Did anyone else feel hoodwinked when the Intel switch was announced ?

[Member2010]

Motorola/Apple/IBM PowerPC to Intel/AMD/Zhaoxin/Fujitsu/Harris Corporation/IBM/Intersil/Matsushita/Mitsubishi/NEC/OKI/Renesas/Rochester Electronics/Siemens/Sharp/Sony/Zilog/SHS-Thomson/Texas Intstruments/Montage/Hygon/MCST/Space Electronics/Maxwell/Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt/Eagle Memories with whatever Intel marketing brand name they were using at the time and I am still confused to this day by Intel's naming of their chips. On some of the other OSes it is confusingly named amd64. Is it an architecture, or is it something like a Transmeta chip doing 386 dynamic binary translation via System On a Chip with modified-Minix spyware in the firmware? My Intel Macs are all dead. My PowerPC G3 and G4 Macs are all still running. I am a little bit jealous of the G5 owners on this forum especially those with 16 GB RAM.

Here are some (unused) folders on my PowerPC Mac:

/usr/include/architecture/i386
/usr/include/i386
/usr/include/libkern/i386
/usr/include/mach/i386
/usr/include/mach-o/i386
/usr/include/pexpert/i386
/usr/libexec/gcc/darwin/i386
/usr/standalone/i386

Apple was testing and running Mac OS X on Intel way before the switch to Intel.

x86 is the universally-recognized name of the architecture. Point still stands.

Maybe your G5 still runs, but so do all of my mid-2000s x86 computers, and all of them are exponentially better performers in practice than the dual-processor G5 ever was (I know what the synthetic benchmarks say).

 

[barracuda156]

Leopard had patches until 2011 - the real issue was how quickly most third party software dropped PPC.

In a low voice: but we still support PowerPC in Macports, and aside of languages which never supported PPC to begin with (and Qt5, sadly), most of software builds. In fact much stuff has been fixed in past couple of years which never worked before.

 

[mmphosis]

x86 is the universally-recognized name of the architecture. Point still stands.

Maybe your G5 still runs, but so do all of my mid-2000s x86 computers, and all of them are exponentially better performers in practice than the dual-processor G5 ever was (I know what the synthetic benchmarks say).

You're in the PowerPC forum, but thanks for clarifying that: x86.

Now I can ignore Alder Lake, Willow Cove, Tiger Lake-Y/U/H, Sunny Cove, Ice Lake-U and Y, Cypress Cove, Rocket Lake, KX-5000, KH-20000, Ryzen, Epyc, Bristol Ridge, A6/A8/A10/A12, Xeon Phi, Knights Landing, Skylake, Kaby Lake, Cannon Lake, Coffee Lake, Celeron Gold, Core i3 i5 i7 i9, Core M, Pentium, Broadwell-U, Haswell, Silvermont, Atom, Athlon, Sempron, Knights Corner, APU A Bulldozer, Trinity, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, FX, VIA Nano, Core 2, Phenom/II Turion, Celeron Dual-Core, Core 2 Pentium Dual-Core, Celeron Dual-Core, Pentium 4, Prescott, Celeron D, Pentium D, X2, Turion 64, Opteron, Athlon 64/FX/X2, Itanium, Transmeta Efficeon, Pentium Dual-Core, Transmeta Crusoe, Athlon XP/MP, Duron, K6/K6-2/K6-III, Pentium III, Pentium II, Pentium Pro, Cx5x86, 6x86, MII, Nx586, 5k86/K5, Am6x86, Am486, DLC, Cx486S, 80486, 80386, Am386, 80286, 80186, 80188, V20, 8088, 8086.

I don't have any G5s, only PowerPC G3 and G4.All of the PowerPC are better real-world performers. (I know what the application benchmarks say.) We can agree to disagree. Welcome to the PowerPC Mac forum.

 

[Member2010]

You're in the PowerPC forum, but thanks for clarifying that: x86.

Now I can ignore Alder Lake...

The names that you provided are all the series names of Intel's x86 chipsets. Not architectures.

I don't have any G5s, only PowerPC G3 and G4.All of the PowerPC are better real-world performers. (I know what the application benchmarks say.) We can agree to disagree. Welcome to the PowerPC Mac forum.

We certainly can, but the facts are the facts. Even against my late-generation Pentium4 machine, the G5 was a slow dog at doing stuff. Mac OSX's obnoxious productivity-killing mouse acceleration didn't help, and the fact that there weren't any Linux operating systems that could run 100% on the hardware was the cherry on top.

 

[Dronecatcher]

We certainly can, but the facts are the facts.

Apart from when they’re not.

At work I used to design on an 8 Core i7 with 24Gb RAM on Windows 7 but getting home to do my freelance stuff on my G5 Quad with Leopard was a joy.

Yes, computationally the i7 left my Quad in the dust but the experience was a kludge.

 

[Member2010]

Apart from when they’re not.

At work I used to design on an 8 Core i7 with 24Gb RAM on Windows 7 but getting home to do my freelance stuff on my G5 Quad with Leopard was a joy.

Yes, computationally the i7 left my Quad in the dust but the experience was a kludge.

I thought about dumping all over this, but I'm not going to because it just wouldn't be right to ruin the day of someone basking in the joy of ignorance to that great an extent. You do you, Dronecatcher. Don't let the facts, reality, or even me, stop you 😃.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I thought about dumping all over this, but I'm not going to because it just wouldn't be right to ruin the day of someone basking in the joy of ignorance to that great an extent. You do you, Dronecatcher. Don't let the facts, reality, or even me, stop you 😃.

Do your worst. What I'm reporting is subjective experience - call me a liar or an idiot if you like, it makes no difference.

 

[Slix]

I was fairly young when the Intel transition was announced, but my dad told me about it since he was the one who would show me Apple news and the keynotes when they used to air on tv. I remember being excited because of the sheer speed that they promised (and turned out to be true in pretty much all instances). We had an eMac G4 from some years earlier and I had a PowerBook G3 at that point, so it wasn't like I had just gotten something new or anything, and we eventually got an aluminum iMac in 2007, and the speed increase was notable. I remember feeling slightly annoyed later on when Lion dropped Rosetta support because I had some apps that were for PowerPC still and a few games, but our family kept around older Macs so it wasn't too big of an issue for me in the long run. We even were able to use some older G4s on Tiger and Leopard for many years after because of the software support that a lot of apps and browsers still had long into the Snow Leopard/Lion era.

I don't think Apple could have stayed on PowerPC for much longer considering we never got a G5 PowerBook (though the memes were hilarious) and the G5 Macs were already pretty loud from the fans necessary to cool them.

 

[Analog Kid]

No, not hoodwinked. I was disappointed, because I really enjoyed that there was a strong competitor to Intel in the market, but we waited years for a G5 and it could barely be cooled in a tower. No laptop was coming.

Frankly, my disappointment was with Motorola (who?). They failed to deliver. People had been arguing for years that Apple should move to Intel. I wanted PowerPC to survive because it looked to me like a superior architecture-- and I think it was. Intel had the advantage (at the time) in process technology and infinite money to spend on making the flawed architecture of x86 less horrible than an underinvested PowerPC roadmap.

That of course has all changed now. Intel is flailing at everything they try, Apple has revealed that Emperor x86 has no clothes, TSMC just keeps spanking them with process updates, and the enterprise world is pivoting fast from caring about CPUs and badly wanting AI accelerators.

Apple has done a great job over the years playing a game of Frogger across the processor space-- hopping from one to the next at just the right moment to avoid going splat.

I did laugh though. Apple had spent years publicly shaming Intel and now they were using Intel chips. It taught me a good lesson when I started buying the iPhone. Apple only cares about Apple and they'll say whatever they think people want to hear to sell you something.

I think that's a bit unfair... I mean, yeah, every company is going to market to its strengths, but PowerPC did beat Intel on some key metrics for a while, then Apple's processor partners let them down. Whatever competitive rhetoric Jobs aimed at Intel, it's nothing compared to how he shivved Motorola when they left him adrift. Mot thought they had a sweet deal getting iTunes on the ROKR, and Jobs held it up on stage like he was worried he might get some on him. I'm sure they took years of abuse behind the scenes as Apple watched their product line stagnate.

Apple was part of the PowerPC consortium, too. It was, in part, their chip.

They pivoted to Intel when Intel had made a strategic shift toward power efficiency. And Intel delivered on that for a couple generations, and gave Apple special treatment for a while. But it fell apart at Intel-- they stagnated and Apple's product line along with them.

Now Apple's back in control of their destiny with Apple Silicon, and it's a good position to be in at this moment. They've shown that, with proper investment, Arm can still pants x86, just like it did in the old days. And as we move into more heterogenous computing, Apple's ability to surround that processor with custom cores for various uses and control the system firmware to use them, is a big advantage. They're in the catbird seat for the moment.

Apple's still not fully independent though-- they still rely heavily on TSMC to stay competitive. If TSMC falters, or a better design solution comes along, I've no doubt that Apple will pivot again to another solution and, just as they have each time before, make that transition as seamless as possible.

So I'm not put off by Apple changing processors. They've done it over and over-- which I think is the right approach for a system maker, and they've done better than anyone I've ever seen at maintaining compatibility across the transition. I didn't like the Intel years because I felt we all just got what Intel was willing to give, which as a few percent improvement each year. I'm happy again with the latest change when the world gets interesting again.

 

[barracuda156]

No, not hoodwinked. I was disappointed, because I really enjoyed that there was a strong competitor to Intel in the market, but we waited years for a G5 and it could barely be cooled in a tower. No laptop was coming.

That could have changed with Cell and PA Semi, but Apple chose to go with lower costs instead of superior quality.

 

[Member2010]

Do your worst. What I'm reporting is subjective experience - call me a liar or an idiot if you like, it makes no difference.

I'm not going to call you a liar. You're fooling only yourself. It was obvious, even in the earlier part of the prior decade, that the G5 (dual-processor, no less) was slow as hell compared to early Core2 Duo machines and even late Pentium4 computers. To be fair, we're comparing 2006 technologies with 2003 hardware, but it's hard to overstate just how much of a quantum leap was made in 3 short years, given that it was the equivalent of 10-15 years worth of improvement today (as the 8-bit Guy pointed out not long ago).

 

[Dronecatcher]

You're fooling only yourself.

Pity you chose to ignore the bit where I said "Yes, computationally the i7 left my Quad in the dust" - You seem to have interpreted me prefering my Quad on Leopard set up exactly as I want it, to a corporate i7 PC on Windows 7 as some kind of deluded techy David and Goliath fabrication.

 

[barracuda156]

I'm not going to call you a liar. You're fooling only yourself. It was obvious, even in the earlier part of the prior decade, that the G5 (dual-processor, no less) was slow as hell compared to early Core2 Duo machines and even late Pentium4 computers.

In carefully selected by marketing department test-cases, where software was highly optimized for x86 and not optimized at all for G5 (no support for Altivec, for example).

 

[Analog Kid]

That could have changed with Cell and PA Semi, but Apple chose to go with lower costs instead of superior quality.

Careful, this is St. Steve you're talking about. People may get the idea that stories of his endless altruism in service to delivering beautifully uncompromised products to the customer without regards to margin are apocryphal...

In defense of his decision though, the truth is that neither solution you're proposing was really safe or even available to bet a product line on at the time. Apple announced they were leaving PowerPC in mid 2005, which certainly means they'd been preparing for that decision long before then.

If you go through the archives here you'll find I was quite the fan of the now deceased Cell architecture when it released. Heterogenous computing was a compelling view of the future but it was an unproven and not well established architecture that didn't ship a first implementation until 2006 in a scope reduced package for Playstation. Moving Mac to an architecture that was still in the lab and uncertain to ship wouldn't have been wise.

In retrospect, Cell was doing heterogeneity at the wrong scale. The made the mistake Itanium did and tried to optimize single thread execution through a diverse and configurable set of logic blocks. We've learned since then that it makes code compatibility across generations really challenging. It's better to optimize per thread through big/little designs and with coprocessors that perform special purpose computations. This is the approach Apple Silicon has adopted.

Likewise PA Semi didn't exist until 2003 so couldn't be considered when deciding how to proceed with the Mac line and they didn't ship their first processor until 2007, a year after the transition started. Apple obviously was impressed with their output because they bought the company a year later, but that timeline just wouldn't have worked for the Mac.

If you're dealing with an unreliable vendor of what was largely seen as an alternative CPU architecture, the solution won't be to move to an unknown vendor or an untested architecture. We know Apple had kept an Intel build of MacOS for a very long time as a Plan B. That's good strategy. Like any good emergency management plan, you establish the plan and practice it in the good times so you don't have to think too hard when the crisis happens.

Yes, companies are in the business of making money, but that doesn't mean that every decision they make is a craven effort to see how far they can degrade their product to screw you out of an extra buck. Sometimes the decisions we see are simply a best attempt to navigate complex technical challenges and high stakes business risks without the benefit of hindsight.

 

[GMShadow]

Apple was also a pretty small computer maker at the time, which was part of the issue that caused IBM and Motorola/Freescale to more or less 'get bored' - cranking out a million chips a year for Apple was small potatoes compared to IBM churning out tens of millions yearly for game consoles (and those chips don't have to get revised beyond die shrinks for 7-10 years), or the large embedded market Freescale was focused on.

Apple was in the unenviable position of being high effort, mid-margin, low volume, and the other parts of the AIM Alliance wanted out.

While Apple sometimes got special runs from Intel, they were just variants of existing designs that Intel was selling to PC makers, which meant the cost structure was much better for both companies, and being able to run Windows natively really helped Apple juice Mac sales, which further drove orders, and so on.

Moving to Intel when they did was the right choice - they got to hop on just as Intel finally pulled their head out, dumped Netburst, and reverted to P6, giving them performance & power efficiency at the same time. Just because the partnership broke down later doesn't make the move the wrong one in 2005, and if I'm honest, I don't think they could really have moved off earlier than they did.

 

[eyoungren]

I think that's a bit unfair... I mean, yeah, every company is going to market to its strengths, but PowerPC did beat Intel on some key metrics for a while, then Apple's processor partners let them down. Whatever competitive rhetoric Jobs aimed at Intel, it's nothing compared to how he shivved Motorola when they left him adrift. Mot thought they had a sweet deal getting iTunes on the ROKR, and Jobs held it up on stage like he was worried he might get some on him. I'm sure they took years of abuse behind the scenes as Apple watched their product line stagnate.

Apple was part of the PowerPC consortium, too. It was, in part, their chip.

They pivoted to Intel when Intel had made a strategic shift toward power efficiency. And Intel delivered on that for a couple generations, and gave Apple special treatment for a while. But it fell apart at Intel-- they stagnated and Apple's product line along with them.

Now Apple's back in control of their destiny with Apple Silicon, and it's a good position to be in at this moment. They've shown that, with proper investment, Arm can still pants x86, just like it did in the old days. And as we move into more heterogenous computing, Apple's ability to surround that processor with custom cores for various uses and control the system firmware to use them, is a big advantage. They're in the catbird seat for the moment.

Apple's still not fully independent though-- they still rely heavily on TSMC to stay competitive. If TSMC falters, or a better design solution comes along, I've no doubt that Apple will pivot again to another solution and, just as they have each time before, make that transition as seamless as possible.

So I'm not put off by Apple changing processors. They've done it over and over-- which I think is the right approach for a system maker, and they've done better than anyone I've ever seen at maintaining compatibility across the transition. I didn't like the Intel years because I felt we all just got what Intel was willing to give, which as a few percent improvement each year. I'm happy again with the latest change when the world gets interesting again.

If I market Widget B to compete against Widget A, telling everyone that Widget A sucks in comparison to my Widget B and I prove that with reproducible stats, then what does it look like when I stop making Widget B and start buying Widget A parts to make Widget C?

Who's confused? Not those paying attention. They know my suppliers screwed me because they couldn't market the parts I needed for Widget B. But what about the rest of the public?

Now, the maker of Widget A has decided to do something different, which I don't like because it makes Widget C look bad. So now, two suppliers have screwed me over.

But I'm making Widget C all on my own now and I'm in full control. That's where I wanted to be to begin with and those who've been paying attention get it. Those who haven't have checked out by this point and don't care. They just want a Widget that works.

Not much of this is Apple's fault. Until now they weren't big enough to make their own CPUs. But promoting PowerPC over Intel way back when was one thing. Making fun of Intel then turning around and purchasing Intel chips is another. I get it. I just had thoughts.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

If I market Widget B to compete against Widget A, telling everyone that Widget A sucks in comparison to my Widget B and I prove that with reproducible stats, then what does it look like when I stop making Widget B and start buying Widget A parts to make Widget C?

Who's confused? Not those paying attention. They know my suppliers screwed me because they couldn't market the parts I needed for Widget B. But what about the rest of the public?

Now, the maker of Widget A has decided to do something different, which I don't like because it makes Widget C look bad. So now, two suppliers have screwed me over.

But I'm making Widget C all on my own now and I'm in full control. That's where I wanted to be to begin with and those who've been paying attention get it. Those who haven't have checked out by this point and don't care. They just want a Widget that works.

Not much of this is Apple's fault. Until now they weren't big enough to make their own CPUs. But promoting PowerPC over Intel way back when was one thing. Making fun of Intel then turning around and purchasing Intel chips is another. I get it. I just had thoughts.

No thoughts for you! How dare you have thoughts

I agree with many seemingly conflicting views in this thread and I for one like the passionate discourse. One point I had not considered (and should have) was the reality that the PowerPC era Apple was not the Apple of today in size and market dominance and how that could have affected its business relationships. Interesting thoughts about that. I absolutely could see why a chip producer would go after a bigger piece of the pie forcing Apple to go elsewhere in the same way one can see how these past experiences of uneven dependence influenced Apples push towards internalized, self contained, and controlled AS.

 

[eyoungren]

No thoughts for you! How dare you have thoughts

I agree with many seemingly conflicting views in this thread and I for one like the passionate discourse. One point I had not considered (and should have) was the reality that the PowerPC era Apple was not the Apple of today in size and market dominance and how that could have affected its business relationships. Interesting thoughts about that. I absolutely could see why a chip producer would go after a bigger piece of the pie forcing Apple to go elsewhere in the same way one can see how these past experiences of uneven dependence influenced Apples push towards internalized, self contained, and controlled AS.

Oh, yes. The saying "Macs for design, PCs for business" was very real when I got my first graphic design job in 1999. It was straight Macs (at work) until 2004 for me. But even that job in 2004 (for which I stayed 14.5 years) had two Macs when I started.

I trace the rise of the current version of Apple to the iPhone and the "I'm a Mac" campaign. That's when it all changed.

 

[MysticCow]

Saw this in the sidebar and expected to read a thread about the move from Intel to Apple Silicon and imagine by surprise when what's actually being talked about is the move TO Intel from PowerPC

Welcome to the PowerPC forum. We have cookies. And the blood of our enemies.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Welcome to the PowerPC forum. We have cookies. And the blood of our enemies.

LOL at that!

We come for the cookies and we stay for the blood

Indeed welcome

 

[B S Magnet]

Welcome to the PowerPC forum. We have cookies. And the blood of our enemies.

💉🅱️🅰️🆎🅾️🩸

All blood welcomed here. Team Haeme (heme) is our theme, all the way. Delicious, scrumptious Siliconfan blood, mmmmm… 🧛‍♀️😋

 

[840quadra]

Looking back the transition was lightning fast, and the drop of support for PowerPC was a slap in the face. Look at now, how long have we been switching to Arm / Apple processors, yet still have support for Intel machines?

Looks like they may have learned their lesson a bit on this.

 

[mmphosis]

The names that you provided are all the series names of Intel's x86 chipsets. Not architectures.



We certainly can, but the facts are the facts. Even against my late-generation Pentium4 machine, the G5 was a slow dog at doing stuff. Mac OSX's obnoxious productivity-killing mouse acceleration didn't help, and the fact that there weren't any Linux operating systems that could run 100% on the hardware was the cherry on top.

Actually, some of those "names" are micro-architectures. And, some of those names are from non-Intel vendors like Transmeta, Zhaoxin, NEC, Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt, AMD and many more.

You bring up the 8bit guy who doesn't seem to like Apple much but I've also seen him retract some of his anti-Apple bias in light of "the facts." I feel pretty childish. I am guessing that you don't like Apple. I do mostly like Apple. I especially like my G3 and G4 PowerPC Macs and Mac OS X Leopard and Tiger and this is why I frequent this forum. I am very productive using Mac OS X —maybe it's because of all that mouse acceleration. I am very unproductive using Linux operating systems because to this day the software just doesn't cut it. It comes nowhere near the plethora of amazing user applications on the Mac with ease of use at the forefront, and 100% Unix in the background if I needed to cherry pick. Linux 100% does not have ease of use. You bring the 8bit guy, I'll bring a quote from elsewhere:

The x86 architecture is terrible for low power, low temperature, and small footprint applications. They’ve tried a few times with SBCs and microcontroller cores but it’s not an efficient design (they never cared about that during the desktop wars) and it’s not fixable in current form. It’s why ARM won in the end and the world now runs on ARM. As I always like to say- the real victor of the home computer wars was the Acorn Archimedes.

Have a cookie.

 

[Member2010]

In carefully selected by marketing department test-cases, where software was highly optimized for x86 and not optimized at all for G5 (no support for Altivec, for example).

If by "carefully selected by marketing department test-cases, where software was highly optimized for x86 and not optimized at all for G5," you mean "all real world applications," then yes, I suppose you're right.

Actually, some of those "names" are micro-architectures. And, some of those names are from non-Intel vendors like Transmeta, Zhaoxin, NEC, Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt, AMD and many more.

Like I said before.

You bring up the 8bit guy who doesn't seem to like Apple much but I've also seen him retract some of his anti-Apple bias in light of "the facts." I feel pretty childish.

He was "the iBook Guy" for quite a few years and still uses a lot of Mac OSX in his day-to-day operations, so I think you'd be hard pressed to find any evidence of "anti-Apple bias."

I am guessing that you don't like Apple. I do mostly like Apple. I especially like my G3 and G4 PowerPC Macs and Mac OS X Leopard and Tiger and this is why I frequent this forum.

I don't "like" any brand, platform, architecture, or operating system. It's all just degrees of dislike, while giving credit where it's due. I am probably the closest you'll get to completely objective when it comes to computing. You might give out free passes to that which you feel nostalgic for, but I don't, at least in as much as it is possible to avoid. I could rant for hours about some of the spectacular things and morbidly stupid things that all major vendors have done over the years.

I am very productive using Mac OS X —maybe it's because of all that mouse acceleration.

If you are genuinely productive using OSX, it's in spite of the mouse acceleration, and not because of it. I can assure you of that. If you don't believe me, test the same mouse-heavy activity (web-browsing, video editing, document publishing; it doesn't really matter) under identical conditions on OSX and then Windows using the same mouse and keyboard, and the same mouse sensitivity settings. I can personally guarantee that you'll notice a degree-of-magnitude difference in how quickly and effortlessly the task can be done without OSX's stupendously awful mouse acceleration slowing you down (and no cheating by using SmoothMouse).

I am very unproductive using Linux operating systems because to this day the software just doesn't cut it. It comes nowhere near the plethora of amazing user applications on the Mac with ease of use at the forefront...

Not sure I'd call it "ease of use." I've always found OSX to be as big of a pain in the ass as Linux in terms of getting things to work right, and that's saying something. The mouse acceleration problem still persists as well. But yeah, you're right about the software compatibility thing.

 

[XboxEvolved]

Well the rumors were getting more and more traction before the actual announcement as I recall and there was great debate on if it would happen because Apple had been telling all of us for nearly a decade that the Wintel alliance sucks and PowerPC was far superior in every way. Part of what fueled doubts about the switch also was the fact that Microsoft and Sony were going to be using the PowerPC architecture in their upcoming consoles, and people took that as a sign of Apple betting on the right horse.

I specifically remember a professor and a few classmates finding the idea of the Intel switch offensive. Once it happened, and specifically because of how smooth it was and the MacBook Pros, people seemed to warm up to it pretty quick.

Had we been paying attention, we would have all known all along that it was very possible that at any moment Apple could switch, but we didn't really have YouTube back then at the time with the archived videos we have now showing Rhapsody running on Intel machines which seemed to be something that the NeXT guys were pushing Apple to do early on, until they really dug in and saw that the PowerPC roadmap was actually pretty sustainable for quite sometime, then IBM started hitting a lot of roadblocks and was diverting more and more of their attention on PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360.