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News: Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006
(WWDC 2005, SAN FRANCISCO, June 6, 2005) At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple
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18 Replies
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No really, this is not good. Isn’t this a core strategic error? God, he could at least have gone with the opteron. It apparently trounces xeon in graphics heavy arenas. The nasty sound is the reality distortion field around cupertino cracking. This strips away one of the core elements of the macintosh’s alternative ethos. Bugger it. I knew this era was too good to last. I think jobs has fundamentally misjudged the delicate psychology of apple’s position in the buying public’s (my) mind. The one thing you cannot say about this decision is that it represents the much espused virtue of thinking different. Rather, it strikes you strongly of capitulation to the seeming banal realities of apple’s position. Whatever figleaf remained is now gone; the mac is now an enclosure, good fabrication and a well regarded unix variant os. Demmit, Jobs, what were you thinking of?
(I actually feel like stamping my foot repeatedly.
I think my inner child is having a s**t fit) -
If it means I can have my dream of building a PC from scratch and running OSX instead of Windows, it sounds great to me.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
[Chris Smith] “If it means I can have my dream of building a PC from scratch and running OSX instead of Windows, it sounds great to me.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that, Chris. I highly doubt that that is ever going to be the destination of all this. After all, Apple is a hardware company and there is plenty that they can do to insure that their OS requires a motherboard that no do-it-yourselfer is ever going to be able to build.
Sorry to throw water on your thoughts but I was around during the entire Mac-clone years and it was a lot less “open” than the term “clone” might imply. I do not think that using Intel procs is going to bring much of a change to the Mac world other than games will be far easier to port to the Mac and development of programs which heretofore have only been PC-centric, will find themselves over on the Mac OS far easier.
But that’s just my two cents.
Ron Lindeboom
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I’m sure you’re right, Ron. That’s why I’ll keep my custom built PC to play games on 😉
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Plus… the ‘downside’ of having the option between all the different pieces of hardware currently available for Windows is the enormous amount of drivers and possible conflicts. Windows usually does a pretty good job at letting everying play friendly even though my system may not resemble my neighbours’ system in any way.
If Apple should decide to go in this same direction, they’d be opening a pandora’s box that Microsoft has only successfully started to get a grip on with WinXP. I don’t think Apple wants to go there.
Right now, how many graphics boards drivers does Apple need to write?
Bar3nd
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Well as far as I can tell,
they’re going to ship computers that have an Intel chip in them,
not a cd you can install on your (w)Intel Box.I think it’s a clever (maybe even late) move, because Apple was becoming a hostage of the PowerPC chip’s failure to keep up with the roadmap.
Come on: drumroll, drumroll: 2.7Ghz! what a dissapointment that was.However, where will all this leave the mega-hertz myth ?
And what’s it gonna be called ?
not a powerMac, not a G5 ? Ooh they’re going to have fun coming up with a wow-name for that.how about the inMac 😉
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I just watched the keynote speech. Wow, I didn’t know OSX has been secretly running on Intel chips for FIVE YEARS! Hell of a secret to keep. Although it has leaked as strong rumor for some time.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
“And what’s it gonna be called ?
not a powerMac, not a G5 ? Ooh they’re going to have fun coming up with a wow-name for that.how about the inMac ;-)”
i’ve been hearing people call them ‘mactel’ on boards recently
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Seems obvious to me.
PC’s own 97% of the market,….Apple cannot get enough ;inadequate; chips from IBM to even keep up with a 3% marketshare!
Software companies don’t make MAC versions for tons of things due to the cost investment for just 3% of the market. Even Adobe has runors about of dropping AE for the MAC due to its ‘exponential’ yearly sales increase on the PC side, which is reducing it’s MAC % greatly……if Adobe dropped Apple,….Apple would lose its primary ‘industry’ market which is design and only be left with ‘itunes’ users at home. That thought alone could drive Apple to go Intel and keep Adobe.
It’s simply a matter of time till a box is a box and the OS of your choice is available…and all Apps run on all boxes. It will take some time,….but IMHO it is inevitable.
Also, lets not forget that Mr. Gates owns part of Apple,….and also ‘could in theory’ buy Apple 100 times over without missing a beat and do with it what he wanted,….think he cares about 3% of the market when he owns 97% of the PC OS sales?
Agendas are being put in place,….will be fun to see where they lead…..
No bias here,…I use MAC’s and PC’s….could care less what is what as long as I have the tools to do what I need….
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[jeff dobrow] “Also, lets not forget that Mr. Gates owns part of Apple,….and also ‘could in theory’ buy Apple 100 times over without missing a beat and do with it what he wanted,….think he cares about 3% of the market when he owns 97% of the PC OS sales?”
While some of your points hold water and I would agree with many of them, this one is laughable and were Bill Gates to even move a muscle to “buy Apple” and “do with it what he wanted,” the FTC and SEC would be all over him like piranha on a bloody piece of meat in the water.
Years back when Gil Amelio was at the helm of Apple and things looked very bleak, I remember arguing on the forums with people who were saying that Apple was dead, that before he’d let Apple disappear from the market, Bill Gates would spend his own money to help keep it alive. He did. This, as long as there’s an Apple, Bill Gates does not have a monopoly. Now, with Apple using Intel chips and having the dual-boot capacity to run both the Mac OS and the full Windows OS on a single machine, Apple not only perpetuates the Mac OS (and will no doubt increase market share because of the dual-boot) but now transforms itself into another customer of Microsoft. Freakin’ brilliant marketing, Steve.
At NAB 2002 I told one of the Intel product managers that I know that Apple would one day be their newest customer. Later at NAB 2002, Apple announced their deal with IBM to ship the new G5s with IBM’s PowerPC chips instead of Motorola’s PowerPC chips that had powered the G3s and G4s. After the announcement, I told him that the IBM/Apple marriage would end in divorce and Apple would still end up with Intel. Why? It was, to quote the irrepressible Mr. Spock, “simply logical.”
In one move, Apple has made itself into a company — the only one that I can think of — that will be making machines which can run both the Mac OS and Windows (not to forget even Linux, if you wish) in a single box. Not emulation, full OS system software. Instead of competing against the Wintel hegemony, Apple has just become one of Bill Gates’ biggest customers — this, as many Mac users who would have never bought a Windows machine will buy a box of Windows now to run in dual-boot mode to run their PC programs on their same box they can boot their Mac OS from to run all their Mac apps.
This guarantees that MacOffice will get full steam ahead (along with other areas where Microsoft had been lax with Mac development as they felt Apple more a necessary irritation than a partner) and also means that Adobe’s apps won’t have to be recoded for the Mac PowerPC as the calls necessary to run them on the Intel chipset will translate quite nicely to an Intel-based Mac, thank you.
Me, I think that companies like Dell have to be going “Oh, cow pies! We just stepped in a big one now!” This, as what are thet going to do when families look at a computer purchase and (as in the case of my son who is a building contractor and needs a PC to run his contractor’s software but his wife and kids love Macs) find that they no longer need to buy two computers. Apple’s power grows far stronger with just this one move and Dell and Gateway and others have to be in shock right about now…
With this move, Apple once again proves that they still have the foresight and pioneering spirit which has marked the company from Day One. “Dear God, ‘No!'”, you say? “Dear God, ‘Yes!’ And it’s about time!” says this old dairy kid.
One machine, booting up any of three major OSes — Mac, Windows or Linux. It’s a thing of damned beauty, I tell you. ;o)
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
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