Do you think Apple's migration to Intel has been a premeditated act,

[Deja Q]

before OS X came out?

We all know OS X is basically FreeBSD.

And will these upcoming Macs be at REASONABLE prices, or will the cost difference not be handed down to consumers, as we all know what a crock of steaming cattle cack "trickle-down" economics is.

[Dave Reynolds]

1. Premeditated,

with malice aforethought.

[billbuckhead]

2. Apple is using the same strategy as with the iPod

Match the best software and the coolest design, with the latest most cost effective chips.
I predict the Apple Intel marriage will allow Intel to keep it's other customers in line about slacking on innovation. Dell doesn't lead the league in innovation and HP has been reduced to aping Apple while it regroups. Besides, if Microsoft screws with Apple's chip supply, why shouldn't Apple just call Microsoft out and compete with Windows on it's own hardware? Apple seems to be 2years ahead of Microsoft, why not take on the much delayed and revised Longhorn. The market cries for a competitor to Microsoft, the time is ripe to take on Gates and Ballmer.

[crispini]

9. Um,

how could *Microsoft* screw with Apple's chip supply? Microsoft ain't the same company as Intel.... :shrug:

[billbuckhead]

11. Microsoft was buying up the IBM chips for X boxes

[entanglement]

3. After surfing a lot of websites, this is what I concluded

1) Apple made this switch AT THIS TIME primarily because of heating problems in their laptops; they couldn't stick a G5 in a laptop and that really hurt vis-a-vis Pentium M. Additionally, IBM was diverting all their fabbing resources to the console makers, and Apple was not their biggest concern.

2) It is OS X and the stylish-Apple box that are responsible for the 'Apple feel' more than the CPU (most average users aren't going to care whether they have a PowerPC 970/G5 or Pentium-4 under the hood)

3) Apple will still follow an integrated approach, ie, they make the boxes as well. That means no clones, and no gray boxes running OSX without legal trouble from Apple. Since they'll continue to make the boxes, I'm guessing they'll continue the charge a premium for the x86 Mac.

4) Yes, it was premeditated. Jobs announced at the Devcon that they've been maintaining a 'secret' parallel x86 build for every G5 build of their software for the last 5 years.

[evlbstrd]

4. Yes. Jobs admitted that Apple had OS X running on Intel

processors every step of the way, "just in case." The big question is, which instruction set will the new Mac use? PowerPC processors are RISC chips, and Pentiums are CISC (as were the old 68K chips Macs used to use).

[Zech Marquis]

6. current Intel chips

are they're using RISC in one form or another already?

[Zech Marquis]

5. my thoughts "the day after"

when I first started hearing the weekend reports, I figured that some rumor site had taken people for another ride. Then I saw the NY Times article and said out loud,"STEVE! You have some explaining to do man!" My approach was,"let the man himself say it Monday...", and he did. I figured Apple had a side project for this, but..not quite like what was revealed yesterday. Each version of OS X has been compiled for the PowerPC and Intel from the word go (five years ago in fact). The big one was Steve telling the keynte audience that in fact, the veyr same Mac he was using for the keynote had a P4 in it. And I could no tell any difference at all. The Finder was the same, the iApps were the same, same Dock, same Spotlight, same iTunes (ok, a preview of iTunes 4.9 with podcasting suport)

So how do I feel the day after? Last year the current iMac G5 was delayed becuase IBM couldn't make enough G5 processors. Then they started focusing more on the Cell chp and 970 class game chip for the xbox 360 (and then a new chip for Nintendo's new system) If I'm correct, intel has always wanted to work closer with Apple--hell, they're righ down the street from each other. Was this premeditated? nO, because Apple bent over backwards to use every possible Power PC option to the max. I know my iMac G5 will be good to go for years, so next will be a Mac laptop..and apparently it will have Intel inside. I'd much prefer a G5 laptop, but the engineers couldn't get one that would be worthy of the Powerbook/iBook name. Intel has chip factories all over the place, so there won't be any supply problems now.

[Paul Dlugokencky]

7. long considered. loooooong....

Steve Jobs used Intel processors for his NeXT computers (the company he founded after being ousted from Apple in '85). Mac OS X is built on the Unix-based NeXT operating system. (The deal where Apple bought NeXT for it's OS is what brought Jobs back to Apple.) So, one could say that running OS X on Intel processors was a seed planted back when Reagan was President.

Jobs acknowledged yesterday that for the last five years, every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for Intel as well as PowerPC chips.




http://www.cafepress.com/kickindemocrats

[evlbstrd]

8. Yes, he sold NeXT to Apple.

And, at first, Apple tried to evolve it into a Mac OS, in cooperation with IBM and Motorola. It was code-named Pink.
It failed.
Berkeley BSD Unix is the foundation of OS X.

[Redstone]

10. Doesn't matter to me;

I'm going to continued using System 9 until the last computer that can run it wears out.

Redstone