It's the end of an era as Apple moves to the Dark Side. (


From various Mac news websites ...

Macintosh Moving to Intel Processors
------------------------------------
As rumored, Steve Jobs announced today at the Apple Worldwide
Developers Conference that the Macintosh will make a
transition to Intel processors.

Jobs reviewed the two previous major transitions, from
Motorola 680x0 processors to the PowerPC in 1994 thru 1996
(before Steve Jobs was back at the helm), and from Mac OS 9
to Mac OS X in 2001 through 2003. Saying "It's time for a
third transition," he explained that the need for the change
was more than just the inability to deliver a 3.0GHz Power
Mac, as he promised 2 years ago, but that Intel offers
increased performance AND reduced power consumption ("Intel
chips runs cooler"), a critical factor for PowerBooks, and
an exceptional "roadmap" into 2006 and beyond.

He said that Mac OS X has been living a secret double life
for the past five years (see Marklar rumor) and gave a
demonstration. The design for Mac OS X has always been
processor independent and cross-platform capable by design.
The technology to let existing PowerPC applications run on
Intel is named Rosetta and performs dynamic translation
transparent to users (see QuickTransit from Transitive).

Mac OS on Intel is to be given to developers (ADC "Select"
and "Premier" members) now and to customers "this time next
year." The transition will be completed in less than 2 years,
by the end of 2007. Dashboard widgets, scripts, and Java
programs do not need porting. With Xcode 2.1 (out today and
distributed at the Keynote), developers can make a "tweak"
and recompile for Cocoa applications, and port Carbon
applications in a matter of weeks. Mathematica was ported in
2 days, although the porting team had direct support from
Apple. A universal version of MS Office is coming. Photoshop
and its plug-ins run with typical performance but take
longer to load.

All demonstrations during the Keynote were performed on a
3.6GHz Pentium 4, to the surprise of many in the audience.

Representatives from big name companies, including Microsoft
and Adobe, also joined Jobs on stage to vouch their support
of the transition to Intel and reaffirm their commitment to
the Macintosh platform. They were soon followed by Paul
Otellini, Intel's president and CEO, who played a 1996 Apple
ad where an Intel bunny was set a blaze. Intel doesn't hold
a grudge, he said. "So after thirty years, Apple and Intel
are together at last."

In closing, Jobs said that with both Apple and the Mac
strong, it's a great time to start building for the future
and making the company stronger. By next year's World Wide
Developer Conference he suspects that most developers will
be shipping universal binaries of their Mac OS X
applications as Apple begins to divulge information about
the next-generation Mac OS X operating system, code-named
Leopard.

"Because more than the processor, more than the hardware,
the soul of the Mac is its operating system," Jobs said.

Apple press release:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

Intel press release:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archi...050606corp.htm






Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

In article <070620051800223098%helpful_harry (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com>,
helpful_harry (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com says...
They had to get their CPUs from someone. The PowerPC was starting to lag
behind what intel and AMD were doing in key areas. It made good sense.

And besides, OS X is still OS X. From the end users point of view
nothing is really going to change. Its not going to crash more, its not
going to suffer windows driver hell, virii, DLL hell, BSODs, or spyware.

And as long as they 'artificially' block windows from running on Apple
hardware, and/or OS X from running on non-Apple branded systems nothing
really changes to the business model.

Sure there will be hacks out there to get OSX into non-Apple hardware
and if needed hacks to get Windows onto Apple hardware just as there are
hacks to get linux into xbox's... but that's hardly going to be
mainstream.) And apple probably benefits from the extra exposure... as
the kids try out OSX on their PCs... and perhaps find out they like it.


It may also help bring the price of Macs down, which certainly wouldn't
be bad for business.

In article <MPG.1d0ef3f641f27f50989b6c@shawnews>, 42
<nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:

The only "key area" is Steve Jobs' beloved laptop. They're having
trouble getting a G5 to run cool enough, so he "HAS" to switch to
something else. \

Otherwise it makes little sense (as far as we, the public, know about
the chips future plans), and according to many PC user going with Intel
is a mistake anyway and they should have used AMD instead.

The G5 is good enough for Microsoft's next Xbox (and Nintendo's next
GameCube, I think).



Unfortauntely, despite what Steve Jobs himself thinks, the "Mac" isn't
just Mac OS X.



Apple will probably start selling Mac OS X to PC users - like most
manufacturers, they make more money on software than they do on
hardware.




Not likely. Apple trades on the fact that people will pay more for the
"Mac experience" or the "Mac brand". Which means we pay more.



Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

In article <080620050855215732%helpful_harry (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com>,
helpful_harry (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com says...
Laptops are outselling desktops these days. They do HAVE to address that
gap. I think laptops are Apples *most* important market.

True. But if they'd gone AMD many PC users would have said they should
have used Intel instead. Its an almost meaningless debate. Both have
their merits.

/shrug

The CPU isn't even that important in 99% of console games... its the
graphics subsystem that really counts. And if the G5 is just going into
the xbox 360 in 2006, the world is prepared to wait until 2010 or so
before they really expect to see a mobile device playing xbox 360 games.
(ie a portable g5). Apple otoh can't wait until 2010 to upgrade its
laptops

The Mac isn't about, and has never really been about the components
inside the case. Did the previous switches to PCI, to IDE, to
ATI/Nvidia, or even to PPC from 68k really make the slightest differnce
to the "Macness" of the units? Not in the least.

Why should the CPU be any different?

The Mac is a well built good-ergonomics OS on top of well-built good-
ergonomics hardware. That is the mac experience. That will continue
unchanged. The actual CPU in the guts of the unit is virtually
irrelevant.

Maybe. But they nixed the whole "clone macs" a few years ago. Remember
the motorola and umax boxes?. Likely one day they'll start selling OSX
to PC users, but they weren't ready to become a software vendor a few
years ago, I doubt they are ready now. I could be wrong, but i doubt it.

At anyrate, at this point they were adamant that OS X will only run on
apple hardware. It will probably change eventually... but i doubt it
will be soon. The ergonomics of the hardware is part of what makes a mac
a mac.

Perhaps. But then Apple makes more money per unit if the cpu price
drops. Its still good for business.

In article <MPG.1d0fba2e4e0edecd989b6d@shawnews>, 42
<nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:

That's mostly because it's the latest "fad". Most people don't actually
NEED a laptop and very rarely use it as one - they just want the
"newest toy" so they look "cool". (




Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

In article <080620051814304334%helpful_harry (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com>,
helpful_harry (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com says...
I completely disagree.

Most people I know with laptops wouldn't even use a desktop if they had
one. Period. From my Mom sitting outside in the sun instant messaging
with family and surfing the web for home decorating ideas to my dad
searching ebay for treasure on the couch while catching the evening
news...

Now either of them will flip it open to look up phone numbers,
addresses, check movie showtimes, get directions & maps, etc. But only
because its beside them on the couch, or on the kitchen counter, or
dining room table... neither of them would EVER go sit down in another
room to "use a computer".

Trust me, these people have had computers and internet since it became
available (thanks to having university age students at the time...)
they've had computers in the house since before the IBM XT. They hadn't
TOUCHED them until they got wireless LANs and laptops. They simply had
no interest in being tied to a desk in the den to play. The laptop
integrates with their lifestyle. Now they can't live without them. They
don't have phonebooks anymore, they don't have address books, they don't
look at the paper for stock prices or movie listings.

Most of the people I know with laptops are the same way. They use them
as portable offices, toys on the couch, for school (on campus during
breaks and even on the bus), etc etc. In almost every case if you
tethered these people to a desktop they'd either feel totally hamstrung
by the limitations or they'd simply stop using computers entirely.

They aren't just "trying to be cool" because its a "fad". Its the
evolution of computing and internet access.

There's a lot of people who'll find they don't need a desktop once they
have a laptop.

The only people who need desktops are programmers, data entry personel,
full time accountants, graphic artists, and other professionals who need
to spend large amounts of time working on them, at desks, with extra
large screens and ergonomic keyboards... oh... and gamers.

The laptop is the superior choice for most users who don't exceed the
requirements of casual (email/IM/web surfing/itunes) and
mobile/managerial (email, powerpoint, sales quotes, expense reports,
light accounting, etc) classes of user.

In my opinion, of course. (But that should go without saying)

Well - as an ex-mac user who runs linux on his PowerBook, I think this
good news. I bought the PB because I thought I would be able to run
things like InDesign and Freehand, and a lot of the Open Source stuff I
use most often, n a gui some one had given *some* thought to.
But the dream failed. Too much weirdness while trying to get what I
needed to run to run.
Thats along time ago - projects like Fink have probably come a long way
since then. But then so has KDE.
If the same source code for Linux apps can be compiled without all the
tweaking needed to make them compile on X - well I may get another mac.
I am writing this on a Win XP box I need for a couple of apps - man it
is a pain.
And I have two HP devices that do not work on mac but do on Linux PPC.
HP and Mac not compatable - now that is weird.
don