Apple go x86!!!!!

[AmigaPapst]

Oh my god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-( :-( :-(
Amen.

[System]

Poster: Emufreak  Posted: 2005/6/7 12:58:23

I don't know what to think. But it's very exciting. What's next? Windows goes PPC

It already did.

XBox 360 developer machines are just G5 Macs with Windows XP running on them, and a fancy ATI video card.

[jutrem]

360.

Poster: Emufreak  Posted: 2005/6/7 7:58:23
I don't know what to think. But it's very exciting. What's next? Windows goes PPC

 Windows has already been available for PPC. It has returned to PPC with the microsoft Xbox 360 in 2005.

[Magic-Merl]

For those who don't know.  The Xbox ran a very small scale Windoze core in order to utilize DirectX and to maintain it's very experienced software developers from the Windoze platform.

Moving to PPC, the Windoze core is still in existence so Windoze does exist on PPC architecture.  Quite how extensive the code goes is unknown but I would hazard a guess and say it's quite extensive.

My opinions here are my own, not those of speculation....gossip or news reports.

Here's an interesting thought.  Bill Gates has now decided to develop Windoze further on PPC hardware.  A1 running Windoze for example.  Microsoft confirm that Longhorn WILL be the last x86 version of the Windoze OS before it's transition to the PPC platform.

[Argo]

I don't know what to think. But it's very exciting. What's next? Windows goes PPC

Everything You Know is Wrong

[The_Power_of_the_Ginger]

No, what happens next is, Motorola- furious at being dropped from Apple- decide to return to the Amiga, investing millions in a super-duper new PPC at 80Ghz to bring the Amiga back as a PC-toppling, Big Mac eating vanilla monster!

Possibly.

Would be nice.

[MarkTime]

You know once people thought the earth was flat, and then round, and then they realized it was not precisely round but had a slight ovoid bend to it...

and so, now you think someday we will think its flat again or a triangular shape?

These aren't random changes... just slight refinements.  The world is nearly flat..just the tiniest amount of average turn on a per kilometer basis...

OK I lost everyone  :-o

my point is windows isn't going to go powerpc...powerpc is dead...dead dead.  POWER is still alive and well, it is in IBM's server architecture, and another offshoot of power, the cell architecture is alive and well in gaming consoles... but the PowerPC branch is dead...its was apple's baby.

And by the way...it wasn't so much that apple left powerpc, as IBM and Freescale, just weren't interested in powerpc anymore.  They didn't see a market there.  Apple didn't have much choice.

With that said, this could still very well turn into something good for apple...but I for one don't think this is the 'perfect' time to make the switch...40% unit sales growth, was smoking...they didn't need to mess with that with all this uncertainty...but they didn't have a choice, so lets hope they pull it off.

[Waccoon]

I don't know if PowerPC will just die, but it's a given that anyone serious about PowerPC is going to order a custom CPU with a PowerPC core in it.  A "vanilla" PowerPC doesn't make any sense, even with an integrated northbridge.

Apple had to put in a lot of work to get good chipsets.  This makes things easier for them in a lot of ways.

[bhoggett]

MarkTime wrote:

With that said, this could still very well turn into something good for apple...but I for one don't think this is the 'perfect' time to make the switch...40% unit sales growth, was smoking...they didn't need to mess with that with all this uncertainty...but they didn't have a choice, so lets hope they pull it off.

The opposite argument would be that if you have to make a radical switch, the time to do it is when things are going well and you can absorb the fallout rather than when things are going badly and you're walking through the doors of the Last Chance Saloon.

[billt]

Can we at least hope the requests for AmigaOS on Mac hardware will now die off??

[Argo]

Can we at least hope the requests for AmigaOS on Mac hardware will now die off??

Sure, Now it will be "Amiga OS needs to be ported to X86! Pronto! PPC is dead...." because the sky is falling. Noone realized how many other companies use PPC CPUs.

[NoFastMem]

As long as they keep supplying PPC buids of OS and suppoorting software updates, I'm cool enough with it.

It would seem odd to me however to "go x86" and yet still lock out that desktop market. OSX has something Linux doesn't, and that's a consistent, usable front end.

[bhoggett]

NoFastMem wrote:

As long as they keep supplying PPC buids of OS and suppoorting software updates, I'm cool enough with it.

It would seem odd to me however to "go x86" and yet still lock out that desktop market. OSX has something Linux doesn't, and that's a consistent, usable front end.

So has Windows, and Apple don't have the corporate market Microsoft have to make their money from. It's no good trying to compete againt Linux, because Linux is free and has been making inroads even in the PPC Mac user base. How much harder will it be to try and compete against it in its homeland?

There are lots of other drawbacks to going "generic":

- Apple would lose the hardware revenue they currently earn.
- The R&D costs would increase because lots of different motherboard types would have to be supported.
- Apple would lose the "cool & trendy" image that does so much for their sales to their primary market: the consumers.
- Piracy would increase (not that it isn't rife already, but at least now the potential users of pirated MacOS are still limited to Mac users).

There is simply no profit in competing against Windows on Microsoft's terms. Apple's offering needs to be more than just another OS, however nice.

Geeks like me would buy OS X if it was available for our hardware, but sales to geeks wouldn't begin to cover the losses.

[Phoenix]

Anyway you look at it there is an opportunity for all Hardware/Software users & companies.

While apple are shifting and changing gaps will appear in the technology market.

To me its all branding and meaningless, if the net result is that users/programmers & companies have a stable hardware/software solution will the really care what processor powers it.

Amiga to infinity and beyond!

[DonnyEMU]

several things:

There are way too many computer religious people posting here. I always say the best tool for the job. Processors are up to 3 ghz now, it's not an issue with speed, most machines are fast nowadays.

Most people are coding software in code that gets compiled to different target processors anyway, and the processor doesn't make the difference that it used to. It's really a software battle now. Both Microsoft (with the .Net Common Language Runtime) and Apple with XCode recognize this..

I think moving to a processor that has a lot more availability in quantities and price point gives Apple the opportunity to really compete head-on with windows for price peformance, even if they stay propritary (like the a1 motherboards and AmigaOS do) and do not license the product to other manufacturers, though they do sell iPODs thru HP already they will still have significant room to play with price/performance..

Considering the amount of G4/G5 processors (beyond the embedded market) will soon shrink, I am looking forward to see what will happen to further AmigaOne development..

For months I mentioned Apple's Darwin for x86 on this board and how it wouldn't be a stretch for them to go intel. The powerpc elitests kept saying it will never happen. Do you know how great an intel based Amiga could be.. (AROS looks really good about now :-)

Maybe it's just me, but I think OS X for intel will give Windows it's first legitimate competition in close to 10 years.

Folks who keep saying the G4/G5 was a better CPU, get over it you were wrong, even Apple refuted that argument that they made originally, in their own press release..

We should be talking what is the better software and not worrying about hardware in this day and age anyway..