It's offical, apple moving to x86 Intel chips by June 6th 2006

A

Archer75

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It is no longer speculation. Was announced by Jobs at WWDC 05.
 
From the feed, on how long it took to port the huge Mathematica software:

"Jobs asked a long time developer (Theo Grey of Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica) to come out to Apple and work on Intel."

"Mr. Gray is joking about getting "the most crazy calls from Apple," where Steve asked him on Wednesday night to come out to Apple and port Mathematica, one of the most complex apps on the planet to Intel by Monday."

"According to Mr. Gray, it took two hours to do this port. "We're talking about 20 lines of code out of millions from a dead cold start where he didn't even know why he was going.""

We're getting a demonstaration of Mathematica at work. It's quite impressive, of course, and it's working on an Intel Mac
 
Yes, it will run on PC's. Some tidbits:

From Macworld..

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/06/06/liveupdate/index.php

"Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple's Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system."
 
Haahaa it WAS TRUE, the rumoir that Apple has had this whole time a intel compiled OS X !
W000h00 these are the happy days for evil PC pirates...finally we can run apples candy OS natively :D I would be pissed if had bought overprized mac hardware these couple years just to use OS X ;D
 
At a random guess, it won't be running on PCs. This is, I guess, more like the 68k->PPC jump of MacOS than, say, the PPC->x86 jump of BeOS.
 
HHunt said:
At a random guess, it won't be running on PCs. This is, I guess, more like the 68k->PPC jump of MacOS than, say, the PPC->x86 jump of BeOS.
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ah, but it is running on pc's. Already been announced and is currently being shown at WWDC 05.
 
Archer75 said:
ah, but it is running on pc's. Already been announced and is currently being shown at WWDC 05.
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What coverage I can see says "an intel mac", not "a PC". Big difference.
 
The prospect of a Mac OS on a PC is very interesting... serious competition for MS, though it could lead to HORRENDOUS complications and dirty tactics in compatibility.

AMD have been screwed by this - aside from having the best processors they just can't do anything right...


Hey, this means Apple will be the first system builder with their own OS...*snort*
 
Archer75 said:
ah, but it is running on pc's. Already been announced and is currently being shown at WWDC 05.
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I'm pretty sure he means that it won't run on regular off the shelf PCs (e.g. it will have to be an Apple vended part to run OS X).
 
scrumdiddly said:
The prospect of a Mac OS on a PC is very interesting... serious competition for MS, though it could lead to HORRENDOUS complications and dirty tactics in compatibility.

AMD have been screwed by this - aside from having the best processors they just can't do anything right...


Hey, this means Apple will be the first system builder with their own OS...*snort*
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I'm fairly sure IBM sold PCs with OS/2 once. :D

Also, nothing I've read so far denies nor confirms that these "Intel Macs" are in any way PCs. They might be far more alien than the xbox, from a PC POV.

Jehannum: Yep.
Archer75: You might be confusing "x86" with "PC" :)
 
If it's using a standard Intel x86 chip, and has been for years according to jobs, it's a PC. The only question is really just what motherboard it's using. And since this as been under wraps for many years it would'nt suprise me if it were an off the shelf ATX intel board.
 
All you would have to do is use a new chipset which OS X would require and you wouldn't be able to run Mac OSX on regular PCs. The interesting thing will be seeing how Mac zealots who bashed Intel/AMD/x86 and how they'll take to it.

The old x86 ISA will now be at the heart of every Mac now. The developers actually cheered Otellini - I wonder if that would have ever happened had he (or Grove or Barrett before) not been sharing the stage with Jobs.

Regardless, as a dual user of a Mac and PC, I think this is great news. I could careless if Apple locks the hardware down (which is a certainty). They still design the best PCs and that is worth the premium. I wouldn't have minded an AMD partnership either (and who knows, this opens the door for just such a thing down the road), but I have no trouble embracing a Pentium-M derived Powerbook :).
 
thanks, Steve. Want your G5 back that I plopped $2k on?

If I can just go by some AMD stuff and run your wonderful OS on it, you can have it back :mad:

I'll just keep the 20" widescreen part
 
ramuman said:
All you would have to do is use a new chipset which OS X would require and you wouldn't be able to run Mac OSX on regular PCs.
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At this point I think that's the worse thing they could do. They have a real opportunity to compete with both Windows and Linux on the PC. And I think apple does have the better operating system.

Still, if they did this it still would'nt be long before someone hacks it and it's running on my PC.
 
Archer75 said:
If it's using a standard Intel x86 chip, and has been for years according to jobs, it's a PC. The only question is really just what motherboard it's using. And since this as been under wraps for many years it would'nt suprise me if it were an off the shelf ATX intel board.
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Ok, update. It was a Dell. :eek:
 
It's about time, about 30 years in the making. Apple could be the microsoft of today if only they had not adopted their proprietary stance on everything. Apple had the big lead in the early days and wasted it all away. They shouldn't repeat this by using custom hardware today. Using a custom made chipset is not economically practical or financially smart. SGI did that with their Intel machines and look what happened to them.

I have concerns about Mac OSX succeeding though. It's Appleness is just a thin layer running on top of a free OS. Even their compiler is just gcc. How much will this Appleness be worth in the OS wars?
 
Is it even worth the money for a 1.67ghz G4 Powerbook now? Not really... :(
 
As for myself, I bungled the Mini prediction, but I nailed this one to a T:

-IBM's pragmatic disinterest in Apple
-Freescale losing interest in desktop PPC
-Jobs not being a slave to the past
-Intel's instutional lust for an Apple design win
-OSX being the jumping off point for a cross-platform OS
-Problems with porting applications being overblown
-Jobs massive strategic repositioning to switch the wider market to Macs

Here's another prediction: Apple will be selling OSX through first tier OEM's within a year of X86's rollout.

So how are the obsessive PPC Macboys and the Ars Technica digerati going to spin this?

A lot of self-proclaimed experts, and a lot of arm-chair experts on a lot of blogs should never make a prediction on a computer company's strategic direction ever again. They simply have no grasp of the big picture or any ability to separate history's lessons from history's prologue. The Mac on X86 predictors deserve a HUGE apology from both the Mac community and armchair experts who said that this wouldn't happen. We've had to put up with so much nasty crap from ignorant geeks who don't know jack about strategic business decisions.

Now, it's time for some well deserved crow eating in Nerd Land. Soup's up.
 
This is an odd move for Apple. Let's not forget that NeXT did a similar move under Steve Jobs. NeXT was about the OS, not the hardware. Now he's trying to do the same with Apple. Will it fail this time? Who can say.

I will, however, venture to say that in a few short months of Apple shipping the Dev kits (3.6GHZ P4 with OS 10.4), it'll be online for hackers to get to work on generic boxes. I have no doubts that it'll be done. Lets not forget that the core (BeOS/Darwin) is open source.
 
I'm glad thsi happened. But I just remember a couple of problems when this happened with next however. A real lack of drivers made it a pita to just be able to "slap" nextstep for intel on any old computer.

Ao when nextstep did this we ended up with the "black" hardware - original next and "white" hardware the intel. So with apple are we now going to have the "blue" hardware and the "white" hardware? :)
 
Doubtless there are zealots out there, for every platform. But it did not surprise me there would be a change in the works. The G5 sputtered, and because the discrepency of the Powerbook/iBook line isn't much of a compelling one any more, I would assume some change was going to occur at some point. I am more surprised there wasn't a "production" model available at the conference, though they have a developer machine. Guess they want to give everyone more time b efore they start trickling out...
 
I would just like to say... I got shit for saying there was a 10.4 x86 a few weeks ago.

but either way ... I think x86 apple stuff is awesome.
 
I'm hoping they will have this set to run on some normal x86 hardware. Yes the builds they have had for year prob are running off generic x86 stuff but that doesn't mean the finial will. One of the good things in the past about apple has been since the platform was more of less closed they didn't have the compatably issues that pc makers have. A few 100 possible configs vs millions.
 
I think the availability to run an Apple OS on Intel x86 hardware could have huge implications, especially in the area of hacker attacks, viruses, and the like. I think this could seriously undermine the work of those unscrupulous folk out there who like writing viruses, DoS attacks, etc....

This could also provide a huge profit for Apple at the same time. While they may feel some financial sting at the end of this quarter because of the large amount of excess iPods in their channels, selling their OS to folks with Intel-based machines could possibly take alot of the market share away from Microsoft.

Of course, I could just be talking out of my ass. :p
 
Archer75 said:
At this point I think that's the worse thing they could do. They have a real opportunity to compete with both Windows and Linux on the PC. And I think apple does have the better operating system.

Still, if they did this it still would'nt be long before someone hacks it and it's running on my PC.
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I doubt Apple will start becoming another PC maker like Dell or HP. They're not going to sell their OS without making sure it only runs on Apple PCs. They will do everything in their power to lock down OS X to their x86 platforms. How well this can be done?

Who knows - there are sure a lot more hackers out there than Apple developers, but if Intel wants to put a hardware lock into the chipset, or even better decides to slightly modify their CPUs (i.e. change the CPUID to something that Mac unqiue that an OS X installer would look for before installing), then they can lock it down fairly well. Intel could do a lot of things since they don't have to maintain true x86 compatibility (i.e. legacy compatibility).

The flip side is running Windows on Apple hardware - which I would love if it had the power of a x86 PC - a dual boot (OS X/Win), well designed, quiet (albeit expensive) tower :D.
 
I was reading on slashdot earlier that Apple was going to make a OSX 10.4.1 Preview for x86 available today. I didn't see it on Apples site yet, but this was just after the conference was over. I figure they will support X Chipset, since the ram/proc/videocard/hard drive don't matter.
 
We all knew Apple had internal versions of OS X on x86. The surprising read was that every version of OS X for the past 5 years has been x86 compatable. So Apple has been considering this move for awhile. I was hoping when it happened it would be with AMD. Either way Apple needed to move away from the PowerPC. IBM has been slacking for years. They just don't care about it. It's not a big moneymaker for them. Even the CPU's they are selling to consoles are dirt cheap barely turning a profit. Intel was asking too much so Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all went with the PowerPC.

Truth is Macs really are slower than PC's. It's sad but it's not Apple's fault. And that is why they are moving to Intel. Also, the heat of the PowerPC is rediculous. So much so that it requires watercooling. It's an innefficient CPU. I believe the W/C put's a nice dent in Apple's profit per system as well.

It's a definite that OS X will not run on an ordinary PC. It doesn't now. Apple has likely hadded a locked bios or firmware that prevents it from being installed. Apple really is all obout the OS. But it makes it's money from selling the hardwareneeded to run it. And besides. The beauty and simplicity of the Mac it's that's its a computer built from the ground up with the OS and hardware working together for ultimate stability.
 
Spaceninja said:
I was reading on slashdot earlier that Apple was going to make a OSX 10.4.1 Preview for x86 available today. I didn't see it on Apples site yet, but this was just after the conference was over. I figure they will support X Chipset, since the ram/proc/videocard/hard drive don't matter.
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Tha is for developers only Spaceninja. You would need to subscribe to the apple developers network...
 
Cool, now Macs will get more blue screens of deaths....
 
Nebbish said:
Tha is for developers only Spaceninja. You would need to subscribe to the apple developers network...
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Didn't read that.. Oh well. have a mac, just an old one that barely runs osx... would be nice to run it on a nice Pentium D with about 2 gigs of ram........ As long as I could build my own.
 
I wonder about their support system for current owners. If they go Intel will they just tell all their current owners to suck it and throw away your $3000 investment when it comes time for repairs?
 
MartinX said:
Yeah!

Just like PCs running Linux do...
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Well, I get black screens of death filled with text. But only when I'm developing drivers and I'm doing something wrong.
 
darktiger said:
Cool, now Macs will get more blue screens of deaths....
Click to expand...

You know, I run XP, Tiger and Linux on an A64 rig and a Powerbook and can't remember the time I got a BSOD save for a compatibility issue that Athlon 64s have with Unreal Tournament 2004 and SP2.

I think if OS X for x86 = Windows ME, then you're right :rolleyes:
 
BoogerBomb said:
I wonder about their support system for current owners. If they go Intel will they just tell all their current owners to suck it and throw away your $3000 investment when it comes time for repairs?
Click to expand...

Jobs said that they would continue to support PPC for a long time to come. As it stands, you still have at least 2 years before a full transistion.

However, does anyone have any bets on how long this page stays up:
http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ ;)
 
I believe the reason Apple went with Intel instead of AMD is supply and demand. While AMD CPUs are usually cheaper, they still have a tendency to not make it to market until long after their launch. Apple cannot afford this to happen with another CPU change, the G5 move forced them to give money back to many people because IBM could not keep up, and lets not forget that we will (probably) never see a G5 Powerbook.

What surprises me more is that they're going to x86. If this has been around for 5 years, why hasn't Intel forced Itanium on it? This begs the question of what has Apple been up to behind those closed doors? How many different CPUs did they try before deciding on x86?

Regardless of your alliance in the Mac/PC war, you have to accept that Apple created the industry that we all love. This move is significant. I had always thought that Apple was staying ahead of aging technology. x86 is nearly 25 years old, surely there's something better out there they could have moved to?

As Steve Jobs said, "The Soul of the Mac is in the Operating System." Well Mr. Jobs, you just gave Mac's soul to Intel where Microsoft dominates. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end of the Uniqueness that is Apple.
 
:eek:

That's really the only way to sum this up. Well, there is another way:

:eek: :eek:

I mean, what's the one thing that we all know about computers? There are PCs, and there are Macs. You get one, or the other, or one of each. Stuff you do with a PC (gaming, tweaking, customizing) you just don't do with a Mac. Stuff you do with a Mac (heavy multimedia, the super-slick Mac OS X) you just don't do on a PC.

It's ALL changing now. Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but this really is huge. This could change the entire industry. Maybe Apple will start selling more to everyday consumers. Maybe Microsoft will realize they actually have competition in the OS market. Maybe those people who just can't get Linux to do what they want will be able to put together something that works for them.

I don't know, but this could be a day that we all look back on in wonder.
 
Apple is using a x86 processor. Not the x86 ISA. The term x86 ISA encompasses all of the standards that the platform conforms to. This means standard ports, hardware to software interfaces, boot processes, partitioning schemes, etc....

Just because you are using a x86 processor does not mean you have to use the x86 ISA! I'll bet Apple's x86 processor machines are still using OpenFirmware and are probably still compatible with all Mac PCI/AGP cards.

Microsoft done something very similar with the XBox. It uses a x86 processor, but everything else is completely different.

You probably will eventually be able to run OS X x86 on standard PCs, but only under a virtual machine that emulates OpenFirmware and any other HW differences. Though it should run close to native speed since the processor is the same :D
 
i still doubt we'll see OSX for x86 on the shelves of bestbuy ready to be installed on anyone's ol' x86 system. wouldn't make financial sense for apple given their current release lacks any cd key or authorization and the proliferation of warez in the pc industry for windows... maybe something in the bios, dunno... but i'm thinking P4+ inside the macs, not OSX in the wild.

-esr
 
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