Appel and Oranges no more?

[Spriggan]

As some of you might have heard Apple is moveing to INTel chips for their new macs, I've read a few articles on this and people theoriseing why but this last one sheds the most lite:

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html

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Released just few days ago, the dual-core chips include a hardware copy protection scheme that prevents "unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard," according to PC World.

Apple -- or rather, Hollywood -- wants the Pentium D to secure an online movie store (iFlicks if you will), that will allow consumers to buy or rent new movies on demand, over the internet.
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Very intresting.  Of course the most intrest I have in this is now that IBM and Apples run on the same chip set that means WINDOWS ON A MAC!!! Yea I'm so happy I might even buy a mini mac an install windows on it (once the nessacery software comes out) just to annoy MAC lovers.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Just keep typing MAC in all caps like that; that's enough to annoy Mac lovers.

This seems to be true, but it's a huge shock. We'll see in a few hours...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

If it's not true, it's a nice hoax. It's been on all the news radio shows

[Jelly_Belly]

Just keep typing MAC in all caps like that; that's enough to annoy Mac lovers.

It also annoys technical editors since MAC stands for media access control (as in MAC address) and Mac is short for Macintosh computers. It bugs me when I find that in my editing because it really does make a difference (however small).

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

its not a huge deal for me, as I recognize that computers are tools, its possible that Apple and Intel have designed something new, or have just spec'ed out the open source version of the power pc chip,... who knows. I'll worry about it when it makes the earth stop spinning.


I will say that intel itself debunked the hardcore copying thing. It doesnt exist yet.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

From what I understand, I don't think they're doing anything new. They're saying this may reduce the cost of buying a Mac. That wouldn't be a significant difference if they were doing a new one. The price cut would come from using a chip already in mass production. Well, probably. I suppose they could come up with a new chip that's actually significantly cheaper to make.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I am nonplussed about the announcement.

Anyway, I guess it doesn't affect me personally, as long as the transition emulation layer doesn't slow things down too much, something which seems doubtful.

After so many years of marketing about how x86 is bad and PPC is good, now Apple's going to x86...for good? What if IBM next year comes out with a PPC chip that whips x86 again? Will developers basically be making hybrid binaries that will work on either chip, so Apple can release computers based on whatever's fastest at the time?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

its a chip,... if its well constructed then I dont have a problem with it. Its not like IBM was doing apple any favors with its G5 dead end. As long as the current machines are still supported in true apple fashion and OSX tiger runs well,... no problem in my mind.

[Spriggan]

Sad once again apple shows it's poor busnisses plans.  They said that they would make sure that OSX would never run on a non-apple machine.  And people wonder why Microsoft is more popular.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Bah, Whatever.

[Spriggan]

The reason that Apple has such a small percentage of the market is their unwillingness to play with others they do the same thing with their iTunes and iPod and it's starteing to bite them as people are moveing to other MP3 sites that let the choose what players they want to use.  It's also one of the reason I've never been fond of Apple becasue they restrict what you can use on their hardware more then anyone else.  And I don't want to buy a Computer that only lets me do what Steve Jobs' likes.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I heard, actually, that OSX was already in development for x386 platforms.

[Spriggan]

It was simultaneously developed for both platforms with Microsofts' help according to Jobs.  So basically it can already run on X86 chips.

While Apple said windows would run (probably out of the box) on a X86 Apple they were dead set that OSX wouldn't run on anything other then a Mac though I'm sure that won't last long due to it being a Linux based OS.  One annalist, in an article I was reading, said probably how Apple is going to do this is by having strict hardware requirements so that someone would have to know what they were doing when building a PC to get it to run OSX.

I personally think this is a mistake, I've been reading a lot of articles on this because I'm bored, and apple has a very good chance to pick up market share from Microsoft and especially Linux.  Several of these articles were talking about how OSX, if were able to install on more common PCs, could single handedly cause the majority of Linux users to drop that OS and move to Apple which, as I'm sure you could deduce, would make Microsoft very happy.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't think that's a likely, scenario, actually. Apple already has Darwin available for distribution as for 386, which is essentially their version of FreeBSD (a Unix distro, not a Linux distro) and it hasn't gotten a huge following.

[Spriggan]

I think it would be very hard to predict what would actually happen.  There are several things to account.

1) Linux's cost vs OSX --winner Linux

2) Both users hate Microsoft--winner OSX (because it is a more solid OS especially on the 64 bit era which Linux has had problems with).

3) ease of use--winner OSX

4) Fanaticism--tie

5) The moral ground.  ie lots of people that use OSS do so for moral reasons as well as financial.--winner Linux

And those are just the ones I made up so I'd actually have some substance to my post.