Re: How many times must Apple make such DRASTIC architecture changes?

["Sean Fahey" <a2fan@hotmail.com>]

"Ilgaz Ocal" <Ilgaz@spamcop.net> wrote in message
3gr18rFcobl4U1@individual.net">news:3gr18rFcobl4U1@individual.net...

> We all miss something, this type of transition from one CPU family to
> other has NEVER happened in IT history.

You've never worked with minicomputers or engineering workstations before
have you? AS/400? Sun? Where were you when the Alpha died?

> As everyone (old timers) knows, let me tell what this move means. Its
> like moving to i80386 (the REAL one)  from Motorola 68xxx series! Lets
> go older, its like Commodore 64 moves to Z80 from 65xx CPU in a new
> model,

Quite a few Commodores have both 65xx and Z-80 processors and run CP/M
handily. Inappropriate analogy.

> Or for ex amiga people out there: Moving from Amiga 1200 with Motorola
> to i386 (it looks like most impossible one)

> The CPU "families" are different I mean. PPC is evolution of Motorola
> 68k series, look the new Amiga guys run PowerPC, they don't run a
> Pentium
>
> IMO We move from a bird to dinosaur here. *g* Darwin backwards

Well, that's got to be a personal opinion because it's not technically
accurate. The PPC architecture was a dramatic change from the 68K, but a lot
of effort went into making the transition as easy as possible. Am I the only
one that remembers extensions, enablers and fat code?

The reason companies like Apple and CBM didn't switch architectures back
then is because tools like Rosetta didn't exist or were too slow, the
technology wasn't reliable, the cost was too high and they had to accomodate
all that legacy crap. And, there's marketing... Taco Bell will sell you a
Pepsi, but you'll never get a Coke from them.

As to switching to x86, this reminds me of all old RISC vs. CISC, big-endian
vs. little-endian debates that have little to no technical merit.

What you guys should be moaning about is that we're likely to see Celerons
in the iMac/iBook/Mac Mini line instead of a P4. I wouldn't buy a
Celeron-based PC, I sure won't buy a Celeron-Mac.

The PPC wasn't going to go where Apple needed , fast enough. The Pentium 4
is actually a pretty good processor, with better branching and latency then
the PPC. Now they've got dual cores, hyper-threading - it was a good time to
make the change. Get over it already.