Apple is adopting Intel processors!

**rallyracr420** · 06-06-2005

from: news.com.com

SAN FRANCISCO--After years of trying to get people to switch to Macs from Intel-based computers, Apple Computer itself has switched.

CEO Steve Jobs announced Monday that Apple will gradually shift its Mac line to Intel-based chips over the next two years. The move confirms a timetable first reported by CNET News.com.

Jobs' announcement formed the centerpiece of a keynote speech to Mac programmers attending the company's annual Worldwide Developer Conference here. The conference, expected to draw some 3,800 attendees this year, is a traditional venue for Apple product launches.

In his speech, Jobs revealed that Apple has been developing all versions of OS X since its inception to run on Intel and PowerPC chips.

"Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life the past five years," he said.

Finally!!! I've wanted to use the MacOSX on PC hardware for years! Apple says at the end of the article that MacOSX will only run on Apple/Intel hardware, but I bet some software experts will change that pretty fast. Also, we'll finally be able to run Windows on Apple's MacMini which IMO is one of the coolest looking computers out there. It gives way to the ideology that computers should get smaller over time and don't always have to be boxed into towering cases.

**siren** · 06-06-2005

Not entirely.

Remember that you need driver support in order to be able to run the OS on PC's. The question is whether Apple will start to license and support OSX accross the array of X86 compatible hardware or if they will instead just switch to Intel chip and maintain their currently closed platform status.

**yoshimaroka** · 06-06-2005

Apple wouldn't allow OS X to run on other boxes, because it would screw up their whole vertical solution. They're the only PC company left that controls every widget in terms of the computing experience; that's why everything works so well and seamlessly.

from news.com:
After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that."
However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.

Although I personally have no reason to run Windows or any *nix offerings. I bought my Mac because of the OS.

EDIT: They'll still be offering PowerPC for the next 2 1/2 years as well and could very well offer both Inter and IBM processors in the long run... more choice the better

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-06-2005

Originally Posted by siren

Not entirely.

Remember that you need driver support in order to be able to run the OS on PC's. The question is whether Apple will start to license and support OSX accross the array of X86 compatible hardware or if they will instead just switch to Intel chip and maintain their currently closed platform status.

Here are some quotes from the Keynote speech:

Mac OS X has been “leading a secret double life” for the past five years, said Jobs. “So today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for PowerPC and Intel. This has been going on for the last five years.

Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple’s Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system. The system itself was not revealed.

And here's the rest of the speech:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the keynote stage of this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Calif., wearing his customary black turtleneck. While Jobs started out by offering some encouraging details about Apple’s growth and unveiled the name of Apple’s next Mac OS X release, he also dropped one of the biggest bombshells in Apple history: Apple plans a phased transition to an Intel-based processor architecture which it hopes to complete by 2007.

“Good morning, thank you,” Jobs said to the crowd, who greeted him with warm applause. “Today is an important day. We’ve got some great stuff for you today.”

Big numbers

Jobs said that WWDC 2005 is the largest gathering in the last decade of Apple developers — more than 3,800 attendees are present this week from 45 countries, including dozens from China and India. More than 500 Apple engineers have trekked into San Francisco this week to offer on-site help to those developers as well.

“The number that blows my mind, we’ve got more than half a million Developer Connection members. The development community at Apple is thriving,” said Jobs.

Likewise, Apple’s retail stores are pulling in impressive numbers, according to Jobs. With 109 stores open around the world, Apple is seeing more than 1 million visitors per week, he said, and has sold more than half a billion dollars in third-party products this past year.

“The iPod has really entered popular culture in America. You know that when you get on the cover of the New Yorker,” Jobs said. By the end of its last fiscal quarter, Apple had sold a cumulative total of 16 million iPods, he added, and had 76 percent market share. “So we’re thrilled with that.”

What’s more, Jobs said that Apple’s iTunes Music Store has sold and had downloaded more than 430 million songs. “We’ve had a lot of competition, and what’s happened? Our market share’s gone up,” said Jobs. “It’s now 82 percent in the month of May.”

Podcasting comes to iTunes

Jobs turned his focus to podcasting, which he described as “TiVo for radio” and “Wayne’s World for radio.” “We see it as the hottest thing going in radio.” And as he had previously mentioned, Jobs said that iTunes will now support podcasting directly.

“We’re building a podcast directory in the iTunes Music Store,” he explained. Jobs demonstrated by navigating the itunes Music Store, clicking on a podcast link, which then displayed a directory of podcasts. Clicking on famed podcaster Adam Curry’s name presented a hierarchical list of podcasts, and Jobs then subscribed and listened to a short segment.

“We think it’s going to basically take podcasting mainstream, to where anyone can do it,” said Jobs, who also noted that Apple would get into the game with its own “New Music Tuesdays” podcast.

Mac grows in leaps and bounds

Jobs also lauded the Mac’s recent performance, compared to the rest of the computer industry. Apple has seen year over year growth in the Mac business unit for the past five quarters. “So last quarter, the Mac grew at over three times the rate of the rest of the industry,” he told attendees.

Tiger has been a huge success, Jobs added. “I’m really pleased to report to you, that this week we will deliver, copies sold through retail, maintenance, and shipped on Macs, the two millionth copy of Tiger,” said Jobs. “Remember, it’s been about six weeks [since Tiger’s release]. This is the most successful OS release ever.”

Of the 2 million users of Tiger already represent 16 percent of Apple’s entire Mac OS X user base. Forty-nine percent of Mac OS X users are running Panther, and 25 percent of Mac OS X users are still running Jaguar. The remainder are “laggards on early versions of Mac OS X,” according to Jobs.

Leopard

Apple’s next major operating system release will be called Leopard, said Jobs. “We’re not going to be focusing on it today, but we intend to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007, right about the time Microsoft expects to release Longhorn,” he said.

The rumors are true: Intel will be inside

Jobs talked about the major transitions in the Mac’s life — starting from the Mac’s Motorola 68000-series processor to PowerPC. “The PowerPC set Apple up fro the next decade. It was a good move,” he said.

“The second transition was even better — the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X that we just did,” he continued. “This was a brain transplant. And even though these operating systems (9 and x) vary only by one in name, they are very different, and this has set Apple up for the next 20 years.”

As the Intel logo lowered on the stage screen, Jobs said, “We are going to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, and we are going to do it for you now, and for our customers next year. Why? Because we want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward.”

“I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven’t been able to deliver that to you,” said Jobs. “But as we look ahead, and though we’ve got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can’t envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap,” said Jobs.

Intel processors provide more performance per watt than PowerPC processors do, said Jobs. “When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of performance per watt, but Intel’s roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do,” he explained.

Transition to Intel by 2007, and yes, Marklar exists

“Starting next year, we will introduce Macs with Intel processors,” said Jobs. “This time next year, we plan to ship Macs with Intel processors. In two years, our plan is that the transition will be mostly complete, and will be complete by end of 2007.”

Jobs then confirmed a long-held belief that Apple was working on an Intel-compatible version of Mac OS X that some have termed “Marklar.”

Mac OS X has been “leading a secret double life” for the past five years, said Jobs. “So today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for PowerPC and Intel. This has been going on for the last five years.”

Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple’s Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system. The system itself was not revealed.

Apple needs developers’ help to complete the transition

“We are very far along on this, but we’re not done,” said Jobs. “Which is why we’re going to put it in your hands very soon, so you can help us finish it.”

Widget, scripts and Java applications should work in the new environment without any conversion, said Jobs. Cocoa-based applications will require “a few minor tweaks and a recompile.” Carbon-based applications require “a few more tweaks,” recompiling, and “they’ll work,” said Jobs. And projects built using Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior need to be moved to Xcode.

The future of Mac OS X development is moving to Xcode, said Jobs. Of Apple’s top 100 developers, more than half — 56 percent — are already using Xcode, and 25 percent are in the process of switching to Xcode. “Less than 20 percent are not on board yet. Now is a good time to get on board,” said Jobs.

A new build of Xcode, version 2.1, is being released today. This new release enables developers to specify PowerPC or Intel architectures. “… and you’re going to build what’s called a universal binary. It contains all the bits for both architectures,” said Jobs. “One binary, works on both PowerPC and Intel architecture. So you can ship one CD that supports both processors.”

“This is nothing like Carbonizing”

Many developers reading this news may be thinking that they’ll have to go through the same woes they had to in order to get their Mac OS 9 applications “Carbonized” to run on Mac OS X. Jobs assured the crowd that this isn’t like that at all. To demonstrated, he brought on stage Theo Gray, cofounder of Mathematica maker Wolfram Research.

Gray said that Mathematica is encumbered by “ancient code that hasn’t been changed since the Reagan administration,” but despite that, it only took about two hours to get Mathematica’s Mac OS X code running on an Intel-based Mac. “We’re talking about twenty lines of source code out of millions, from a dead cold start. This is nothing like Carbonizing. It’s pretty good when the biggest problem from your port is to figure out what to do with the rest of your weekend.”

Rosetta keeps old apps running

Jobs also discussed a new technology called Rosetta, that he described as “a dynamic binary translator.” It runs existing PowerPC applications on the Intel platform, he said. Jobs described Rosetta as “lightweight,” and said “it’s nothing like Classic.”

Jobs demonstrated Rosetta by running Microsoft Office applications, Quicken and Photoshop CS 2 — all unmodified PowerPC-binary versions, unlike Mathematica — on the new Intel-based hardware.

“So that is Rosetta, Jobs concluded. “These PowerPC apps just run. And that’s what we’re going to have for our users, because every app isn’t going to be there for our users on day one.”

Big names pledge support

Microsoft’s Roz Ho and Adobe’s Bruce Chizen both took the stage to reaffirm their commitment to the Macintosh platform. Ho said that Microsoft has been “working with Apple for some time” to create future versions of Office using Apple’s Xcode tools, and will create universal binaries accordingly.” Chizen called Apple’s decision to move to Intel “great,” and gently chided Steve Jobs: “What took you so long?”

Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini was next on stage, greeted by Jobs with a warm embrace. “I expect there’s a whole lot of people who’d never expect you’d see that logo on this stage,” said Otellini, who launched into a story tracing the history of his company, founded in 1968, and Apple, founded in 1976 — two high-tech firms that have blossomed over the decades in Silicon Valley.

Despite occasional jabs over the years, including Apple’s infamous ad where they set fire to the Intel “Bunny Man,” (an ad that was shown), Intel doesn’t hold a grudge, said Otellini.

“I think this brings the skills and the opportunities and the engineering excellence of two great companies,” said Otellini. “They combine our strengths and play on our respective strengths. Apple has legendary capability at hardware and software design and innovation.”

“Our strengths are different but entirely complementary. We’re about architecture, about scale and scope, and what we are most about is the relentless advancement of Moore’s Law to give you better and better machines every year. So after thirty years, Apple and Intel are together at last. I don’t think of this as a fairy tale with a happy ending. I think of this as an exciting and important story with a very happy beginning,” concluded Otellini, who then left the stage.

Last words from Jobs

“Apple is strong. And the Mac is strong. So this is a great time to start building for the future, to make us even stronger. We know transitions: We’ve been through two of them, and they’ve kept our platform at the forefront,” said Jobs.

“And we’ll continue to be bold and begin a third transition today … to make the best machines we know how to make in the future. This transition isn’t going to happen overnight. We’re making awesome machines now, we’ve got a lot of great PowerPC products in the pipeline, but we are also working to design some Intel-based Macs, and when we’re here next year we will have them in the marketplace. And there will be a transition in the next two years. We’re getting ready.

“It’s time for you to get ready too,” said Jobs, refocusing his emphasis to the developers who hold the future of Macintosh third-party software support in their hands. “What do you have to do? Create universal binaries of your apps.”

When Jobs greets developers at next year’s show, he said, he suspects many of them will already be shipping universal binaries, and Apple will keep pushing the frontiers and offering more information about Leopard.

“Because more than the processor, more than the hardware, the soul of the Mac is its operating system,” said Jobs. “And we’re not standing still.”

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/06...php?lsrc=mwrss

**siren** · 06-06-2005

I have a sudden urge to buy a Mac next year and run Windows on it.

I would love to have their style with the Windows OS attached.

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-06-2005

Originally Posted by siren

I have a sudden urge to buy a Mac next year and run Windows on it.

I would love to have their style with the Windows OS attached.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, siren.

**siren** · 06-06-2005

Macs are the best looking PC's our there. I would love to have my hands on a Powerbook and use it everywhere I go. But I personally can't stand OSX. It looks pretty, but I imagine it is mostly my unfamiliarity with the MacOS in general that drives me away from it.

Apple stated that they would not do anything to prevent Windows from running on the systems. Assuming I could get drivers for most of the system, I would love to get one and run Windows on it.

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-06-2005

Awwww, ok. I see what you mean now. Yes...Apple makes some nice looking laptops.

**yoshimaroka** · 06-06-2005

I guess you'll have to put up with a heftier price tag. And I'd love to build a custom PC with OS X, but it'll be a while before whatever hardware Apple offers will be hacked.
What can you do…

**rallyracr420** · 06-06-2005

Apple does have nice looking hardware...everything except the iMac. MacMinis look amazingly sexy, as well as the iPod and iPod Shuffle. (speaking of the iPod shuffle, have any of you seen the Super Tangent? Its import only...search eBay).

Good point siren about the drivers not being ported to the Mac OSX, but I imagine some sort of wrapper will be created so the driver still talks to a Windows compatibility layer and then this compatibility layer talks to OSX. It won't be universal but should be decently feasible for most of the hardware out there.

**straightballin** · 06-07-2005

What do you guys think IBM is gonna do? Even though they are making money with supporting all the consoles.

**siren** · 06-07-2005

They will be fine. PPC chips were not only used by Apple. Yea, Apple was a big purchaser, but just one of the upcoming consoles will ship more systems with IBM based chips than Apple bought in an entire year. IBM will make less profit per chip in the consoles, but they will still be making money on the architecture.

**SessDMC** · 06-07-2005

don't forget their think pads and other business solutions.

**CompGeek** · 06-08-2005

The new apple OS tiger is rated better than Windows by PC World

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-08-2005

You guys can go watch the Apple Keynote here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/

You need QuickTime to watch it (it's an hour long). Also, after viewing the conference, I have to say I'm a lot more excited than I was before.

**mudger** · 06-08-2005

Apple is absolutely amazing. WOW os x tiger looks AMAZING!!!!

OMG!!!

I think apple will eventually take over the pc as the number 1 home pc... As soon as they figure out how to get gaming on it.

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-08-2005

As soon as they figure out how to get gaming on it.

There are plenty of games for Apple PCs. I don't know what you mean.

**mudger** · 06-08-2005

Originally Posted by PeanutButterMunky

As soon as they figure out how to get gaming on it.

There are plenty of games for Apple PCs. I don't know what you mean.

Not any real MAJOR games come out for apple right from the launch... Usually it takes a while for it to get to Apple..

but hey, prove me wrong please... I need another excuse to buy an Apple like i need a hole in my head.

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-08-2005

Some games out for Apple right now: Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, Doom III, NeverWinter Nights, Baldurs Gate 2 - Throne Of Bhaal, Aliens Vs. Predator Gold Edition, Halo (the original), Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Lord Of The Rings - The Return of the King, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament 2004, WarCraft III...and I'm still waiting on Half-Life 2

...which probably won't be released.

**straightballin** · 06-08-2005

So i guess thats a no go for a cell in a Apple computer. Do you think any other major computer company will pick up IBMs PPCs.

**rallyracr420** · 06-09-2005

Some games out for Apple right now: Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, Doom III, NeverWinter Nights, Baldurs Gate 2 - Throne Of Bhaal, Aliens Vs. Predator Gold Edition, Halo (the original), Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Lord Of The Rings - The Return of the King, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament 2004, WarCraft III...and I'm still waiting on Half-Life 2 ...which probably won't be released.

That's still a tenth of the amount of games that are released for the PC. Apple is finally gaining some ground on the software side, and this move Apple has made to x86 CPUs will undoubtably help, but Apple still has a long ways to go.

**PeanutButterMunky** · 06-09-2005

Originally Posted by rallyracr420

Some games out for Apple right now: Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, Doom III, NeverWinter Nights, Baldurs Gate 2 - Throne Of Bhaal, Aliens Vs. Predator Gold Edition, Halo (the original), Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Lord Of The Rings - The Return of the King, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament 2004, WarCraft III...and I'm still waiting on Half-Life 2 ...which probably won't be released.

That's still a tenth of the amount of games that are released for the PC. Apple is finally gaining some ground on the software side, and this move Apple has made to x86 CPUs will undoubtably help, but Apple still has a long ways to go.

Yeah...there's about 400,000 more games on PC than there is for Apple. Another reason why switching to Intel will probably be great in the future.