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Choice is good, especially for us. Before, choice meant - Who will be slower and make less substantial upgrades between chips, IBM or Motorola?
Now, Intel and AMD have yet another vendor... a vendor that has a passionate following.

Apple is not being held hostage because they do have the choice. Apple is not tied into Intel, but they will be loyal as Intel scrambles to remain competitive. Intel will do all the work to remain competitive against AMD. One of apple's advantages is their streamlined supply chain. Adding an alternative processor will only complicate the process.

AMD's behind because they haven't made any major chip releases lately. Last time they had a major chip revamp, they were ahead of Intel by light years, and then Intel updated their line and now Intel's ahead. It's basically whoever takes the fastest, longest steps who wins. All we have to do now is see AMD's next big step.

MacDailyNews Take: Currently, and for the foreseeable future, AMD lags behind Intel's processors. Ruiz talks choice because he doesn't like the choice made by Apple. It sounds like wishful thinking by Ruiz; Apple made the right choice with Intel. Still, anything can happen and, with Apple, it often does.

Looks line MDN has a clear vision of the future..... A crystal ball perhaps??? As many may recall there was a time Intel was lagging AMD and this probably will happen again in future. As long as there's innovation, these AMD and Intel will swap positions in being the leading company.

Right now Apple needs to have the top processors, and Intel has them, AMD doesn't. If AMD catches up or passes Intel, then Apple may look to them, but don't hold your breath. It seems as if Apple and Intel have a good thing going, and are working together more closely than just Intel selling processors to Apple.

Apple didn't "choose" to use only Intel forever.

AMD has done great things in the past, and they will again, and Apple CAN use them. Why be an Intel fanboy? Macs can use whatever's best at the time. Right now it's Intel. Someday it will be a mix of both. That is a GOOD thing. We should all hope for AMD to do amazing things.

Having two chip suppliers is MUCH better than having one. Just thing where Apple's pro towers would have been with only Motorola and no IBM! Yet before that, Moto had the G4 which gave us the fastest computers in the world at one time.

What Ruiz says makes sense to me.

Is it just me, or does this guy sound like every other Glaser-like wanna-be that's said, "Oh, yeah. Apple's gonna want to and need to do business with us", along with a carefully placed use of the "c-word" (choice)?

This guy is full of crap. Apple is not Dell. I know that Apple is gonna give me the best processor for the job.

By the way, where is my MBP with C2D?

MDN Magic Word "living", as in: How do these guys make a "living" coming up with this crap?

Interesting that the CEO of AMD would deem it necessary to make such a statement.

Does he believe that Apple is on the move upward and will be a major alternative to Windows.

Very interesting.

I have nothing against AMD but I think Apple made the right choice at this point in time. Intel seems to be on an innovative track for the first time in a long time, and it shows in the performance of their Core line.

The one thing about Apple that puts AMD at a disadvantage is that since SJ came back, Apple has been all about paring down their lines. Using two brands of similar processors doesn't really go with that plan. You could argue that they already did that with IBM producing the G5 and Motorola/Freescale the G4 but that's not really the same thing because of the AIM alliance.

Time will tell, but if AMD wants Apple (which they obviously do) they're gonna really have to stay innovative.

I'm sure Apple, like any other company in the space, keeps tabs and is privy to roadmap details unavailable to mere mortals. AMD has had their 15 minutes of fame at the expense of Intel. As long as Intel remains focused, I doubt that AMD will ever seriously leapfrog them again in critical technology.

It's nice to know that if AMD should develop an amazing earth-shattering chip that eclipses anything offered by Intel, Apple could most likely use it.

With an announcement like that, Steve Jobs probably WON'T use AMD processors until AMD does some serious groveling first.

Thing is people give less of a crap nowadays about which processor they have than they do about security and usability.

You all think they do but the people who give a crap about the uber geek details probably make up less than 5 % of the market. Most people just want something that works.

i could be totally wrong here but doesn't AMD not have fab labs? they contract out production of their chips to IBM?

Apple might switch back to Motorolla

I made you laugh, good.

Apple gets a lot more from Intel than just processors and it's the total package that is the best deal. Intel has provided a lot of motheroboard engineering that has helped Apple get the switch to happen much more quickly. Intel has all the supporting chipsets too, one stop shopping for parts and engineering. Plus Intel is hungry for success. They've been tied to Microslop OS and third rate box assemblers like Dell for too long. Apple is doing something fresh and so is Intel.

Apple don't need no stinking AMD.

Ruiz seems to be implying that Apple will offer customers a choice of Intel or AMD processor (since merely switching to AMD wouldn't expand the choices). They have never offered that kind of choice before, so I can't see them doing it now. It goes against their whole philosophy of not overwhelming the user/customer with unnecessary decisions. (Yes, they had IBM and Motorola chips, but never as an option in the same product line.)

Despite popular opinion that choice is always good, studies have shown that choices can have a negative impact on sales. In the book _Blink_, there is mention of a study in which a woman sold jelly at a stand. When she had a dozen flavors to choose from, she sold less than when she only had 3 or 4 choices.

AMD sells a processor. Intel sells a platform...

AMD...not anytime soon. Apple & Intel are doing great together. And Apple is getting tons of additional credibility (in the Windows world) having its name tied to Intel. AMD is a great company and it is good to have them push Intel. However, I see no advantage ot using AMD chips at this time.

As someone else alluded to, even having AMD say that they would like to have Apple's business must be a good thing, and bid well, for Apple.

Intel is known to screw good things up, so who knows...

The only thing apple needs is an SLI rig, and they can do that with nvidia, and intel.. so unless AMD has soemthing up their sleeve they are gonna be hurting, and soemhting tells me they dont have anything up their sleeve..

SHUT YOUR STUPID MAC FACES!

What is the future for Intel processors? The two top of the line processors from Intel is Itanium and C2D. Will they unite in the future? It sounds very plausible to me now that C2D is a 64-bit processor. Itanium cannot run 32-applications natively - they need an emulation layer. The decrease in speed may not be noticeably because the speed of an Itanium processor is aproximately twice as fast as the C2D processor. In addition, I would believe that most major application will be recompiled to run optimally on a 64-bit processor.
The next generation processor architecture, nehalem, from Intel, is not very different from the architexture used in the present C2D processors and I therefore presume that we cannot expect any major speed avantage other than that they are moving to 45nm technology.
I don't knot what the future brings from AMD, but they haven't moved to 65nm technology yet and it sounds to me that they could have a major advantage over Intel because their 90nm technology can compete with intel's 65nm technology?
If Intel focused on one architecture they may give os faster processors faster?

Guys, just because you enjoy sucking Steve's shlong that doesn't mean you have to toady to every supplier Apple uses.

There is no way that it works out bad for us that AMD is out there or that AMD wants Apple's business.

On AMD's worst day they still keep Intel prices lower, so that even if Apple is Intel all-the-way they still reap the benefit of price competition, which ultimately we reap as well. Also on AMD's worst day they keep Intel's development cycle and release cycle in overdrive, which carries the sames benefits.

Anyone that want to explain to me how it could in any way be a bad thing that Intel is encouraged to release better processors at lower prices?

On AMD's best day it releases processors that are faster and cheaper than Intels. It has happened plenty before, and there's no reason it can't happen again. On that day, is there any reason Apple shouldn't go for the faster, cheaper chips?

There is no logical reason anyone who doesn't have stock in Intel or work for Intel should be posting "Gosh, Intel is great" posts. The great part about using commodity components is that Apple can use whoever offers the most bang for the buck at a given moment.

AMD has a totally solid product. I would love for Apple to consider AMD, especially for their Xserve line.

A little shameless promotion: If you want to find out what AMD has been up to lately, you should check out AMD's virtual tradeshow - http://virtualexperience.amd.com - where execs from AMD and a few of AMD's partners talk about the innovative stuff they're doing. My company, Design Reactor, made it for them, and it's been getting a lot of public interest. Definitely pretty cool.

Since I made all of you, and you cannot predict the future like I can...I'll tell you this:

God likes his G5. Why? Because its not Intel or AMD. But, being God, I often have to appease the masses, and let them get what they want. Therefore, I allowed Apple to move to Intel. But asking me to make the switch to the crappy AMD processors is like asking me to play on the "Hell's Angels" softball team.

Not gonna happen.

Long live the G's. Just because.

The problem I see with AMD's wishful thinking is that it will make the purchasing of an Apple computer more complicated, and I don't think Apple would do something that would make it difficult to buy one of their products.

Right now people know that the Intel chips are faster than the G4 and G5 Apple was using previously. If consumers need to think about and compare processors first, it makes the purchase more difficult.

If AMD does sell to Apple, the chips would most likely be in the Mac mini and low end iMacs, to reduce pricing on those products slightly, for those consumers concerned with the cost of a PC.

That being said, AMD is just looking for a piece of the pie. Mentioning your product with the most popular brand in the world did get him some PR, didn't it?

Maybe Apple went with Intel because Intel is more regonizable. After all, they aren't call WinMD computers, they are Wintel, so to get people to switch to mac, they can have their Wintel machine, except it looks better, does more, and has this other operating system that doesn't have viruis' or spyware and just works. I think it's all a marketing ploy for now. Wait till Mac's market share is up, then we'll see if they start offering AMD or not.

Just so you know, in case you were wondering.

if (a = b) and (b = c) then (a = c)

Yes, Apple will use AMD chips, because AMD now owns ATI, and Apple uses ATI graphics chips...

I thought one of the issues of using AMD was whether they could supply all of Apple's chip needs. Also, Apple designs their hardware around a specific processor and a custom motherboard, so if they wanted to go with AMD, they would have to commit to AMD and only AMD for a specific model of Mac.

AMD WILL HAVE NAIVE QUAD CORE CHIPS IN EARLY 2007...NOT LIKE INTELO'S PASTED DUAL CORE TO DUAL CORE

APLE SHOULD USE AMD

AMD makes soem great stuff, and has for years. Whether or not their processors are better right now or not (or even what "better" means) isn't relevant.

Apple will go with whatever gives them the competitive advantage.

Right now, that's Intel. But tomorrow? We all know, in this industry anything can happen and everything can be turned upside-down overnight.

Remember when Apple switched to Intel?

The beauty of Universal applications is the chip no longer matters. Apple can use whatever chip they want going forward. Intel, AMD or PowerPC.

MDN, don't be an Intel fanboy.

The wonderful thing about Apple going x86 is that it can benefit directly from competition between AMD and Intel. In years to come, it won't matter which company is making faster chips - Apple will use the best available. I hope that AMD catches up soon, to keep the pressure on Intel to keep getting better. Intel is dominating so much right now that there is practically no competition, which is never good in the long run.

It happened with Motorola. It happened with PowerPC. It will eventually happen to Intel. Apple willl go with whomever provides the best processor at the time.

MacDailyNews Take: "Currently, and for the foreseeable future, AMD lags behind Intel's processors..."

This is so ridiculous a statement it's not even wrong. But no matter ...

Jobs went to Intel for their TPM chips, and no other reason. And he's invested HEAVILY in this switch. Those are mighty high hurdles to be overcome, if a Mac running an AMD CPU is ever to see the light of day. Therefore, he won't use AMD CPUs - or any other company's - until a] he's convinced that hardware DRM is no longer necessary for him to be King of All Video, or b] Intel's hardware falls so far behind their competitors that it would make Apple look foolish for not leaving them.

With both those conditions in mind, I'd say it is likely that Apple will drop Intel at some point in the next year, two tops. First, Amazon's DRM laden UnBox is a total bust, while iTunes' more limited (but less restrictive) video offerings are going great guns. Since prices are uniformly ridiculous for both services, it can't be ignored that less DRM means more sales here. This can't help but lessen Jobs' commitment to the technology. Second, AMD's new CPUs - due out in early 07 - are going to completely eliminate the small lead Intel currently has in CPU performance.

And AMD will continue to pull ahead after that. They have a better technology base to work from (true multicore w/integrated memory controller), more than enough capacity to supply up to 50% of the market at consistently lower prices than Intel, and the efficiencies needed to remain much more profitable than Intel in doing so. Factor in the truly groundbreaking stuff AMD is going to be able to do with ATI technology leveraged over Hypertransport, and I have no problem at all predicting a world of hurt for Intel and their antiquated FSB and overly expensive FBDIMMs. It's no contest.

Apple will move to AMD, or risk going down with a sinking ship. The DRM/TPM adventure was misguided from the start, but now it's clear it will be a white elephant. Sunk costs will have to be recouped by Apple, but once that is done, the only question will be how long it will take Jobs to do what he knows he will have to.

Meanwhile, the CELL rules them all...

It would be great to have an OS X kernel with hooks for "VE coprocessor" support, so we could have [any] multi-core general CPU, plus dedicated media coprocessor support (CELL), so you could build an A/V workstation by adding additional CELL cards to the coprocessor bus similar to PCIe, to augment the motherboard CELL. Then nothing could beat Apple's hardware.

Let's not forget AMD just acquired ATI.

It is very possible that Apple could start using AMD chips if AMD offers a chip + GPU combo at a price that is irresistable. We saw how Apple began using integrated graphics in Macs for the first time in many years because of the price savings they represent.

If AMD was smart, they would do something similar to get some Apple business. Let's remember using AMD chips isn' t the same as the difference between PowerPC and Intel. Using AMD is about the same as deciding whether to put an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card in a Mac.

In a meeting with Ruiz at Motorola, when he worked there, I told them, "I can't wait until we don't need you."

I haven't forgotten that, even if he has.

Bozo

S.

You think AMD's purchase of ATI wasn't planned for a reason? ATI makes the chipset and the video, AMD makes the chip, whats left? small taiwanese motherboard manufacturers are a dime a dozen... AMD is positioning itself with full package for this deal in the future, not to mention its other low power goals..

No matter what, they are interesting days again, but this future looking comment from Ruiz is hopeful, but look at it as their future goal and strategy.

Max

Not anytime soon. Intel and Apple are working together on hardware design. Intel is giving Apple a "sweetheart deal" on processors, probably in exchange for exclusive use. For AMD to get Apple's business, Intel would have to totally fail as badly as IBM did.

Odyssey67, you are such an Intel-hater of a crusty old Mac user! Intel Core 2 Duo absolutely owns anything AMD has got now and for the foreseable future. By the time AMD ships a quad-core CPU, Intel will be shipping the quad-core version of the Core 2 Duo. Can you say 8MB shared L2 cache? The only response that AMD has given to the Core 2 Duo is to slash prices on Athlon CPUs. For at least the next year, if Mac users want the fastest CPUs available in their Macs, they are going to need Intel CPUs. I'm in the process of selling my old 2.4Ghz Athlon64 computer (parting it out on ebay), since my MacBook Pro 1.83Ghz Core Duo is faster and consumes about 1/4 the power. Athlon64 had its glory years, but now they have passed. The Athlon64 X2 doesn't even have the "SSE4" 128bit vector processing extensions that the Core 2 Duo does, which makes it a particularly bad Mac CPU.

Nick, AMD has its own extensions that intel doesn't have, does this make intel a bad everything else CPU? No it just means that one optimization would be swapped for another, it would be part of the agreement, I am positive that there are OSX machines running on AMD @ Apple, they have been running x86 there for atleast 6 years that I _know_ of.

The problem with intels multi core that AMD has solved is really kinda neat...

Intel: Throw two chips on one socket.

AMD: Throw two chips in one socket, let them communicate, share l1 and l2 and l3 caches, offload threads internally. 4x4 does this.

Intel core quadro hasn't even considered it.. just more cores on a box.

Max

I agree with him. Anybody that knows anything about ATI and AMD can see where this is all heading...

Max Inux:

if AMD has a better design, why does Core 2 Duo easily beat anything that AMD has? I'll take the Mac that runs faster in the real world, thanks.

Nick says:

"if AMD has a better design, why does Core 2 Duo easily beat anything that AMD has?"

It doesn't - at equivilent clockspeeds Core2 barely eaks out victories in multimedia stuff, thanks to that 128bit SSE3 you mentioned (but it seems to be buying them precious little). AMD has already announced they will be increasing their multimedia data pathways to 128bit as well with K8L. With them essentially matching all of Intel's advances, and still having a more efficient core overall, it seems ridiculous to expect Intel holding heir lead.

"I'll take the Mac that runs faster in the real world, thanks."

Since most anything you can do on OSX is accomplished faster on Windows XP, are you going to make that change too?

You accused me of being a biased 'anti-Intel' guy ... I'll ignore the "crusty" comment, since the status of my shorts is my own business ... but given the obvious holes in your knowlege on this subject, most would assume you're the one speaking with bias.

I frankly would love it if Intel was as grand a company as you seem to think it is. I'd also be the first to say their Core arch is untouchable if that in fact was the case. My only agenda is wanting the best for Apple. The recent benches have been good for Intel, but only indicate the kind of lead you would expect from a company that recently invested hundreds of millions playing catch-up in the first place (not to mention you're comparing Intel's 'next gen' CPU to the last version of AMDs 'last gen'). After you get past that, you have to start looking at the underlying fundamentals, and they ALL favor AMD. For example, that 8MBs of cache you're so excited about? It's only there b/c Intel can't feed their procs through their FSB with main memory fast enough. Once you get the cache saturated, all the benches show already, Core & Core2don't maintain a performace lead over an equivilent AMD system - or a G5 either for that matter.

So, crusty or no, AFAIC you're the one with the conceptual problems here. Either you're a Jobs-Zombie, or a guy desperate to keep his stock prices up. Or both. Neither help when accurately assessing a situation though.

I know its a few days old, but I hope you get a chance to read this.

Odyssey67:

"at equivilent clockspeeds Core2 barely eaks out victories in multimedia stuff"

So by your logic, Core 2 Duo would beat AMD's best even if you could only get Core 2 Duo at AMD chip speeds. Since Core 2 Duo is in fact available in higher clock speeds, you have logical ground to stand on going with AMD.


"most anything you can do on OSX is accomplished faster on Windows XP"

Wrong. Off the top of my head: Java compiling is much faster in Mac OS X. So is booting the computer. CinaBench v95, a high-end 3D modeling and rendering benchmark, runs faster in Mac OS X than on Windows. Just because you can't run Photoshop natively YET doesn't mean that Mac OS X is slower.

You're probably still using a crusty old PowerPC Mac anyways. I'll bet you're hoping Apple makes an AMD Mac by the time Photoshop is released as a universal binary, just so you don't have to have an Intel chip in your Mac. Intel haters are so 1990s. I'll bet this is your favorite ad ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvvcQpp3SYE

You all have to remember even with the Intel chip UNIX runs better on the AMD chipset. Yes, MAC machines run the UNIX under the GUI and AMD even with the older chips are faster for the MAC machines.

AMD compared to Intel? I support both!

Try to compile and run Linux with Intel, runs like a dog but when AMD runs or compiles the kernel you'll be still waiting for your Intel's to get done.

I think Macintosh will make a great choice with the new AMD processor. Oh, yea! Yes AMD has a new processor faster then the fastest Intel on the market, so hold on.

Yea! SHUT YOUR MAC FACES!

I don't think "ANYWAYS" is in the dictionary! So shut YOUR MAC FACES!