mac - intel - windows

[jbo]

do a search.

there isn't enough info to really know that yet, don't know the details of the cpu yet, or what if any protection measures apple will take. but theoretically, you could install windows on anything.

[Srek]

To the best of my knowledge the only thing that was said on this by apple is that they won't prevent Windows from running on Intel Macs. What this means is up for interpretation and speculation until we see these things in action.
Cheers
Björn

[Beamtracer]

My prediction is that the Windows OS itself will run on the Mactel box, but OS X won't run on any generic x86 box.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. A year is a long time to wait, though.

[lots]

sorry if this has been answered aleready..

so in theory if apple switches to intel Chips i could install windows on a mac ?

It's not a question of IF, Apple IS switching to Intel. And.. I would have to agree with Beamtracer. It is pretty likely (since it will be the same hardware, P4, etc.) that windows will work on the MAC hardware. But I believe Apple will do all in its power to prevent OSX on anything but thier own hardware.

Plus, the way Apple has approached hardware has always been to keep tight control on what hardware thier OS runs on. This way they do not have many variations that thier OS's have to keep track of like windows. Thus, the whole system, in theory, should be more stable. Maybe x86 OSX will work on other hardware, but I doubt you'll find any support through drivers, etc.

What I wonder about is if Apple is shooting for a larger market share with this move, how long it will be till there are Mac specific viruses floating about :)

[Vertizor]

My biggest concern is the chipset drivers and such components you don't think of everyday.

Windows does indeed have generic drivers for those but they run slow. We're still assuming that Intel will be making the mobo as well, who knows maybe it's possible to just install compatible Intel chipset drivers.

[enygma]

What I wonder about is if Apple is shooting for a larger market share with this move, how long it will be till there are Mac specific viruses floating about I stil have a feeling that this isn't really about trying to gain market share as much is it is trying to keep themselves from being hung up on the G5 bottlenecks. Plain and simple, the Intel roadmap is much more appealing and apple would effectively move themselves out of the performance competition by sticking with the G5 processors.

As for viruses, I assume it will take about as long as it does for Linux specific viruses to be floating around... ;)

[lots]

If thats the case, why not AMD, they do have better tech, at least for the moment ;) And Apple apparently switched to Intel for the better cooling advantages (oddly enough AMD is better than both IBM and Intel in this regard :P, unless Apple is going to use the P-M..). Intel has alot of marketing power, and I'm sure some of Apple's decision is based on increasing market share.

Linux is just as small of a market share as OSX, but if either were to grow much larger (more than 40% marketshare) then I would bet there would be some viruses out there for them :) But who are we kidding, its hard to battle MS :P

As far as hardware, what I've seen (rumors) pretty much say that It will be P4's/PM (or thier successors) running the new Macs in 06, not sure about the chipset, but why not that too?

[enygma]

And Apple apparently switched to Intel for the better cooling advantages (oddly enough AMD is better than both IBM and Intel in this regard :P, unless Apple is going to use the P-M..) I would assume that Jobs may have evaluated roadmaps and production capacities and found Intel could suit both of those needs best. I'm only speculating on this though. I have a very keen feeling that the Pentium M may become a big thing down the road, considering the performance for clock speed. Based on a number of benchmarks, the Pentium M 2.13GHz processor can out-perform the 3.7GHz P4 EE, but can be as low as a 3.2GHz Northwood, and it offers low power output as well, which can make this the ideal processor for Powerbooks, iBooks, iMacs or even a future Mac mini, which makes up a large portion of Mac sales. I don't think AMD Athlon64s would be ideal in this respect, and if Intel is going to be supplying ideal parts for most of their products, I think it might just be cheapest for Apple to stick with Intel for all of their computers.
Linux is just as small of a market share as OSX, but if either were to grow much larger (more than 40% marketshare) then I would bet there would be some viruses out there for them Well, I still stand firm that there are fundimental problems in Windows, mainly due to defaults. Most people get infected with viruses and spyware because they couldn't be arsed to give themselves a limited user account. And if there is only 1 user account, Windows XP even makes you jump through a few hoops to make your main account limited as well. Can be a bit of a pain explaining to family that in order to install something, they have to log out and log in as administrator, install a program, log back out and log back in as your limited user. To me, I see that as a huge problem. I haven't had problems with my Mac, Linux systems or Windows systems I have configured to only allow administrator to install software. Windows default configurations however, that is where most of the exploits seem to open up.

So I'm sure that there would be viruses for Mac and Linux if they had a higher market share, but they first have to try and get past the whole thing where you need an administrator password to do anything that alters a system. This is a little more of a difficult process to automate, generally because it would probably have to involve social engineering of sorts to get the user to enter their password.

[Beamtracer]

It's in Apple's interests to allow MacTel boxes to run Windows.

If someone buys a MacTel box, then they will get OS X with it. Apple gets its money. If someone wants to erase the hard drive and put Windows or Linux or whatever on it, then Apple has still got its payment.

At the moment, on PowerPC Macs, Apple has not stopped people wiping OS X from the drive and replacing it with Linux. In fact, Apple has even assisted the Linux PowerPC development effort.

Apple also assisted the Windows emulators on the Mac (eg, Virtual PC and others).

This is why I think they'll allow Windows to run on MacTel boxes. They'll sell more Macs that way.

BTW, even if Apple didn't, Microsoft now owns Virtual PC, so this 'emulator' on an Intel box would run at close to native speed.

[qwatkins]

I have a very keen feeling that the Pentium M may become a big thing down the road, considering the performance for clock speed. Based on a number of benchmarks, the Pentium M 2.13GHz processor can out-perform the 3.7GHz P4 EE, but can be as low as a 3.2GHz Northwood, and it offers low power output as well, which can make this the ideal processor for Powerbooks, iBooks, iMacs or even a future Mac mini, which makes up a large portion of Mac sales. I don't think AMD Athlon64s would be ideal in this respect, and if Intel is going to be supplying ideal parts for most of their products, I think it might just be cheapest for Apple to stick with Intel for all of their computers.

I am with you on that Enygma

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/pentium4-01.html

[Beamtracer]

Apple could have decided to go with both AMD and Intel, but instead has settled on an exclusive deal with Intel.

My guess is that this is because of an arrangement with Intel for co-marketing and/or volume discounts to those who sign an exclusive deal with Intel. This is the sort of arrangement that Dell already has, which stops them from selling AMD processors.

I don't like the fact that Apple has entered into an exclusive arrangement like this. Even on PowerPC they had two processor suppliers (IBM and Motorola-Freescale), but now they will only have one (Intel).

I like what AMD is doing, and I think that AMD's high-end processors... the sort of processors you would use for rendering... are better than Intel's. I hope some hacks manage to crack open OS X and enable it to be run on AMD processors.

[ages]

My prediction is that the Windows OS itself will run on the Mactel box, but OS X won't run on any generic x86 box.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. A year is a long time to wait, though.

Beam I think you are inccorect on this one..
I give ppl 3 months and they will have OSX running on all sorts of x86 devices like clone comps to xbox's.
Its darwin remember and darwin is open source.
Sure apple will take measures to prevent piracy, but i think Apple wont mind it if it means more market share.
I see Apple making a huge loss on this described system i mentioned for the next 2 years in order to get to the bigger picture. Market-share.
Afterall thats why apple has been toting a 6 billion dollar warchest they have done nothing with...
MS did all the above in '94 leading up to win '95 to get market-share..
Its the American way to make a loss so competitors cant afford to compete and drop off.

I also think Apple knows theres hard money to be earned in hardware and now would rather be making money from their fabulous software.
Now that Apple has gone snoozeTEL for their chips I dont care about their hardware nomore. And I cant see Apple ignoring AMD, so obviously they will have to support em one way or another.

The Apple we knew is nomore. Its like being a Starwars fan....
And watching Ep One for the first time, its for the new generation.

[Vertizor]

In fact, Apple has even assisted the Linux PowerPC development effort.
I strongly disagree with that. In fact I'd go as far as to say Apple has made PPC/Linux on Apple hardware more difficult. Each new hardware revision meant the kernel hackers had to go back and tweak the kernel to support sleep and power management. Older Macs had more of those features better supported. For example Linux ran perfectly on my G3 iBook. Sleep, power management, special keys, you name it. But newer PowerBooks and G4 iBooks took some time to regain that level of feature support in the PPC/Linux kernel.

And Benh is the man! :thumbsup:

Edited to fix typos.

[KayosIII]

I don't think that Windows will run out of the box on the new intel/Macs... I suspect that the boot logic will be different enough to stop this from happening. It might be possible to get a 3rd party hack to make it possible or microsoft may support this in an upcoming version of windows (provided apple is feeling in a cooperative mood).

Apple generally tries to maintain very tight control over its products... So I don't know if they will be even interested in having windows run natively....

I think that the virtual PC option will become a lot more attractive though.

[MCronin]

Beam I think you are inccorect on this one..
I give ppl 3 months and they will have OSX running on all sorts of x86 devices like clone comps to xbox's.
Its darwin remember and darwin is open source.

People may get OSX running on non-Apple hardware, but I wouldn't count on it running well if at all. Darwin is open source but there's a lot more to OSX than Darwin, and many hardware vendors (Nvidia/Ati) don't provide sufficient resources for open source developers to write complete device drivers. All Apple has to do is make a few small changes to their "PC" reference hardware to dash any hopes you have a running OSX decently on non-Apple hardware. Remember they will only support hardware they ship. They write their own drivers for core components, so don't get your hopes up on running OSX on an AMD machine, or anything that doesn't have Apple's logo on it. As for Apple allowing WIndows to run on their hardware... don't cont on that either. I don't see Apple making it easy for this to happen. I interpret what they have said as "We won't hamper the efforts of crackers who attmept to make this work", not that they will allow it out of the box.

[Beamtracer]

Beam I think you are inccorect on this one..
I give ppl 3 months and they will have OSX running on all sorts of x86 devices like clone comps to xbox's.
Hi ages... good to see you around here! :)

I hope people do manage to get OS X running on everything, now that it'll be on Intel. Only it may be difficult to get it onto an Xbox, as Xbox is migrating to PowerPC :p


I also think Apple knows theres hard money to be earned in hardware and now would rather be making money from their fabulous software.
That's a good point also. A lot of people say that Apple could not decouple OS X from the hardware, because OS sales alone would not recoup the cost.

However, it's not just OS sales these days. It's OS + Final Cut Pro + DVD Studio Pro etc etc.
If Apple could get enough people buying the related software then I think it could be profitable to sell a shrink wrapped OS X for generic x86 machines.

[enygma]

Hi ages... good to see you around here! :)

I hope people do manage to get OS X running on everything, now that it'll be on Intel. Only it may be difficult to get it onto an Xbox, as Xbox is migrating to PowerPC :p
Now why would you want to run OS X on a 733MHz P3? :D

[lots]

enygma:

I definately agree about the P-M, its quite possibly the best chip Intel has to offer on the consumer end of things, and Intel's manufacturing potential is also a driving factor. These are all reasons I think Apple chose Intel over AMD. It may not have been totally for the gain in market, but it cant be said that this wasnt on apple's mind when they made the deal.

I also agree about the viruses in systems like OSX and Linux, but it is possible to have viruses break the system without having admin rights, so a dangerous virus is not out of the question, they'll just be more sophisticated than the ones floating around windows boxes :)

And hey, a virus that whipes out your home directory will be just as disasterous ;)

[KayosIII]

enygma:
And hey, a virus that whipes out your home directory will be just as disasterous ;)

Shouldn't be that much of a problem - you have backed up your home directory lately havent you.

[enygma]

Shouldn't be that much of a problem - you have backed up your home directory lately havent you.
I generally just backup the important things myself. Those will easily fit on a DVD, but for anything higher, I keep them backed up onto a server. I use Backup 2.0.2 to keep myself good.

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