Might Apple ditch PowerPC for Satanic chips?

The Inquirer ^ | July 22, 2002 | Tony Smith

[JameRetief]

Might Apple ditch PowerPC for Satanic chips?

Citizen Smith Resolution wavering?

By Tony Smith: Monday 22 July 2002, 10:17

IS APPLE SERIOUSLY thinking about switching processor platforms? There's been no end of speculative answers to that question over the past few years, but Apple itself has been resolute on the point: no we're not.

That stance may have changed, if comments made by CEO Steve Jobs at the company's quarterly earnings confab. Asked whether Apple is now mooting a move to x86 chips, Jobs noted that that couldn't happen until the vast majority of its users and - more importantly - its developers have migrated to the Unix-based Mac OS X. That won't have happened until the end of this year, he added.

"Then we'll have options," said Jobs, "and we like to have options."

Ditching PowerPC and Motorola, Apple's prime supplier, is, as we say, an old chestnut, and Jobs could well have been just fanning the flames of investor interest. God knows, the company needs its share price to rise.

It also needs a shot in the arm of its processor strategy. The significant architectural changes incorporated last January into the latest, G4-class PowerPC 7455 processor meant that the 1GHz chip was able to deliver greater performance than its clock frequency suggested, as does AMD's Athlon XP.

Six months on and Apple's dual 1GHz CPU boxes are looking woefully underpowered again. Digital Video Editing magazine's comparison of a Power Mac G4, a dual Athlon MP 2000+ system and a Dell machine containing a single 2.53GHz Pentium 4 produced an unhappy result for Apple: "the Mac dual 1GHz G4 could not even come close to keeping up with these two PCs".

Apple is expected to launch new high-end Macs based on faster G4-class processors - the PowerPC 7470 at up to 1.4GHz, we hear - but that won't happen until late next month. Even so, it's unlikely to turn around Digital Video Editing's test results.

In the same timeframe, Apple will ship Mac OS X 10.2, which should eliminate many of the OS' performance limiters, primarily its sophisticated but processor-intensive graphics engine. Reports from beta testers suggest users will see big improvements - provided they're willing to cough up $129 for them - but it's hard to see those changes plus the upcoming faster processors allowing Apple to reduce the performance gap with Wintel significantly.

Mac OS X 10.2 ships on 24 August. It's clearly the release that will drive the level of adoption Jobs is predicting by the end of this year. But what else is happening in that late 2002/early 2003 timeframe? Why, AMD begins shipping Opteron and, later, Hammer-based Athlons. Could these be the "options" Jobs referred to?

A lot of Mac users - not to mention AMD fans - would like to think so. AMD may be x86, but it isn't Intel, and not being Intel and Microsoft are the two main reasons dedicated Mac users stay dedicated - me included, though I'm processor agnostic.

How's this for a scenario: a Power Mac based on an x86-64 AMD chip and an Nvidia nForce 2 chipset. That would almost certainly deliver a significant hike in Mac performance without sacrificing any on the Apple platform's distinguishing features: Firewire, USB, AirPort, etc. And it could probably be offered more cheaply too.

Mac OS X's abstraction of the hardware it sits on makes that possible. Plausible is another matter. ISVs would certainly have to recompile their code, and it would mean the death of Mac OS 9 backwards compatibility. The former doesn't necessarily mean vendors would have to support multiple versions - if the x86 and PowerPC versions were functionally the same, sharing the same code base, running on Apple-certified hardware, support and installation issues would be minimal. The transition from 680x0 to PowerPC was harder to do.

And plenty of users would be happy to wave farewell to the Classic Mac OS - if they haven't done so already.

So we're all set for an AMD-Apple future? Well, Motorola's next major G4 architectural revamp, the 7500, is believed to be scheduled for an early 2003 release. And just as Dell likes to court AMD to give it bargaining power with Intel, so Apple may be hinting at a new processor strategy to encourage Motorola. Jobs comments came in the same week that Motorola's chip division announced further significant Q2 losses ($1.3 billion). And there has been talk that Apple is considering a variant on IBM's Power4, though this seems unlikely for a company that makes desktops and notebooks, not big server iron.

PowerPC or AMD - or Intel, for that matter - at the very least, Apple realises it may have to change CPUs. It's done so before - 680x0 to PowerPC, no less complex a change than from PowerPC to x86. While the plan may simply call for an alternative if PowerPC can't deliver, Apple is clearly getting itself into a position where it can make that shift and take its users with it. µ

[jimtorr]

Hopefully they won't make any such shift any time soon. I don't like OS X or the browser software that runs on it.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

While the plan may simply call for an alternative if PowerPC can't deliver, Apple is clearly getting itself into a position where it can make that shift and take its users with it.

No doubt about it . . . and given the history of NexT, that would have happened back in 386 days, had Jobs not been forced out of Apple. The whole Mac history from then to OS 9 would have been skipped, and x86 users would have had the option of switching from blue screening to Unix long before Linus Torvolds got into the act.

Even without discarding Motorola, Apple could port OS X to compete directly with Windows, if it had the stomach for it. But Jobs would never price it aggressively . . . the NexT OS he ported, but priced at $1000. People bought Windows 3.0 for comparative peanuts, and Gates not Jobs became hyperrich.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Even without discarding Motorola, Apple could port OS X to compete directly with Windows, if it had the stomach for it. But Jobs would never price it aggressively.

An Intel port would have to be cheap, and at least a little degraded in order not to canibalize Mac sales--unless Apple wanted to go out of the hardware business altogether, as NexT did before dying altogether.

[William Terrell]

Ditching PowerPC and Motorola, Apple's prime supplier, is, as we say, an old chestnut, and Jobs could well have been just fanning the flames of investor interest. God knows, the company needs its share price to rise.

More short stuff, possibly?

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

NeXT was too far ahead of its time. To be fair, it was a bit pricey, too.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

NeXT was too far ahead of its time. To be fair, it was a bit pricey, too.

"too far ahead of its time" in the sense of resource requirements? Perhaps that was the actual root of the problem. But had it been developed a little later--thus, for 486 hardware--Windows might already have owned the market. But if priced competively--and, certainly, if coming from Apple rather than Steve Jobs alone--there would have been a real contest, with Gates selling patent slop in comparison to a Sys X lite. Part of what made Windows go, tho, was Office.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Lousy marketing was mainly responsible for the death of NexT.  It was geared for educational and scientific people.  I know of business people who begged NexT to sell them a box - and were refused.

[avg_freeper]

The quote was taken slightly out of context.

Here it is in its entirety:

(5m 40s) Steve Jobs was asked about porting Mac OS X to Intel:

Steve Jobs: "The roadmap on the PowerPC actually looks pretty good and there are some advantages to it. As an example, the PowerPC has something in it called AltiVec, we call the Velocity Engine -- it's a vector engine -- it dramatically accelerates media, much better than, as an example, the Intel processors or the AMD processors... so we actually eke out a fair amount of performance from these things when all is said and done. And the roadmap looks pretty good. Now, as you point out, once our transition to Mac OS 10 is complete, which I expect will be around the end of this year or sometime early next year and we get the top 20% of our installed base running 10, and I think the next 20 will come very rapidly after that. Then we'll have options, then we'll have options and we like to have options. But right now, between Motorola and IBM, the roadmap looks pretty decent. "

He implies an all together different sentiment within the complete quote.

[Richard Kimball]

I really like my Mac and I love OSX. My biggest complaint is speed. An Apple cannot compete with a PC on raw speed, regardless of what any of the mac fanatics say.

AMD is IMHO the most innovative chip manufacturer working today. As to Apple porting OSX to a PC platform, I don't think it would kill Apple as a hardware manufacturer, as the quality and innovation of their computers has always been a huge selling point. The big concern would be, "what would Gates do to kill Apple?"

Never underestimate Bill Gates. Guy is a genious, and he knows how to cut people off at the ankles. Right now, he needs Apple. They stick at 5% of market, and give him cover to avoid being called a Monopoly. Apple ports to PC and Gates sees 25 to 35% of the market going Apple, and believe me, he'll start figuring a way to slice Jobs throat. Wouldn't be surprised if a plan wasn't already in place.

First moves would be threatening current PC manufacturers and peripheal makers with discount loss and removal of access to code necessary to make peripheals run. Second would be pulling Office as an OSX option. Third would be sabatoging code to make interchange between OSX apps and Win apps more difficult (remember the constant Windows code changes to make Wordperfect crash? How about Lotus 123?)

Most of Microsoft's profits come from Office, according to most reports. However, most of their control comes from Windows. For OSX to compete on a PC platform, Jobs would have to be able to get down and dirty with Gates. Pretty tall order for a company that has created practically every innovation in personal computers in the last fifteen years, but hasn't been able to convert it to market share. Also, I haven't seen anyone who can take Gates on in a slugfest over platforms. Lotta dead or dying companies out there that tried.

[chilepepper]

NeXt was ELITIST. I tried to buy one and the rules snobby jobs put up to make it harder to buy turned me off (university had to have a full time service guy to fix the damn things for example), so i went elsewhere.

Jobs, IMHO, has the inverse of the MIDAS touch.

A black MAGNESIUM case for the NeXt????????
A cube like server that overheats??????
A CLOSED ARCHITECTURE system????
A $129 UPGRADE FEE for OSX10.2????
A funny looking lamp containing a computer????

[boris]

As Joe Stalin said, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

The reason X86 architecture has zoomed ahead of PowerPC is that there is an enormous user base. Chipmakers on the X86 side are scrambling for the user base. This is called "competition", which Apple abhors.

In any event, it has caused an incredibly-short cycle time for new generations of CPU and graphics chips, thus 'evolution' proceeded very rapidly, hence the X86 stable blows the doors off the tired old Moto Power PC.

So finally the tiny brain in the tail of the dinosaur gets the message that the front of the beast has been devoured by mammals.

--Boris

[HAL9000]

The megahertz difference is widely misunderstood, and Apple can match Intel's performance at a lower clock rate because the PowerPC architecture is more efficient. The issue Apple needs to address is memory bandwidth - and it appears that they will do that next month.

Apple's strategy is to grow their marketshare on the current platform, which is much better suited for the task. They've managed to remain profitable during the economic downturn, and if the economy improves, they will probably succeed in gaining marketshare - and the probability that Mac OS X will be ported to Intel processors will be low.

[razorback-bert]

the company needs its share price to rise.

Why don't they try some radical, like paying a dividend.

I am now on a no dividend no buy investment program.

[discostu]

Actually I think porting to x86 would be the death knell for Apple. You're not going to see a mass migration from the Windows market, hasn't happened yet with any of the other "competing" OSes. What you will see is Apple customers chosing to put it on cheaper PC hardware, and according to Apple the hardware has always been where their margin is. If Apple is reduced to being just an OS company, with a miniscule 5% of the market place (down from the 7% the were at when St. Jobs came back) they're in big trouble.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[razorback-bert]

Something got shortened to some in cyberspace.

[SoDak]

Or, they could start buying IBM copper chips. In my experience, RISC blows the doors off Intel, high-end for high-end. I can load a database on an Intel-based server with their latest chip, and on a RS/6000 server with their latest chip and the RS will blow the Intel away everytime, so much so that we've scrapped our Intel offerings and are RISC exclusively.

[Zathras]

In my opinion, the Apple speed problem is that Apple knows nothing about microprocessor design or process technology.

Designing a processor beyond 1Ghz requires more than Steve Jobs hype. It requires LOTS of money and hard work by a quality semiconductor manufacturer AND the incentive for someone to invest that money and personel.

The small market Apple fills is not enough to justify a multi-billion dollar effort.

[general_re]

I expect that if Apple did something like that, they would try to lock the platform with Apple-specific ROMs or some such, much the way they always did on the 680x0 chips. You can get PPC motherboards, but I have no idea if the PPC Macs have Apple-only ROMs on board to keep people from rolling their own machines - probably they do.