9 Jun 2005 @ 06:04, by Raymond Powers
I jst bought a Powerbook G4 1.67. Hope I didn't jump the gun. Noooo...I love my little box.
This is from Cult of Mike
I didn’t believe the rumors when I read them. Apple moving away from the PPC to Intel? No way. I just didn’t believe it, it was that simple. What reason did Apple have to move away from the beloved IBM PowerPC to Intel? PPC was faster, and for sure would only be getting faster. IBM is developing Cell, what is sure to be the next generation of computing. We are seeing Apple competitors moving to PPC, Microsoft, has chosen this chipset for its next generation gaming console, and Sony’ PlayStation3 will be powered by the IBM Cell.
Yesterday afternoon, when I saw that the headlines were true, that Apple would move to Intel after all, I was shocked, appalled, why? My initial thoughts were that there was no way this would help Apple, this was the end of the line for Apple Computer. I decided to read and listen, find out what others though, then after I did the opinional research, listen to Jobs speak about the topic, and write this essay.
I didn’t understand a lot about it right away, because I didn’t listen to the keynote first. I agreed with much of what the gentlemen at TWiT had to say. All the software would have to be re-written, x86 and Intel didn’t look to have that strong of a future, and we would be looking at an almost halt in sales for at least the next 6 months.
After watching the keynote, I have some slightly different ideas on this. For starters, I realized that the speculation that TWiT had about everyone having to re-write their applications was 100% false. It’s not a matter of having to completely re-vamp an application; it’s a matter of recompiling and tweaking as Steve put it for us. A dual binary version of software will insure that those of us who still run PPC’s (I run two PPC PowerBooks) will be able to have upcoming versions of software. This also comfortsome in knowing that I don’t have to be worried next year when I walk into my local Apple store and want to get the new iLife, I know I wont have to have a new Macintel to run it. Rosetta is something that will help developers as well, this insures that even if a developer decides to not recompile for Intel, we’ll still be able to run PPC applications on the Macintel. The demo that Jobs showed at WWDC showed that on his 3.06ghz P4 with 2GB RAM, Rosetta ran without notice. I’m hoping there will be a reverse that allows people still running the PPC will be able to run the applications only compiled for the Macintel.
The other for me was, how would Apple survive if sales do halt in the next 6 months? Sure iPod and iTunes will flourish, but Apple needs to continue to move units. The majority of the new consumers will most likely be blind to the fact that the Macintel is coming, and will continue to switch away as nothing happened. But most of the current users, the geeks of the Mac world, are defiantly going to hold off on a purchase until we start to see the Macintels coming into play. I know that personally, I have just advised all family members, a few of which were about to click the “buy” button, to wait for the new Macintels to come out. It’s more and more people doing this that will kill Apple in this time of test.
I am starting to believe that this switch to the Macintel from PPC will be a rather good thing. My original thoughts were that this should in no way, shape, or form, happen. The more I read about it though, the better it became. This will push the prices of Macs down to a more reasonable level, a level that more people will be willing to dish out a few hundred more to get the beauty of a Mac and of an Apple. The other things that this will bring about is more dramatic updates to the notebook line from Apple, as well as bigger and better updates to the other computer lines as well.
There are a few things that scare me in this regard as well. Apple will be able to put a “G5” into the PowerBook, possibly a Pentium-M? A great and solid chip which should do worlds of good for the notebook line by Apple. And faster chip speeds in the other lines for computers for Apple as well. But this is the thing; the IBM PPC was always benchmarked with a “slower” speed than the Intel or the AMD. Hell, AMD decided to throw out clock speeds altogether and just give you a 2600+ chip name, which gave you an idea of what the speed was still. Steve Jobs used a 3.06GHz Pentium 4 at his WWDC keynote, a slower chip than the 2.7 GHz G5 that we see on the market right now. So why is this important? Well Jobs had promised us a year ago that we would see a 3Ghz G5 by now, and it doesn’t look like IBM will be releasing that number for some time now. Steve has to come through on his promise here, so, a chip change was needed.
Most of us also wanted to see a G5 PowerBook by now, unfortunately, IBM wouldn’t be able to do this for somewhere around two years. This is an insanely long time, something that again, Apple couldn’t wait for. This, was one of the key factors in this change. The Apple desktop line has pretty much been steady over the years, yet the notebook lines have skyrocketed in sales, it’s their baby right now and they have to take care of it by making bigger advances in the notebook line, something that the Pentium-M can produce.
That’s one of my reasons for the switch from PPC to Intel for Apple. Appearance, if it looks faster, if it looks more “up to date” with what the rest of the PC industry is seeing, then it should sell better. Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to that.
But what does this mean? As we have seen with the PC industry, if you buy a computer on a Monday, the latest and greatest, on Friday that computer will be so outdated that you cant run the software that you bought a week later. Will this happen to Apple too? Will be seeing weekly upgrades? If, this were to happen, I would like to say now, that Apple, is a goner. Allow me to explain why.
Apple users dish out a lot of money on their systems, and they don’t mind doing it. Why? Because they know that it will be worth it in the end. They will be able to get a good 5 or 6 years out of their system. This is proven with people running Panther on their 300mhz G3 systems. People don’t mind spending extra money if they know they will be able to keep it around for a long time, with it being outdated sure, but not to the extent that they cant use it on a regular basis. A 3.06GHz “G5” coming out in Q1 is awesome, but in Q2 if there is a 4.0GHz “G5” the users will not be happy. It doesn’t feel nice to be outdated that fast. So Apple will surely have to plan these releases in a way that they can make them spaced out, and not too dramatic to scare off the user into waiting. They also have to keep up with the other PC’s powering Intel. A headache eh? That’s what was nice with the PPC, they were really the only computer with the exception of a few Linux flavors to be running PPC, so they set the launches, they set the industry standard.
What comes next? I wasn’t into computers in 1994, when we switched from m68k to PPC, mainly because I was 5, so I really don’t know. I’m a bit worried, but more than ever, optimistic. The more I look at this move, the more I realize this is going to be a good thing. This isn’t the end of the world as many people originally thought it would be. The new Intel chipset is going to be a good thing; it will have the ability to take Apple to new and better places in the long run. The IBM roadmap for the PPC ended up being one that was slower than Apple could handle. Apple right now needs to be able to develop newer and better computers to stay on top of the media industry. The PPC just couldn’t keep up on where Apple needed to go. IBM was also starting to look more into the Cell processor, another sidetrack for the PPC enhancement.
As I said, Apple has to stay on top of the media industry, again a concern about this (just when you thought I was about to finish up this post huh?). As we all know, the Apple Velocity Engine that is built into the PPC architecture makes the Apple PPC ideal for crunching FPN (Floating Point Numbers). It blows the doors, pants, socks, shoes, anything off of a comparable x86 chip. This worries me because we are moving to x86. FPN crunching is a necessity in gaming, and other media types, and we are moving to a chipset that is slower at this. Could we see a problem in the Apple Pro Series software line? My guess, my hope, is no, but at this point, it’s in the air from what I can see.
We will be fine, that’s what I’m telling myself at least. We will be fine during this move, as long as we as developers do our part to make this transition a smooth and effortless one, Apple will do their part, and we shouldn’t see anything too bad happening. This is a big test, Apple is doing one after another 5 years ago it was OS9 to OSX, and now its PPC to Intel, the difference, this one scares the fuck out of me.
Feel free to pass me related articles, I would love to read more about this, trade links to posts, or just chat with what your thoughts about all this are. I’m pretty much sure I have a solid opinion, that this will be a good thing, but at the same time, I’m scared for what could happen.
-Mike
1770 words | I know I made some words up, but hey, they worked. Excuse the horrible grammar in some spots too.
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