Status of 6.0 for production systems

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Chad
>Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC
>Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 6:45 AM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: Free BSD Questions list
>Subject: Re: Status of 6.0 for production systems
>
>
>
>On Nov 19, 2005, at 5:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
>>
>
>>
>> Although, come to think of it, it also illustrates one other point -
>> that Apple isn't simply taking the Intel CPU and using it in their
>> own superior hardware design.  Instead they are just copying the
>> existing Wintel motherboard designs and porting to that.
>
>We don't know that and that is a subject of much speculation.  Will
>they be adopting Wintel motherboard designs or coming out with
>something different?  (ie, BIOS versus that new Intel thing no one
>uses, etc)
>

We will see when the NetBSD people start porting to the new Macs.

>
>We'll see if that is what they do.  The internal guts may be the same
>Wintel motherboard designs or may be different.  However, with PPC
>they never really controlled the HW either as they were dependent on
>IBM and Motorola.
>

As one of the largest customers of PPC I think that they had a lot
more control over it than you are claiming, but that is a point.  It is,
in fact, a good question - since Apple thinks of itself as a HW company,
why don't they make the CPU themselves?  Sun does.

>>>
>>> That is what IBM said and also did.  IBM did not come through and had
>>> nothing they were working on.  Get your facts straight Ted.
>>>
>>
>> The low-power Power 970FX cpu which is currently available from IBM
>> uses 16 watts at 1.6Ghz.  The speed and power of that chip at 1.6Ghz
>> is far faster than a Pentium running at 1.6Ghz, as has been proven by
>> benchmarking.  See the following article titled
>> "No More Apple Mysteries, Part Two" here:
>>
>> http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2520
>>
>> After some research, the author found serious problems in how MacOSX
>> is optimized for the PPC.  Perhaps if Apples programmers had done the
>> work, they could have used the existing G5 chips in laptops that would
>> be just as powerful as anything that is shipping on the Wintel
>> platform.
>
>Whatever you say Ted.
>

Confronted with some facts to the contrary, you have nothing to
say I see.

>>
>>
>> I love this arguement - people are buying lots and lots of currently
>> shipping
>> PPC gear so they must be wanting Intel-based gear.  You ought to be a
>> politician.
>
> people's PPC purchases are
>a show of faith that the Intel platform will be a success.

you REALLY REALLY ought to be a politician!

>Yes, that is not in dispute.  What is in dispute is that you claim
>that Apple want's people to transition so they can drive a spike in
>revenue.  I claim it is because the long term health of their market
>demands it -- ie, in order to continuing competing their existing
>platform was not going to cut it.
>

If that was true the new wintel Macs would use completely different
architecture
that wasn't hobbled by all the archaic PCisms left over from the IBM PC
Jr.

We will see if that happens.  Right now what it looks like is a quick
port of MacOS X to some wintel motherboards that have a security chip in
them that MacOS X requires in order to boot (to prevent people from
buying cheap PC clones and running MacOS X on them) and a big
marketing campaign with a lot of song and dance about poor Apple
how we have to move to the x86.

>I have always understood it Ted.  Understanding it and agreeing with
>it are two different things.   You claims are utter BS Ted.  History
>does not support it (based on previous transitions).  Nor does
>logic.  Nor any other set of facts.
>

That about sums up your argument - you don't agree with something,
so you claim what you don't agree with is BS.

>>
>>> or they made a business decision to switch because
>>> the PPC was no longer a long term viable architecture for their needs
>>> (Chad).
>>>
>>> Btw, your theories don't pass Occam's Razor either.  You add
>>> complexity to Apple's decision when the simplest is Apple's stated
>>> public reason.
>>>
>>


>> Most successful ways of making money don't pass Occam's Razor.
>> If they did, then making lots of money would be so simple and obvious
>> that everyone would be doing it.
>
>It was just an interesting observation.  And I think a valid
>observation since people who ascribe all sorts of complexity to
>actions that can be described in much simpler terms are usually wrong.
>

If it was a valid observation you wouldn't be here, you would be lying on
your yacht somewhere trying to figure out what to do with your billions.

And, the theory of "we move to wintel to make a big pile of money" sounds
pretty simple to me anyway.

Ted