The switch to Intel how do some of you feel about it now?

It is about sixteen months ago that Apple switched over to the Intel chip. I have been thinking about this more recently and i think that i would have liked to see Apple continue with their PPC range.
It made Apple more unique i would have loved to have seen an iBook G5 or a Powerbook G5.

It was rumoured to happen back in 2005 but it obviously did not happen as Apple switched to Intel.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/14/apple_powerbook_g5/

I have also read as well that this switch to Intel has made Apple more susceptible to viruses.

Apple used to go on about how PPC was so much faster than Intel and the users in the main believed this also. You would see so many debates come up about the PPC chip being better than Windows and the Mac users in the main would defend the PPC chip to the end. I question now if some of these people actually believe what they were writing.
Because if now you ask some of these people now they have done a complete 360 in how they perceive the PPC chip.
I kind of feel like Apple does the same as well in a way now.


This is an interesting article it is titled Did Apple lie to us?
http://lowendmac.com/hodges/06/0817.html

I think that these test results are not that accurate (but still interesting none the less) in the link below and also the commentary is interesting.
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html

So would have liked to have seen Apple continue their PPC range or are you glad that Apple switched over to Intel?

 

I'm glad they switched. Makes things just that little bit more compatible.

 

I would have to agree as well, I think the switch has been a v.good move .... it got me to buy a mac!
The other thing is that intel had/has arguably the best tech and a proven track record for producing powerful cps's for a mobile platform, at a decent price and on time. There was always some doubt that the ppc/ibm could or ever would be able to match intel on all these fronts, esp given that so much of their focus was being funnelled into the cell processor and the ps3.
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If Apple had their way then i'm pretty sure we would be talking G5 this and G6 that, unfortunately their hands were tied with regard to hardware development. I remember how upset the mac faithful got when we saw very small incremental upgrades until the G5 Power Macs came out.

I think Apple got tired of waiting for then Motorola and IBM to get their priorities straight especially with IBM concentrating making CPU's for the Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony gaming consoles where they make a lot more money.

 

I suspect that if Apple had stayed with the PPC chip that programmers would still be working on a more superior VPC or something like Parallels but for PPC Macs.

 

if they hadn't switched i would be writing this from my Dell Inspiron 9400 not my MBP.

 

From a business standpoint, it's definitely one of, if not THE best move Apple has made.

 

I can see what you mean by that but interestingly figures suggest in the last year that the sales figures of Apple notebooks have been down.
Now i seriously doubt that is due to the Intel chip but it is an interesting point none the less. I would have expected to see Mac sales up though as opposed to going down.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/app...while-the-industrys-numbers-are-up-what-gives

 

Apple would still be falling behind if they hadn't made that switch, without Intel they could not offer an equal product for even close to the same price, The G5 would have never made it into a notebook computer, it is barely capable in a desktop compared to intel's newest offering.

One of the best moves in the computer industry in a long time.

 

From a design standpoint, I'd maintain that PPC is still better than the x86 architecture. And the PPC family of chips is far from being unsuccessful - one of it's greatest costumers is - surprise - Microsoft! Xbox360 sports PPC chips. And that after coming from a x86 platform in the original Xbox, so MS must have seem some gain in switching. Alas, both Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PS3 use PPC-flavored chips as well.

For me, what tips the market towards x86 is the economy of scale it achieves. Earlier RISC chips which now are almost extinct, save for the ARM family (which is probably the most used and sold CPU family), were loads better than the x86. BUT its low price, and the dominance in the market Intel achieved allowed them to spend gazillions in development and effectively "patch" their design and overcome most of it shortcomings. The platform resembles a Frankenstein, but you'll be hard pressed to find a better value anywhere, specially in the lower end.

So I'd say that in the beginning of the use of PPC chips by Apple - say the G3 era - they weren't lying at all. x86 caught up, and they began "omitting" - showing just benchmarks that favored the PPC. The PPC still trumps x86 in some areas, a G5 still holds it own against a similarly clocked x86. There was just no good upgrade path in a timely manner, and Apple was possibly concerned with losing status with IBM due to the current console gaming generation being based on PPC.

Apple lied? Please, this is business. They will say what they have to say to sell their stuff. Don't be innocent.

Now, replying to rachuk's last post: that article is completely misleading, it is comparing Q12007 with Q42006! Apple sales have never been so good, and if I am not mistaken it is the single most quickly growing notebook maker in the US. Q12007 is just after holidays so a decrease in sales is expected. I am surprised such an article made it to Ars.

 

I think Apple just saw what would bring them to the mainstream. Dualcore chips were already out and the G5 wasn't delivering the goods. I'm not sure they were too concerned with people running Windows at the time they made the switch, but there is no way Jobs isn't happy for what he did.

I'm proof that they switch to x86 was well worth it. I bought my first Mac a week ago.

 

The switch to Intel was a good one by Apple. Finally, the speeds of the Macs were on par with the PCs, and the Motorola/IBM chips were barely improving.

Like Photoshop, it took close to 4 seconds for Photoshop to preview a filter effect on an iMac G5. How can that compare to almost a no-second wait on PCs? And Photoshop is supposed to be Apple's advantage (the artistic people).

And oh no! I'm not at 911 posts anymore!

 

I now have a MacBook Pro dual booting OS X and Vista.

I sold my dual G5 as soon as Apple announced the switch, and bought a MacBook Pro as soon as Adobe shipped CS3.

The desktop lineup might have been ok with PPC, but the move to Intel was really about the laptop. PPC had NOTHING on the laptop front.

 

Yeah PPC pretty much sucks.
G4's and G5's were bad enough... I would not have ventured into the Apple world if it weren't for the switch to Intel.

Best move Apple has made in a LONG time.

 

Simply not true.

PPC was capable of running dual CPU when the Pentium 4 was not.

G4 and G5 were extremely competitive in benchmarks.

It was really about two things:

1. Jobs wanted more attention from his chip supplier. IBM was not kissing his butt enough.

2. There was no G5 or dualcore G5 that was going to work in a laptop.

When Apple made the switch, the G4 Powerbook had been stuck in the single core 1GHz to 1.67GHz range for YEARS.

 

I think switching to the Intel platform will open a lot of doors for Apple. It allows them to "mainstream" their hardware and will allow software vendors much easier porting of software to the Mac platform.

The kind of growth this should facilitate should either bring the joy of Mac to a lot more people, or corrupt Apple and ruin that which is Mac for everyone. I'm hoping for the former ;-)

 

THe switch is why I bought my macbook pro. Best investment ive made in a long time.

 

That second point is the fundamental issue. Notice how many Macs being sold are MacBooks or MBP's.... and notice how popular laptops are in general compared to desktop PC's.

The writing was on the wall. I do like the PowerPC, but there was no mobile PowerPC G5, and I don't believe there still would be one.

If the mobile platform wasn't relevant, I think Apple could have gone on using PowerPC chips (perhaps moving to the long-rumoured Cell-based Power Macs, for example). But that wasn't the case.

Apple absolutely had to switch to Intel, and it was smart on their part. Intel is able to deliver CPU's across the board, from low-cost chips for the MacBook and Mac mini, to incredibly powerful CPU's for the Mac Pro, and it is nice for Apple to be able to take advantage of the developments of the Intel platform.

And there is the added benefit that one can now buy a Mac and dual-boot Windows and/or run Windows software with virtualization.......... this has always been something some Mac users have wanted to be able to do, but the options for actually doing so were always pretty junky (SoftPC, RealPC, VirtualPC, etc.) compared to what we can do now with Boot Camp, Parallels, etc.

The idea that the PowerPC is what made Apple unique doesn't hold water, in my mind. The hardware components being used are irrelevant. Frankly, this same argument was used back when Apple first switched to PowerPC - there were people who were upset that Apple didn't continue using Motorola 68k chips instead, for example, and thought that the switch to PowerPC was taking away something "unique".

It's always been the OS, software and hardware design - the particular hardware being used was just the engine to power things.

-Zadillo

 

I'm gonna have to agree with zadillo on this one.

Plus I'm one of those that wouldn't have switched if not for intel being the chipset. I'm a programmer, so I have to have accessibility to Windows, and boot camp allows me to do that quite easily.

Now if I could just figure out xCode...

 

Apple said it when they switched to Intel - they simply could not feasibly stick a G5 into a laptop; it presented too many heat and power issues. Add to that the fact that their sales were not doing so hot and that many were speculating they would switch to iPod only, and they needed something to get them back in the PC game. The Intel chips have done it if I do say so myself.

 

I read somewhere that the real reason why Apple switched to Intel is because of the advantage of using DRM with Intel chips (build in hardware), especially since Apple moved it's focus to selling multimedia through iTunes and AppleTV.

 

I don't think you would this big a move for DRM.

I think it is one of the best moves Apple has made. They saw the shift to portables and new that the G5 would not go into a notebook. Now, you have a great line of chips that are being updated regularly and have a great road map ahead. Plus add to that the ability to run nearly every OS and you have a very compelling product. It was a good move and their sales are showing it.

 

This was one of the rumors that was floated around when the news initially broke that Apple was switching to Intel. Personally I don't think there was ever any substance to it, and it seemed more like fearmongering from paranoid people who thought it was blasphemy that Apple was going to be using Intel processors.

The idea was essentially that Apple wanted to switch to Intel so they could tie into all the DRM stuff, tie your music and other content into the hardware, etc. There were even suggestions that Apple would tie OS X into your hardware, which would be pretty dramatic considering Apple uses no copy protection on their OS at all right now.

Is it possible this was a motivation? I really doubt it. If all Apple cared about was that, they could have come up with their own DRM scheme, or even used Intel's DRM stuff without a complete platform switch.

And either way, even if it was a motivation at some point, we can now see it didn't come to anything - Apple never started using this stuff, and given their current push to do away with DRM altogether, I think this whole issue is pretty much dropped.

 

I can't see DRM being much of a motivation for the switch. If I'm not mistaken the core of Intel's DRM implementation is the TPM. I'm not sure if it's open source, but I'm pretty sure the TPM is a specification in itself and can be licensed. Apple could have easily included their on chips in their G4 or G5 platforms if they wanted to.

In terms of Apple's sudden reversal about PPC's dominance over x86, I don't think they were lying just being very selective in the benchmarks they show. When comparing the G5 to Netburst, the G5 would kill the P4 in FP intensive tasks. Netburst may have an advantage in integer performance due to the double pumped simple ALUs. In SIMD, Altivec is more flexible than SSE so I can definitely see the G5 having an advantage here too. The thing is the G5's advantage no longer stood against Merom. Merom is very efficient at integer tasks, and while SSE may still not be as flexible as Altivec, if you optimize properly I have little doubt that Merom's 128-bit SSE units will win out. Still, I would have liked to see a 2GHz 4778 G4 PowerBook with a 200MHz FSB. Would have been interesting to see if it would have made any difference. (Just liked I would have been interested to see 1.1GHz 750GX Gobi G3 iBooks for the heck of it).

While PPC is used in the Playstation 3 and XBox 360, it really has little relevence to Macs. The CPUs used in Playstation 3 and XBox 360 are all in-order versus the out-of-order PPCs used in desktops. Those console chips extract their performance by trying to run multiple threads rather than eeking out all the performance from each single thread and that works well in some graphics applications, but won't work well in the types of code used in computers. Even in gaming, the in-order CPUs have trouble offering acceptible performance (compared to the graphics subsystems) for physics and AI calculations which don't thread as well. This is especially true for the Playstation 3 which only has 1 general purpose CPU. The main reason PPC was used for consoles was likely that PPC is generally more transistor and power light, especially in an in-order form. (The simple in-order execution was also what allows the console chips to clock at 3.2GHz, so it's not like IBM was holding back frequency room on the G5.) Developers are also familiar with PPC from Gekko in the Gamecube which is basically a G3 with the FPU able to do 2-way SIMD.

 

To clarify this a little bit. I think Apple was always wary of being beholden to one chip manufacturer after its experience with Motorola and then PPC coalition, and then the collapse of the PPC coalition to just IBM.

I think the laptop thing is still far and away the #1 reason for the Intel switch, but, when Apple and Intel got together, Apple had to be impressed with Intel's size, their chip roadmap, and their other products like integrated video which increases margins, and we all know how much Apple loves its margins.

Intel also gets some halo/shine of the relationship as well.