Technology News Article | Reuters.co.uk — I was skewered for telling the world about this two years ago in PC Magazine when the deal began to emerge. And don’t think that this isn’t about processors. That said I was under the impression that Apple got most of its chips from Motorola, not IBM as Reuters suggests.
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I think there is some confusion in this story. When most people hear it they assume we’re going to be able to install OSX on our PCs. That WON’T happen!!! Apple is primarily a hardware company, that’s where it gets its profits. They’re not going to throw that away for no good reason.
If and when Apple switches to Intel it’ll be a proprietary solution and Apple will be the sole source of it.
There’s an excellent alternative analysis from Hesseldahl over at Forbes Magazine:
http://www.forbes.com/home/personaltech/2005/05/23/cx_ah_0523apple.html
It lists IBM and Freescale as the PowerPC chip vendors.
Other folks reference software from Transitive Technologies that allows for translation — without recompiling — which would let existing software written for OS X to run on an Intel chip.
Some of the most technically-competent discussion I’ve seen, so far, makes the point that, with a Unix-based OS — like OS X, it would be easier to produce a port to the X86 [or following?] architecture. Though, others feel it would require an awful lot of work to downgrade graphics capabilties.
i haven’t an insider’s perception as to whether or not this would be a profitable niche or an astounding addition. Looking at it as a potential cost/price-reduction for new, lower-price Minis or doing the same for a new, lower-price iiBook [!], then, it might be worth the energy of a re-write. But, it sounds as if it would still require the production and retail requirements of a 2nd OS. That would still be a very big increase in sustaining costs.
Presumably Apple has a very portable code base. Simply playing off Intel against IBM may result in lower chip prices regardless of which chip they use next.
You are still dreaming. Apple uses it’s PPC hardware to differentiate it from the PC clones on the market. Apple (in other words Steve Jobs) has no intention of reducing the impact hardware has on Apple’s bottom line.
With the advent of 3 new gaming consoles all based on the PPC architecture, Apple’s case for using PPC chips is stronger now than ever. And with the Motorola supplying low-power chips for notebooks and IBM’s ‘server’ and workstation oriented chips in the other product lines, again, Apple would be crazy for switching to Intel.
Also consider the momentum behind Tiger from a software perspective. The last thing Apple would want to do is reduce their performance numbers by emulating PPC on Intel with Transitive Technologies software (80% is not 100%).
This agreement is probably Wi-Fi chips, memory chips or other. You know, Intel DOES make chips other than Pentium CPUs.
This is just fluff to get readers and stock broker’s panties in a bunch. What a load of crap.
I’ve said it over and over again for years… Apple needs to get out of the hardware business. That’s not where the money is… It’s in the software… If I could get OSX for my PC, I’d do it in a heartbeat, and almost everybody I know would do so too… Selling their own hardware isn’t the route to go. As evil as MS can be at times, they at least got it right and stayed out of selling the actual PCs.
Freescale is a spin off of Motorola. I wonder who is actually fabricating the chip for Microsoft’s XBOX 360? Also, didn’t Apple have a version of its OS called Rhapsody running on x86 a long time ago?
People keep saying that the software business is where Apple could make some real money, but who’s making a lot of money of operating system sales except Windows? If this were true, why was Be such a failure? The fact that Apple is still around at all amazes me, but I don’t think they would last long going head to head with Microsoft.
The processors that Apple puts in its desktop machines (for the most part) are purchased from IBM and the processors for their laptops come from Freescale (formerly part of Motorola).
The beta distributions for the first version of OS X server contained a CD to run on the Mac and another that ran on a stock PC. I have a copy in an old box of junk in the back of my closet, this isn’t urban myth. Apple engineers have hinted on several occasions that they still maintain a build for the x86, mostly for quality control. Given that NextSTEP/OpenSTEP ran on x86 hardware, this makes sense.
FWIW, I think the Apple is trying to pressure Intel, I’ve seen this happen a couple times already. IBM has already made some important concessions to Apple (originally they claimed that they would never put Motorola’s AltiVec, aka “Velocity Engine” in their processors). I can’t see IBM letting Apple go at this point. Jobs is a little crazy, though, so you never know. 😉
It’s been more than hinted at in other publications over the past couple of years that Apple has had server and workstation hardware designed around an x86 CPU, using some chipset of it’s own. This shouldn’t be hard to believe at all; the move to PPC years ago was the first move toward porting their code to a more standard RISC based platform. And Apple would be foolish not to persue this; relying on one company’s processor in the coming age of 64 bit computing, and at a time when the chip suppliers are running away from the vertical systems arena (for example,. IBM getting out of the PC market), means Apple *must* have a transition strategy ready to roll. Yeah, Apple has probably used this in the past to get IBM off it’s duff and roll out some more powerful PPC chips, but when both AMD and Intel are rolling out dual-core processors, sheesh, ya can’t just sit there!
BTW, how can Apple “pressure” Intel in any way? I’d think they’d have more luck “pressuring” Intel by courting AMD – why oh why aren’t they doing this? I’d get all weak-kneed if an AMD based Mac-mini rolled out. Especially if it came out at 2Ghz, 1Gig RAM and 200Gig HD at $499. Silly, isn’t it?
John: I don’t know if this went through, the first time. Safari wouldn’t display the bottom of the comment window, or the “Say it!” button. I’m trying this again in Camino.
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Apple has already ported iTunes and Quicktime to Intel/AMD processors.
They tout their use of the Object-C language and the open source GNU C-compilier (GCC). Darwin already runs on Intel/AMD. How tough is it to re-compile the existing Object-C code for Intel/AMD, since the GCC has long been optimized for Intel/AMD by it’s GNU/Linux contributors?
The main stumbling-block seems to be finding a viable Intel/AMD alternative to the Altivec vector-processing abilities of the PPC.
Adobe has Creative Studio running on PPC and Intel/AMD. Firefox/Mozilla runs on both. Maya runs on both.
It’s not magic. But there has to be a compelling reason to take the risk of shifitng-away from the existing platform.
Apple is staying profitable even as it is slowly shifting away from being “just” a desktop computer maker into a server & software company.
iTunes/iPods, Final Cut Studio (video & movies & DVD), Logic (music), Xserve/Xraid/XSAN/Xgrid – are all markets Apple is staking a claim in.
How much longer will they need/want to be in the desktop PC business?
Excuse my ignorance. ..
Why would this be controversial at all?
Take me, for example: I own two WinBoxes (working), a laptop and a Macintosh laptop. I couldn’t care less who made the chips.
The chip issue came up once… when I just home-assembling my Shuttle. I was given the option of AMD or Intel and I asked, “Which is cheapest?”
Why should end users like me care about what chips are in a Mac?
“Why would this be controversial at all?”
For end-users like you & me, no controversy at all.
For the company (Apple) which has always kept hardware and OS in-house – in would be a major restructuring of their busines.
For WinTel haters, it would be an infuriating sellout. 🙂
Apple is moving fast into the consumer electronics business including video downloads, so this story makes sense as a cost-cutter in a less relevant division.
If Apple does it, the result will be proprietary x86-based hardware–more so than the Xbox (have you ever run Windows XP on an Xbox?) in order to protect their hardware business. The only hard part about this is the existing base of PPC software. They can bolt on an emulation layer, the same way they bolted one on for legacy m68K code. Existing PPC apps will run slower, so the determining factor is whether the lower cost makes it worth the performance hit.
I still think this is more of a ploy to get something they want, rather than something they’re seriously considering in the near term. But is it feasible? Absolutely. Will it happen eventually? Probably–the price/performance ratio of x86 will always improve at a faster rate than PPC just because it’s the larger market. The question is when will it hit a threshold where it makes sense for Apple to switch. It could be next year or it could be 10 years from now.
I definitely feel safe in predicting this isn’t the last you’ve heard of this story. Expect Apple to revisit this in public every couple of years or so.
Am I really one of the few who actually tried OpenDarwin naturally you need to run Gnone for a gui but, that isn’t too bad.