Apple explores use of Intel chips -report

[cstaylor]

Seriously, ask your Japanese co-workers how much faster they could 'type' if the text input was by voice. The Japanese system has some shortcuts compared to Chinese. But those shortcuts aren't as fast as just speaking.

Have you ever worked in a Japanese office? No walls whatsoever between employees... I can't imagine speech recognition software surviving in an environment like that.

You beat me to it cs! Damn I hate it when work gets in the way of my FG postings!

You're just a slow typist.

[FG Lurker]

You're just a slow typist.

Maybe my brain was just slow... Don't want it to overheat!

[FG Lurker]

There is also a massive technical issue with trying to use speech recognition software in (at least) Japanese and Chinese. Probably Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and other Asian languages too.

How is the software going to manage Kanji? Even with keyboard-based IME it is a real pain in the ass. Some combinations just don't work, and of course if you enter too much before you convert it to Kanji everything goes down the shitter.

Even if there was some way to overcome the noise issues I mentioned in a previous post I think it will be a good long time before it can properly handle Asian languages.

[American Oyaji]

Part of the problem is the impreciseness of Japanese.

[FG Lurker]

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips
C|net, June 3, 2005

Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it's scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.

[...]

The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech. The conference would be an appropriate venue: Changing the chips would require programmers to rewrite their software to take full advantage of the new processor.

IBM, Intel and Apple declined to comment for this story.

(Full Story)

Well, it will be interesting indeed to see what comes of this. I'd use MacOS if I could run it on my Athlon 64 3500+... I'm not holding my breath though!

[mr. sparkle]

Well, it will be interesting indeed to see what comes of this. I'd use MacOS if I could run it on my Athlon 64 3500+... I'm not holding my breath though!

If it don't sell Macs, it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens. The move to Intel HAS to sell Macs or there is no motivation for Apple to do allow PCs to run OS X.

Or maybe Steve has other ideas. We'll find out on Monday. Stay tuned.

[FG Lurker]

Well, it will be interesting indeed to see what comes of this. I'd use MacOS if I could run it on my Athlon 64 3500+... I'm not holding my breath though!

If it don't sell Macs, it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens. The move to Intel HAS to sell Macs or there is no motivation for Apple to do allow PCs to run OS X.

Or maybe Steve has other ideas. We'll find out on Monday. Stay tuned.

It's damn hard to make money selling hardware...With warranties and user support added in it's gotta be tight even with Apple's margins.

Further, selling POWER-based Macs and marketing an Intel-based MacOS would be impossible... So, if Steve plans to move Apple more towards a consumer technology + software company the move makes sense. Certainly not a "for-sure" thing, but I can see some logic to it.

Also, if Apple could use commodity hardware they could sell Macs for a lot less than they do now and still make the same margins. Volume would go up too.

Anyway........ Like you say we'll find out on Monday! Heh, not often I look forward to a Monday.

[cstaylor]

I'm betting that someone is feeding misinformation to the press. I will bet that we're not talking CPUs, but maybe xScale on the new iPods or something.

I don't see the benefit in moving to an Intel CPU. AFAIK, only the XEON processors are qualified for SMP, and those chips aren't cheap. Apple's big push has been Dual-machines for power users, now that Tiger is properly threaded in the kernel (prior to Tiger, there were two big locks called "funnels", one for networking, and one for the rest of the kernel), so how would they save money by moving to Intel?

[FG Lurker]

I'm betting that someone is feeding misinformation to the press. I will bet that we're not talking CPUs, but maybe xScale on the new iPods or something.

I don't see the benefit in moving to an Intel CPU. AFAIK, only the XEON processors are qualified for SMP, and those chips aren't cheap. Apple's big push has been Dual-machines for power users, now that Tiger is properly threaded in the kernel (prior to Tiger, there were two big locks called "funnels", one for networking, and one for the rest of the kernel), so how would they save money by moving to Intel?

With the arrival of dual core CPUs having two physical chips isn't as important or desirable anymore.

The other big thing that would be gained would be a very very good mobile chip -- the Pentium M.

Beyond that though the big thing Apple would gain would be the ability to use standardized commodity hardware.

All that said though, I'm not holding my breath... Looking forward to hearing what it is though!

[cstaylor]

With the arrival of dual core CPUs having two physical chips isn't as important or desirable anymore.

AFAIK dual core chips are relatively cheaper than SMP units, but still pretty expensive.

The other big thing that would be gained would be a very very good mobile chip -- the Pentium M.

That's true. Wireless and video support built-in as well.

Beyond that though the big thing Apple would gain would be the ability to use standardized commodity hardware.

They can do that already if they wish, other than the BIOS on the cards. I don't think Apple will be ditching Open Firmware, so they'll still be needing special BIOS units in the add-in cards AFAIK.

All that said though, I'm not holding my breath... Looking forward to hearing what it is though!

The fact that Apple hasn't moved to squash the leak probably means it's a non-story. Usually something this big leaked before his speech would drive Jobs through the roof.

[FG Lurker]

With the arrival of dual core CPUs having two physical chips isn't as important or desirable anymore.

AFAIK dual core chips are relatively cheaper than SMP units, but still pretty expensive.

The chips are not leaps-and-bounds cheaper, but you only need a single socket on the motherboard. A top-end single CPU board is about 20,000yen retail. A mid-level dual CPU board is about 50,000yen.

The other big thing that would be gained would be a very very good mobile chip -- the Pentium M.

That's true. Wireless and video support built-in as well.

Actually no... The Centrino setup is a combination of the Pentium M chip and an Intel wireless chip. Graphics are separate yet again -- Intel (in the main chipset), ATI, or nVidia. The Pentium M is an amazing CPU though -- very lower power but very good performance.

Beyond that though the big thing Apple would gain would be the ability to use standardized commodity hardware.

They can do that already if they wish, other than the BIOS on the cards. I don't think Apple will be ditching Open Firmware, so they'll still be needing special BIOS units in the add-in cards AFAIK.

If Apple goes to Intel I can't see them continuing with proprietary hardware as it would defeat most of the advantage of making the move. (One of the biggest advantages would be standardized motherboards. PPC970 boards cost a fortune.)

All that said though, I'm not holding my breath... Looking forward to hearing what it is though!

The fact that Apple hasn't moved to squash the leak probably means it's a non-story. Usually something this big leaked before his speech would drive Jobs through the roof.

Both Intel and Apple have responded with "no comment". If there was nothing going on certainly I would expect Intel to deny, even if Apple said nothing. So I expect something to be announced, although maybe not quite as big as what we are discussing here.

[cstaylor]

NYTimes is just publishing the same article, which means it's probably true. What does that mean for current sales?

[mr. sparkle]

I'll be watching the keynote from closed circuit tv on campus. Should be entertaining. Boy does a good show, you know.

[cstaylor]

I'll be watching the keynote from closed circuit tv on campus. Should be entertaining. Boy does a good show, you know.

"Oh, and one more thing..."

[FG Lurker]

Think Secret has an interesting and balanced report on this:

http://thinksecret.com/news/0505itunes49.html

Still a few hours to wait...

[FG Lurker]

Here is the above-mentioned NYT article for anyone interested:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/technology/06apple.html?

[FG Lurker]

Apple will switch to X86 processors (Talking to AMD too)
The Inquirer, June 5, 2005

THE RUMOURED APPLE MOVE to x86 is true, the INQUIRER has gotten independent confirmation of this. Prior to publication of this, sources had told the INQ that a switch was in the works. More importantly, they also said that Apple was playing the AMD card at full force, so don't be too surprised if a green logo shows up on some models.

(Full Story)

There's a bit more to the article about what chips they think Apple might start with. Interesting stuff!

Since the Keynote starts at 10am PST I don't think I will be awake tonight to catch the news-as-it-happens... Will be something interesting to wake up to though!

[cstaylor]

Dual Opterons with dual cores would be nice...

[FG Lurker]

Dual Opterons with dual cores would be nice...

Hell yes!

That would be another good reason for Apple to switch to x86 actually -- they could do very well playing off AMD and Intel against each other.

[cstaylor]

Wonder how'll they'll replace the Mac-mini.... Pentium M?

[FG Lurker]

Wonder how'll they'll replace the Mac-mini.... Pentium M?

Could be, or it could be a low-power Athlon 64.

The Register as a good write up on the possible annoucement too. 3 pages here: Apple shifts to Intel: what is all the fuss about?

[cstaylor]

Story is true. June 2006 Apple will ship Intel Inside Macs.

[mr. sparkle]

[mr. sparkle]

Story is true. June 2006 Apple will ship Intel Inside Macs.

Dang. You're up late dude!

[American Oyaji]

I don't mind that there is an intel chip in a mac.

I've known for a while that there was OS X code compiled that could run on a Pentium. That info came out about the time that OS X came out and I was right when I predicted Apple would evetually switch.

[FG Lurker]

And sorry Lurker, No PC version of OS X in sight.

If the move to Intel helps Apple bring their prices a bit closer into line then it won't matter. Unless Apple decides to pocket the savings themselves I don't see any way that prices can't come down.

I also don't think it will take very long for MacOS-capable PCs come out. The biggest difference will likely be the BIOS and duplicating that won't be too hard. This won't affect Apple's sales really (they'll use a tactical nuke on anyone who actually tries to sell such a beast), but it might make for some interesting toys.

And only 547 more days 'til Longhorn comes out.

Longhorn doesn't interest me much -- MS has already had to pull all the interesting features out. That is one reason I'd be interested in having a Mac...I'm just not willing to get raped on the hardware price to buy one. Maybe I need to drink more Kool-Aid. ]OS X 10.5 should ship by then and it's called Leopard....[/quote]
The name is a real surprise! I guess the next couple will be "Cougar" and "Lynx".

As always it will be interesting to watch things unfold.

[FG Lurker]

The more I think about this the more I like it.

From a typical Mac-user's perspective not much will change.

From the perspective of someone like me though it opens quite a few doors. Buying a Mac and running Windows in something like VMWare should be possible without much trouble. This interests me because I still *need* Windows for some reasons. Symantec Ghost is the biggest of those reasons, and there isn't really any reason I couldn't run Ghost Server on top of Win2K with VMWare. Since the underlying hardware will be very similar the performance hit will be acceptable.

I think Apple's future just got brighter. There will be a certain percentage of PPC zealots who will be unhappy with it....But what are they going to do? Switch to Windows?

[yellowlightman]

I think Apple's future just got brighter. There will be a certain percentage of PPC zealots who will be unhappy with it....But what are they going to do? Switch to Windows?

Maybe they'll just buy an XBox360.

[FG Lurker]

I think Apple's future just got brighter. There will be a certain percentage of PPC zealots who will be unhappy with it....But what are they going to do? Switch to Windows?

Maybe they'll just buy an XBox360.

Or a Cell-based PS3...

Especially if the new binary emulation layer is good I think this will find very quick acceptance among Mac faithful...once they get over the initial shock. Hmm, "Mactel"? "MOStel"?

[mr. sparkle]

The more I think about this the more I like it.

From a typical Mac-user's perspective not much will change.

Precisely. I do not give a fuck what's under the hood...as long as it's the best damn Mac there is. I want it to be faster than ever--whatever it takes. I could care less if it's Intel, AMD, IBM or Motorola. I'm from Silicon Valley and they're all the same death corp. to me. I do feel that the PPC is an excellent chip, but it takes up more power per unit of processing. Jobs mentioned that power usage of the chips is important.

From the perspective of someone like me though it opens quite a few doors. Buying a Mac and running Windows in something like VMWare should be possible without much trouble. This interests me because I still *need* Windows for some reasons.

My work parther runs virtual PC on his laptop already and enjoys it. I'm sure that in the future, it will be even more seamless.

I think Apple's future just got brighter. There will be a certain percentage of PPC zealots who will be unhappy with it....But what are they going to do? Switch to Windows?

Shit dude, who knows what's gonna happen to the PPC. It's an awesome chip. Nothing beats Alti-Vec IMHO. That shit rocks. Check it out....Steve hinted that the PPC line of G5s is not dead yet. We ain't gonna wait 2 years for faster Macs. That being said, there are some sweet deals on dual 2-2.5 G5s that just hit the 'net. A dualie 2 with 2 GB or RAM is $1699.

To be honest, I almost thought they were gonna announce a PC version of OS X when Steve said they've already been working with Intel chips for the last 5 years.

Lurker, you woulda loved that, no?