Apple to start using INTEL chip......

[Resonant Alien]

Here Here Gary. can't wait for it

Cheers,

[Tritonemusic]

Originally posted by sdfalk:
Well it's MY birthday today:
6/6/66
Now who's your daddy

I am!
:p

[sdfalk]

I am!

POP!!!

[composer11]

The only thing I don't get is if it indeed is x86 then this means, Intel and Better, AMD X2 64 chips would work.

The chip has nothing to do with WiNDOZE, however, if this is true, and Apple does run x86, then this would mean a user could build a MAC with his/her own parts and buy the MAC OS.

I'm wondering if SJ is thinking that he'll cash in on Software sales? If you think about it, that what MSFT does! I know many users that never went near a PC until gigistudio, and then along came AMD and with it brought performance.

One thing many tend to overlook is that PC sales and tech heads are far far more advanced with speed, optimizing, stability, with PC's, whereas your typical mac user is not, not to generalize, but on a whole, this tends to be true.

Now whether you (audio users) like it or not, (and this goes for PC audio too), we are the lowest common denominator when it comes to PC sales.

The huge change comes from graphics, and gaming and with that comes the tweakers and overclockers....yet, the funny thing is, most tweakers I know that have an audio RIG usually have the LEAST amount of problems, this, stemming from tweaking the system and removing garbage from the OS...yet, on the other hand, I have many friends with dual G5's and compared to an Nuendo Audio rig, or even Photoshop, it runs like a turtle, i.e., slow. And after some observation, it's due to all the eye candy...(which by the way, WinXP users get/download too...such as YzDock, (you know, that scroller at the bottom of the screen, ), anyway, without getting too much off topic, this will be a good thing if it's x86, why? Becuase micro$oft has many users that would love to go mac but won't due to the lack of gaming support, which, in turn, will trickle down to MAC having more audio applications, and hundereds if not thousands of available VST, RTAS, plug-ins...

The only major problems would really be for Apples suite of products and MOTU DP, all the others have cross platform, but in a sense, a majority of audio users, as well as video users, would dump windows (not INTEL, not AMD, but the OS) and use the MAC x86 coding.

I see this as a big win for audio/video, especially if an end user, even a pro-sumer device with a $100 sound card, just has to purchase the MAC x86 OS and all his *.exe files, programs, vst's, etc, work. This would also bring sales to MOTU if they had to recode to x86 bin.

In the long run, it would create an apple enviroment whereas all audio video is done on a MAC OS using x86 (eg Gigastudio) programs.

[Socolov]

This is just crazy....
There still alot of things to do
for the software that are out for "OSX for PPC".
More stable and more faster. For example,
Kontakt 2 for Mac isn`t light, but VERY heavy
compared to the Windows version, so NI needs to
improve this. But Apple annoncing this news,,,
I doubt NI will do this....Because they cutoff old users
like they did in the past. (MAS users, and OS9 users)

And I wonder if MOTU will continue to
improve (more stable, more faster )DP for the "OSX for PPC"...
Native Instruments stopped MAS support at a very early time,
and for OS9, the update for the software for OS9 were
VERY SLOW.
I don`t want to see that happen again.
I hope they don`t ignore the users that are going to
be using OSX for PPC in the future .

[mastermix]

Originally posted by dougieb:
Why Intel sucks...

C Intrinsic for AltiVec

vec_cmpgt( A, B )

x86 Equivalent

_mm_cmpgt_epi8( A, B ) _mm_cmpgt_epi16( A, B) _mm_cmpgt_epi32(
A, B ) _mm_cmpgt_epi_ps( A, B )

C Intrinsic for AltiVec

vec_ld( A, B )

x86 Equivalent

_mm_loadu_si128( B + A ) _mm_loadu_si128( (short*)((char*)B
+ A) ) _mm_loadu_si128( (int*)((char*)B + A)) _mm_loadu_ps(
(float*)((char*) B + A))

Need I say more? Intel's instruction set has ALWAYS sucked.

OT alert...

IMHO..

Apples and Oranges comparison here...

How about comparing G4/G5 instruction set code with the latest Pentium...since Altivec is a specialized (Vector) co-processor that assists with additional computations on the Mac?

Mind you..I am not an Intel supporter -- But let's play fair...

Kris...

<small>[ June 07, 2005, 02:46 AM: Message edited by: mastermix ]</small>

[juan_alexei]

Some coments on the whole thread.

1) Apple did not say they were switching to PC but to x86. Don't expect running MacOS X on a standard PC.
Apple could even switch back to PPC or other processor available in the future.

2) Switching from Mac OS9 to MacOS X was for many developpers a much larger jump than switching processor will be.
Switching from Mac OS9 to MacOS X required to adapt to a new API. This is not the case here, the APIs will be the same.

Most code nowadays is written in C, that is the compiler is responsible for translating to processor instructions.
Some issues remain as Metrowerk may not work. The other rare problem will be for the few parts coded directly for the processor sometime used to optimize critical parts of the code.
3) Don't think about DP on Windows because of that switch, it's not an easier task to do now.
4) Porting application from a PC to a Mac running an intel will still be as complicated and expensive as it is today.

For developpers, it will not change many things, especially if they have programmed using good practices.

In my opinion, this will not change many things for Mac users, except for having faster machines.
I don't expect suddenly PC software companies to port they soft because of the processor change.

I just hope that DP is well coded enough to ease the port.

[Studio615]

Wow. Alot of info overload and hysteria over the course of the past day. At first, I was a bit scared, after purchasing a new powerbook 3 weeks ago, and hearing the news. I watched the speach last night, and I have to say that I am not scared at all. It should take motu no more than a week to port the source code. Then they will have plenty of time to debug it and make sure it works. They have been in the loop and probably already knew this change was coming for some time. The new intel processors for mac are roughly going to be able to put out 55 perfomance unit of power out per watt. I'm not sure of what that unit is, but the g5 can produce 15, and the pentium4 can produce 70. It is very much more efficient, and will give the mac so much more power. This is a good thing.

[dixiechicken]

I would guess that the deciding factor is how this
switch will effect the MOTU business-model.

If MOTU will manage to port DP to x86-Intel chips
on mac OS-X. Thats where I will stay.

If MOTU decides to go totally "wintel" with DP - thats
where I'll jump.

It will be interesting to see i Apple can sustain
any profits for the next two years.
I was considering investing in a dual G5 2.3, later
this year. But now I will wait until I know how
MOTU will handle this switch.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[Timeline]

OK I slept on it and here are my concerns today...

If you look closely at the demo SJ did, the heat loads are only slightly better now on Intel and SJ showed the future chart Intel promised in their "roadmap" compared to where per watt we are now with the PPC. Strange!!! What will the difference end up being.

That whole part of the demo was highly suspect to me and I'll bet there is allot of story left that should have been told.

It could be Intel, like IBM, also promised more than they can deliver to Apple so don't count your chickens dude. What if next year SJ is pissed at Intel and brings in AMD?

One other thing....

The developer package only contains a single processor. Anyone think about that? How are companies like DP going to really know how it's going to run on a dual processor after the Binary is done. I don't think we will be off of the PPC platform for a long while guys.

I know companies like Nuendo are very concerned about this and still don't have the software running well on the Dual-Dual or quad processors yet. and... that's PC software with NO binary bull.... architecture changes.

<small>[ June 07, 2005, 06:44 AM: Message edited by: Timeline ]</small>

[wylie]

Are they talking about an off the shelf Intel Chip?
Or is intel making a chip based on Mac/Apple Specs?

<small>[ June 07, 2005, 06:40 AM: Message edited by: wylie ]</small>

[Umbrella]

I've read through the whole thread -- I think this move by Apple towards x86 should be viewed more as a broadening of options rather than the noose that some people seem to think it is...

Also -- depending on what happens, Apple may not totally abandon the PPC platform -- we may see performance gains from IBM/Freescale as a result of this...

I am hopeful that this will work out in our favor (DP fans)...

Paul

[Timeline]

I've read through the whole thread -- I think this move by Apple towards x86 should be viewed more as a broadening of options rather than the noose that some people se

Yes Paul I think we should be positive but we need to ask questions and consider all of the things that could be a hitch too.

[billf]

Originally posted by Studio615:
<snip>

I watched the speach last night, and I have to say that I am not scared at all. It should take motu no more than a week to port the source code.
<snip>

It depends on whether MOTU used XCode tools or not to build DP 4.52. In the Keynote, Jobs said there was another coding environment for OSX that wasn't XCode, and those ports would be much more time consuming.

[billf]

Originally posted by Juan Alexei:
Some coments on the whole thread.

1) Apple did not say they were switching to PC but to x86. Don't expect running MacOS X on a standard PC.
Apple could even switch back to PPC or other processor available in the future.

I hope Apple plans to restrict the native boot to just OSX on the Macintels. Releasing OSX to PC clones is dangerous, and having a dual boot Macintel is dangerous. One of Apples SVP's (I think it was Phil Schiller ) said in an interview yesterday that the Macintel boxes will be able to boot Windows. I hope he meant the continuation of VPC.

But if that means a dual boot machine, then I think Apple is taking a huge risk. Didn't IBM try the dual boot strategy with OS2?