Steve jobs hints at a switch to x86

[Cowpie]

Oh, and I found this:

http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/17176.html

Posted in April? Why didnt we get this news earlier!

[Chad]

This will never happen people. OSX is going to be forever on a Mac only. I'm sure if they went with AMD/Intel to do processors, it would make sure its something totally different from x86

[unspec]

Originally posted by GatorZx2

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

A similar thread has been going in Ars.

I'd tend to agree with GatorZx2 that, if anything, this is just SJ trying to put a bit of extra pressure on Moto.

I'd disagree with the thread title as it suggests that they have the option of moving to x86, when the reality is that he just ment option to migrate.

It has already been pointed out by others that migrating to x86 when it is nearing the end of it's lifespan would be a poor move.

x86-64, ia64, POWER4 etc are all alternative options

Food for thought....

[geek dreaming]What would I like?

IBM POWER4 + licenced Motorola Velocity Engine on a Rapid IO/HyperTransport style mainboard. My god, that thing would fly.[/geek dreaming]

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unspec

[sheer]

Apple and Moto have a love/hate relationship so I'd take Steve saying *We like to have plenty of options* with a pinch of salt. Reading between the lines, I'd guess Jobs wanted to release speed bumped towers with the new DDR mobo and Moto are having trouble getting enough faster cpu's out for a change, the usual chip yield/fab costs thing. Apple are probably all ready to roll and Moto aren't, so Steve is ****ed.

I can see IBM being dropped tho since they're only doing the iBook G3's which is probably due for a move to G4, tho I'd expect that next year sometime when the towers/powerbooks go G5.

Apple will **** off too many developers by switching to *86. After pushing many of them to rewrite their apps for X, they're gonna be none-too-pleased at having to rewrite them again for *86. If it does happen, it's a good few years away yet unless Moto suddenly go ######-up.

[Bling3k12]

I would die if Steve put OS X on x86... it's not right and i don't think he'd ever do that... it would take ALOT of time to write new drivers and a whole new architecture for the OS... it uses RISC while x86 chips use SISC (right? something like that)

although I do have Rhapsody on my computer :) So far the only Apple Operating System to work on x86... supposed to be the competition for Windows 95 but they stopped production on it and started on OS X...

and from what i'm hearing, why the hell doesn't apple buy out Altivec (they do have the money... couple of billion dollars there) and let IBM do all the chip making! Imagine 1.5GHz iBooks and 2+ GHz G4's!

(drools)

- casey

[unspec]

RISC and CISC, are not fixed processor designs, but ideals that shape the processor design.

The modern x86 series is more CISC-like but it does have some RISC-like features, while PPC designes have adopted CISC-like features.

Although, saying x86=CISC PPC=RISC is a fair generisation.

:)

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unspec

[Tesseract]

Apple will not go to x86, this is just wishful thinking.

[Qarth]

Thank you terra for your speaking for Apple and Steve.

[unspec]

Thank you Qarth thinking that if I say:

"Microsoft will not put a man on the moon this year."

I am speaking for the MS board.

:rolleyes:

The Apple on x86 is really, really old now.

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unspec

[Advocate]

There is certainly something going on at Apple re the OSX on x86 issue but I think it is more likely that Apple will keep their proprietery (spelling?) design/s while utilising the new AMD Hammer CPU (IF they use this CPU).

[unspec]

Although to be accurate hammer is x86-64.

If they did move to a Hammer based solution they would almost certainly heavily optimise it for x86-64. This is not the same as, or compatible with, x86.

As I already stated, other alternatives would be ia64 or POWER4.

But x86 isn't on the cards IMO.

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unspec

[unspec]

SJ quote:

"The roadmap on the PowerPC actually looks pretty good and there are some advantages to it. As an example, the PowerPC has something in it called AltiVec, we call the Velocity Engine -- it's a vector engine -- it dramatically accelerates media, much better than, as an example, the Intel processors or the AMD processors... so we actually eek out a fair amount of performance from these things when all is said and done. And the roadmap looks pretty good. Now, as you point out, once our transition to Mac OS 10 is complete, which I expect will be around the end of this year or sometime early next year and we get the top 20% of our installed base running 10, and I think the next 20 will come very rapidly after that. Then we'll have options, then we'll have options and we like to have options. But right now, between Motorola and IBM, the roadmap looks pretty decent. "

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unspec

[Advocate]

Originally posted by unspec

Although to be accurate hammer is x86-64.

If they did move to a Hammer based solution they would almost certainly heavily optimise it for x86-64. This is not the same as, or compatible with, x86.

As I already stated, other alternatives would be ia64 or POWER4.

But x86 isn't on the cards IMO.

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unspec

Yeah sorry perhaps I should have been clearer, when I said they may move to Hammer I meant using Hammer in a Mac rather than porting OSX to the x86-64 architecture (and letting anybody with a hammer use it).