Woah! This news almost blew me away:

http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nefd.lede

Also discussion on www.osnews.com

Check out arstechnica.com as well.

Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...

Looks like Walter's job just got easier.

-JJR

John Reimer wrote:

> Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just
> when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...

It's time for the pendulum to swing back again, I suppose ?

"Mac OS X"* used to run on both PPC and X86, and raw Darwin
has been running on both platforms since the start... (1999)


See http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/ for lots
of details on Apple's various earlier operating systems.

When I started with it, it was running in the "Yellow Box"
environment under Windows NT... (used for doing WebObjects)


But it's wild. What's next ? A two-button Apple mouse ? ;-)


> Looks like Walter's job just got easier.

AFAIK, GDC should *already* be working under Darwin X86 ?
Not that I've tested it, but there's nothing stopping it...

Too bad that the cross-compilers aren't installed with the
regular Xcode Tools, you need some additional Darwin extras.


If you *are* able to test it, please post results on D.gnu.
(use http://www.opendarwin.org/en/news/opendarwin721.html)

--anders


* since the Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server 1.x days, that is

"John Reimer" <brk_6502@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:pan.2005.06.04.09.43.51.643007@yahoo.com...
> Woah! This news almost blew me away:
>
> http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nefd.lede
>
> Also discussion on www.osnews.com
>
> Check out arstechnica.com as well.
>
> Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...
>
> Looks like Walter's job just got easier.

Man.  If anything, I hoped PCs would move to the more efficient and better-designed RISC PPC chips, but apparently not.  Oh boy.. another generation of X86 architecture..

Interesting news though; would be nice to see Apple being a little less proprietary :)

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> 
> Man.  If anything, I hoped PCs would move to the more efficient and better-designed RISC PPC chips, but apparently not.  Oh boy.. another generation of X86 architecture..


I was looking forward to the time that PowerPC's overtook Intel CPU's. It looked like things were getting close.


> Interesting news though; would be nice to see Apple being a little less proprietary :) 
> 
> 

You know what?  I'm wondering how much less proprietary they will be. Apple still has to be "different" than the others.  It ill be interesting.

-JJR

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> John Reimer wrote:
> 
>> Looks like a big shift is coming.  I'm not sure what to think... and just
>> when I thought the cell architecture would have made the difference...
> 
> 
> It's time for the pendulum to swing back again, I suppose ?
> 
> "Mac OS X"* used to run on both PPC and X86, and raw Darwin
> has been running on both platforms since the start... (1999)
> 
> 

Mac OS X has been running on x86?  I never knew that.  You must mean unofficially.  I know Darwin has been running on x86 for quite awhile, though.

> See http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/ for lots
> of details on Apple's various earlier operating systems.
> 
> When I started with it, it was running in the "Yellow Box"
> environment under Windows NT... (used for doing WebObjects)
> 
> 

?? On windows NT?  Never heard of that either.

> But it's wild. What's next ? A two-button Apple mouse ? ;-)
> 

Heh... Probably just around the corner. :-)


>> Looks like Walter's job just got easier.
> 
> 
> AFAIK, GDC should *already* be working under Darwin X86 ?
> Not that I've tested it, but there's nothing stopping it...
>


I wouldn't be surprised if it was working.  But it would be nice to have  a clean dmd build on Apple too... just like linux.

> Too bad that the cross-compilers aren't installed with the
> regular Xcode Tools, you need some additional Darwin extras.
> 
> 
> If you *are* able to test it, please post results on D.gnu.
> (use http://www.opendarwin.org/en/news/opendarwin721.html)
> 

I'd like to try darwin sometime.  I downloaded the ISO and booted it up once, but that's all.  Sometime I may try installing it on a spare system, but right now I'm too busy.  It would indeed be a good little test project, though.


> 
> * since the Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server 1.x days, that is

Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.

-JJR

On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:29:23 -0700, John Reimer wrote:


[snip]

> Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.

I used to have a Lisa.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
5/06/2005 9:35:46 AM

"Derek Parnell" <derek@psych.ward> wrote
> On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:29:23 -0700, John Reimer wrote:
>
>
> [snip]
>
> > Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.
>
> I used to have a Lisa.

Wow! I still have my old 128K Mac, upgraded to 512K plus a 10Meg drive :-)

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:29:23 -0700, John Reimer wrote:
> 
> 
> [snip]
> 
> 
>>Ah, that's what you meant.  Mac OS X Server was a totally different beast than today's Mac OS X, from what I understand.  I've followed the history of Macintosh since I was a kid.  I grew up using the Mac 128K.
> 
> 
> I used to have a Lisa.
> 

Ah! You bested me!

The more I think about it, the more I think that these systems will be almost as proprietary as they were before.  They probably won't be usable for anything but Mac OS X.  But now they will have a huge technological advantage for competition... both price and performance. Being able to leverage the current intel platform technology could help Apple gain market share.  No more supply problems, that's for sure.

The other advantage? Think of being able to run virtual PC software on the Mac OS.  Now the virtualization layer will have much less to emulate .  Performance will be almost on par for running a Windows OS within a virtual machine.  This could get interesting.

As for linux and other OS's, I doubt it will take long to port them over.

-JJR

"John Reimer" <brk_6502@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:d7trdc$n51$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> The more I think about it, the more I think that these systems will be almost as proprietary as they were before.  They probably won't be usable for anything but Mac OS X.  But now they will have a huge technological advantage for competition... both price and performance. Being able to leverage the current intel platform technology could help Apple gain market share.  No more supply problems, that's for sure.

That was something I was thinking about when I was mowing today.  When you think about it, healthy competition is a good thing, but competing platforms move the decision from being based on features to personal preference.  For example, look at Palm vs. PocketPC.  Both are very capable platforms.  Both have loads of software available, a flexible OS, competitive hardware etc. But they are completely incompatible.  So, instead of choosing one over the other because one has better features than the other, you choose one over the other simply because you like it.  Then you're stuck with that platform, and you're isolated from the other one.  The same gap exists in the PC vs. Apple competition - it's no longer a competition when the platforms are so different.  It's apples to oranges.

Moving towards a single platform (at least architecturally) makes it simpler for developers to develop, and makes it more of a choice of features than of preference.  You can choose OSX over Windows because it supports such-and-such, but they will be largely compatible simply because the platform will be the same.

But like you said, Apple has to be different, so they will probably keep on with their "let's make everything completely incompatible with the other 98% of the computers out there" mantra.  :P

> The other advantage? Think of being able to run virtual PC software on the Mac OS.  Now the virtualization layer will have much less to emulate . Performance will be almost on par for running a Windows OS within a virtual machine.  This could get interesting.

Heck, probably most of the speed loss of things like PearPC comes just from byte-swapping everything.  Using the same processor makes making an emulator (relatively) trivial - just have to translate API calls and such.