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digitalmars.D.announce - Apple moving to x86?!

reply John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
Woah! This news almost blew me away:

http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nefd.lede

Also discussion on www.osnews.com

Check out arstechnica.com as well.

Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just
when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...

Looks like Walter's job just got easier.

-JJR
Jun 04 2005
next sibling parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
John Reimer wrote:


 Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just
 when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...


It's time for the pendulum to swing back again, I suppose ?

"Mac OS X"* used to run on both PPC and X86, and raw Darwin
has been running on both platforms since the start... (1999)


See http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/ for lots
of details on Apple's various earlier operating systems.

When I started with it, it was running in the "Yellow Box"
environment under Windows NT... (used for doing WebObjects)


But it's wild. What's next ? A two-button Apple mouse ? ;-)



 Looks like Walter's job just got easier.


AFAIK, GDC should *already* be working under Darwin X86 ?
Not that I've tested it, but there's nothing stopping it...

Too bad that the cross-compilers aren't installed with the
regular Xcode Tools, you need some additional Darwin extras.


If you *are* able to test it, please post results on D.gnu.
(use http://www.opendarwin.org/en/news/opendarwin721.html)

--anders


* since the Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server 1.x days, that is
Jun 04 2005
parent reply John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
Anders F Björklund wrote:

 John Reimer wrote:
 

 Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just
 when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...


 
 
 It's time for the pendulum to swing back again, I suppose ?
 
 "Mac OS X"* used to run on both PPC and X86, and raw Darwin
 has been running on both platforms since the start... (1999)
 
 


Mac OS X has been running on x86?  I never knew that.  You must mean 
unofficially.  I know Darwin has been running on x86 for quite awhile, 
though.


 See http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/ for lots
 of details on Apple's various earlier operating systems.
 
 When I started with it, it was running in the "Yellow Box"
 environment under Windows NT... (used for doing WebObjects)
 
 


?? On windows NT?  Never heard of that either.


 But it's wild. What's next ? A two-button Apple mouse ? ;-)
 


Heh... Probably just around the corner. :-)



 Looks like Walter's job just got easier.


 
 
 AFAIK, GDC should *already* be working under Darwin X86 ?
 Not that I've tested it, but there's nothing stopping it...



I wouldn't be surprised if it was working.  But it would be nice to have 
  a clean dmd build on Apple too... just like linux.


 Too bad that the cross-compilers aren't installed with the
 regular Xcode Tools, you need some additional Darwin extras.
 
 
 If you *are* able to test it, please post results on D.gnu.
 (use http://www.opendarwin.org/en/news/opendarwin721.html)
 


I'd like to try darwin sometime.  I downloaded the ISO and booted it up 
once, but that's all.  Sometime I may try installing it on a spare 
system, but right now I'm too busy.  It would indeed be a good little 
test project, though.



 
 * since the Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server 1.x days, that is


Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different 
beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the 
history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.

-JJR
Jun 04 2005
parent reply Derek Parnell <derek psych.ward> writes:
On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:29:23 -0700, John Reimer wrote:


[snip]


 Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different 
 beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the 
 history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.


I used to have a Lisa.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
5/06/2005 9:35:46 AM
Jun 04 2005
next sibling parent reply "Kris" <fu bar.com> writes:
"Derek Parnell" <derek psych.ward> wrote

 On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:29:23 -0700, John Reimer wrote:


 [snip]


 Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different
 beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the
 history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.


 I used to have a Lisa.


Wow! I still have my old 128K Mac, upgraded to 512K plus a 10Meg drive :-)
Jun 04 2005
next sibling parent John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
Kris wrote:


I used to have a Lisa.


 
 
 Wow! I still have my old 128K Mac, upgraded to 512K plus a 10Meg drive :-)
 
 


Mine was gutted long ago in the days when I thought I could fix anything.
Jun 05 2005
prev sibling parent =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
Kris wrote:


Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different
beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the
history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.


I used to have a Lisa.


 
 Wow! I still have my old 128K Mac, upgraded to 512K plus a 10Meg drive :-)


I started on a SE, so I guess that's mean I "lose"...
Anyway, that's *another* operating system. (Mac OS)

Owning a NeXT cube would make you "win" this one ?
http://www.lowendmac.com/next/cube.html

--anders
Jun 05 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
Derek Parnell wrote:

 On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:29:23 -0700, John Reimer wrote:
 
 
 [snip]
 
 

Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different 
beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the 
history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.


 
 
 I used to have a Lisa.
 


Ah! You bested me!
Jun 05 2005
prev sibling parent reply "Walter" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
"Derek Parnell" <derek psych.ward> wrote in message
news:1okuzbkvfn411$.18xa3rf900jwk.dlg 40tude.net...

 I used to have a Lisa.


I still have an IBM PC with type 2 motherboard. Stupidly, I gave away my
H-11. Those are worth $$$ now. The only one of my older computers worth
anything now, and the only one I gave away!
Jun 06 2005
parent Derek Parnell <derek psych.ward> writes:
On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 17:27:03 -0700, Walter wrote:


 "Derek Parnell" <derek psych.ward> wrote in message
 news:1okuzbkvfn411$.18xa3rf900jwk.dlg 40tude.net...

 I used to have a Lisa.


 
 I still have an IBM PC with type 2 motherboard. Stupidly, I gave away my
 H-11. Those are worth $$$ now. The only one of my older computers worth
 anything now, and the only one I gave away!


I was evaluating word-processors for the company I was working for at the
time (Motorola) and we went into IBM to see a presentation of the IBM-23; a
state-of-the-art word processor. I was hooked as it beat anything else I'd
seen up to that point (including some neat machines from Xerox). Just as I
was leaving the IBM offices, I noticed a funny looking machine on one the
of lab desks so I asked about it. The sales guys said something like, "Oh
that! That's a toy computer. I think they're calling it a Personal Computer
so it wouldn't really be suitable for office work, and besides they aren't
for sale yet." I pressed for more info about it and was really blown away
by its specs. It was a relatively powerful machine for the price, so I told
my management to hold off buying anything until this new IBM-PC thingy was
announced. We got a 'trial' machine on the day they were announced and I've
been playing with PCs ever since. I think I've even got the original MS-DOS
v1.0 boot diskette somewhere.

-- 
Derek
Melbourne, Australia
7/06/2005 11:08:52 AM
Jun 06 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"John Reimer" <brk_6502 yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:pan.2005.06.04.09.43.51.643007 yahoo.com...

 Woah! This news almost blew me away:

 http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nefd.lede

 Also discussion on www.osnews.com

 Check out arstechnica.com as well.

 Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just
 when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...

 Looks like Walter's job just got easier.


Man.  If anything, I hoped PCs would move to the more efficient and 
better-designed RISC PPC chips, but apparently not.  Oh boy.. another 
generation of X86 architecture..

Interesting news though; would be nice to see Apple being a little less 
proprietary :)
Jun 04 2005
next sibling parent John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 
 Man.  If anything, I hoped PCs would move to the more efficient and 
 better-designed RISC PPC chips, but apparently not.  Oh boy.. another 
 generation of X86 architecture..



I was looking forward to the time that PowerPC's overtook Intel CPU's. 
It looked like things were getting close.



 Interesting news though; would be nice to see Apple being a little less 
 proprietary :) 
 
 


You know what?  I'm wondering how much less proprietary they will be. 
Apple still has to be "different" than the others.  It ill be interesting.

-JJR
Jun 04 2005
prev sibling parent reply John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
The more I think about it, the more I think that these systems will be 
almost as proprietary as they were before.  They probably won't be 
usable for anything but Mac OS X.  But now they will have a huge 
technological advantage for competition... both price and performance. 
Being able to leverage the current intel platform technology could help 
Apple gain market share.  No more supply problems, that's for sure.

The other advantage? Think of being able to run virtual PC software on 
the Mac OS.  Now the virtualization layer will have much less to emulate 
.  Performance will be almost on par for running a Windows OS within a 
virtual machine.  This could get interesting.

As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them over.

-JJR
Jun 05 2005
next sibling parent "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"John Reimer" <brk_6502 yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:d7trdc$n51$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 The more I think about it, the more I think that these systems will be 
 almost as proprietary as they were before.  They probably won't be usable 
 for anything but Mac OS X.  But now they will have a huge technological 
 advantage for competition... both price and performance. Being able to 
 leverage the current intel platform technology could help Apple gain 
 market share.  No more supply problems, that's for sure.


That was something I was thinking about when I was mowing today.  When you 
think about it, healthy competition is a good thing, but competing platforms 
move the decision from being based on features to personal preference.  For 
example, look at Palm vs. PocketPC.  Both are very capable platforms.  Both 
have loads of software available, a flexible OS, competitive hardware etc. 
But they are completely incompatible.  So, instead of choosing one over the 
other because one has better features than the other, you choose one over 
the other simply because you like it.  Then you're stuck with that platform, 
and you're isolated from the other one.  The same gap exists in the PC vs. 
Apple competition - it's no longer a competition when the platforms are so 
different.  It's apples to oranges.

Moving towards a single platform (at least architecturally) makes it simpler 
for developers to develop, and makes it more of a choice of features than of 
preference.  You can choose OSX over Windows because it supports 
such-and-such, but they will be largely compatible simply because the 
platform will be the same.

But like you said, Apple has to be different, so they will probably keep on 
with their "let's make everything completely incompatible with the other 98% 
of the computers out there" mantra.  :P


 The other advantage? Think of being able to run virtual PC software on the 
 Mac OS.  Now the virtualization layer will have much less to emulate . 
 Performance will be almost on par for running a Windows OS within a 
 virtual machine.  This could get interesting.


Heck, probably most of the speed loss of things like PearPC comes just from 
byte-swapping everything.  Using the same processor makes making an emulator 
(relatively) trivial - just have to translate API calls and such.
Jun 04 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent Dave <Dave_member pathlink.com> writes:
In article <d7trdc$n51$1 digitaldaemon.com>, John Reimer says...

The more I think about it, the more I think that these systems will be 
almost as proprietary as they were before.  They probably won't be 
usable for anything but Mac OS X.  But now they will have a huge 
technological advantage for competition... both price and performance. 
Being able to leverage the current intel platform technology could help 
Apple gain market share.  No more supply problems, that's for sure.


I agree that Apple will gain market share with this because price/perf. should
increase substantially. It has to be a hard sell to most consumers to consider
Apple with the current p/p compared to Intel-based machines. Maybe not 2-3 years
ago, but since then PC prices have dropped significantly while Apple's hasn't.

The way I read the story, it seems Apple has chosen Intel (not AMD) for the
platform. What is odd to me about that is that one of the advantages that Apple
hardware had over x86 was the bus technology, until AMD came along with
HyperTransport. Add to that AMD dual-core architecture is also supposed to be
superior (in part because of HyperTransport), and AMD chips are generally
cheaper for the same performance.. You have to wonder why Apple didn't go with
AMD. It's a pity - they could have reduced the influence of two monopolies in
one shot.


The other advantage? Think of being able to run virtual PC software on 
the Mac OS.  Now the virtualization layer will have much less to emulate 
.  Performance will be almost on par for running a Windows OS within a 
virtual machine.  This could get interesting.

As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them over.

-JJR
Jun 04 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply kris <fu bar.org> writes:
John Reimer wrote:

 The more I think about it, the more I think that these systems will be 
 almost as proprietary as they were before.  They probably won't be 
 usable for anything but Mac OS X.  But now they will have a huge 
 technological advantage for competition... both price and performance. 
 Being able to leverage the current intel platform technology could help 
 Apple gain market share.  No more supply problems, that's for sure.
 
 The other advantage? Think of being able to run virtual PC software on 
 the Mac OS.  Now the virtualization layer will have much less to emulate 
 .  Performance will be almost on par for running a Windows OS within a 
 virtual machine.  This could get interesting.
 
 As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them over.
 
 -JJR


Don't forget the hardware virtualization that's right around the corner 
(vanderpool? AMD has something similar too). If OSX is released on x86, 
I'd bet that it'll be the first mainstream OS to run WindowsXP as a 
hosted 'task' :-)

Goodbye emulator ... goodbye ... hello 16GB stick of RAM <g>
Jun 04 2005
parent John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
kris wrote:


 
 Don't forget the hardware virtualization that's right around the corner 
 (vanderpool? AMD has something similar too). If OSX is released on x86, 
 I'd bet that it'll be the first mainstream OS to run WindowsXP as a 
 hosted 'task' :-)
 
 Goodbye emulator ... goodbye ... hello 16GB stick of RAM <g>



Yes, this is really exciting.  I'm also thinking that Apple's new Intel 
based systems have a marvelous opportunity here.  They will not need to 
worry about all the legacy junk that current x86-based motherboards 
contain for the sake of backwards compatibilty: Apple will be unfettered 
in this regard; they have no need to try to support the PC's of the past 
like current x86 systems do.  The BIOS can be designed anew with more 
specificity for modern and future systems.  Boot sequence, power 
management, interrupts/tables, DMA, RTC, and VESA: all these need no 
compatibility with 16 bit OSes of the past.  Remember LBA support 
requirements for hard drives?  Remember 16-bit segment addressing during 
bootup?  Remember the 16-bit "int" calls for changing video modes and 
such?

That is a tremendous advantage and should simplify things greatly.

I'm excited not merely for MacOS X on Intel:  I'm looking forward to the 
system design and the implications of the move on the hardware design 
level.  I'm sure Intel has a lot to be upbeat about.  It's a chance for 
them to move away from legacy design... at long, long last.

This is one reason I'd prefer one of these systems to any modern clone 
available today.  People need to realize that these systems won't be 
"just-another-ibm-clone."  They likely will be brand new designs.... and 
they'll have something to prove.

-JJR
Jun 08 2005
prev sibling parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
John Reimer wrote:


 As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them over.


Port them, to what ? The Mac hardware ? Most drivers are closed, 
unfortunately. You can run Linux PPC just fine today, though...
(without the graphics card accelerated - or AirPort, sound, etc)

--anders
Jun 05 2005
parent reply John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
Anders F Björklund wrote:

 John Reimer wrote:
 

 As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them over.


 
 
 Port them, to what ? The Mac hardware ? Most drivers are closed, 
 unfortunately. You can run Linux PPC just fine today, though...
 (without the graphics card accelerated - or AirPort, sound, etc)
 
 --anders


No, to any "new" intel-based mac hardware (if it ever arrives).  It will 
very likely require a new port of any free OS, since I doubt these new 
systems would be compatible with the current intel-based systems. 
Granted the port would be fairly easy, I'm sure.

-JJR
Jun 05 2005
parent Trevor Parscal <trevorparscal hotmail.com> writes:
John Reimer wrote:

 Anders F Björklund wrote:
 

 John Reimer wrote:


 As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them 
 over.




 Port them, to what ? The Mac hardware ? Most drivers are closed, 
 unfortunately. You can run Linux PPC just fine today, though...
 (without the graphics card accelerated - or AirPort, sound, etc)

 --anders


 
 
 No, to any "new" intel-based mac hardware (if it ever arrives).  It will 
 very likely require a new port of any free OS, since I doubt these new 
 systems would be compatible with the current intel-based systems. 
 Granted the port would be fairly easy, I'm sure.
 
 -JJR


How much different could they really be? I mean, the whole problem with 
PPC and Intel was 90% endianess I though. (Also someone said already)

I suppose I should never doubt Mac's devotion to creating the most 
incompatible computers in the world. (sorry if I am offending a mac user 
in denial)

-- 
Thanks,
Trevor Parscal
www.trevorparscal.com
trevorparscal hotmail.com
Jun 05 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent John Reimer <brk_6502 yahoo.com> writes:
And a little more proof?



-JJR
Jun 05 2005
prev sibling parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
John Reimer wrote:


 Woah! This news almost blew me away:


For those of you not following Steve Jobs
keynote at WWDC, it just got confirmed...

Apple *is* moving to Intel in 2007 (or so).
Mac OS X will be supporting both, at once.

--anders
Jun 06 2005
parent Derek Parnell <derek psych.ward> writes:
On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:55:59 +0200, Anders F Björklund wrote:


 John Reimer wrote:
 

 Woah! This news almost blew me away:


 
 For those of you not following Steve Jobs
 keynote at WWDC, it just got confirmed...
 
 Apple *is* moving to Intel in 2007 (or so).
 Mac OS X will be supporting both, at once.


Apple moves from IBM to Intel, and Microsoft is moving from Intel to IBM
(XBox 360).

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
7/06/2005 8:14:53 AM
Jun 06 2005