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One year later: How Apple's Intel transition is going

macworld.com — The move in the first place was accepted by most people, and a year later the transition seems to be running smoothly

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 30, 2006

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  • Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26Considering apple (Steve Jobs) said at WWDC 2005 (world wide developes conference), the intel trasition would be complete by the end of of calender year 2007, but said this year that it would be complete by the end of 2006. I think it's going pretty well, don't you?
  • NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16I was very optimistic about it from the beginning, and it's gone better than I expected.

    -jcr
  • Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Someone should stamp "insane" on your hand.
  • plosfas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6it's been a year already?
  • NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Update to 10.4.7

    -jcr
  • Nathan07, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Xserve's are rumored to be released this July.
  • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8"Yeah, it seems that with the Mac Pros supposedly coming out this summer at WWDC, the transition (in terms of hardware) should be completed by August."

    You forgot about the XServe and XServe RAID, but with Woodcrest's release, both should be converted at the same time with the Mac Pro desktop systems.
  • UnnDunn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I love how the article refers to Intel as Apple's "occasional arch-nemesis" and calls the initial reaction to the transition announcement "largely positive."

    Am I the only one who remembers Mac fanboys threatening all sorts of bad things when this transition was announced?

    Shoot, even Joy of Tech, every Mac fan's favorite comic, chronicled it best...
    http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/693.html

    But now the reaction was "largely positive?" A bit of revisionist history there, MacWorld?
  • deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4About 80% of my apps are now native Intel code. Thankfully Rosetta has lived up to Apple's promises. Besides slower load times, it's almost impossible to tell if you're running Intel or PPC apps. I think ShapeShifter is the only app that hasn't run on Rosetta for me.
  • pyro116, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yep, the Intel transition was announced at WWDC last year, June 2006: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html
  • danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I would say that 98% of what I do is already native. I guess that is because I am not a graphics person that uses Adobe. The only non-native apps I user a Excel, and my printer utilities.
  • Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You should of contacted apple, it is not within spec, and they will fix it.
    When I brough my macbook in for heating, boot up, and whining problems, he just said the permissions were off. The main reason they work there is because they have a mac and they wanted to sell ipods, the repair center are the ones that know how to fix macs. :P
  • davdav, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No idea why, but that was the funniest post I had read since the meat packing article.


    http://digg.com/apple/No_iPod_for_Christmas,_just_mystery_meat

    by "thewordwasgod"
  • starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4i've lived through every transition. they always are pretty painless. apple has kept the intel version current.
  • super_spyder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3i wish i could digg down people twice, but sadly one is all I get.....
  • danboarder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The latest update (10.4.7 + firmware) messed up my MBP 17... not sure of the cause yet, but Firefox 1.5.0.4 crashes after opening 2 or more tabs now, and sometimes on launch... I've disabled all extentions, tried Bon Echo (Firefox 2.0 alpha) and still the same. Anyone else have this problem on a Macbook/Pro with Firefox?
  • Subtonic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Steve is a marketing master - under-promise, and when you meet the "real" deadline it looks like you've over-delivered.
  • Butros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Thanks, now I have coffee all over my laptop.
  • matatabe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Anyone here actually have an Intel Mini or MacBook? I've got a Mini Core Duo, and it's anything but smooth. Sure, a fair amount of programs run extremely fast. A lot of programs hard lock the system. A lot of programs become unresponsive and don't take kindly to being force quit through any of the three major means. Adobe Creative Suite's installer will kill you if you accidentally don't deselect Version Cue, and then you've gotta boot to safe mode or target disk to get rid of it.

    This article is from macworld.com, so it should be taken with a grain of salt (and a free subscription with every Mac!). The software side of the transition is far from done.
  • jmontes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In my mind much of the success ultimately rests with Adobe since many of the power users of Apple computers are in the creative graphics field. Talk about "occasional arch-nemesis" -- Apple tends to occasionally piss off Adobe by putting out products like Aperture but can't afford to anger them too much least they leave altogether. I wish Apple would just purchase Adobe and bring stability to the issue.
  • JulianMorrison, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Apple have done a hardware transition before and NeXT's OS was always built for cross-platform. I ran Rhapsody dev release on my beige PC box, before they deprecated the x86 version. No surprise, they succeeded again.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have one of each...bought a macbook duo for the wife and a intel mini duo for my desktop.

    My wife and I have yet to have any lockups or crashes... and the both run WindowsXP in a virtual window using parallels FASTER than my old AthlonXP which was barely 24months old.


  • stepnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@davdav - Thanks - that was sweet.
    "walmart will pack your box full of meat when you try to buy from them.
    do not buy from walmart they like nothing more then packing your box with their meat when you are not looking and not suspecting."

    That was funny - ever so funny - for those of you that didn't see the walmart gem from "thewordwasgod".
  • asst, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The initial reaction was mixed...but then again many were waiting for new beasty Mac notebooks to come out and eagerly were drooling with this announcement too. I guess with certain masses of MacBook users, as long as the pretty Apple logo lights up correcting when their notebook is on nothing else matters ;)

    As long as the hardware keeps up, if not leads, the trends I'm just happy to use OSX. Its the operating system and certain apps (Logic, Shake, Final Cut) that attracted me to the Mac, not the PPC inside.
  • leszek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2lol it is clearly a troll, just look his comment history :)
  • pyro116, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Yeah, it seems that with the Mac Pros supposedly coming out this summer at WWDC, the transition (in terms of hardware) should be completed by August.
  • Butros, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I was just thinking the same thing, seems more recent. Weird.
  • starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2most graphics people have good PPC macs. they aren't going to switch until adobe is native. hell, i got a 800 mhz iMac that i use and i don't feel any crunch. i have several 3 ghz XP machines that don't perform as well as the iMac. i have opened the entire suite on the XP box and it brings it to its knees. the iMac i open everything and can't really see any slow down at all. nobodies in any hurry to dump their PPC Macs. if anything they are buying up an extra... i'm sure intel is going to be fine but its hard to beat the PPC.
  • DarkSideofMoon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Drunk?
  • nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Am I the only one who remembers Mac fanboys threatening all sorts of bad things when this transition was announced?"

    Sure, it was like that when it was first announced. Then when the first machines were released, everyone said "Oh."

    Gaining a huge amount of performance (2-5x) for a very modest price raise ($100 give or take per platform) is a very, very good thing.
  • NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Add memory!

    The cheapest way to speed up any Mac, is to avoid paging.

    -jcr
  • Bigcat1021, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What programs lock it up and how much memory do you have installed?
  • SoonerPet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I fully agree. I had been hoping Apple would buy Adobe for years now. It would consolidate their hold on the creative field. Apple has too many big players they can't piss of right now, they need to fix that. They can't piss off MS or they pull Office, they can't piss off Adobe or they lose Photoshop and the whole CS suite. They need to just buy Adobe and be done with it. If MS ever pulled Office for the mac, Apple could pull Photoshop from windows. Mutual destruction. And now that Adobe has Macromedia as well, Apple would really own the whole creative field just by picking up Adobe. One can dream.
  • danboarder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I solved the Firefox crashing problem --- I found that the Intel Optimized Firefox Builds from Beatnik don't crash (and seem smoother all around) http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2006/06/04/firefox-1504

    @ rshuston: thanks for the suggestion. I will try repairing permissions to fix anything else that might be acting up.
  • tnedor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I will not say that the transition is "complete" till all the software from the major third party vendors are operating "natively" on the new hardware ..
    I love all the Apple stuff that I use.. but there are still apps I am quite tied to for work, etc. that is not updated.. and I find myself using the G4 laptop still for a number of these ,,,
  • MedicineMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"If MS ever pulled Office for the mac, Apple could pull Photoshop from windows. Mutual destruction."

    More precisely: the Cold War 'Mutual[ly Assured D]estruction' (MAD).
  • starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3in the first place... apple fan boys... there are none. we are satisfied customers. as mac users we experience all the OSs. we know what we are talking about- as opposed to a microsoft fanboy which has never sat in front of a mac but has an "educated" opinion anyway. as for predicting the future saying it was gong to be a disaster or something... don't know. if you look at apples history they do these trasitions pretty well. but then... microsoft fanboys wouldn't know that... all they have experience with is microsoft botching things up.
  • ElectroBot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Could you specify if the programs that crash are PPC or Unviersal Binary?
  • insanemike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1As a software developer, I agree with the comments posted above regarding third-party software needing Universal binaries.

    And the article is slightly erroneous; porting app's to i386 has been anything but easy. In fact, we usually refer to Jobs' "checking the box" instructions as a joke. Companies have been bogged down over the past year "just checking the box."
  • rshuston, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I was able to run the latest Firefox (Universal Binary) and have 6 tabs running without any problem on my MBP17. Try repairing your permissions with Apple's Disk Utility - mine were somewhat messed up and it was wreaking havoc with my Xcode and Mail applications.You also might try downloading the "Combo" update to 10.4.7 and reinstalling just to make sure everything's up to date.
  • philomatic, on 02/08/2009, -4/+3My Mac Book Pro constantly makes a whining noise and runs so hot that it will frequently have to reboot. Of course the Apple genuises say this is all within spec.
  • volcomjerk, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6What translator did you use???
  • bi0metric, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1**COUGH COUGH** APPLE HUMPERS LOL
  • NonPC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Mac fan's favorite comic? Nobody likes that stupid "comic"
  • pozdena, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3LISTEN TO BALPAKINA! HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH THAT YOU ARE TOO IN LOVE WITH YOUR APPLES ! THERE ARE DAMNING PICTURES OF BILLGATE= AND STEVE JOBS TOGETHER, IF THAT ISNT DAMNEING EVIDENCE OF THEM ARE PLOTTING TO MERGE THEN I DONT KNO!!!!

    http://d.smugmug.com/photos/24354059-M.jpg

    HOW IS INSANE NOW.
  • zippydoodle, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2yes leave please
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0WHAY I DONT KNOW WY THE POST YOUA RE THE NEGATIVE FOR HTE DIGGS. I AM THE THE ONE PSEKAING THE TRUTH HERE AND YOUR EHT EONLE TYELLING HTE LIES! MIROSFOT AND BILLY BALMER ARE GOING TO THE WAYS OF HTE STEVE JOBS, WHY DO YOU THINK HE SOLD PIXAR? SO HE COULD HAV ETH MONEY FUNDS NEEDED TO CASH ON THE MICIRSOFT BOARD OFI DRECTORS!~ DO YOU THINK ITS ANY SECERET BILLY GAETS IS STEPPING DOWN FROM CEO POSITION? STEVE JOBS WILL REPLACE HIM IN 2008, THIS ISTN EVEN THE EELCTION.

    I AM FROM BAGLNADESH, I KNOW THESE SHTINGS. I!!!!!!KSMAIMB!
  • Ryan001, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2Just leave. Please.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -58/+3I THINK APPLES IS SELLING OUT HTE MICORSOFT. IT IS OBVIOUS OT ME THAT WHEN APPLE SIGNED THE CONTACT WITH MICROSOFT BILL GATES AND BILLY BALMER THAT STEVE JOBS SOLD OUT TO THE DRONING DEVIL THEY WARNED US ABOUT IN THEIR 1984 COMMERCIALS WITH THE OLYMPIC THROWER HAMMER TOSS. LOOK, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE CLEAR THE AIM OF THE INTEL TRNASISTION, AL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LOOK AT THE NUMBRES. IF YOU HAVE THE SLIGHTEST AMOUTN OF JDUGMENT IT WLL TELL YOU THAT APPLE IS PREPARING FOR A MERGGER WITH MICORSOFT AND THAT VISTA/LIEPOARD ARE GOING OT BASICALLY TBE THE SAME THING ANYWYA. AND ID IDNT EVNE READ THAT ON EHT EFREKAING RUMOR SITES LIKE A!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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