DBWI: Apple switches to Intel

So back in 2005 or so, Steve Jobs was reportedly really pissed off about the heat/power consumption of the G5 processors. Like, to the point of switching the Mac over to Intel. (Issacson's biography mentioned this in the chapter "We were eyeball to eyeball.")

Supposedly there was a secret group in Apple that works of porting Mac OS X to various architectures in case IBM/Motorola/Freescale don't play ball with them.

What would have happened if Apple HAD switched to Intel after the G5 debacle?
 
So back in 2005 or so, Steve Jobs was reportedly really pissed off about the heat/power consumption of the G5 processors. Like, to the point of switching the Mac over to Intel. (Issacson's biography mentioned this in the chapter "We were eyeball to eyeball.")

Supposedly there was a secret group in Apple that works of porting Mac OS X to various architectures in case IBM/Motorola/Freescale don't play ball with them.

What would have happened if Apple HAD switched to Intel after the G5 debacle?
Well.. They DId switched after G5 Debacle to AMD. The AMD has seen revival due to this. Especially with purchase of ATI and Release of Ryzen after Lisa Su became CEO, AMD is seeing its golden age.
 

Asami

Banned
(OOC: No offense, but I'm going to ignore your direction here. The point of this thread is "what if Apple doesn't switch to x86", not the specific vendor of x86 processors.)

Well, the G5 debacle definitely cost Apple some precious time. A lot of PowerBook G4 users abandoned the platform when Apple ended up delaying the "next-generation PowerBook" until they could figure out the next generation with the AIM alliance. I don't necessarily think that the Intel switch would have avoided the specific problems with NVIDIA as a vendor in the G6 models-- that's the big reason why the modern PowerBooks run AMD chips, which is actually quite cool because now that POWER-based non-Macs are starting to gain traction, it makes things so much easier to do with cross-compatibility, and is a big reason why Vulkan and OpenCL has seen mass-adoption by Linux and Mac users vs. the awful CUDA core nonsense that has kept NVIDIA plagued with problems for years!

(And that isn't to mention the fact NVIDIA hasn't made a decent GPU since like, 2012, but that's another story entirely...)

I recall a Marklar build dropping on BetaArchive back in the day, but it was basically just Mac OS X 10.4.7 ported intentionally to Intel's monstrocity, the Pentium 4.

On that note-- in the long-term, the thermal and performance differences between the x86 and PowerPC processors really wasn't as severe as some press outfits liked to pretend it was. The Intel Pentium 4 and successor platform, Pentium 5, were... plagued with very high base TDP, lower clocks, and general malaise. I remember seeing a side-by-side comparison of a Pentium 5 high-end enthusiast custom build vs. a Power Mac G6... and the Pentium got absolutely bashed by the G6.

AMD wasn't much better once they started falling behind in the IPC battle. Remember the Athlon X6 and FX chips? Yeah. Big jokes, particularly when you needed to do productivity. It's the main reason why POWER8 and POWER9 have taken off so much among PC enthusiasts, particularly since the new CEO of Apple has opened up to clones again. It's easier and more efficient to simply buy a PowerPC motherboard, CPU, and a copy of Mac OS X than it is to try to finagle the horrid x86 family of chips.

If Apple had switched to Intel, I don't see the PowerBook, Power Mac, or iMac families being anything more than glorified Wintel PCs. Apple may have tried to stop users from running Windows through some lockout, but honestly... once the genie's bottle is open, people are going to go with what's got the most compatibility, and Mac OS X is still quite behind in that regard, even with the release of Klamath (10.15) just a few days ago-- but the adoption rate is promising, particularly since Apple's stepped up on the UNIX compatibility front.

In fact, I just ordered my own PowerBook Pro yesterday-- the new 2019 model looks really good. 8 cores, 3.6GHz base clock, 16GB DDR4... a nice replacment for my 2015 PowerBook Pro. The quad-core POWER8 is just... a little long in the tooth, I think, what with new improvements to the production and IPC.
 
Wonder how this would affect videogames, with IBM still pushing top of the line PowerPC, that affected wii sucesor, now getting a cheaper Power PC they were able to get a powerful yet afordable CPU for Wii 2.
 
Wonder how this would affect videogames, with IBM still pushing top of the line PowerPC, that affected wii sucesor, now getting a cheaper Power PC they were able to get a powerful yet afordable CPU for Wii 2.
Who knows. The Wii 2’s architecture is pretty long in the tooth, being a glorified G3. Without Apple pushing IBM and Freescale into die shrinks, Nintendo would probably have to use an ARM SoC like a Snapdragon.
 

Asami

Banned
Who knows. The Wii 2’s architecture is pretty long in the tooth, being a glorified G3. Without Apple pushing IBM and Freescale into die shrinks, Nintendo would probably have to use an ARM SoC like a Snapdragon.

I recall the numerous gaming press diatribes back in 2012. "Wii 2 only plays at 480p" yadda yadda yadda. I'm glad Nintendo adopted something more modern in the PPC family instead of ARM, the 750 was ancient and they weren't doing themselves any favors by retaining it so late.

With the PlayStation 4's POWER9+AMD Jaguar APU, Xbox One's POWER9+AMD Jaguar APU, and the new Nintendo console's low-power POWER9 chip combined with that Matrox V9000 SoC GPU... excellent times for gaming.
 
Who knows. The Wii 2’s architecture is pretty long in the tooth, being a glorified G3. Without Apple pushing IBM and Freescale into die shrinks, Nintendo would probably have to use an ARM SoC like a Snapdragon.
I recall the numerous gaming press diatribes back in 2012. "Wii 2 only plays at 480p" yadda yadda yadda. I'm glad Nintendo adopted something more modern in the PPC family instead of ARM, the 750 was ancient and they weren't doing themselves any favors by retaining it so late.

With the PlayStation 4's POWER9+AMD Jaguar APU, Xbox One's POWER9+AMD Jaguar APU, and the new Nintendo console's low-power POWER9 chip combined with that Matrox V9000 SoC GPU... excellent times for gaming.
G3 was the parent chip gekko come but use the same registers for Backward Compatibility. Still unironically all 3 adopted powerPC9 anyway, making ports all 3 natural.

Nintendo would probably have to use an ARM SoC like a Snapdragon
Like the Nintendo Dual Tablet Use? Still that is nice hardware but is for an handled not a console.
 
Apple made the right calls. They bought P.A. Semi in 2005 when they realized IBM wasn’t going to get the G5 to mobile. They built their own chip while continuing to use the fundamental building blocks of IBM’s POWER advances. They stretched cooling technology to the max to support the G5 all they could in their towers and iMacs, meanwhile FreeScale’s 7448 2 GHz model and later on dual core MPC8641D with a modern Rapid I/O bus was just enough for a couple updates to the PowerBooks to tide them over. Because the Apple designed PowerA CPU was world class at launch and they certainly never sat still after. I do pity FreeScale who went all out to support Apple for them to be dropped when AMD offered their better fabs to Apple though.

Plus all that experience helped them immensely customizing ARM out of the gate for the 2008 iPhone introduction.

(OOC: MacOS clones? Never been a good idea, not about to be a good idea, nor an idea any Apple CEO will use post-Jobs. Apple uses high margins on hardware to fund lavishly on R&D as well as advanced production tech (and huge buys of key components) and considers the fusion between hardware and software their competitive edge.)
 
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