apple moving to x86

[Duo]

David Kelly wrote:

>No, that is NOT Apple's plan. Apple's plan is to use Intel CPUs. It has
>nothing to do with "make the mac x86 compliant" or to use commodity PC
>hardware.
>  
>
Uhm, for the last several years, they have been using alot more
"commodity" hardware, from AGP Video cards, etc. I cannot speak to x86
compliance, but, using commodity hardware, they most certainly have been
doing.  What do you call PCI/VGA? How about USB? USB wasnt even
considered a commodity until it was slapped into an iMac.

As someone who cut his teeth with Apple hardware, this is a glaring
piece of misinformation. Sorry for the harsh tone, but, the days of "mac
only" monitors, the Mac boot ROM, etc, have been long gone for awhile now.

About the only difference in the boot ROM dept, would be the use of
OpenFirmware, which is forth based,  as opposed to BIOS, which in my
opinion, has made it far more functional than a traditional bios. What
happens with OF now is somewhat of a mystery. But, I think, by and
large, this makes Macs a bit more extensible.

As for Apple's insistance they "wont allow" OS X to be run on anything
other than sanctioned Mac hardware, id like to point to similar
statements from the MPAA regarding DVD, etc. I give it two weeks from
the retail release of OS X for intel, before we see a slashdot entry.

>I think Apple will cause the PC market to clean up their act. To make
>hardware that actually does what it says it will do. Something Microsoft
>either never understood or lacked the guts to enforce.
>
>  
>
On this, I do agree. I think Mac hardware lives up to a better standard
of quality than most x86 machines, BUT, I would also surmise, as
Microsoft consistantly has sold products to people who knew they were
flawed, that this is a 50/50 proposition. At best.

One thing, that I am insanely curious about, is, will this make endian
issues in sourcecode not ported to PPC go away for the most part?
Specifically in regard to networking (client/server)?
--
Duo.