Apple going Intel - DRM driven?

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 9:27 am

This article from Wired is the first to mention DRM as the real motivation
for a switch to x86 architecture:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67 ... _tophead_2

DaveQB · Post by **DaveQB** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 10:11 am

Haven't read the article, but I thought I read that it was becoming apparent that x86 has reached the end of its useful life ??

Maybe that was on an Apple site or something

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:24 pm

Things are going to get pretty interesting in the next 2 years.
Some quick thoughts:

Looks like we'll have a triple boot system: windows/OSX/linux

Is this the start of all out war between Apple & Microsoft, Apple & IBM?

Was Apple emboldened by the constant delays in Longhorn?

Were the Apple fan boys all wrong when saying you can't compare x86 to PPC?

Will IBM offer PPC machines with IBM linux?

Will Apple sales plummet in the next 18 months? Who wants to buy a discontinued product?

Linux has a major opportunity with all the old Apple hardware once the transition finalizes. Linux runs great on PPC hardware. Hell it runs great on x86!

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 12:11 pm

To me the obvious motivation is Intel (compatible) chips are cheap.

Power PC processors are expensive. Anything that's produced in small quantities is expensive. The economies of scale of x86 chips will bring Apple PCs closer to being cost competitive.

Apple PCs used to have SCSI drives, but they were dropped in favor of IDE. Why? SCSI drives are better, but IDE is cheaper. Same thing with moving to PCI. That may be the reason they still only have one button on the mouse.

Apple needs to make a profit, and they're willing to cut performance to do that.

mrben · Post by **mrben** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 3:12 am

Patrick wrote:Things are going to get pretty interesting in the next 2 years.
Some quick thoughts:

Looks like we'll have a triple boot system: windows/OSX/linux

Possibly - but it won't be supported - but no surprise there.

Were the Apple fan boys all wrong when saying you can't compare x86 to PPC?

Yes

You can compare them, but the problem is that while PPC is good, it's expensive, and, from what I've heard, OSX is quite resource intensive too, so the only real way to compare is to run Linux on both.

Will IBM offer PPC machines with IBM linux?

Nope. Never going to happen. There will never be an 'IBM Linux'. However, IBM is already selling PPC machines with Linux installed and have done for a while, not least their recent OpenServer range.

Will Apple sales plummet in the next 18 months? Who wants to buy a discontinued product?

What's been 'discontinued'? Will users notice _any_ difference between PPC and x86 hardware if they're both running the same OS on top?

Linux has a major opportunity with all the old Apple hardware once the transition finalizes. Linux runs great on PPC hardware. Hell it runs great on x86!

Totally agreed. /me hopes he can pick up some cheap PPC hardware to give it a test run with Linux

Post by **Patrick** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 6:40 am

Good read from Michael Robertson of Linspire:
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_michael ... php?id=173

A good article talking about the proprietary hardware and how people will crack it to get OSX running on generic hardware:
http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?o ... ew&id=1386

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:40 am

Good commentary from the weekly Distro Watch newsletter:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050613

Post by **Patrick** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:51 am

Roblimo has a good commentary:
http://business.newsforge.com/business/ ... =130&tid=2

Post by **dann** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 5:23 pm

Patrick wrote:Roblimo has a good commentary:
http://business.newsforge.com/business/ ... =130&tid=2

That's what I said the day after the announcment (well two days).

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 12:10 am

Linux will problably gain a lot especially if Apple stops making their newer OS versions for PPC computers. People will want better and newer operating systems and they'll look to linux

but that would take a while since I think it is at least 2 years between Apple OS releases but its gonna be a while till all Macs are running x86 (i think it was 2007 or something)