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When Apple sells a Mac, Air or otherwise, Intel wins a bit. They're inside. Because of that, they are definitely shooting for ahead of now - to the part where A
by becomevocal 15y ago
When Apple sells a Mac, Air or otherwise, Intel wins a bit. They're inside. Because of that, they are definitely shooting for ahead of now - to the part where Apple decides they may not need their chips.
I agree that the user experience needs to improve across the Windows 8 platform for this to really matter, but that is mainly in Microsoft's court.
For me, I like having both a Mac and PC on hand. An Ultrabook would be nice if only for the size.
- marshray 15y agoExcept that Apple's and 3rd-party Mac code is much much more portable. They can switch from x86 down the road in a way that Windows can not.
- wvenable 15y agoMicrosoft already has Windows 8 and Office running on ARM. The fact is, in both cases, supporting a different processor is a recompile away (with edge cases failing in both cases). Windows NT and NeXTStep were both supporting different processor architectures at the same time. The big different is not technology, it's culture. Apple will happily make all your old software obsolete as long as it doesn't seriously interfere with them selling new hardware. Microsoft has the much harder job: they need businesses to buy OS licenses (that is what they sell) and those businesses have a lot of old crappy expensive software that must continue to run to make the sale.
- marshray 15y agoYes, I know Microsoft has Windows and Office running on ARM. Wake me up when 50% of the shrinkwrapped Windows-logo compliant and hardware software sitting on store shelves runs on it at native speed.
- rimantas 15y agoFun fact: Apple had OS X running on x86 since the first release (iirc Jobs dicslosed this announcing the transition to Intel processors).
- wvenable 15y agoThat's less interesting when you know that NeXTStep (the direct predecessor to OS X) was actually released for x86. Fun fact: Windows NT was released for PowerPC.
- blinkingled 15y agoPlease explain. Most recent Windows code is written in C# which makes portability easier but even for C/C++ code as long as the api level compatibility is maintained ( and no one frankly is better than Microsoft at that game) Windows code should be no less portable. It might be an issue of scale but not portability. Much less software exists for Mac than does for Windows.
- ianferrel 15y agoApple's done two successful architecture changes on their desktop OS (68k->PPC->x86). Microsoft's done none. Traditionally, MS has been very good at maintaining compatibility through different versions. Maybe they'd make an architecture change easily, but they haven't had to do so yet.
- blinkingled 15y agoThey have always supported multiple architectures - Win NT ran on Alpha, CE had ARM port, they had IA64 version of Windows server. Technically x86 to x86-64 also is a architecture change and they sailed pretty well thru it given most shipping Windows version today is 64 bit.
- marshray 15y agoIt's true! I even know someone who's seen a non-x86/64 Windows system!
- blinkingled 15y agoI am sure it doesnt exist as you sir marshray havent seen it. I must have just woken up from a dream where Windows machines running on Itanium also ran Oracle database ported to Windows Itanium.
- marshray 15y agoYou know him too?! Sorry. I concede that there is a major application or three that runs on Itanium. For now. Microsoft is dropping the platform. As for ARM all I'm saying is we'll wait and see.