My whole world view is crashing in on me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4612951.stm

Okay, please start your AppleBashing(TM) at once!

 

What do you think this means to the consumer? I don't know what to make of this news other than it should be possible in the future to run both an Apple O/S and Windows (and Linux, of course) on a partitioned drive in the same computer.

I would think that Apple should eventually come down in price to be more competitive with Windows boxes.

How do the Apple faithful feel about Job's decision?

--
0==WW==0
"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

this is all a result of IBM failing to be able to make a G5 chip run cool enough to be put into a Powerbook without melting the case or causing a rash of burn victums (a la early 1990's).

IBM can't cut it, so apple made the executive decision.
smart, since they're prolly loosing a lot every day they cant launch a G5 powerbook.

who cares at this point...carve the bastard out of balsawood and call it a toaster...as long as it does what i need and doesn't spontainiosly implode i am all good.

so who's gonna MS paint the apple logo w/ the "Intel Inside" logo in it?

 

my only concern is if it will affect system stability. i realize a lot of microsoft's issues are related to code, but its also related to system architecture. i have faith in apple, and i really don't think they'd do something this drastic without looking at every possibility and evaluating everything.

 

HAHAHAHHAHAHAH

Intelowned

 

I am no processor expert but that news seems rather pathetic on IBM's part, doesn't it? I mean who can't make a capable G5 chip in this era? I mean duh!

I'm curious as to what people think about this too. I plan to be an apple owner the next time i'm due for a new computer.

 

Apparently, you are right. Jobs and Apple have already explored such a platform, unbeknownst to the general public.

In his speech Jobs revealed that a team of Apple engineers has been secretly working on a transition from IBM's PowerPC platform to an Intel-based architecture for five years inside a building on the firm's Cupertino campus.

In fact, every edition of Macintosh OS X that has been released since then has been also been designed to run on the Intel platform "just in case," Jobs said.

"The Mac OS has been leading a secret double life for the past five years," Jobs said. "So Mac OS X is cross platform by design right from the very beginning."

A few developers in the audience groaned when Jobs confirmed the switch, but later cheered when Jobs demonstrated a Macintosh desktop that was already operating on an Intel Pentium 4 3.6 Ghz processor.

--
0==WW==0
"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

yeah, i heard that he was running the intel chip for that.

as a proud powerbook g4 owner i couldn't be happier, but it did seem rather odd to me that there weren't any g5 notebooks, so that explains it.

 

I'm not exactly an Apple purist (consider me a unix nerd that jumped on the os-x bandwagon), so I gotta say this news doesn't really bother me.

Its just a processor, and Apple already proved their point in the processor arena. Intel x86 processors already reduce their legacy CISC instructions into RISC instructions before computation, so Apple/IBM/Motorolla already "won" on that front.

The software shouldn't really take much. Get the compilers working (I think they'll be able to find a copy of GCC for x86) and 90% of the code should compile easily. All developers will really need to do is swap the assembly code from big endian little endian, and maybe change a few actual instruction names around. Shouldn't be too hard, I don't think. It'll be tedious, but not exactly difficult.

 

Its quite funny actually. There were rumors of this for quite some time that really divided the zealots. Some believed in the Marklar (OS X on x86) rumors, but a lot believed Apple's official stance that it didn't exist. Quite funny to see flame wars about Apple rumors.

 

I was pretty shocked when I read the news today. It might be neat to eventually dual-boot into MacOS just to become more familiar with it.

 

I'm not a big Apple fan, but isn't the current Mac OS just a highly customized Linux Distro? Since Linux has been running on Intel Architecture forever, it shouldn't be too difficult to port Apple applications over to the new hardware.

Just another step in Intel's plan to rule the world... Wintel and now Mactel...

 

OS X is unix based, it really doesn't have a whole lot to do with linux. As far as the rumors went, I heard a lot of them too, and I was in the "lets wait and see" camp. The RSS feeds have been HOT with this stuff though, every half hour (refresh) there's a new article about it.

 

Will Apple commision (or use if it already exists) a 64bit chip from intel though? I would think they would want to, as the newest OS-X versions are built for it.

 

Just an "old school" side note. It is funny that "purists" are upset that Apple may be switching to Intel chips instead of IBM. Remember back in the day when Apple made all of those "Big Brother" commercials in 1984 when the first Mac was released? The enemy then, IBM and the chipmaker at the time, motorola.

P.S. I once paid $200 for a 14mhz 68000 chip for my Amiga 500.