The new Intel-based Macs

[yesthattom]

I really don’t care if the new machines have Intel chips, Motorola chips, or corn chips. What I was concerned about was whether or not I would lose the “Firewire Terminal” mode capability when booting. That is, if you hold down “T” while booting a PowerMac, it turns into a huge Firewire drive. You can then plug it into another Mac and do huge amounts of maintenance, data recovery, and so on. It’s the single most useful feature that a sysadmin can have.

So far none of the reviews I read mentioned whether or not this feature exists.

FINALLY Apple has revealed that this feature is retained:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303124

W00t!

Comments

[knell.livejournal.com]

I'd never actually thought about that. I, too, would have been intensely annoyed if that feature had vanished (in short, it's the bestest thing ever), and it's good to know that Apple are sensible enough to have retained it in the new architecture.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

As Hagrid would say, it's dead useful.

mmmmm

[mrfantasy.livejournal.com]

corn chips . . .

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

Am I correct in assuming that if I were to buy an Intel chip Mac, software I own for my non-Intel chip Mac would not work on it? This will be a huge deciding factor for me in my upcoming G5 purchase, as I already own quite a bit of software, including the $1000 Final Cut Pro. If I have to buy that software again, I'll do everything in my power to get the "old" G5 Quad, and not a new Intel chip one.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

Never mind. I just found the answer (http://www.apple.com/rosetta/).

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Most software will still work because of a built-in emulator called Rosetta. You won't even notice that Rosetta kicks in, the software "just works".

However, check with the vendor to find out if it works, or works-but-is-slow. Some are offering upgrades to the Intel version (a "universal binary") for a small fee.

Tom

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

When it comes time to buy the Mac, I'll have to do some comparisons on what is available and what the expected performance is, etc.

And while I was looking up that info, I noticed that it doesn't even look like they're doing Intel chip G5's yet anyway. Just Powerbooks and iMacs. That might make the decision even easier.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

The Intel-based desktop will be out some time this year, but they haven't announced a date. It won't be called G5 or Power Mac and it'll probably have two dual-core Intel chips.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Final Cut Pro is one application which does not run under Rosetta, the PowerPC code translation layer.

However, Apple has announced that they will ship current users a new installation disc with a universal binary installer on it for $49.00. (Shipping may be extra, I don't recall.) They claim that it will be out in March.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

I was going to war about running a video editor under any kind of translation (due to possible dropped frames) before I saw your mail. Hooray for them getting it out quickly.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Apple's various Pro applications, such as Final Cut Pro, and Aperture, are fairly processor specific in optimizations, they'd not be a simple compiler check-box tick away from universal binary compiling. I'll be a bit surprised if, as Apple claims currently, all Pro applications will be ready by the end of March with universal binary installers.

But, if anyone can do it, they likely can. They've done processor change-overs before, and handled it exceedingly well. (Early Mac Motorola 68xxx series chips to PowerPC chips was only slightly less radical a change.)

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

The Intel chip doesn't have anything that is Altivec compatible. Anyone that wrote Altivec-specific code has to rewrite it from scratch. That's gotta hurt.

Typo

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

Um, that should have read 'I was going to warn' rather than 'I was going to war'. In general, I don't think going to war is a good use of people's lives.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

One thing to be aware of is that currently, you can not boot an Intel based Mac from a drive formatted for PowerPC Macs, and vice-versa. They use different partitioning schemes (due to the Intel Macs using EFI instead of open firmware) and thus the boot block areas aren't where they're expected to be when going cross-processor like that. I'm not sure what a multi-partition drive will do in this regard.