Happy and Sad day for a Mac user..

[karch]

Well, it's both a happy and sad day for this Mac user. My first Mac was a 660av, then a 7600, iMac DV and clamshell iBook. I run OS X on both the iMac and iBook. The 7600 has a G3 card and is running OS X server as my web server and companies backup email server. But because I'm using OS X all the time, I just don't have time to bother rebooting back into 9 to play CM.

Anyway, the good news is I can play CM whenever I want now, the bad news is it's on the new windows laptop my company bought me. It's the bottom of the line Dell Inspiron 1100, but you know what? It works as well as my ibook ever did playing CM in OS 9. It should, it's a 2GHz celeron. No speed demon, but I think it works well.

I'm just happy I'll get to play CM from now on again. I'd tenatively recommend this option for Mac users running newer machines that can't boot back into 9. The machine costs less than $1000 and has pretty much everything you need for a nice basic machine.

I'll still be using Macs at home, but I don't have a problem using this one more often.

Scott (please don't turn this into a Mac PC war)

[jeffsmith]

I have also been a Mac user for over 15 years

My first MAC SE is next to my bureau

but I am afraid this G4 may be my last Mac

the price/performance difference of the Hardware

is starting to become prohibitive

and after using WinXP I am getting used to it

my only hope is OSX for INTEL/AMD

[aka_tom_w]

there are rumours we will see the new 970 64 bit chip be able to run MORE than OSX

its a long story of a rumour but what if the next generation of chips could boot into either OSX or some new form of windows?

WHAT if OSX could run on PC hardware...

think about it

suypposedly there may be some NEW draconian Microslut windows licenseing policy that you have to log into Microsofts world wide licence server to "authenticate" your os and pay a yearly fee or something

ONE rumour/theory is that OSX in the future, maybe Panther or maybe on revision after panther will run on some intel chip that will also run windows.

WHAT if you could by OSX to run on CHEAPER FASTER intel/PC (WinTel) hardware!!!!?

What then?? this may only be a year - 18 months down the road??

any comments?

-tom w

[-hero-]

^ Apple cannot do this.

They still earn most of their revenue by selling hardware, at prices that the faithful Macolytes will pay. They cannot simply start selling only software. There is not enough market share of their OS to make that a compelling business model.

Apple will keep making machines, some perhaps based on newer IBM CPU technology (including multi-core CPUs). Besides, Apple users have never cared as much about performance as they do aesthetics or interfaces, so there's no reason for anyone at Apple to jump to an x86 hardware platform.

[-hero-]

sorry, double post

[ April 12, 2003, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: -hero- ]

[karch]

I've been gleaning the interweb for the next mac chip choice. I've seen interesting things supporting a few different options. I don't know how much of this is true, it's things I've taken from various rumor sites and reporters.

SCENARIO A: Itanium

1) Steve Jobs will be speaking at an Intel conference

2) There were Intel employees mgmt/engineers in the first few rows of the last Apple event

3) Panther will probably be a 54bit ready OS

4) Itanic is a 64 bit chip

5) It's Intel and all the power/respect that brings

MAYBE Apple will use Itanics for XServes and high end workstations where heat output isn't as important. The logic boards wouldn't run anything but OS X so they don't have to worry about the millions of Dell users grabbing a copy of the new Intel OS X and slapping it into their boxes... read lose tons of HW revenue. Could make for a very interesting concept. Would Intel be willing to give Apple a few million in development to get Itanium onto the desktop finally? Maybe then get OS X server running on any Itanium server... HP DELL, etc. That could be a nice way of easing into the plain vanilla PC/Server market. Interesting

SCENARIO B: IMB 970

The rumor mills have been going gaga over the 970 for some time now. There is mention of the 970 going into full scale production last week. There are also rumors of Apple's new MoBos for the 970 being finished too. Know way of knowing if they are true. I like this option because

a. 970s produce little heat and could go into laptops

b. 32 bit/64bit design, Alta-Vec included

c. fully SMP we could get monster 4 or 8 processor giant servers with Gigs and Gigs of RAM using 64bit processing.

d. They would be really fast and

e. They aren't Intel

You could put these into BOTH workstations and laptops.... you can only get Itaniums into desktops and servers.

SCENARIO C: OS X for plain Intel boxes

Apple is going up against Microsoft with it's own browser, slideshow program and is rumored to be working on an Office competitor... Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Slideshow, Database Mail integration. With the cool Mac only Apps, iMovie, iDVD iPhoto iTunes, there a chance they could try and turn into a software company and get machines to Dual Boot into OS X and WIN XP. If they could get some sort of concurrent booting like VirtualPC for Windows, that would be cool, but Microsoft bought Connectix, maybe to stop that.

The option sounds great to consumers, because users that may like OSX or be interested in it could start using it without buying new hardware and all new Apps. But I don't see it happening as a first step because it would so canabalize HW sales. Now running OS X Server on Itanium servers... that is interesting.. people could get a Massive Itanium server to do huge MAYA renderings, Video editing and Photoshop editing where monster horsepower is needed but without biting too much into sales of their own hardware. Those computers woudn't cost any/much more than Apple's X Serves.

Also the work that would have to be done to support the millions of device drivers for video, SCSI, USB, etc etc etc devices that Windows users demand to keep using would be massive and there probably wouldn't be enough driver support out there.

Well, there's my 2 cents. I think we'll see 970 chips only with Intel integration moving forward in 1-4 years.

regards, Scott

[gibsonm]

I know the performance hit would be pretty bad but is it worth running CMBB with VPC?

Whilst you would have to buy a new CMBB CD at least it would let those machines that no longer boot into OS9 run the game.

Not sure if VPC's video support would be up to it though.

[Jarmo]

970 is where Apple is heading. Good thing too, since moving to Intel would be bad news.

First theres the compatibility thing, I'm not up to speed with the issues, but there are significant differences with the processors. While you could get X to run on Intel with (minor?) rewrite, you couldnt get old mac apps to run on Intel. Everything would need a rewrite.

Assuming developers would be interested, there'd still be problems ahead.

Would OSX on Intel be restricted to Apple hardware? Perhaps needing an Apple motherboard to run.

Or would Apple try to support all possible wintel side hardware combinations?

Having X run exclusively on Apple hardware would have the benefit of not killing off 95% of revenue. But then the price difference would be even more glaringly obvious.

Apple is not going to be pushing cheap gray boxes any time soon, users would still be paying for design, exess features and the OS developement.

Only this time the hardware would be directly comparable to opposition.

[Jarmo]

VPC is not a viable option. It fails to run Explorer satisfactorily (with 867Mhz G4). Version 5 emulates S3 graphics chip, which doesnt run CM well even with real PC.

I know the 266 PII on the other desk is well faster than my 867 when running windows 98.

My rule of thumb is to divide your Mac Mhz by five, and you'll be in the right ballpark of what kind of PC performance you can expect.

Things might be different when SMAK arrives, if you can get something like dual 1.6 Ghz 970. Then you might have an equvalent of 500+ Mhz PC, which would be just enough for CM.

[davidh]

I know the performance hit would be pretty bad but is it worth running CMBB with VPC?

Whilst you would have to buy a new CMBB CD at least it would let those machines that no longer boot into OS9 run the game.

Not sure if VPC's video support would be up to it though.

Doubt it. My understanding is that VPC doesn't support 3D cards, so you'd be back to software rendering (at best). It seems we must stick with our older hardware for now and wait for CMX2.

Dave

[-hero-]

970 seems to be the way indeed.

Itanium isn't really an option for many reasons, not the least of which is that HP/Intel aren't gearing the CPU toward general users; they're for enterprise server farms and technical computing systems, and having used HP zx6000s in both environments, I can say they excel at their tasks (amazing FPU capabilities). But Apple would spend a lot of time and money to develop IA64 code for their users that could be better spent in the direction of the newer IBM CPUs, while maintaining a semblance of code and compiler compatibility. Remember that HP (co-inventor of Itanium) has spent 8 years building compilers for IA64...just for its own core logic systems and HP-UX/HP Linux code. That's not an investment that Apple can afford to make.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by karch:

Well, there's my 2 cents. I think we'll see 970 chips only with Intel integration moving forward in 1-4 years.

regards, Scott

sooner than that

from Macwhispers

" April 10, 2003

Update: 970 PowerBook Production: Accelerated 970 Production

Further discussions with Apple OEM assembly partners have given us up to date information on motherboard production for both PowerBooks and PowerMacs, both using the IBM PPC 970 processor.

First, we have been told, and we have second-sourced the claim that 15.4-inch PowerBook motherboards are now in production and are shipping regularly to Apple's contract PowerBook assembler. Next, we have been told, and we have also second-sourced a claim that bid requests for a fully-designed 970-based board for the 17-inch PowerBook were received by two assembly plants this past Friday, with a submission deadline for replies of April 30th.

Finally, a reliable source in engineering management at the ODM supplier providing the upcoming PowerMac motherboards has informed us that those boards went into volume production this past Friday, and that first shipments to Apple's final assembly partner for the new PowerMacs is to take place "about April 15th."

We will add that our sources seem consistently taken aback by what they all characterize as the unexpected and very unusual hurry involved in all work on these new desktop and portable Apple products. Every step in each process is being scheduled far tighter than is normal for a new production run."

from

http://www.envestco2.com/macwhispers/archives/000057.php

the 970 (64 bit archtecture) IS the next big thing for sure

AND it might one day run windoze software

I think it is conceivable if the rumours to purchase Universal Music (by Apple) are true that APPLE "could" be changing their business plan and tactics so that the loss of sales of hardware won't hurth them when they start to sell OSX that runs on faster cheaper pc boxes.

there is VERY little margin and profit in hardware sales, maybe Apple can make MORE money in software sales along with an online music service??

I am growing more convinced the day will come when Apple will sell a version of OSX that you can run on the latest ibm PC 970 chips that come in NON Apple computers that were sold with some flavour of windows on them

What would happen when wintel PC's (NEW 970's!!) could be purchased with NO preselected OS and the user could choose to buy the FAST Cheap PC and install EITHER OSX or some new fancy flavour of Windows??

What then?

How about it Bill Gates?? Maybe someone else will market a competitive/competing OS that will be Cheaper and better and run on the latest FAST ibm 970 chips

I see this coming because the 970 is an ibm chip and we will see towers SHIPPING with the 970 chip in them by the end of this August and then Panther (the next OSX flavour AFTER the current Jaguar) will ship in September and it is heavily rumoured to be written to take full advantage of the 64 bit architecture in the ibm 970

ITS coming and we will see BIG things this summer and and next fall.

I think about 1 year from now (sometime NEXT summer 2004) there will be some chip somewhere that will DUAL boot some flavour of OSX AND the latest version of windows.

the maker of that hardware (likely IBM!) will sell **** LOADS of those chips and that hardware and some folks "might" even buy BOTH mac and windoze OS's to run on it.

I KNOW I would just so I could play the latest windoze games on my ibm 970 MAC! !!

But that is ALL speculation on conjecture on my part.

-tom w

[ April 13, 2003, 03:07 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Jarmo]

there is VERY little margin and profit in hardware sales, maybe Apple can make MORE money in software sales along with an online music service??

20-30% in Apples current lineup.

At this point, all Apples software is geared to selling more macs. Case point is the recently aquired Shake. Now priced $5000 for macs and $10 000 for other platforms.

I am growing more convinced the day will come when Apple will sell a version of OSX that you can run on the latest ibm PC 970 chips that come in NON Apple computers that were sold with some flavour of windows on them

What would happen when wintel PC's (NEW 970's!!) could be purchased with NO preselected OS and the user could choose to buy the FAST Cheap PC and install EITHER OSX or some new fancy flavour of Windows??

I wonder why either Apple or Microsoft would go for that?

Apple killed cloning because cloners were killing Apple by selling machines cheaper than Apple.

MS didnt support Alpha chips (at the time MUCH faster than Intel) because they didnt need another platform to support.

And 970 is NOT a speed demon! It's a scaled down Power4 and by the time it arrives, it's slower than Intel offerings.

Apple will likely use dual processors to get a lead on wintel speeds.

But yeah, there will almost certainly be IBM made 970 boxes. And you could probably run Darwin on them, not OSX. But I'd expect IBM to push them as Linux or AIX workstations and/or low end servers.

But we'll see...

[ April 13, 2003, 05:14 PM: Message edited by: Jarmo ]