If Apple would stream these Keynotes, we Mac junkies wouldn’t have to crash all these sites that are trying to do live reporting.
Anyway, If you are interested in know what is going on, Endgadget has a stable site running a live update.
Apparently, the rumors were true. Apple will be switching to Intel. In fact, the system that Steve is using today to run demos for his keynote is a P4 3.2Ghz. Also, every release of Mac OS X for the past 5 years has been compiled to run on PowerPC AND Intel.
I found this site to be the best:
Macobserver
MacRumors has a live page that automatically refreshes every minute.
MacRumors WWDC Coverage
Smart move by Apple in many ways, but I just can’t picture a powerbook with the ‘Intel Inside’ sticker.
As one who just switched from Microsoft, I feel a little let down. It’s like finding out my new girlfriend is a crossdresser.
It actually makes a little sense to me. IBM has failed to deliver a 3GHz PowerPC processor. Also, the Intel processors run cooler than the PowerPCs,which is one reason why you haven’t seen a G5 Powerbook yet.
correction:
It’s a 3,6Ghz P4 not 3,2 :P
Isnt one of the selling points for the PPC that it doesnt bottleneck the data exiting the processor, where the p4 does, ie:
ppc: | data v |
p4: \ data v /
(| | vs. \/)??
At least that’s how I understood it. That’s how they had the image showing on the powerbook or ibook page a few years ago. Not anymore though.
Anyway, I’m mad at them for switching. Does this mean PPC (G4s and G5s) wont run the new OS’s or Apps, or if they do, they’ll have to do some sort of emulation and make it slower, or, make the developers make two versions and then you’d see that the devs would only make the version that they had. Don’t you think?
They are going to release some emulation software called “Rosetta” (nice name) that will allow PPC apps to run under the Intel.
As for the bottleneck issue, they may not be planning on using Pentium 4 processors. Intel could be developing a modified version for the Mac to use.
It wasn’t clear if this transition meant that you could run OS X on any old Pentium based computer.
They say in http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/06/06.16.shtml that it’s a p4… I doubt it’s any p4, I bet they make a specilized version. Apple would lose lots of money if they don’t. Then people would just buy OS X and put it on their current p4.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/06/06.16.shtml
oops, I thought that’d auto-link.
Note they said that the Apple Intel boxes will be able to run Windows. But not the other way around.
As a die-hard PC user who uses OSX at work, I would think very seriously about buying an Apple box to be able to run both…
As long as Apple can keep OSX off normal PCs, they’ve just opened up a huge market.
The thing that makes me wonder is that they dont say that software compiled for intel will run on the ppc chips. That’s whats making me think about waiting to get my powerbook.
New software will be compiled in a form they’re calling Universal Binaries (UBs) (remember fat binaries with both PPC and 68K code?), and aparently it’s going to be relatively trivial for third-party vendors to release recompiled code in this form (with the new release of X-Code 2.1). So long as they continue building UBs and not switch to pure Intel code, then I can see PPC systems sticking around for a while yet, and running Leopard just fine!