]

there's no reason the clock speeds should be this slow on the macs. i'm sure jobs realizes they need to get things in gear.

[Timan Veteran]

yall this means yall wont have your pretty aqua, and it will not be os x by the time all this happens it will be osxi or something.

[Wickedkitten Veteran]

lmao you PC people are hilarious. Just because Intel is making the chips that doesn't mean they are going to be x86. They can just drum up a deal so they give Intel the technology to make powerpc chips. lol you poor people getting your collective knickers all in a twist.

[Timan Veteran]

thank you! so sick of this os X porting **** :s :s :s

[Dazzla Veteran]

Originally posted by cerbero

I'm sure chaning from Motorola to Intel does not mean a change to x86. Intel's manufacturing the G3 chips right now for Apple from what I understand... And the license for the PowerPC CPU architecture is owned by Apple, Motorola and Intel together.. Correct me if I'm wrong though. I just read an article a couple of days ago about this, can't remember where though..

The G3 is produced by IBM and Motorola. IBM far exceeds Motorola in this, it's capable of scaling it's version of the G3 to 1.5GHz. Their top end G3 will outperform the high end G4 from Motorola.

The G4 though has Altivec, this is owned by Motorola and if Apple wanted IBM to produce G4 chips (which would be a good thing) they would have to buy the rights from Motorola.

Here's some specs:

IBM G3

Motorola's limited G4

The fabled G5

This looks pretty appealing

[cerbero]

Originally posted by Dazzla

The G3 is produced by IBM and Motorola. IBM far exceeds Motorola in this, it's capable of scaling it's version of the G3 to 1.5GHz. Their top end G3 will outperform the high end G4 from Motorola.

The G4 though has Altivec, this is owned by Motorola and if Apple wanted IBM to produce G4 chips (which would be a good thing) they would have to buy the rights from Motorola.

Here's some specs:

IBM G3

Motorola's limited G4

The fabled G5

This looks pretty appealing

Ah yes. I confused IBM with Intel.. Sorry about that :)

[tomwarren Veteran]

Would be good if you could run Mac OSX on a PC system tho :D

[Zerosignull]

there is only one weeeeeee little problem to moving to a x86 platfrom and that is u cannont emulate a PPC in software at ne desent speed. the g4 has 32 registers for altivec and the p4 has 8 for mmx/sse

[McKrout]

as much as we would all like to see OS X on the x86 platform, i dont see it happening, we're just no that lucky

TS

[johnqpublic]

just as with the mmx extensions, altivec doesn't offer as significant of an advantage when there's about 500mhz more of raw processing power ... let's give it up IBM!

[Dazzla Veteran]

Originally posted by johnqpublic

just as with the mmx extensions, altivec doesn't offer as significant of an advantage when there's about 500mhz more of raw processing power ... let's give it up IBM!

Agreed, Motorola can only ship 1GHz G4's atm but IBM can ship G3's at 1.5 GHz.

Apple doesn't mean **** to Motorola.

[DrunkenMaster]

Yeah, it would be nice to have OSX on Intel but thats only because we, presumably, wouldn't have to buy new hardware. There is no way I can see Mac making only the OS as a source of revenue. Can't make enough money on it. They are really a hardware company in the end. The only reason I think MS was able to pull off what it did is the enrollment of large companies upgrading Office, OS desktop and server and other major apps every year or so.

I think Apple is trying to consider AMD as the next runner up. I don't know if AMD would make a complete switch to MAC or still make PC hardware. Of course, the system has to remain proprietary to some degree which isn't bad as long as the hardware is good. I'm always annoyed at the low-quality crap hardware you see on the PC.

Lets make this interesting though. What if Apple went with SPARC (which SUN uses), Alpha or MIPS (which SGI uses) based processors instead? All are completely different architectures than X86 and have had a lot of money dumped into research for them and all are proven performers. While SUN and SGI don't manufacture their own chips, my argument is that there are other fab plants in the world other than AMD, Intel and Motorola and other processor technologies.

Dazzla, consider that while Motorola isn't really desparate for money right now (they sell a lot of Communications and semiconductors), I recall reading sevarl months they really screwed up on some major contracts for the US military (I think they were for satellites). While Apples' business may not be a huge chunk, they might want to reconsider since they probably are going to lose some businness from the military.

[Cowpie]

Well if Jobs wanted to take MS head on, he would get together and do a few things:

1. Make Mac OS run on x86(and make it so current cpus could handle it)

2. Write drivers for the majority of hardware out there, that doesnt of course, have drivers for mac already there.

3. Make a nifty utility that allows u to transfer ur docs and saved pics and **** from Windows to ur nifty new Mac Os-PC.

Just my thoughts....Heck, I would repartition some space for mac os on Pc