Throwing my cap over the wall
Been a bit of a crazy day in the inbox, with half the Mac world dropping into various states of depression or confusion. If I didn't know better, Apple was dropping flash-bangs into the web. Now that the QuickTime stream is up, I'll put on a pot of coffee, give it a whirl, and post my usual running commentary on it in the wee hours of the evening. My hope is that the Sony guy is back, he was the highlight of MacWorld for me.
I'm also aware that Apple announced they'll be moving to x86, but I can't respond to all those emails separately right now. I'm not really interested in some of the wild speculation coming my way, but if you have questions feel free to email them and I'll work them into a separate post regarding my thoughts on the PowerPC situation (short: I'm surprised they did it, but think it's a good thing in the long run even though we may be entering a world of pain in the short run).
That'll come after the WWDC post, and after I make good on getting some questions out for some interviews. I'm so crazy behind on some things that I'm going to have to slip into info-triage mode again, with the white earbuds superglued in place.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJune 06, 2005, at 11:44 PM
Comments (25)
Posted by: Ben Reubenstein at June 7, 2005 12:21 AM
Just finished the Keynote. The Video streamed at a very high quality with QuickTime 7.
X86. Should have seen it coming. A FreeBSD based operating system... Either way, I just got a brand new dual 2.0 ghz power pc so I guess I own a piece of history.
My question for Apple would be, "Can you take Mac OS X 10.4.1 Preview and get it to install on an intel box in my house?"
Either way Jobs is a showman and does a great job of pumping up the crowd. I for one think that this will introduce Mac to a whole new crowd.
~ Ben
Posted by: Jay Contonio at June 7, 2005 12:30 AM
I agree with Ben. It is going to be a good thing having sexy laptops that can actually compete. When tons of people are buying powerbooks for all their features minus the power, think of how it will be when they finally perform.
This is a big boost for Intel. They have a "cool factor" that they will try to bank on now. The new CEO is in for the long haul with Apple, it seems, and I don't think it could be any better. Intel doesn't need the client obviously, but it needs some freshness. Having a company like Apple choose them over AMD won't go unnoticed.
I can't wait to dual boot OS X, Windows, and x86 linux off of a powerbook. What will they name the new powermacs? Powermac GX86 ?
Posted by: Mac-arena the Bored Zo at June 7, 2005 12:31 AM
My question for Apple would be, "Can you take Mac OS X 10.4.1 Preview and getting it to install on an intel box in my house?"
you can't take Tiger off the shelf and install it on an x86 PC; all the binaries in the OS are still PPC-only.
my expectation is that Apple stores and resellers will soon (defined as 'somewhere between now and june 2006') begin selling Tiger in both x86 and PPC versions.
Posted by: Mindflayer at June 7, 2005 12:34 AM
Despite the hand-wringing, this is a Good Thing™. What makes a Mac a Mac is NOT the CPU (well, for geeks like me, it is, but that doesn't fit my argument) - it's the combination of OS, GUI, and Industrial Design.
Posted by: Matt Green at June 7, 2005 02:09 AM
@ Mac-arena:
I think Ben was referring to the preview Intel build of 10.4.1 which will be available to developers, not 10.4 off the shelf.
and @ Ben:
The OSX-on-Intel will most likely not run on anything but an Intel Mac, as the firmware is most likely different, and OSX will be lacking drivers for anything that is not an Apple-built motherboard.
However, I can see someone eventually managing to combine some parts of Darwin and OSX-on-Intel, with a bit of imaginative hacking, to produce something that will run on commodity x86 hardware, but probably won't be very useful or stable.
Posted by: Sunny at June 7, 2005 02:32 AM
Ordered my first Mac - a Powerbook 15" - after the keynote. At best the transition will take a better part of 3 years and until then the Powerbook would serve me fine. It sure is interesting times for Mac users.
Its interesting to note Apple's thinking here. They are hedging for the next decade. We will hear many journalists / hacks talk about how this is a stupid move and how Apple is dead. Since these folks subscribe to the theory that Apple at any given time is two quarters away from dying, they cannot fathom Jobs' long term thinking. Apple's future is more secure than it ever was.
Personally, I think Apple has lost some of its mystique. The PowerPC Macs were really different in all respects. Although the chips are trivial and inconsequential to many, Apple has lost part of that identity. 'Intel Inside' seems ordinary, generic.
Posted by: Twist at June 7, 2005 04:11 AM
I think the move is great. I do agree that it may cause some pain but once we get OS X running natively on some high-end Intel chips I think we will see that a large part of the supposed advantages of PowerPC chips were just hype and the nice motherboards Apple uses. I do think the PowerPC platform is a good platform but Freescale and IBM are both having trouble scaling it upward. Over two years ago now Apple shipped its first 1.4 GHz G4 based Mac and they are still shipping models based off of that chip today. This has led to the low-end Mac's being under-powered. Of course Intel isn't exactly increasing MHz by huge leaps and bounds anymore but they are doing a good job at producing powerful low-power chips these day.
One big question I would like to have answered by someone in the know is if an x86 based Mac will be able to dual boot OS X and Windows. If so the gamers might finally get on-board with Apple hardware. Especially if hacked x86 versions of OS X don't run well on non-Apple systems.
Posted by: SamR at June 7, 2005 04:36 AM
I shouldn't think it's too long before an OS X version of WINE will let you run unmodified Windows binaries on (x86) Macs. I'm a bit uneasy about this - notwithstanding the faintly disgusting concept of running Windows applications within OS X (Terminal Services is bad enough), I think it may impact the viability of native application development, particularly for smaller shareware developers. It may also be a convenient excuse for lazy ISV's to not bother targeting the Mac platform natively.
If this happens, it's going to result in ppc owners being left out in the cold, and a generally worse user experience for the rest.
DB, if you get the chance can you quiz some of your developer contacts on this? I'd be interested to know what their gut feeling is at the moment.
Posted by: Dave Robertson at June 7, 2005 06:37 AM
Using Intel chipsets will give the Mac a theoretical performance boost, but until Apple addresses the serious kernel bottlenecks mentioned here on DB http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000385.html and more recently on AnandTech http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436 performance is still going to lag behind other operating systems.
This lag will be especially obvious when all the competitors are running the same cpu, vector processor, and graphics cards.
I guess performance is not the reason we buy Macs - but then why the need to go through another cpu switch?
Posted by: marc nothrop at June 7, 2005 08:25 AM
Like many, I've been speculating about this one since pretty early in the OS X days.
It was hardly a huge mental leap, coming through the previous transition, and looking at the NeXT history (well, follwed them in their day!), it was always a distinct possibility.
Transitive were just icing on the cake, or more the key to the deal. Once PPC 'emulation' was assured, the last piece was in place, leading to...
Like SamR, I've pondered on the effect of running Windows apps on a Mactel, alongside native apps; it's an interesting scenario.
It'll definitely be good to run niche stuff, or recalcitrant enterprise Windows-apps, Virtual PC is just not the best solution, and remote desktops, Cytrix etc. require extra resources from IT. Perhaps with a slightly more sympathetic, or curious attitude, the Mac might become that bit more acceptable in the enterprise.
I guess, on the optimistic side of your comments, Sam, might seeing their apps running on OS X pique the interest of some Windows devs? OTOH, of course the game developers are spooked.
This is the side of things that's most interesting to me, although the Pentium D, lockdown scenario is a little worry.
Posted by: vastheman at June 7, 2005 08:31 AM
Intel CPUs, no Open Firmware, a different partition table format... what is wrong with Apple? The Mac will lose a lot of what made it different and elegant.
Intel CPUs are less efficient. There are no 3-operand instructions, no saturating maths, no fused multiply-add, no vector permute, not enough architectural registers, etc. Go through the universal binaries guide. There's so much that's gone missing.
Before long, WINE, VMWare and Virtual PC will all be able to run Windows applications at near-native speed on these Intel-based Macs. Then there will be very little incentive to target Mac OS X. Applications will dry up.
Will it be worth buying a Mac any more? I feel betrayed. I'm pretty close to ordering a Sun Blade. At least I have the option to buy a Sun. What if I depended on applications that aren't available for Solaris? Then where could I go to get a computer that's a great design?
Posted by: Gavin at June 7, 2005 08:46 AM
I'm not particularly shocked by the news. The whole of x86 Darwin and NeXTs own x86 days were hints that this was always possible. What makes me wonder are all the "Mac" things that aren't tied to the OS and how these are going to fit into the new PentiumMac... gah, that just does NOT have the same ring. Things like Firewire target disk mode, or option key booting and selecting a network host. The whole of Netboot, how is that going to be done? PXE? or something totally new. Or even simple things "Hold down C to boot from the CD," vs. "Press F2, select the boot menu and move the CD up in the boot order." Pressing and holding the mouse button to ignore the internal drive. Being able to boot off an iPod. I don't know about anyone else but I've never seen a PC boot from a Firewire device.
And what about the whole XServe thing? Are you simply going to give up the market? I mean there really isn't -anything- special about a 1U Intel server. And even worse what about the whole scientific community? Have you been lieing to them this whole time about how fast the G5 was for biotech? The little mini-clusters what's going to happen to them?
These things are not big huge selling points to be sure, but they are part of what all of use have come to consider part of the Mac experience. My question then to Apple isn't can you make the OS boot, but can you really make an Intel a Mac? I sincerely hope you can, if not well, there is always KDE.
Posted by: Troy Phillips at June 7, 2005 08:48 AM
Yesterday my 12" Powerbook refused to wake up (probably bung PMU) - not sure if it is a coincidence or if it is heart broken!
I agree with Sunny - my head knows that it probably has to be done, but my heart is still disappointed that it had to be done. Would have been nice if Intel had just made a Pentium M that could interpret the PPC ISA too!
After reading Apple doc detailing the stuff that you lose when moving from PPC to x86, I couldn't help hoping that Apple has been let into Intel's plans for SSE4 - hopefully it will add those extra things that AltiVec does.
Posted by: at June 7, 2005 10:55 AM
Cool. You should start a column called "Ask a drunk." :-)
Posted by: Ankalon at June 7, 2005 11:37 AM
I believe Jobs did say that both architectures would be supported for "a long time," but he did add "I think." Gulp. Those "universal binaries" should help PPC last for a while.
So where does that lead us?
P.S. Sunny, I'm going to take the dive and order a 15" Powerbook too. You're not alone. ;)
Posted by: lightningrod at June 7, 2005 11:39 AM
The thing that isn't good that Jobs doesn't talk about - Classic apps will not run. For Rosetta to run PPC-Mac apps, they must be able to run on a recent G3, running Mac OS X Jaguar or later, with no AltiVec dependences, or requirements like G4/G5 - those will not run.
This means that Final Cut, Motion, and many other optimized higher-end games and apps must be recompiled. When you realize this, you know that we'll be waiting on a few developers, and some things will never run on MacIntel.
Posted by: ledge at June 7, 2005 02:18 PM
Something everyone seems to be overlooking: Steve's demo at WWDC Keynote was done on a Pentium-IV. Last time I checked, those are 32-bit chips. Nobody's said anything about any 64-bit "roadmap" (to steal a phrase).
We were talking about this over lunch today, and one of the guys asked me how many 64-bit apps I was running today. The honest answer is "none," but without a 64-bit chip in the future, that answer is _always_ going to be "none."
There's the "EM64T" which from all I've understood is basically an Opteron clone. So Intel is the "most innovative chip company" but Apple is going to put AMD chip clones in their "most innovative personal computers."
I know it's all about marketing, but I think Steve's Reality Distortion Field is malfunctioning.
Still, I'm not totally gloomy and doomy. I'm sure the move was forced by IBM. We shall see how well they bounce back.
Posted by: Dave B at June 7, 2005 06:04 PM
There's a nice article over at Eweek that suggests that Mr Jobs' story about umph-per-watt being the motivation for the change was twaddle.
Apple wants to sell an X86 box to gain market share.
Posted by: Mindflayer at June 7, 2005 06:50 PM
Despite the hand-wringing, this is a Good Thing™. What makes a Mac a Mac is NOT the CPU (well, for geeks like me, it is, but that doesn't fit my argument) - it's the combination of OS, GUI, and Industrial Design.
Posted by: feeze at June 7, 2005 09:14 PM
"My hope is that the Sony guy is back, he was the highlight of MacWorld for me."
Unfortunately he isn't. But Theo from Wolfram research IMHO was great.
"I'll send down our crack team of emergency developers that we keep on standby ..... that would be Rob"
Posted by: Jeff R at June 8, 2005 12:00 AM
There is some room for optimism after reading the write up at Tom's Hardware Guide on the Pentium M, which seems to be the processor that Apple will be using to start with.
From that article it seems like Apple will be able to move the PowerBook forward, which has been a pretty big issue with the G5.
Intel has diversified beyond just microprocessor design and manufacturing. It will be interesting to see which other technologies from Intel that Apple will use (i.e. DRM with LaGrande, HyperThreading, Virtualization).
There's no doubt that beyond the RDF that Steve Jobs posseses he's a very shrewd business man. It will be interesting to see this play out.
No one said that being a Mac user was boring.
And thanks to Dave B for the link to the eWeek article. It is indeed very interesting.
Posted by: Macadamias at June 8, 2005 07:00 AM
@ Dave Robertson
Using Intel chipsets will give the Mac a theoretical performance boost, but until Apple addresses the serious kernel bottlenecks mentioned here on DB and more recently on AnandTech performance is still going to lag behind other operating systems.
As I understand DB's previous article, it was pointing out the very real limitations of the spit-funnel system of accessing the Mach kernel at the core of OS X. If you haven't already, read through John Siracusa's wonderful review of OS X 10.4 Tiger at ArsTechnica. He spends a few pages on Apple's changes to their kernel in Tiger. Those changes include stable KPI's (Kernel Programming Interfaces) and finer grained locks in the funnel system. Now processes can navigate a hierarchal tree of locks to get to the kernel subsystem they need freeing each previous lock as the go for other processes to access. So this would bring them closer to real MP support.
I am amazed at the sequence of events in technology. Apple first had to develop OS X from NextStep code which was multi-platform. They then encouraged developers to use the new Cocoa framework. While their developers succeeded in porting over to OS X, they continued to mature the new OS in stability and usability including supporting multiple threads and processors while simultaneously developing it on x86 architecture. They created their Xcode development enviroment. Their iPod and iTunes projects bought added revenue, better market standing, and increased their image as a vital company. They can now face the challenge of changing their platform over to Intel as smoothly as possible.
The last step would be incredibly difficult if not remotely unlikely without the previous pieces. And then there is where Intel is currently at after AMD's competition, Microsoft's move to IBM, and their refocusing on Pentium M. A truly fascinating concatenation of events.
Posted by: Derek at June 8, 2005 05:11 PM
There was a feature on Inside Mac Games regarding all their concerns. It has just about every software company I can think of, save for Feral Interactive.
http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=355
Posted by: losof a little late at June 10, 2005 11:36 AM
I guess this strategy implies deeply tied-in drm 'technologies' and a developers kit to make its way into the most trivial gui-for-shellscript shareware. Makes me wonder if the new intel macs would even boot any other os than os x as it could be used to undermine this 'system security'. I'm thinking of a playstationlike personal computer for the moment. I'm not advocating for piracy here, but i don't want to live in (=use) a kind of 'control society' (=os) as my desktop. Ok, now please bang me: 'What are you afraid of if you don't have anything to hide?'. Answers: a) My mother was a Chinese trapeze artist in pre-war Paris, b) Jobs (not GWB2) is Palpatine
Just finished the Keynote. The Video streamed at a very high quality with QuickTime 7.
X86. Should have seen it coming. A FreeBSD based operating system... Either way, I just got a brand new dual 2.0 ghz power pc so I guess I own a piece of history.
My question for Apple would be, "Can you take Mac OS X 10.4.1 Preview and getting it to install on an intel box in my house?"
Either way Jobs is a showman and does a great job of pumping up the crowd. I for one think that this will introduce Mac to a whole new crowd.
~ Ben