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Steve wanted to go Intel 5 years ago

cyrana

By cyrana

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While we knew that Steve Jobs has been committed to maintaining a cross-platform OS X since its inception, an interview with Michel Mayer, CEO of Freescale Semiconductor, gives some interesting context to Apple’s switch to Intel. From the interview:

 

Weren't you there during the discussions when IBM convinced Apple to adopt the G5?

Mayer: In my previous job, I ran IBM's semiconductor business. So I've seen both sides of the Apple story, because I sold the G5 to Steve (Jobs) the first time he wanted to move to Intel.

 

Five years ago?

Mayer: Yeah, that's about right. So I sold the G5. First I told IBM that we needed to do it, and then I sold it to Apple that the G5 was good and it was going to be the follow-on of the PowerPC road map for the desktop. It worked pretty well. And then IBM decided not to take the G5 into the laptop and decided to really focus its chip business on the game consoles.

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Phineas J. Whoopie
http://news.com.com/Is+the+PowerPC+due+for..._3-5983157.html

 

The interesting stuff starts on page two. Some tidbits:

 

Note the bit about -IBM- not taking G5s into a laptop...

 

Where IBM dropped the ball, another starup picked it up. This would have worked very well in a Mac laptop. I am disappointed that I'll never see it:

 

http://www.pasemi.com/processors/index.html

 

It's only a year too late. Given the team's experience at SiByte, I believe they will be able to pull it off. The entire motherboard would consume about the same power as an Intel mobile CPU.

 

Phineas

Edited by Phineas J. Whoopie
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cyrana

Yeah that does look interesting. But I bet Apple was getting scared of small(er) suppliers and possibly those who can't provide a better end-to-end deal.

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unixguru
http://news.com.com/Is+the+PowerPC+due+for..._3-5983157.html

 

The interesting stuff starts on page two. Some tidbits:

 

Note the bit about -IBM- not taking G5s into a laptop...

 

Back in the summer of '04, a "Powerbook 7,1" appeared in the 10.3.4 release of OS X. It appeared in a plist file for the G5 platform driver (basically the driver for Apple's U3 north bridge). It disappeared in the next release I believe. Future hardware has shown up in plist files before. For example, the iMac G5 showed up in OS X several months before its official announcement .

 

So what this tells me is that Apple was ready to go on the Powerbook G5, but IBM didn't deliver on a processor for it. Apple has already been screwed over by Motorola. Then they got screwed over by IBM. Who's left that has a PowerPC development team? I can really see now why Apple went to Intel. If I was Jobs I sure as hell would have done it too.

 

I have sort of mixed feelings about this. I think the PowerPC is a nice architecture. And I'm not saying that as some Machead. I've actually written some MIPS, PowerPC, and Intel assembly and x86 is really messed up! The good thing though is Darwine and the ability to dual boot the machines with Windows. I don't like Windows but it's nice to be able to boot it to run the occasional Windows-only app. What I really hope is that all the apps I want to use will run under Darwine. We'll see soon!

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cyrana

AMD does make better CPUs now. But it would sound like Apple wanted someone who could do more than just make CPUs. Remember that AMD isn't really in the chipset business any more. We can all cross our fingers and hope that with Conroe being released next year that things will hopefully at least be equal on the CPU front. :poster_oops:

Edited by cyrana
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Slip

Wish list 4 Inexpensive Laptop.

 

Get the ATI chipset that's popular in the Acer Turion models. Seeing as how Apple seems to be focusing on ATI so far Either use the X700 or the latest X1600 Low power Turion SSE3. (ML or MT?) hope they can produce enough. Add firewire to the chipset ? Add 14.1 inch wide screen a 5400 RPM drive and OSX86. Oh yeah! quess they have to add some kind of ROM to the chipset.

 

 

What would something like this cost?

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halo1982
Intel was a safer bet than AMD.

 

Intel is certainly going to kick ass in the laptop area, but don't forget Apple can always go AMD for their desktops and servers. Apple PowerMac x8 based on quad dual core opterons in 2007? Mmmm.

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cyrana
actually Steve Jobs have mention this at his Macwold keynote earlier this year, Apple's os team have do x86 compilation scince frist version of OSX.

Yeah, we know this. Don't see how it related to the thread really, though. We all know about Marklar. But, the site I linked to just highlights a possible reason the switch didn't happen 5 years back.

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