applegazette.com — I stumbled upon an article on Low End Mac written by Jeff Adkins exactly four years ago (October 17th, 2002) detailing the author?s opinion that ?OS X on x86 would be the stupidest business decision in history.? That was the time when an x86 version of OS X (Project Marklar) was still very much under wraps, and all sorts of leaks?whether fabricate
Oct 17, 2006 View in Crawl 4
chicken101Oct 17, 2006
"Jobs would rather sell Pixar to Disney than see that."
starmantaOct 17, 2006
18 months ago I'd have all but stabbed you for suggesting I'd be running an Intel machine today, and running Windows programs on it too.But, I'm glad I finally got to play HL2....
francphysicOct 17, 2006
Yeah x86 is faster then PPC. I'm sure that's why the 3 fastest supercomputers in the world all use PPC.The fact of matter is IBM chose to focus more on consoles and servers and left Apple on the backburner. Apple chose Intel because Intel specializes more in desktops then IBM.
wooteryOct 17, 2006
"Apple chose Intel because Intel specializes more in...", that sounds rather like "it's designed to..." to me.Post something that actually means something, like performance or power-consumption, and I won't be leaning on the red thumb.
delmonteOct 18, 2006
"Take a look at the Xbox 360. PowerPC doesn't seem to suck too much at the moment."Tell me, in 2-4 years, at what speed will the XBox 360 PPC CPU run?Answer: the same speed as today.Microsoft paid IBM billions to have 3Ghz PPCs before anyone else. Apple already invested too much money in the PPC alliance, and IBM was asking for more to get past 3Ghz and get a G5 caliber PPC that could be put inside a PowerBook.The PPC platform hit several walls in performance over the years, and over and over PPC got stuck at the same rating for long periods of time. This kind of thing don't matter much for a video-game console CPU, but it sure makes a difference when it comes to personal computers.Apple doesn't have to beg or pay intel so that they make viable desktop and notebook CPUs, because that's intel's core business.Microsoft chose the PPC for strategical reasons. This way they could avoid having to chose between intel or AMD, and it's a way to make sure people won't be able install Windows on it.
delmonteOct 18, 2006
Well, that's how Apple haters behave. They see some negative news about Apple, and then they try to spam it on every other article they can, using some convoluted logic to try to link the two stories.
delmonteOct 19, 2006
"It's a console. I don't even know what your point is there - consoles are always far behind PCs at the end of their lifetime."Duh! this IS my point... The PPC may not suck for a console, but for a PC it's another matter... "I doubt that, seeing as that the development of the Cell - something new, not just faster - cost $400m."Whatever, make that millions instead of billions. It's still not a trivial amount. Apple invested too much already for a chip that kept hitting performance walls time after time. "You should notice that I blame IBM for that, not Apple."That must be why you can't see my point as I'm trying to explain why Apple did the switch and why the PPC wasn't the right CPU for them anymore. "no, choice is a Good Thing." Sure choice is a good thing, but for a console, you have to settle on only one CPU supplier. If MS chose AMD for the 380, it would have pissed off intel, and vice-versa. By chosing the PPC they avoid having to play this game."Linux is available for PowerPC."Linux is not Windows...Anyway maybe we're both saying the same thing and just arguing on semantics, but I take issue when someone use consoles to say that the PPC was a good thing after all and Apple shouldn't have switch, and this is how I interpreted your statement.