New IBM-based Power Macs Mean What Exactly?

I can't remember where I read this, but the PowerPC to Intel roadmap goes like this: The transition is to begin in mid 2006, and it's speculated that Mac Minis and PowerBooks/iBooks will be the first to transition. Then iMacs. Then PowerMacs. Then Xserves at the end of 2007.

It's generally thought that the intel switch will commence with low-end and essentially move gradually through to the high-end. The reasons apple cites for the switch are those of performace-per-watt, which is important for laptops and the mini while a powermac can use lots of power but have terrific thermal design and remain cool and quiet.

It's generally thought that the intel switch will commence with low-end and essentially move gradually through to the high-end. The reasons apple cites for the switch are those of performace-per-watt, which is important for laptops and the mini while a powermac can use lots of power but have terrific thermal design and remain cool and quiet.

I have a question. Will the intel switch effect the software? For example, will Adobe software that worked on the Power processors work on the intel based one? or will we all have to change over? it's kind of vague.

Not vaague
Rosetta
Look it up

Apple averages 180 to 210 days between product refresh. Given they've recently released updates of all products except for iBooks, perhaps they have enough capacity to prepare a few product lines (ie, Mini, iMac, iBook + Powerbook) for x86 launch next June.

Then again, guessing Apple's moves is fruitless..

Apple is definitely going to be selling intel macs next to powerpc macs. in 6 months they can move the whole line dual processor dual core.

Who cares?

It was clearly stated at the developer keynote in June that the process was "low-end consumer" in mid-2006 first(emacs/minis/ibooks), then the "professional" (ie Powermacs/Xserves) in 2007. Apple doesn't want to upset the cart with regards to its Pro users.....I may buy one more PowerPC machine before buying an intel... That quad looks pretty good..... :-) And as far as the software switch goes, it sounds like the developers are working on it pretty well. The major players will do their best to have product ready either at intel switch time or shortly thereafter.... for developers using Xcode it sounds fairly painless. Developers using Codewarrior are going to take the longest to release product.....

And developers using the gnu toolchain that OS X ships with (gcc and friends) will mostly just have to do nothing but recompile. It's all of the software that's written in languages that are themselves built on the gnu toolchain that I see having the most problems.

The main 'oops' in things built with gnu tools is likely to be any weird workarounds for being on powerpc or OS X that will now do the wrong thing. But it shouldn't be too much fuss, so long as assembler is not involved, or endian issues. I'm not just talking out my ass, either, as, I've ported non-trivial software TO Mac OS X, including the initial builds of scsh (the Scheme Shell) and sfs (the self-certifying filesystem) to OS X when it was still in beta.

But yes, I think that codewarrior users will take longer than just about everyone else...I cringed for them when watching the stream of the transition keynote and reading more details on the web right after. Were I still developing actively for OS X (I drank the linux koolaid for real and put ubuntu linux on my old mac), I'd mostly have to just do a "make clean; make" on my projects to update.

Well Dave - what you are saying sounds good but its pretty dang vague for us mere non porters :)

Well, good except maybe the part about weird workarounds for OS X - those weird workarounds are often there because of the strangeness of some things compared to a stock xBSD or Linux - and those weird things are still going to be there in large numbers. Having ported a filesystem Im sure you are well familiar with some of them :) The "PPC workarounds", yep - Im with you on that one 1000 percent.

You are absolutely correct that people doing Carbon programming using Codewarrior are probably going to have the hardest time. Pretty much Apple expects that your Carbon apps will be Mach O and not CFM PEF, and that you will be using gcc 4.0 (sorry xlc or codewarrior coders). I think you also pretty much nailed that its going to be architectural differences and byte swapping issues that are going to cause "fuss".

For the technical folks out there - if they are interested in creating universal binaries or "porting" Apple actually has a pretty nice PDF on that (unlike most of their technical documention, its actually fairly technical). http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/universal_binary/universal_binary.pdf

Wow, thanks for all your insights and information on the realities of porting code. Question for you: Would you buy one of the new iMacs and/or new PowerBooks announced given the fact that a new processor is on the distant horizon?

uhh, ya i have a scoop, that everyone and their mother knows except the author though i guess, Apple is using intel in low end laptops so they use less power consumption and less heat and longer battery life, because Apple is tired of being a generation ahead on low end stuff.... but costing more and with lower battery life. and doesn't need to be a generation ahead there and recognizes it, the rest of Apple products they want to continue to use G5's in high end Desktops, because they want to continue to be a generation ahead of Windows machines with the speed and tech involved for high end applications... including the better RISC architecture...

given the choice of Intel in the high end desktop, with lower heat characteristics, but lower speed for professional apps, or the G5 chips with higher real speed and higher power consumption, of course professionals will continue to choose the IBM G5....

that is why Apple has such a strong presence and commands better margins that no other PC manufacturer can match, they didn't shun Intel chips for the heck of it...

jon.

I enjoyed the technical insights presented here, these are relevant from a software transition stage. I would suggest, in addition that Apples strategy is also sales based and in broader terms they must be eyeing the possibility of moving OSX to any other Wintel machine as way of directly hitting into Microsofts home turf. They view Windows as a vulnerable OS that is late to improve and later to arrive (i.e. Vista) and that OSX looks pretty darned secure and powerful by comparison...and will support 64 bit easily.

---------Would you buy one of the new iMacs and/or new PowerBooks announced given the fact that a new processor is on the distant horizon?--------------

at what time in the entire history of any PC maker, were you not buying a computer, knowing that there were new processors on the horizon? that is a question that answers itself pretty readily..... nothing has changed here either, every time you buy a computer from Apple atleast, it is loaded with just about every piece of important software that you want anyway, Apple and other PC makers continue to always change to newer processors... never stopped people from buying before....

what people are missing i think, is that Apple announced this to put pressure on it's one supplier, it wants two suppliers, to keep prices down and competition up, now that Apple sells lots of machines...

Apple will have two choices, and put the best chip in for each situation, and that could be an IBM chip in the distant future for even the low end computers if IBM comes out with a cheap ass chip like intel that takes little power, and long battery life, but lousy speed... (well atleast better speed than intel's offer at the time anyway)....

people have read the announcement as Apple closing up shop at IBM, that is not the case at all... now they will have two choices, and people might have two different machines with two different processors in their house, yet never know the difference software wise....

jon.

The G5 can at least hold its own if not smoke entirely what intel has to offer for the desktop PC. As of today that is. The glaring slow-poke problem has been the G4, especially in the Powerbook line. It's been a long time (in computer years) since the Powerbook has really had all that much advantage on its iBook little brother. Meanwhile high-end PC laptops are running at bus speeds 3 times faster than the G4. Intel Macs in the desktop world will just cannibalize their own sales if they released them first. Intel Mac Powerbooks on the other hand (with say a 500-600Mhz bus instead of the absurd 166MHz the "high-end" offering has now) would grab a nice little chunk of the market. Graphic designers LOVE their G5's and have been "making do" with Powerbooks for too long. The first intels will be powerbooks but NOT iBooks. The iBooks of tomorrow will be more or less the powerbooks of today. Also, prediction 2: the other initial intel offering will be a no-frills intel Mini, with a dual core G5 making an appearance in the iMac before the PPC fades into the sunset.

I need advice more than anything else. I am a landscape contractor, who is a low end user I guess. I have been a pc user for about 12 years just for business use such as for bookkeeping (quickbooks pro 02), design (CAD landscape pro), and word processing (word perfect).
I've always been and still am a Mac lover (bought and still have) the original 128 k - fat mac upgrade. It still works too!
I'm just plain tired of all the problems, especially now that I am internet dependent with the pc. I want my mac back, but of course I have a lot of files that are pc and can not even in my worst nightmares consider re entering those files to a mac format.
I have two questions right now:
1. Is there software that will allow me to 'translate' those pc files to my new mac?
2. What mac should I get. I'd prefer the mobility of a labtop, but if you think a desk top would be better to start out with, then which one. I can wait a few months before purchasing one.
Please help me.

I need advice more than anything else. I am a landscape contractor, who is a low end user I guess. I have been a pc user for about 12 years just for business use such as for bookkeeping (quickbooks pro 02), design (CAD landscapepro), and word processing (word perfect).
I've always been and still am a Mac lover (bought and still have) the original 128 k - fat mac upgrade. It still works too!
I'm just plain tired of all the problems, especially now that I am internet dependent with the pc. I want my mac back, but of course I have a lot of files that are pc and can not even in my worst nightmares consider re entering those files to a mac format.
I have two questions right now:
1. Is there software that will allow me to 'translate' those pc files to my new mac?
2. What mac should I get. I'd prefer the mobility of a labtop, but if you think a desk top would be better to start out with, then which one. I can wait a few months before purchasing one.
Please help me.

Katie:
You would get a lot more answers if you moved your question to macrumors.com the forum section is awesome. In the word procesing part there is nothing to worry about, files are interchangable on both systems like jpg's. On the other two programs I'm not sure, I know there is CAD for Mac, but thats all.
I would sugest you get the Mac mini, and a KVm switch, (the switch lets you share keyboard, mouse and monitor with 2 compuuters) that way you can still use your PC only programs and where posible use the Mac, with a minimum investment. Good luck.

This might be stupid but i have no idea. Will the intel powermac be faster than the one now

It is not stupid to ask a question..it is stupid to think an opinion is an answer!
I would suggest that since Intel chips are still on a evolutionary trend towards faster output of data ( not necessarily) higher clock speed, eventually Intel chipped versions of a Mac will be faster than what is offered under the G5 chip today...That answer is a no brainer but will the immediate affect of an Intel chip be a faster machine? I would say only if the Intel chip is substantially faster from the get go than the G5 chip as to run Intel, the Mac software presently available will have to pass through a translator called Rosetta which will shave 20 % off the native speed of the CPU. Now this might mean a speed at par with the G5 or maybe slightly slower ...or faster...depending on the various issues that need to be resolved. I would say though that Apple are much to sharp to put out a machine that speed wise is a step back. I suspect that they will be slightly faster even in Rosetta mode but nothing to write home about. On the other hand, software written to run on Intel might scream on the new machine.

Hello everyone...I need some advise please.
I'm working with a regular pc windows xp and I create a advertising automobile magazine, so my question is should i remain with windows platform or should i move to a mac platform, basically which one would be faster when it comes to saving a pdf files, pages that contain 30-90 mega bites, i'm considering the G5 QUAD, or is there something else compatible for less money...thanks in advance.