[DM-MUG] a P.O.V. on the move to Intel

[Bryan Baker]

On Jun 11, 2005, at 1:30 PM, pegleg wrote:
> I don't know if Mac users are in shock over the move to Intel or if  
> people see
> Steve as being too powerful to fight on this (kinda like the people  
> of Iraq
> under Sadam.)

I will confess to still being in shock and I'm currently struggling  
with the fact that I've been contemplating a purchase of a PowerMac  
for a while now, and I'm trying to figure out what to do. Right now,  
I'm still leaning toward going through with it. I also think tying  
Steve Jobs to Sadam Hussein to be an unnecessary ad hominem attack,  
but we'll let it slide.

> Among the things we lose by going to Intel are of course Classic  
> which will
> fall by the wayside and Appletalk which is already gone in Tiger.  
> But more
> important for power users we lose Altivec and future upgradeability  
> to PPC
> Core chips. By going to Intel we lose the option to move up to PPC  
> Core when
> that promise matures. If Steve switches more then once he will be  
> seen as a
> joke in the industry and be totally discredited so we will be  
> locked into
> Intel for better or worse.

Yes, I think classic is "pining for the fjords" but I don't see this  
as either sudden or unexpected, It always was a transitional  
technology, and has been going away bit by bit for the last half decade.

As you mention "classic" Appletalk is already gone, so, what does the  
Intel move change here? I can also understand getting rid of it, it's  
a chatty protocol, and lets face it, the only machines that can't do  
AFP/IP were out of production in the last century. I myself have a  
large number of older machines around, but I haven't wanted to use  
classic appletalk in years. Also, this may be a smaller part of the  
strategy to keep current sales from tanking completely - if you need  
anything to run in classic - you'd better get a machine before the  
change.

Loss of Altivec does suck, especially for the HPC folks that Apple  
has had success with in the last couple years. (VA Tech cluster,  
etc.) For most mainline ISV's it'll be less of an issue, since what  
little Altivec code they have can be re-done as SSE code (and likely  
already has been for most big vendors, since they had to do windows  
versions anyway) In fact, one of the biggest pains in game porting  
lately, has apparently been getting SSE code to work as Altivec code.  
Since most of this stuff is at the higher end of things, I think  
maybe we'll see something to ease this (I hope). Depending on Apple's  
rights, it may be possible that an altivec->sse "front-end" could be  
licensed to Intel so developers wouldn't have to worry about it, but  
I know that's a long shot (I would have expected an announcement or  
at least a hint at WWDC).

> I can see the Intel chips as being a good thing in only the  
> Powerbooks, which
> need a lower-heat chip then the G5. The desktops, the iMacs and  
> even the Mac
> Mini lose on this deal.

Why would the mini loose here? It's also currently on a 32bit chip,  
and G5 is not an option for it much more than it is for laptops. Heat  
is every bit as much an issue, and current intel chips are faster  
than the G4's that are in those boxes. This is why Apple is going in  
"reverse" order for introduction of the new lines from usual  
practice. Intel currently really has a 32bit lineup and pretty much  
will until late 2006 into 2007 when they should be able to get 64bit  
dual core stuff from intel.

This reversal, is also what may be a saving grace to PPC macs for a  
couple additional years. The high end is going to be the last line  
converted, which means they will need to keep PPC support decent up  
through that point, since their most demanding customers won't be  
able to upgrade until 2007. This is part of what is driving me toward  
going ahead. I want a higher end machine (current is an iMac G4 800).  
If I wait, it'll be about 2 more years, which is most of what is  
currently considered the useful life of most PCs (Apple's being an  
exception, but you are correct that this is changing). Even when the  
transition is complete, it will take a while before new machines sold  
overtake currently supported base, so I'd say, while it's not the 7  
years some of us have grown accustomed to, it'll still likely be a  
full 4 years before it starts slipping.

The good news here, is that OSX has (obviously) been designed from  
the ground up to be fairly processor agnostic, which is excellent  
planning. They've had working Intel builds all along, and now they're  
making use of that. The flip side of this, is that because the code  
base is already cross platform, it shouldn't take too many resources  
to keep that way for quite some time.

I think this article does a good job of guessing at the processor  
roadmap:

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050608.ars


> Another side effect of this change is Apple is setting a clear  
> benchmark for
> planned obsolescence. At some point Apple will be able to say that  
> we are not
> supporting PPC Macs any more. That cut off will force many people  
> to buy new
> machines.
>
> This seems to be a pattern or dare I say it, a strategy since Steve  
> Jobs
> returned to Apple. The iMac was the first time we saw this  
> approach. No slots
> to add future technology, not one. At some point you couldn't  
> upgrade to a
> newer technology that you desired so you were forced to buy a new Mac.

Well, first, The original 128k mac was even MORE closed than your  
iMacs, etc. This didn't change that much and has usually been  
differentiated on the Consumer/Pro division - at the high end it was  
usually reasonably easy to eke out more performance by doing a bit of  
hot-rodding, at the low end you could maybe add RAM. Hasn't really  
changed much. If you buy an iMac (I am typing this on one) you can  
expect it to be only so upgradable, that's part of the bargain, for  
being such an affordable bundle.

I'm not exactly happy about the fact that Apple's getting better at  
getting people to upgrade more frequently, but I understand why they  
need us to. One of the big reasons for the market share gap, is that  
PC users need to upgrade frequently (usually about the time spyware  
mkes it screech to a crawl). ;-) Mac users have not. Apple makes the  
most money from selling machines, not OS or software upgrades. The  
reality here is, Apple is starting to play like a grown up company,  
and guess what, it hurts us a bit.

> The non-support for Beige Macs under OSX was another. Ryan Rumpel  
> with his
> XPostfacto utility proved that OSX could run on many non supported  
> Macs albeit
> at a slower speed (upgrading the processor was an option here.) But  
> most
> people wouldn't be bothered to look into a third party solution so  
> they bought
> another Mac.

First, beige G3's could install everything natively up through 10.2 -  
it was 10.3 that "killed" support for that machine, which was, at the  
time a 6 year old machine. It also, had too much legacy hardware to  
continue support for (ADB, built in SCSI) and had no native USB or  
firewire. They also haven't done anything to squash Ryan, this lets  
people who really want to run the latest, but it keeps Apple free  
from having to support users forever.

I have one of these running 10.2 - now that I've upgraded the iMac I  
may put 10.3 on it for fun (once I've got a new main machine). But  
even with a new proc in it, I wouldn't want to use it as a primary  
machine.

> The discontinuation of straight Appletalk in Tiger is yet another
> obsolescence. If you had a home network with older Macs (say for  
> the kids or
> that served a lesser purpose in your home) then when you upgraded  
> to Tiger
> suddenly those Macs could not be seen on the network. You would  
> have to
> abandoned them, buy a newer replacement or use sneaker net to move  
> files
> around because Apple won't support it's own protocol for networking.

See above, though it does occur to me that you might be able to use a  
mac that could do both as a bridge here.

> And here we are again being set up for obsolescence. In a few years  
> it will
> be, "Sorry folks we can no longer support those old Altevic/PPC  
> Macs. Quit
> your grumbling, you knew this day would come." And we will be  
> expected to go
> out and buy a new Mac. I can see it coming.

Yes, this is true, though I don't think it'll be tomorrow (or even  
2007) it's more likely to be around the end of the decade.


btw - This is what we're going to be talking about at the next  
meeting - I doubt we could get much else done, and I think it's  
important to have these discussions.

--
Bryan Baker
President
Des Moines Macintosh Users Group
http://www.dmmug.org
president at dmmug.org