Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 21:35:20 +0200 From: Phil Regnauld <regnauld+ppc@catpipe.net> To: Michael Dexter <dexter@ambidexter.com> Cc: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Apple x86 Ramifications? Message-ID: <20050606193520.GC7233@moof.catpipe.net> In-Reply-To: <a06210227beca464214b2@[213.175.79.146]> References: <20050604155921.2F8AD7306E@freebsd-current.sentex.ca> <867jh9st82.fsf@xps.des.no> <20050605001359.GA30548@arved.at> <86d5r1r6lh.fsf@xps.des.no> <a06210227beca464214b2@[213.175.79.146]>
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Michael Dexter (dexter) writes: > > Peter & Co., > > Any thoughts on Apple's announcement that they will slowly transition > to Intel processors and thus phase out PowerPC? Does IBM's "Power" > (power.org) initiative yield a viable target in light of many of us > hardware donors being unable to afford any to donate? IMHO the PPC Mac is a doomed platform now. IBM has probably no wish of continuing to make efforts for Apple when a) they got flamed by Apple (rare thing) for not delivering and b) they got Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo as customers. 10.4.1 w/P4 development machines will soon be available (two weeks). I'd bet they're "vanilla" Intel boxes, though I wouldn't be surprised if the future boxes will be OpenFirmware based with a HW lockin (or simply: a lack of support for any hardware/chipset other than what Apple will provide). Shouldn't be too hard to get FreeBSD to run on that (but at that point: why bother ?) Of course there are definitely plenty of PPC Macs out there, the price of which are going to be falling, but I see them no more useful than Alpha at this point (and then, Alpha at least made it possible to port FreeBSD to 64 bit). I think the question is: why should there be a PPC port in the future ? Certainly not for Apple machines, maybe for IBM (RS) boxes ? More than anything it proves (with Microsoft and the Xbox 360), that CPU architecture is less important nowadays. Let's see if the OS X developers and the market follows. NOTE: if this sounded like a recommendation NOT to donate to the FreeBSD project, ignore me -- Peter, David and Dag Erling are certainly better placed than me to say anything :)
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