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Haddad: OS X on Intel a bad idea

updated 03:20 pm EDT, Wed September 11, 2002

In his Byte of the Apple column, Business Week writer Charles Hadded says that if Apple allowed Mac OS X to run on Intel chips, it would take away the Mac's edge and spark a war that "Microsoft is sure to win." Although the idea may look good on paper, compatibility issues with different hardware configurations would cause the Mac OS to become less stable. "[Apple] couldn't ensure that OS X would work as well on all Intel processors as it does on Apple's PowerPC chip. And that would mean OS X would inevitably become persnickety, too, just like Windows. Apple's reputation for quality would be badly tarnished. Why buy a PC running OS X if it didn't work as reliably as on today's Macs?"

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09/11, 03:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not exactly

I think there is a impression that "OS X on Intel" means OS X on any computer with a Intel processor. That isn't the way Apple would go. If Apple put Intel processor into their boxes you wouldn't even know that you had a Intel Processor. It would be the same Apple industrial design with all the innards hidden from you. THe only thing a WinTel box would have in common with a Intel based Mac is the processor. Apple has switched processor before and made it as transparent as possible.

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09/11, 03:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
Or

Apple could come up with some kind of a standard that manufacturers could follow. They would have something like Designed for OSX label, and people would know that those components were designed for OSX. OSX is stable on a Mac b/c Apple knows the hardware. So I think they would have to come up with some sort of a standard that everyone should be following. This could be done. Notice I didn't say it would be easy to do...but hey...what a big difference did it make when someone invented the wheel and the poor guys in Egypt didn't have to roll those big building blocks rectangular wheels any more. :P

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09/11, 03:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
Uh, maybe I'm not

"getting it," but just because Apple would use, say, strictly Pentium IV's and the respective logic boards doesn't necessarily mean every PC bin maker and their mothers can make compliant or compatible "swap'em" parts to go onto these hypothetical Mactels (lexicon of Mac and Intel for those denser than myself). Apple would still control the ROM.

gtabbott
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09/11, 03:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
Like many others...

...Haddad confuses two options:

1. Apple Port OSX to run on any Pentium machine fast enough to handle it.

2. Apple use Intel chips in its own machines, while maintaining the proprietary code (and control) to prevent it running on just any machine.

Option 1 would clearly be disastrous. Apple is a hardware company primarily and to open up the OS to the clones would kill it (like it almost did once before).

Option 2 is still viable, and nothing Mr. Haddad says speaks against it.

But there are two remaining arguments to be considered:

1. If Apple decides to port OSX to Intel (either option 1 or two above), we're likely going to see the performance price we pay for an easier-to-use OS. With less user-friendly overhead, I predict that Windows would maintain a performance edge over OSX on the same hardware, and though it might not actually matter, would be a marketing disaster to make the Megahertz Myth seem trivial.

2. Also with either option, All that legacy software will no longer work. Anything from OS9 (including OS9 itself, either on it's own or as Classic) simply will not run on Intel hardware, and it would be cost-prohibitive to make it do so.

It will be a long time before this second issue will become a non-issue (though I go days or weeks without booting Classic right now), and the first item will always be an issue.

ADeweyan.

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09/11, 03:56pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Like many others

2. Also with either option, All that legacy software will no longer work. Anything from OS9 (including OS9 itself, either on it's own or as Classic) simply will not run on Intel hardware, and it would be cost-prohibitive to make it do so.

Hey, maybe this means Apple is going to Intel in January. That's why they removed the booting option!! Woo-hoo, 3Ghz here we come!!!

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09/11, 04:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Go easy on Haddad

As all of his previous articles have proven, the poor guys suffers from some serious mental disabilities.

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09/11, 04:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
He's right...

P4's are not the holy grail of chips... neither are the AMDs. Their clock speeds may be fast... but it doesn't translate into amazing performance...

Although the PowerPCs are lagging... they've served us well... the next phase will too.

All we need is a little patience.

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09/11, 04:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
dumb

Apple has just said that Classic will still be available after January, so all this Intel stuff is a bunch of bogus nonsense.

If you want to run Mac OS, buy a Mac. If you want ugly garbage, buy a PC. And don't expect Apple to make a version of X for your garbage box. You would have to buy all new software, AGAIN, and no one, including every developer who is barely entering the PPC OS X race, will stand for that.

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09/11, 04:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
apple is not ms

if microsoft can't do it, it doesn't mean that apple can't.

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09/11, 04:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
error

Apple has just said that Classic will still be available after January, so all this Intel stuff is a bunch of bogus nonsense.

No. Classic runs on Carbon, Carbon can run on Intel.

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09/11, 04:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not exactly

I think there is a impression that "OS X on Intel" means OS X on any computer with a Intel processor. That isn't the way Apple would go. If Apple put Intel processor into their boxes you wouldn't even know that you had a Intel Processor. It would be the same Apple industrial design with all the innards hidden from you. THe only thing a WinTel box would have in common with a Intel based Mac is the processor. Apple has switched processor before and made it as transparent as possible.

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09/11, 04:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
What's Better

Unless Apple put in some Intel (whichever Intel processor they choose - there is Itanium after all) to Motorola (and Motorola + Altivec) translation a la Virtual PC with no performance loss (which is probably impossible); the result would be disaster.

I just can't see MS porting Office to a new processor just after porting it to a new OS. I can't see Adobe doing the same for all their apps.

The move from 680x0 processors to PowerPC left many apps running slower on PowerPC than they were on 68060, until they were rewritten; the same will happen for an Intel conversion.

What Steve Jobs said about having options was of course true. Everyone has to have options, but we won't know what options he was talking about until better machines are released. It may not be Intel, it may not be Power4, or Motorola even. Who knows. Frankly I think they should go Power4 and lose out on Altivec, but gain on the 160+ instructions that IBM offers.

Incidently, I use a PC at work every day, and believe me an iMac 800Mhz is just as fast as the 2.5Ghz processor in the PC. I don't know what the fuss is about about. The megahertz myth is even less than that, it's totally meaningless. Has no one noticed that Sun's processors are just hitting 1Ghz and are still faster than Intel equivalents.

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09/11, 04:48pm | report spam | close Reply |
Wow...Haddad not thinking

When Steve Jobs said "We like to have options" This does not mean that Apple would simply run on current Intel Hardware. They may work with Intel in the same capacity as Motorola to produce a whole new line of chips. Not all of Motorola's PPC chips are suitable for Mac OS are they? Haddad totally missed the mark here. Mac OS X is designed to run on a RISC system so IBM's POWER chips are more likely than Intel.

Or maybe Apple has something else up their sleeve, like a completely new architecture. Thus requiring the dump of OS 9 after January 2003

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09/11, 04:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Okay, "not getting it"

guy here, again. Seriously, folks. If there ever was a story in recent computer history to take with a whole container of Morton's iodized salt, it's the OS X on Intel shebang. Did you buy a Mac because it had a PPC processor? I didn't. I bought it because of OS X and its "feel." I don't know how else to put it, but I'm sure other long-time Mac users know the feeling. It just "feels" right and good. It's almost totally irrational, and I'm loving it.

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09/11, 04:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
Two Things Here

Of course the issue is confused, as already noted. Going to Intel doesn't mean going to PC -- that would be a disaster waiting to happen. Of course, the other option is putting in an Intel/AMD processor instead of the IBM/Motorola, and the rest of the hardware to support it.

Software wise, this means probably nothing more than recompiling for the new processor. Assembly would have to be rewritten, but everything is bloat and hence probably not a lot of assembly is left. The alternate is to emulate, like the 68040->PPC transition. That'd be slow.

Of course, who says that if Apple gets Intel or AMD involved that they'd have to use off the shelf processors? It's the INSTRUCTION SETS that are different. Hook up a PPC instruction set to an Athlon processor, and you have a direct replacement for PPC! Check out arstechnica for an up-to-date discussion on the RISC/CISC war -- there's NOT much of a difference, and a new "front end" would be very possible.

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09/11, 05:29pm | report spam | close Reply |
Ok....

If there is not much difference between RISC and CISC then why doesn't Intel just go RISC. They already have RISC processors? The innards of the Pentium is RISC but is run through a RISC/CISC translator making it essentially a CISC processor. I think the move is going to head toward 64 bit processors. And what better time to do it. While OS X is fresh.

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09/11, 05:47pm | report spam | close Reply |
What about the apps?

What about the thousands of Mac applications that are compiled for PPC? They would not run on an Intel chip, and emulation would be too slow. All those apps would have to be recompiled and the PPC-specific parts would need to be rewritten, and that's just not going to work.

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09/11, 05:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
RE: error

No Classic DOES NOT run on Carbon (though Carbon may be used for part of it). Classic is a Virtual Machine that allows for Mac OS 9 to boot inside of a Mac OS X process/thread. this is very similar to the Mac On Lunix project that allows Mac OS systems to boot under Linux for PPC (BUT do NOT work on x86 hardware). Classic still runs all of its code natively. It's just fooled into believing that it's the only process running. For classic to run on x86, the virtual machine would have to be converted to a full scale emulator like Virtual PC. This would completely trash Classic's performance.

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09/11, 06:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
lack of speed kills

who really cares whether what kind of processor apple uses? we all want the same thing - a solid operating system and a computer with some snap. apple delivers one but not the other. until apple addresses the speed issue they will never up their numbers enough to be anything more than a niche player. i love my apple but would love it a lot more if it was quite a bit faster.

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09/11, 06:52pm | report spam | close Reply |
lack of speed kills

who really cares whether what kind of processor apple uses? we all want the same thing - a solid operating system and a computer with some snap. apple delivers one but not the other. until apple addresses the speed issue they will never up their numbers enough to be anything more than a niche player. i love my apple but would love it a lot more if it was quite a bit faster.

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09/11, 07:29pm | report spam | close Reply |
yuck Haddad again...

All speculation with no tangible basis for the most part.

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09/11, 08:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Never

OS X on intel would mean that Apple loses any performance advantage over Wintels. Think about this for a moment....sure, right NOW it seems like Apple is behind, but what about 6 months from now when IBM's G5 is here? Suddenly altivec-optimized tasks running on a Powermac G5 will totally blow away ANY Wintel competitor!

If Apple switches to x86, they remove the performance gap--BOTH WAYS. Don't forget that it wasn't very long ago that PPC had a clear performance advantage over x86...it's only been since Motorola's G4 debacle that PPC has gotten behind.

It's good to know that Apple has OS X running on x86 as a safe option, but I for one hope they never have to use it.

Rincewind
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09/11, 08:10pm | report spam | close Reply |
X on intel - why it won'

Apple won't be moving to Intel chips anytime soon, if ever. The simple reason is getting publishers to recomile/reoptimize their apps. While it may be true that many of them already have apps optimized for x86 chips, that doesn't mean that those apps will be optimal if recompiled for a Mac/x86 box. And in the meantime, Apple would have to write a PowerPC emulator for x86, not just for apps that aren't native, but for apps that people have already bought that are PPC compiled. Can you imagine telling someone that because they bought a Mac/x86 box that they can't run your copy of Photoshop at nearly the same speed? And if you want to know how bad an emulator would be, just take a look at Itanium. It doesn't run x86 natively - it's also got half the Mhz that the P4 has. Regardless, it's faster than a P4, but runs x86 instructions at a much slower comparative speed. Can you imagine how much slower a PPC emulator would be on x86??? At least by the 2nd generation PowerMacs the 68K emulator could run apps faster than any 68K Mac that ever existed. I can't imagine how many iterations of Pentium it would take to run as fast as a current generation G4 under emulation.

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09/11, 10:20pm | report spam | close Reply |
OS X on x86? why not?

I got hammered last time for advocating (or at least dreaming) about the possibility of OS X on x86 CPU. Come to think of it, I wasn't even advocating. I just raised the question. And all of these Mac zealots flamed me like the wrath of God itself. Calling me a bunch of names, and when I said "hey guys, take it easy", someone replied, you should expect to be flamed, and if you cant take it, dont post here anymore. EVER.

Jeez, talk about PC-phobics. It's like watching Birdcage with a bunch of homophobes. I mean really... whats the big f_u_c_k_i_n-g deal? OS on x86? Why the h*** not? All of this talk about it will never happen, or its a bad idea is just plain bullshit. Its simple-minded. Look, a CPU runs what you order it to do. It doesnt care what, as long as it understands it. No one seems to be complaining about the quality of Linux on x86, PPC, or anywhere else. Why couldnt OS X get the same support? The thing that makes PCs bad is not the architecture (otherwise we wouldnt use it), its fricking Windows! Windows is ok at times, but its no OS X. Just imagine the possibilities of OS X on a AMD 64-bit Hammer setup, 1 GB DDR, ATI Radeon 9700, and a good 200 GB Caviar!

Open your minds to the possibilities. Don't be afraid of change! Embrace it! I dont think anyone can say that OS X is running at its full potential right now on current hardware, so why at least try to improve the situation.

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09/11, 10:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
lack of speed kills

Apple is addressing the speed issue, by dumping OS 9 they can begin to explore new hardware that otherwise would not run with 9. Apple has plans in the works...we'll see some pretty big things starting after January.

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09/11, 10:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
What Apple should do

I think that Apple should make an X86 "PowerMac" available to developers alongside their PPC systems. This would not be a machine designed for the general public but would be used for porting over their apps. They would also need to announce some kind of time frame for launching the first "real" X86 Macs. Say around one to two years maybe. Apple would be best to keep a machine like this quiet, completely ignoring it at MacWorlds, and not putting any info about it on their main web page. They could sell them through ADC.

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09/11, 11:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hehe

Really, I don't think it would matter if they did switch. I mean it would still be called the "g5" :)

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09/11, 11:39pm | report spam | close Reply |
Figure it out!

Some of you still don't get it.

If Apple switches to x86, then they give up any chance of having a performance advantage over Wintel. Forget about Photoshop bake-offs, forget about ANY advantages that Altivec brings (and yes, Altivec is the best SIMD unit on any CPU, bar none). Forget it all, because Macs will offer the same performance as Wintels.

However, if Apple sticks with PPC and IBM delivers on the scaled-down desktop variant of the Power 4 CPU, complete with Altivec unit, then Macs will be FASTER than Wintels at virtually all tasks. We still don't have the numbers yet, but chances are that such a PPC would be faster than any x86 CPU even at non-altivec optimized tasks. Throw Altivec into the mix and it's a washout: PPC demolishes x86.

This is why Apple will not make the switch to x86 anytime soon. As long as Apple can offer a PPC-based mac with superior performance to a Wintel, they will not switch to x86. And all of the recent high-end 3d software aquisitions made by Apple demonstrates that they plan on offering a highly competitive hardware solution.

testudo
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09/12, 12:37am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: what apple should do

I think that Apple should make an X86 "PowerMac" available to developers alongside their PPC systems. This would not be a machine designed for the general public but would be used for porting over their apps. They would also need to announce some kind of time frame for launching the first "real" X86 Macs. Say around one to two years maybe.

Funny, funny, funny. First off, developers working on some new app aren't going to sit there and make sure it works and compiles on an X/Intel when it ain't released yet. In business termonology, that's called "wasting company money". Not everyone has Microsoft's or Apple's R&D budget. Second, why would a developer believe apple that this would happen? Developers were told of Copland. They were told of Rhapsody. They were promised a Yellow Box for Windows. Apple has a history of making plans and having them change (hey, all companies do). Maybe you haven't noticed, but a little thing called OS X has been on the drawing board for 2.5-3 years. Its been released for 1.5 years. And people still can't get drivers for their freakin' 3 year old printer, or 6 month old scanner.

Apple would be best to keep a machine like this quiet, completely ignoring it at MacWorlds, and not putting any info about it on their main web page.

Quiet? If a developer has it, then its going to be talked about. Because the Mac world is full of insiders and kind-of insiders who have so little self-esteem that they try to make themselves feel important and "in the know" by leaking NDA'd info. Why do you think the last, oh, I don't know, 16 Macworld Expos have been disappointments. Partly due to the fact that everyone already knows what to expect, so there's no chance for the "Oh, one more thing" surprise.

And let's not forget just yesterday people complaining about the "can't boot in OS 9 in 2003" announcement. "My app(s) don't run in Classic!" and "My peripherals don't have OS X drivers!". Going intel ain't gonna help these people, and in fact, may make it more unlikely not to get drivers.

Oh, and will you people please stop spewing the c*** about "And current OS X programs just need a recompile". OK, that MAY be true, but who says that developer X is going to recompile it. You might love InDesign 2, but if Adobe decides to drop support for it, I doubt they'll go back, find the source, and recompile it for X/Intel hardware. Or they might, and just charge you a mere $200 to upgrade to Indesign 3. (And even though OS X supports fat binaries, also don't expect developers to make a "one binary for both" app. I'm sure they'll have some qualm over that. Piracy and all, you know.)

hayesk
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09/12, 09:23am | report spam | close Reply |
Not gonna happen

Situation 1: Apple ports OS X to any x86 machine. People buy x86 boxes and Apple goes out of business. We know this won't happen.

Situation 2: Apple makes their own boxes and OS X only runs on them. Fine, but a month later, Connectix announces VirtualPC will run at almost full speed. Developers say, "Hey, Mac users can run Windows apps at full speed! Let's drop the Mac version." Developers drop Mac versions of software, people say "Hey! Who needs MacOS X since all of the software runs on Windows." Apple goes out of business.

That's partly the reason why there's little mainstream software for Linux. People who have Linux also have Windows and they put up with Windows versions of their software.

What I think Apple should do: resurrect Yellow Box for Windows (i.e. Cocoa for Windows). They could even get away with charging a small license fee. Now developers can truly have one IDE for both platforms.

TechLarry
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09/12, 02:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
I disagree Whole-Heartedl

Motorola is a lost cause. IBM doesn't look much better. And the Apple is getting it's a** handed to it by the PC camp where hardware is concerned.

And putting OSX on x86 hardware does NOT automatically put Apple in direct competition with Microsoft. I don't know what baffoon thought that one up.

It's not what the OS runs on, but the OS itself.

It's not what the user experience runs on, it's the user experience itself.

The spirit of the Mac is the man-machine interface, not what's covered up by the plastic.

Lets be done with it. We'll all be better off.

TL

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Haddad: OS X on Intel a bad idea

updated 03:20 pm EDT, Wed September 11, 2002

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Not exactly

Or

Uh, maybe I'm not

Like many others...

Re: Like many others

Go easy on Haddad

He's right...

dumb

apple is not ms

error

Not exactly

What's Better

Wow...Haddad not thinking

Okay, "not getting it"

Two Things Here

Ok....

What about the apps?

RE: error

lack of speed kills

lack of speed kills

yuck Haddad again...

Never

X on intel - why it won'

OS X on x86? why not?

lack of speed kills

What Apple should do

Hehe

Figure it out!

Re: what apple should do

Not gonna happen

I disagree Whole-Heartedl

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