Apples on Intel
Posted by Skrud at Monday, June 6th 2005 at 3:28pm
So it’s official … Apple is moving to Intel-based processors. And not even some super-awesome PPC-core based processor, but the boring old Pentium at that! At first I was shocked, aghast, and confused. The PowerPC processors are some super-awesome CPUs, based on a RISC architecture. They have much faster processing speeds than x86 CPUs, and it’s no wonder that both Sony and Microsoft are using a PPC core processor for their next-gen consoles: PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.
Yet Apple’s moving away from PPC? Interesting…
It took a while for this to sink in … but what this really means is that Apple software products are no longer going to be dependent on Apple hardware. That means I could go out and by “Tiger - the Intel version” and put it on my home PC. … So could everyone else.
There’s more too… In a report released a couple of days ago from MacDailyNews, it seems that the Mac OS install base is about 16% – and that Mac users tend to buy more software than Windows users. Why is that? There is certainly no lack of torrents. (I have two theories on this… (1) the “normal” people that buy macs don’t know about pirated software (and good for them?), and (2) people are more likely to buy software if it doesn’t cost about the same as a downtown apartment, complete with hookers). I for one am not adverse to paying $60 for iWork, if I’ll actually use it, while I’ll never plunk down the full $900+ for Microsoft Office, or even the $250 for the Office Student Edition.
If, all of a sudden, hardware is no longer a barrier for Apple products, then how many people would be switching to Mac OS X? Even just comparing the $150 price tag of Tiger with the $464 for Windows XP Pro SP2 (according to NCIX)… what do you think that means? How many more people will buy iWork over Microsoft Office (well, at least Word and Powerpoint) if it even works on Dell flavour-of-the-month $450 PC?
Okay but enough about prices … I hate numbers. The point is, that Apple is removing a significant barrier in the adoption of their products, and they’re entering the same arena as Windows and Linux in terms of cross-platformability. I bet Microsoft is a little scared. Apple has an excellent reputation when it comes to Mac OS X, and they’re getting more popular by the day thanks to the hugely successful iPod, among other things. On top of all that, Mac OS X, being Unix-based, will work flawlessly with anything that’s running any flavour of Unix. There’s no need to for tinkering or hacking around or finding annoying workarounds to get it to work in a Unix environment.
What about the fact that using an x86 processor would mean that all that software which currently exists - compiled only for Windows - would now run natively in a Mac environment? VirualPC does a great job of emulating, but if you can run stuff natively, then you won’t even be limited when it comes to gaming on a Mac. Do you think Microsoft will port Direct-X to an Intel-based MacOS in order to sell more games? Probably not, because that would pretty much kill their last remaining advantage. But what if you could get games on your Mac to use existing DirectX libraries that live on a Windows partition in a dual-booting system? (You can already do this sort of thing with NTFS drivers on Linux to enable NTFS write support)…
There’s a flipside to this whole situation as well, that Apple’s hardware would become more popular as well. What about people who were previously turned off by the fact that they’re have to use Mac OS – as foreign as it can be to comfortable Windows users. Now they could get themselves a beautiful-looking PowerBook, and have Windows on it. They’d be comfortable … well, until it crashes. :P
Earlier today on the forums I said I probably wouldn’t buy a Mac if it was Intel-based. I’m still not sure. The PowerPC processor was one of the influencing factors of my purchase. They’re smooth and fast. If Macs were all using the same Intel processors as everyone else … then I probably would have bought an IBM ThinkPad or something of the sort, and then I could just put OS X on it and reap all the benefits. It really is all about the OS … I absolutely love it. The hardware is little more than a complimentary commodity – even if it _is_ in fact, top-notch hardware.
I think the biggest obstacle regarding the switch would not be about compatibility issues with existing software - since Apple’s Rosetta emulation software seems to accomplish that well. The biggest problem is going to be keeping up to date with different kinds of hardware. Making sure that drivers exist for different peripherals and graphics cards and network cards and scsi cards and all that other stuff. One thing Apple has always maintained is the philosophy of “It just works”. I can attest to the fact that I’ve never had to fiddle with anything to get things working on my Mac – things just work. But moving to a hardware-independent level means that there’s this whole bag of worms being opened that could either make or break Apple’s transition. Without the tight control over their hardware, could Apple still make everything work as smoothly as it does now? Or will everything resort to crossing your fingers and hoping that new graphics card you installed won’t set your computer on fire…
I’m really glad I got the last line of PowerBooks with PPC processors. :D
Well said!
But, I think you’re a littlw too hard on INter based processors… No matter what you say about PPC’s being “smoother” or “faster”, it’s simply not true! Just because it’s NOT x86 based, doesn’t mean it’s better in any way. Risc architechure is inherently flawed for personal computers. They’re wonderful for servers and high performance computers that do specific things, but PC’s (of all types) need to be able to handle many different programs and uses at a time. x86 instructions (with MMX, or whatever it uses) does actually help by giving compilers an extended instruction set!
Intel (and AMD) based processors are so vastly superiour to any other processors out there. I think that’s the MAIN reason Apple switched. They probably only went with PPC because they were hoping big blue would have enough clout to muscle it’s way into the processor market with a faster-than-intel processor; but it never happened.
You’re right. There are some benchmarks comparing the G5 and the Xeon and Opteron processors (you’ll find it falls flat next to the Opteron). The conclusion is that the G5 is fantastic for workstations, but not for servers…
Besides that - I have a G4.
Anyway, I like the PPC architecture. If you compile anything with Altivec vectorizing they’ll outperform pretty much anything. Unfortunately gcc isn’t all that great at it, apparently. But my mplayer is compiled with altivec enhancements and that’s all great for me. (Altivec > MMX :P)
I was kind of hoping for another generation of PPC’s. Just one more – to kind of blow everyone away. I think the x86 architecture is reaching its limit with recent speed boosts being attributed to little more than better cooling systems. “Sure it can run at 4GHz, we just need a bigger fan!”.
I would like to see a new breed of better, faster, higher-performance processors that are developed totally from scratch, using everything we’ve learned in the last 30 or so years of computing. I know they’ll break compatibility with all existing software and we’d have a bit of a rough start – but the sooner we do it the better. We can’t stay stuck using the same achitetcture that we’ve been using since 1974… and the longer we wait the harder the transition will be.
In conclusion: I think we should be moving progressively away from x86, not towards it.
What bothers me about all this is that Apple hardware is no longer unique. From now on “Apple” will just seem like another common PC manufacturer in the same boat as Dell or Compaq. When I bought my imac G5, it was in part due to the fact that Apple had a small niche in the PC market. I took it as a bit of a status symbol to be honest.
My main reason for purchasing a mac was still the OS and the software, but finding out that soon it will be available for the common Pentium based PC is a bit of a let down, especially considering the current price differences.
Sorry but just because the CPUs within Apple systems will be Intel-based rather than PPC does not mean OS X will be running on everyday PCs. Apple is not going to be battling MS for such a role. And Apple will not want to loose out on their hardware profits. You better believe Apple and Intel will be working something out to prevent PCs running OS X. Maybe a custom chipset or something… DRM… who knows.
All the switch to intel means is that you’ll stil have OS X running on Apple systems, but the CPU behind it will be an x86.
However, there’s always the possibility of running a hacked up system, using custom drivers and whatnot to get x86 running on your everyday PC, but I think it’ll be a couple years before anything close to that happens.
Well we know that now :P
I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t too far down the line for Apple to run on commodity PCs. If they did do such a thing … Microsoft is going to be in a lot of trouble.