On Sunday 05 June 2005 11:47 am, Adam Bower wrote:
I was under the impression that lots of OSX was based on NeXT technology, which originally ran on m68k and x86, I'm quite certain that Apple have been building an x86 version of OSX for some time and that the changes they would need to make to the OS to get it running on x86 would be minimal. Although, like you mentioned I wouldn't be surprised if the move isn't to Intel x86 but to a different Intel architecture, or possibly even an AMD platform?.
I think the NeXT technology is present in OSX in terms of idealology. I doubt there is that much actual NeXT code in there. Jobs has practically admitted that Apple do have a running X86 build of OSX....but running and running as well or better than it does on a PPC are different things.
I agree though that AMD would seem like a more logical choice. Perhaps because the last two suppliers for Apple CPU's have had problems meeting delivery targets and in Motorola's case pushing the PPC arch forward at the rate Apple needed, Apple have decided to go with the bigger player this time.
It does seem like a bit of a shame to drop the G5 arch though (if that's what they are going to do) I thought it was a great chip and I have heard that there is still some clockspeed headroom in the design.
But aren't many of these apps already built for x86 as they run on Windows? Certainly I was under the impression that most Apple users fave software was either made by Apple *or* Adobe. So again the porting wouldn't be disastrous (and given that if they were going to shift to x86 Adobe would already know this and probably have been given Mac OSX on x86 to build apps with).
Well sort of I suppose but Adobe can't just take the Win32 code and run it on a X86 Mac. It would certainly make the port easier knowing that they already have a x86 codebase but building for a X86 Mac is bound to be a bit different from building for Win32
Also you have to consider things like 3rd party drivers and the OSS comunity efforts to port code over to OSX PPC, neither of those two camps are going to be so thrilled about having to rebuild (and probably introduce new bugs into) their existing work.
Hmmmn, I was just thinking... Isn't it time for a Mac OS XI? I don't think it would be beyond Apple to start producing software for x86 with a limited range of hardware support (say only recent Nvidia and ATI gfx cards, limit it to fast cpus, Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 and above only and you can then ignore lots of the problems with old hardware as you don't support it). God knows if they will actually produce a version of Mac OS X that runs on standard x86 hardware, I can see that if they did it would be interesting, as I'm sure that many Windows users would be happy to pay 100 quid for a copy rather than the 200-300 quid that M$ want for Windows upgrades.
I just can't see Apple ever supporting their OS on a clone architecture, they tried it years ago and it didn't really fly for them. Also to me half the thing about Apple is that you are buying a package (hardware and software) which pretty much guarantees a degree of compatability and reliability. Even if you set high minimum specs you are still going to encounter some crufty chipset that requires third party drivers to work properly.
I think that Apple don't really make money out of OSX it's just a reason to get you buying Apple hardware, so unless there was some hugely profitable licensing deal to be had I can't see them ever supporting running their operating system on someone else's hardware
You forget the funky thing that Apple can do if M$ say "no more office for Mac OS" they can just bundle technology similar to wine with a funky wrapper/installer and then run all the popular Windows software natively. It makes a huge difference to launching what would essentially be a new OS with the tagline "runs 90% of existing Windows software, while giving you the ease of use of Apple Mac OS X".
Apple wouldn't want to do that. Wine or Virtual PC is great when you have no option but to run some Windows code but to actually rely on it for a desktop strategy would be a little silly.
If you look at say Office 2004 on the Mac you will see that it's much more than just the Win32 version running on a Mac, the integration with the rest of the OS and the matching Widgets etc. The way things like the preferences dialogue etc all behave is very different on the Mac product (actually Word on the Mac is far nicer than the Windows version)
It would just be an ugly situation and there would be no guarantee that Microsoft doesn't either make it a licensing requirement that Office is run on a MS operating system or somehow breaks compatability in a future version.
Also potentially you could open up OSX to all the Windows spyware,malware and viruses. Admittedly the better default security policies of the Mac would make this less likely.
But worse than that (for Apple) It would turn OSX into a closed alternative to Linux.
Either way, everything is just speculation until Monday. I reckon perhaps they are just going to announce iCrack where you give Apple money and they give you addictive hard drugs and then tell everyone how wonderful Apple is and how they are your friend really ;)
They already do that in a way, The iPod whispers subliminal messages watermarked over the Owners music in real time by the AAC compression. If you close your eyes and listen real hard you can hear "Buy Apple....Buy a Mac....Apple are your friends.....Having a Powerbook makes you look cool and intelligent" :-)
But as you say on Monday we may even hear that some big wires have been crossed and that actually they are looking at Intel to provide some supporing chips (Wireless or perhaps chipset) or perhaps they are going to get back into PDA's and need an ARM chip.