Macworld: The end of the PPCs

[shooraijin]

Apple announced the Intel Core Duo-based iMac and the MacBook Pro, along with Jobs' commitment to convert the line to Intel by the end of the year. See for yourself at http://www.apple.com .

Unless I hear some promises that Intel Macs can run Classic (which I doubt), I guess I'll be buying that quad G5 sooner than I thought.

[Puritan]

This was REALLY interesting. I am admittedly an IBM clone fan, but I think that this is a move in the right direction for Apple. From what Steve Jobs has said, the new Intel processors are much faster than the old IBM processors, and likely cheaper as Intel fabricates so many processors already. Also, the whole propriatary hardware thing bugs me (I have built several computers for fun), so hopefully this indicates Macintosh is moving towards compatibility with the rest of the computing world. I would love to see them compete with Microsoft in the OS realm, the more OS competition there is the better for all involved, Mac lovers or PC lovers alike.

[shooraijin]

Actually, I'm rather unhappy about it because I have a large investment on Classic Mac hardware and software which will be rendered pretty much useless by the shift.

Also, do note that the Intel iMac is priced the same as the PPC iMac. This is a little strange and makes me wonder what Apple actually had in mind for using them. However, it's all an academic argument now because they're here.

*grips credit card sadly*

[Arnobius]

Interesting copy in the ad. Omissions were also interesting. They used the G4 as a benchmark, but not the G5. Also interesting that they want to have this new universal software that works on both. Could be costly for Apple if they have to make two versions of a program and support both.

I suspect if the move to Intel proves successful I bet they'll be saying farewell to the older compatibility as soon as they can.

Also wonder if AMD wil make processors or if this is going to be the usual attitude of Apple with one option only.

[glitch1501]

i have been following macworld expo all day

this is the moment i have been waiting for to make the switch...well almost the switch...i really want a macbook for school....(photoshop and illustrator)

must still game.....XP

now all i need is the 30 inch dell
so lets add all this up....

around 4200 for my macbook and the 30inch dell.....i guess i will need a kvm switch too.... ....i have too many student loans....

[Locke]

Something that I always wondered is why do MS laptops top over 3.0 Ghz and the most expensive iMac is only 1.83 Ghz ?

[shooraijin]

For one thing, it's a dual core, so the clock speeds are probably different.

Also wonder if AMD wil make processors or if this is going to be the usual attitude of Apple with one option only.

Doubt it will be anything but Intel. Besides Apple's tendencies for one computer, one choice, I strongly believe Intel has something Apple wants very badly (other than their CPUs) and I'm not sure what it is yet.

[Locke]

Oh, I see.

Well this one's for the spoofers in all of us:

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/bestswitchvideoever-147837.php

[shooraijin]

Excellent, my master.

[Puritan]

Hmm, if Apple is planning on making software to support both, are they perhaps looking at using the same basic processor architecture as their old machines? That would likely simplify support of both processors, but would likely make the processors more costly thant the typical x86 processors Intel puts out. Anyone know more about this?

Shame they aren't likely to use AMD though, that might help drop the price of Macs.

[glitch1501]

Something that I always wondered is why do MS laptops top over 3.0 Ghz and the most expensive iMac is only 1.83 Ghz ?

http://www.asia.apple.com/g4/myth/
i couldnt find that on the northamerican site...wonder why

that was what they were telling everyone when they were with the powerpc chips...i dont know if thats still a factor now

i never really believed it...my pc has always run faster than any mac i have been on...and we have g5's here at school...photoshop runs way better on my 3.6p4

[Arnobius]

http://www.asia.apple.com/g4/myth/
i couldnt find that on the northamerican site...wonder why

that was what they were telling everyone when they were with the powerpc chips...i dont know if thats still a factor now

i never really believed it...my pc has always run faster than any mac i have been on...and we have g5's here at school...photoshop runs way better on my 3.6p4

It's quite telling that they now say that the new Intel chips run 4x faster than the G4, when this is saying the P4 was defeated by up to 83%

Something that I always wondered is why do MS laptops top over 3.0 Ghz and the most expensive iMac is only 1.83 Ghz ?

For one thing, it's a dual core, so the clock speeds are probably different.

But we've had single core processors that broke the 3.0ghz barrier for awhile. 1.83ghz is only fast by laptop standards.

Though I do understand what you mean about different standards. I have an Athlon 64 3700. Supposed to run at equivalent speeds of 3.7ghz when it clocks at 2.411ghz. Not sure how accurate the claim is, but since I dumped Zone Alarm, I go from cold start to ready to go in under 15 seconds (could be faster but I pasword protected my system

[shooraijin]

Right, but in a dual core system you have a much larger system of interlocks, so it's not the same as a single core system and may be subject to architectural changes. I wouldn't say bottlenecks, but it may affect the way the overall device is clocked independently of benchmarks.

The PPC and Intel wars are over anyway, and as far as Apple is concerned, Intel won, so the benchmarks are now irrelevant. (I still plan to buy an IBM pSeries server if my current Apple server craps out one day, though -- this box is about 9 years old, but it's still doing well, so I have no plans to replace it.)

As far as the architecture, it is my understanding that the Intel Macs have a BIOS in the way that PCs have a BIOS, unlike Open Firmware on the Power Macs. However, I think they are also using some of Intel's hardware lockdown technology to prevent people from installing OS X on non-Apple hardware, and obviously the BIOS is significantly different even though it's still "a PC."

[Arnobius]

I found an old "Dummies" book on computers talking about how the G4 had a 128bit processor as oppsed to the 32 bit processors of Intel and compared to the 64 bit processors now made (after the book was published).

If the new Apple copy is claiming 4x faster with Intel which is 32 bit,, does that mean the Mac was doing less per cycle with it's 128bits than the PC?

I don't know... it may be history now but it almost seems like Mac is admitting their previous claims of superiority in performance were wrong.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Woah O.o a third sibling to the notebook lineup

The specs are really beefy, but the price... ouch man

edit: nice video there! I knew this (I think shoo explained it somewhere else) but never really indepth

[glitch1501]

man, i really want one.....

[blkmage]

Darn, I was hoping that the introduction of the new Macs would cause a drop in price for the lower end iBooks.

As for universal binaries, it's the only way to continue to switch architectures without abandoning the current users. Also, they still have a while to go before they completely stop producing PPCs so they still have to sell those.

I think they compare with the G4s because the Powerbooks are on G4s, not G5s.

[shooraijin]

I found an old "Dummies" book on computers talking about how the G4 had a 128bit processor as oppsed to the 32 bit processors of Intel and compared to the 64 bit processors now made (after the book was published).

If the new Apple copy is claiming 4x faster with Intel which is 32 bit,, does that mean the Mac was doing less per cycle with it's 128bits than the PC?

I don't know... it may be history now but it almost seems like Mac is admitting their previous claims of superiority in performance were wrong.

Bit width doesn't really apply to clock speed -- you want to look at the pipeline of a processor to really determine how much work it's doing. In other words, how many operations are being done with each tick of the clock?

In the Pentium 4, you had a lot of pipeline operations running at high speed, but comparatively little was being done with each tick of the clock. On the G4, there were slower clock ticks but more muscle. The G5 is sort of in-between. Ars Technica had some good articles on this.

Keep in mind the following when comparing the benchmarks:

- The lowest end MacBook Pro is clocked at the same speed as the highest end PowerBook (1.67GHz), and Apple doesn't say if they were using the 1.83GHz MacBook Pro or the 1.67 in those tests. I just looked.
- The MacBook Pro is dual core; no PowerBook or iBook has ever been.
- The MacBook Pro has a faster bus than any PowerBook because the G4 is limited to a 167MHz system bus. Even a low-end Intel (by today's standards) will whip that.

So, for lack of a better expression, it's an "apples to Apples" comparison but I think the symptom is more that the PowerBooks and iBooks were stuck with old technology. Note how little evolution occurred in the laptop arena as far as CPU and bus power, which Apple stated publicly was one of the reasons driving them to the Intel chip. While the G5 is a beast, and part of the reason why the Power Macs and Xserves are still PPC, the G4 is fairly old tech by comparison.

OTOH, my daily Mac is a dual G4, and my laptop is a G4, so ...

[Arnobius]

Well yes, I'll definitely admit being impressed by what the G5 can do. That's a bit of hardware I wish was PC compatible.

Pity there isn't really a efficient standard to figure out which system (PC vs Mac) actually does work better/more efficiently

I do know that when it comes to Digital Video, the pro systems I've seem were all extremely high end Macs ($10K+), not PCs so there are areas where acclaim seems imply superiority in certain arenas

[shooraijin]

Well, I'm still planning to buy a quad G5. I'll probably get it just before the Intel "Power Macs" emerge -- the reason I need it is Classic, because I still run some Classic applications and I'm not interested in running them in a windowed emulator when Classic is so much more seamless (considering what it has to do).

[shooraijin]

Bump. Arstechnica has reviewed the iMac Core Duo, and it uses EFI, not a BIOS. Here's their review: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/imac-coreduo.ars/1

On the whole, they were pleased with the performance, but only in native apps. On the other hand, Rosetta seems to be useable for all but high-performance games, something on the order of a gigger G4 or similar.

[shooraijin]

Further bump. The iMac Core Duo has now been benchmarked and ... it sucks. In fact, in at least one benchmark, the G5 was faster. All native apps, too.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/imaclabtest1/index.php

[Arnobius]

Interesting. So not only are the Apple comparisons to PCs misleading, now they're misleading comparinig with themselves

[shooraijin]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty abysmal. Now I'm even more irritated about the switch.

[glitch1501]

[quote="AnimeHeretic"]Interesting. So not only are the Apple comparisons to PCs misleading, now they're misleading comparinig with themselves ]


lol i dont think there are any benchmarks that aren't misleading

[shooraijin]

I'm more inclined to believe MacWorld's benchmarks, though, because (we hope) they have nothing to prove. It really does cement two things for me though:

- I'm buying that quad G5 this year, that's for darn sure. If the Intel Macs have little performance advantage and ruin compatibility with my old software ...
- The benchmark disparity between the G5 and IA-32 is not as much as either side would have you believe. In the case of the iMac G5, we were comparing an IA-32-based dual core system against a single core G5, and the gains were underwhelming or at least certainly in line for what you would expect for a similar core doubled. Obviously doubling the number of processor units does not double performance, and the iMac Core Duo did not double performance which makes one suspect that the G5 and Yonah cores are not all that different in raw operation.

It *could* be that Apple is using an "inferior" compiler to build the Intel binaries, but it should still be gcc, same as they used for the PPC. If anything, gcc is better tuned to IA-32 because more people use it for that. And I have great difficulty believing that EFI is the cause (or, the benchmarks suck because Apple built a lousy implementation), especially since by ripping everything out and effectively starting with a whole new design, they could do whatever they want without being hobbled by legacy issues.

The MacBook Pro will do a lot better than the PowerBook, but the PowerBook was a G4.

[Arnobius]

Looking at all this, I am inclined to think that Apple made a decision and then tried to sell the idea that the switch was based on benefits rather than the real reason, which was probably economic (cheaper).

Anyway, it does sound like a rough time to be a Mac user, as probably the new stuff will eventually be incompatible with the G4/G5 hardware

Maybe there are some advantages to having an OS owned by a billionare who is dependent on the PC market?

[shooraijin]

Yeah, but not if the OS sucks

Seriously, I'm inclined to agree with you and I pretty much thought the same thing when the switch was announced. It may have something to do with the iPod, or some other venture that Apple needs Intel for very badly (and Intel is willing to use Apple as its boutique stage in return). But I'm increasingly convinced the issue was not purely one of performance, or at least not in the desktop market [in the laptop market, yes, the G4 is aging rapidly].

[glitch1501]

i am thinking that apple did it because intels mobile chips are whomping on everything....and i think intel did it because amd is whomping on them in the desktop market, they are faster and cheaper....

[blkmage]

Yeah, I think the main reason is the laptops. I heard they were having trouble stuffing G5s into laptops because of the power consumption and overheating.