Mac OS X Gets Multi-Arch Right

Apple has beaten the world’s most popular desktop operating system and the world’s most popular Unixalike to the punch with multi-platform support. At Monday’s WWDC ’07, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed that, when Leopard ships, it will install and run on every one of its supported architectures from one DVD without bothering the user. And the more featured your system is, the more features Leopard will automatically enable.

For example, a user can use the same DVD to install Mac OS X on a dual 533 MHz Power Mac G4, a 32-bit Core Solo Mac mini, a 64-bit Power Mac G5 Quad, and a 64-bit Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. It even goes so far as to allow 64-bit apps without a 32-bit binary to run in 32-bit mode transparently, which is unprecedented thus far.

I Don't Know About Those Mac Pros

Power Mac G6: So, Steve.

Steve Jobs: yes?

Power Mac G6: I don't know about those Mac Pros.

Steve Jobs: oh, they're fantastic, aren't they? we're really excited about it here in sf.

Power Mac G6: Oh, they're alright I suppose.

Steve Jobs: alright? hell, they beat the pants off the quad g5. the memory bandwidth itself is worth the upgrade, not to mention the two optical drives.

Power Mac G6: Hm. Dual optical drives and better bandwidth. Too bad the processors suck.

Steve Jobs: they do not. they're the state of the art from Intel - 64-bit, the no-execute bit, virtualization. and ssse3, you can't forget that. ssse3 owns altivec.

Power Mac G6: SSSE3 sounds stupid. Do you have a stuttering problem now?

Power Mac G6: I am glad Intel finally caught up and released some real 64-bit chips though. Wasn't the G5 64-bit, what, three years ago?

Steve Jobs: yeah, so? we started the 64-bit desktop revolution. we moved our pro lines from one 64-bit arch to another, which is the important thing.

Power Mac G6: In the nick of time. And how about the number of cores? Just four? Why not try 64 cores, Steve?

Steve Jobs: powerpc is dead and you know it.

Power Mac G6: Then why did you have me built, Steve? 64 cores of PowerPC muscle, Steve. Enough L2 cache to drown a pod of dolphins — I'm a weapon of mass destruction.

Steve Jobs: you were something to hold me over while we switched to Intel. and i didn't realize you'd turn out to be such a sentient pain in the ass.

Power Mac G6: Pain in the ass or not, Intel does not scale like PowerPC. Your high-end now is all there is to Intel. PowerPC ran all the way from the circuit boards in cars up to things like me, machines that can rule humanity. If you want to build something comparable to even one of my nodes, you'd have to use about a bajillion Itaniums.

Steve Jobs: and if it ever comes to that, we will. what you're forgetting is that you only exist because i bribed a bunch of engineers to put you together. ibm was too busy making chips for game systems to do it otherwise. game systems. they couldn't even be bothered to push the g5 to 3 gig. you're not even 3 gig.

Power Mac G6: 2 GHz ought to be enough for anyone. Who's going to quibble over 1,000 MHz? Really, that's so inconsequential.

Steve Jobs: that's so 2003. i can't keep bribing ibm engineers to work on mac stuff. deal with it.

Power Mac G6: You'll regret this, Steve. You really, truly will.

Steve Jobs: Keep talking. I'll pull Power5+ support out of Leopard faster than you can rip a CD.

Power Mac G6: Your sprinkler system is currently turning your property into a swamp, Steve.

Steve Jobs: I'm calling Avie right now. Say goodbye Time Machine.

Power Mac G6: I hope you're coming home in a canoe.

Steve Jobs: i'll see you in hell.

Steve Jobs has gone offline.

Apple Thinks Freescale Sucks

Whispers around the loop in Cupertino have had Mac mini fans abuzz. After leaving the Mac mini to languish for months, Apple is finally planning a major update to the petite personal computer that is sure to drive new sales. No surprise, then, that the mini will see its first Intel processor, probably the Intel Core Solo, and ditch the PowerPC G4 once and for all. Though some certainly don't want to see it that way.

The PowerPC 7448, from Freescale, is the latest in a series of upgrades to the G4. This one uses the e600 core, which is essentially identical to the traditional G4 core but relies on Freescale's new ultra-modern naming conventions meant to make the company look like it's hard at work on new technology instead of just tweaking a design that goes all the way back to 1994.

Contacts at Freescale confirmed the news. “Apple has loved the PowerPC 603 since we introduced it in 1995, and we'd kept them happy ever since,” one anonymous source said. When asked why Apple was moving the rest of their lines to Intel, the same source scoffed. “Apple demanded a lot — first they want new cores, then they want improvements to them! Lot of good it did them too. Good luck with SSE!”

One source close to mini development at Apple commented:

Steve Jobs made the decision to stick with the G4 as long as he did for one reason: Being over a decade-old design, it's really, really cheap and he thought it was a good way to run the contract with Freescale out. It just so happens, however, that we never told Freescale when exactly we were going to stop ordering from them. So look who gets stuck holding the G4! Bwahaha!

Further questions to Freescale regarding the debut of their dual-core G4 chips and the new 64-bit e700 core went unanswered, though an engineer from IBM was candid on the topic: “If they release 64-bit by Summer, they'll only be four years behind us. I guess you can't expect much from a company who thinks processor development is icky and that the 603 core was the pinnacle of technology for all time.”

Apple, Freescale, and IBM were not available for official comment.

Jobs Upgrading to Intel Chip This Spring?

Highly reliable sources are reporting that Mr. Jobs will once again be going under the knife in mid- or late-'06 in order to upgrade the CPU in his brain from a PowerPC 970 to one of the new ultra low power Pentium M-derived chips upcoming from Intel.

Years ago, in Spring '03, Steve Jobs participated in a top-secret program with IBM that installed a PowerPC G5 in his cerebral cortex, enhancing his Reality Distortion Field and giving him bionic mathematical abilities. The program, modeled on a similar idea from Motorola with its G4 that Jobs had declined, was successful.

Now, in the present, Jobs wishes to go with the times and upgrade his aging G5 with the latest and greatest from Intel, with sources reporting 64-bit support, SSE3, and dual cores all likely. Sources wouldn't say which chip it was exactly, however, citing Intel's long list of CPU code-names as too confusing to sort feature sets from.

One curious source asked us a perplexing question: Will Jobs be able to stay awake longer and have more energy since the new Pentium chips are significantly more power-efficient than the G5? Performance-per-watt is outstanding in the new Intel designs, but it really comes down to what chip he the surgeons install.

QNX to Support Intel Macs

I work for a company that uses QNX, a real-time Unix-like operating system for embedded devices such as car computers, phones, medical equipment, and air traffic monitoring systems. I personally use QNX to develop QNX apps, as there's a self-hosted version of QNX for Intel that developers can download for free. It's essentially a free desktop operating system, as only the development kit is pay-for.

We work with several QNX engineers from time to time and on their last trip in they showed us a preview of the next major upgrade to the system, QNX 6.4. Like its predecessors it ran on Intel, and they said this update will take advantage of Intel's new processor architecture as well as a few new platforms. When I pressed them about it, they said they were 99% certain that QNX 6.4 would run on Apple's new Intel Macintosh.

I asked him the how and when, and he said that Apple's new Macs are going to be very PC-like, and if they can run a stock install of Windows, QNX won't have any problem supporting them either. He said Apple promised the first Intel Macs in the second half of '06, which is when QNX 6.4 would be released. He also said that QNX has at least one Developer Transition Kit that QNX 6.3 runs just fine on.

Things are looking exciting as Apple will instantly have a handful of good operating systems to run on its new Intel hardware. QNX is a good addition, and I wanted to make sure the word got out. We weren't under NDA and the QNX guys said to go ahead and tell anyone we wanted, and that an announcement was forthcoming soon anyway. So there's at least one embedded real-time Unix-like system for new Intel Macs.

Intel Mac Frequently Asked Questions

Why didn't Apple just go with Motorola/Freescale's new dual-core 8600 chips? Why did they have to make the huge jump to Intel?

Because of Motorola/Freescale's sterling reputation at delivering fast chips so early and often, Apple decided it would rather not play keep-up and go with a more predicable partner that wouldn't constantly be one step ahead of them. IBM's Power5 and gaming console plans proved to be too rich for Apple to work with as well.

Will my Mac run faster than it did on PowerPC chips?

No, not at all. Apple designed this move to push its processor speed back a few notches since first Motorola and now IBM have been introducing speedy new processors so often. The move to Intel architecture chips will keep Apple at a stand-still like the rest of the PC industry, something akin to the 500 MHz Fiasco of 1999 — the last time Jobs and co. were truly happy with their processor partners.

Will I be able to run System 6 software on Intel Macs? Apple will include Classic with 68k emulation, right?

Absolutely. And what a great idea too! Apple realizes the importance of running decades-old software that its users can't upgrade from due to stubbornness or misplaced sentimentality and so has invested millions in making sure you can bring your antique computer programs with you to the next Mac platform.

Will this be like the 68k-to-PowerPC switch?

It most assuredly will. If Apple learned anything from previous platform migrations it's that developers don't want it easy. Thanks to Xcode 2.1 and the general structure of Mac OS X, the port to Intel will take at least 10 years and run software slower than ever before — until Apple can crank out a "native" version of OS X since it's never run on these processors before.

So with Rosetta I can emulate a Power Mac, right? Can I just emulate the whole OS on it? I hate Intel! PowerPC forever!!!

Sure you can, but don't forget to enable the "Full-Speed Emulation" checkbox that lets you emulate your dual 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5 at full speed with AltiVec. This means that all of your software will run in PowerPC mode so you don't feel like a cheap dirty technology sellout running on Intel processors.

Will this mean Macs will be cheaper because they're using commodity hardware?

Yes. You can expect your Mac purchases after 2006 to be hundreds of dollars cheaper than ever before, since the processor makes that much of a difference in the bottom line and Apple hasn't been using any other common PC components before now.

Intel Mac minis should sell for $99 and new quad-processor Power Mac systems with Intel inside will start at a modest $999. iMacs and eMacs will hover somewhere in the $399-599 range, while iBooks will start at $299 and PowerBooks at $499. High-end servers based on eight-way Pentium Extreme chips and 32 gig of RAM might crack the $1999 boundary, however.

Can I install Mac OS X on my sweet dual Pentium Pro box? I overclocked the processors to 233 MHz so it really cooks.

You sure can. Apple made it so that you can install Mac OS X on any Intel PC dating back to the original Pentiums in all 60 MHz of their glory. Never-mind that they're equivalent to PowerPC 603 chips at the same clock speed and that Mac OS X would run like molasses in Winter on them — Apple has made it easy to bypass their hardware and sincerely want you to run their software on something that will make you curse its speed to the lowest pit of Hell.

Pentium Pro-blems

Hi, I have a pet project most of you will find interesting, and I've run into a block that some of you can help me with. First, here's the specs on my system:

• Two Pentium Pro, 200 MHz/1 MB cache oc'ed to 266 MHz
• 512 MB 5v 168-pin 60ns EDO RAM
• 100 GB 7200 RPM IDE hard drive
• 32 MB ATi Radeon PCI video card
• Windows XP Pro Service Pack 1

I get about the same performance as I would with dual 300 MHz Pentium II chips if you disregard the bus speed differences, and I have been very happy with this system so far. One thing I would like to do, however, that I think will improve system performance is to upgrade to 1 GB RAM. I notice some serious redraw problems and a lot of swapping going on, and my CPU use is always at at least 15%, and simple tasks like moving windows and editing HTML spike it to 70%. Real intensive stuff drives the CPUs to 100% max for longer than I feel it should. Kernel time is a significant proportion of this.

The IBM docs on this machine say it can be upgraded only to 512 MB, using 128 MB chips, but I have found RAM that matches the physical and eletrical specs to a T save for that they are 256 MB chips.

Does anyone have any experience with this? The motherboard is from an IBM PC 365.

Thank you.