Forums | MacLife

I agree, mahakali. People put too much stock in Steve's pride and ego affecting his business decisions.

Pros: Dual boot with windows, plus it's only a matter of time 'till someone makes something like classic for running windows.

Cons: There will never be a next generation G5.

Altivec software developers are the ones most upset, as I understand the situation.

Tetrachloride wrote:

Altivec software developers are the ones most upset, as I understand the situation.

According to Ryan Gordon, SSE3 is much better and a lot more flexible.

-mark

Kirk wrote:

Not true, HJ.  Our thermal analysts derate computer parts all the time for high temperature operations.  We don't even bother trying to use Intel chips in our hardware.  At elevated temperatures they won't even survive half a year where a PPC part is good for five years.  And before the rest of you jump on me about consumer electronics being different, remember that electronics lifetimes obey the Arrhenius relationship.  A 10 C increase in operating temperature cuts the part lifetime in half.

If you have a thermal department then you aren't exactly using a processor at room temperature in a PC. You are talking about the embedded market and yes thats a whole world different than Apple putting an Intel chip in a powermac.

The Pentium4 was never designed for the embedded market. Considering NASA uses Intel parts and the space shuttle has 'Intel Inside' I have no doubt Intel could make a cpu that takes heavy temperature changes but the P4 is a desktop cpu and there is no reason for design extremes like that.

So unless you plan on putting your Intel based Mac in some harsh enviroment that the hardware was never designed to operate in to begin with I'm sure you'll find the life span of Intel cpus is quite good.

Like I said I have 386 systems from 89' that still boot DOS and Windows 3.0. The stuff lasts.

ScifiterX wrote:

Possible positive repercussions of the x86 architecture switch include the possible expansion of video cards and more, possibly better, options in "emulation"/software compatibility/OS choices.

However, on the negative side, this probably just put Apple in Microsoft's cross-hairs. The software vendors are gonna be less than pleased about having to develop for Mac's running radically different hardware. Every time Apple shifts architecture their market goes into the dumper. And finally, of all the CPUs, Intel currently has the worst real performance. They claim to have the best chips and many people fall for their marketing but it's clearly not the truth. Over all AMD chips edge out the Power PC and smoke Intel's best offering like butcher smokes a ham. As far as chip failure goes, Pentiums are quite failure prone. Intel has at least made it so that frying a chip usually only results in a fried CPU though. I've seen AMDs & Power PCs take out whole computers when they fail. Fortunately they are less prone to failure.

Where do people come up with this stuff ?

I've been using Intel since the early-mid 80s. NEVER had a bad Intel cpu. NEVER. Never had one fail in daily use over years. I'm currently on a 4 year old dual P3 system. Still running strong.

Burnt a P4 out overclocking the living smurf out of it and fried a couple of AMD procs doing the same in my time but thats what happens when you play around in the OC world with any cpu.

  AMD ? So the Opteron and Athlon64 have a better design for the time being with a sweet memory interconnect. That dosen't say anything for AMD's ability to deliver in quantities and do it consistently over the long haul. AMD is only currently strong on the high end vs. Intel and Apple surely likes what Intel is doing in the mobile market where low power is king.

Considering its all x86 anyway Apple always has the option of going to AMD if Intel proves to be a problem down the road but Intel invented the cpu as we know it and they are not going to just sit around like moto/ibm did and pay apple lip service. They intend to keep dominating the very industry they started and Apple's cpu troubles are over with a partner like that on their side.

I don't think this is all that bad for Altivec developers.
Most altivec applications will run without altivec (not many OS X apps won't run on a B+W G3 or CRT iMac). Granted, they get a boost from altivec - but they'll run w/o it.

If rosetta is as good as they say, those apps will run just fine on an x86 Mac - get a performance boost compiling it w/o altivec optimization for x86 mac - and can get another boost if x86 optimizations are implemented.

If you already have a port of your software for Windows, you probably already have the x86 optimization part figured out.

Now that we know they have been doing this for 5 years, I doubt they are going to stop. They will probably keep ppc builds too.

Oh, I really really doubt rosetta is as good as they imply. How much did we see of Photoshop CS2? Great, you can run Photoshop CS2, but at what performance hit? It sure took a while to load too. Yeah I am sure your fairly basic apps work work great but anything else will probably need a recompile at the least.

NAG wrote:

Now that we know they have been doing this for 5 years, I doubt they are going to stop. They will probably keep ppc builds too.

Oh, I really really doubt rosetta is as good as they imply. How much did we see of Photoshop CS2? Great, you can run Photoshop CS2, but at what performance hit? It sure took a while to load too. Yeah I am sure your fairly basic apps work work great but anything else will probably need a recompile at the least.

It basically emulates a G3. (no altivec etc.) I'm not sure of how fast of a G3, though.

akb825 wrote:

NAG wrote:

Now that we know they have been doing this for 5 years, I doubt they are going to stop. They will probably keep ppc builds too.

Oh, I really really doubt rosetta is as good as they imply. How much did we see of Photoshop CS2? Great, you can run Photoshop CS2, but at what performance hit? It sure took a while to load too. Yeah I am sure your fairly basic apps work work great but anything else will probably need a recompile at the least.

It basically emulates a G3. (no altivec etc.) I'm not sure of how fast of a G3, though.

I am sure there are other gotchas (like classic...yeah I know they are different).

HackerJax wrote:

Considering NASA uses Intel parts and the space shuttle has 'Intel Inside' I have no doubt Intel could make a cpu that takes heavy temperature changes but the P4 is a desktop cpu and there is no reason for design extremes like that.

Heh. Could that be why the shuttle fleet is still currently grounded.

akb825 wrote:

Yes, an Intel chip caused foam to chip off and hit a wing, damaging the shuttle.

Is that what it was?  I thought it was that insulating foam stuff.  Man, these chips ARE dangerous.

Well, I think there is good and bad in this decision for consumers. First the bad. This move has the potential to reduce desktop CPU competition / choice by 2 (IBM, Freescale). Transitions are bad because you don't know if you should buy now or wait to get the latest hardware. If you are in business, though, you just buy what you need when you need it. I'm generally talking 'home' users like myself.

The good news. Mac OS X continues. It's simply the best OS on the market. Since the hardware becomes basically equivalent, the 'OS Wars', become just that. Add in components like video cards, CPU upgrades for the Mac should come way down in price. Software eventually should become just about as bountiful for Mac as it currently is for Windows, since porting should be relatively simple.

That said, I still feel a sadness in my heart. I always wanted the AIM alliance to destroy the 'Wintel hegemony'. Probably because Windows folks over the years (of my Mac use), have taken AIM (a pun?) at me every opportunity. At the place I work, for years I was the only 'Mac Guy'. This year I was feeling better since several coworkers bought iPods and three even bought Macs!

Also, my current Mac is now 4-1/2 years old. I was planning on buying a new Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0. I am now thinking I'll just wait to see what Apple Intel based Macs come along first. For now, I might just blow some of my savings on Tiger and a newer video card.