Talk:Apple–Intel architecture

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Branding[edit]

should there be some discussion of the branding of Intel on Apple computers? all Dells ship with Intel stickers on the case and box, do Apple computers now have the same?Romansanders 22:41, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, they don't. Guy Harris 01:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New article[edit]

I created this article to discuss the Apple-Intel architecture in general, there had been some discussion on the MacBook Pro article on whether the machine would run other operating systems than Mac OS X (like Windows), such a discussion really belongs in a general article since both the new iMac and MacBook Pro share a very similar setup hardware wise, so anything running on one of them almost certanly can run to at least some extent on the other (and this'll apply even more as more machines are released). —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:06, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Running operating systems other than Mac OS X[edit]

"Being able to use software that is designed only for, works faster on, or is more intuitive on Mac OS X (for example, Adobe Photoshop)."


I take issue with this, I think Photoshop is a bad example because:

1. it is not designed only for osx 2. it does NOT work faster on osx 3. it is not any more intuitive on osx

I would suggest putting Final Cut Pro or Logic in there instead, and have amended accordingly.

Heck, One report [1] has Apple's computers running the WIndows version of Photoshop better than 'designed for Windows' equivalent PC notebooks. I don't think a separate article is necessary. After all, there is no 'Linux on Mac hardware' article, even though there are commercial organizations that support this. Ehurtley 01:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have been thinking of removing most of that section; seems to me that it can be replaced with something short like "By installing Windows XP on a Macintosh, users who want/need to run both operating systems can do so using a single computer". Thue | talk 08:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That whole section should go - there is a BootCamp page it links to with all the relevant information and a discussion about the benefits of multi-booting is important doesn't belong here either. DamienG 14:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Virtual PC[edit]

Contrary to what the article says, Microsoft has not stated that they will port Virtual PC to Intel Macs. The linked article actually says:

"We have a commitment to understanding what VPC will look like on the Intel Mac. But until we have the final hardware we can't know what Virtual PC will look like on those machines," Lefebvre said. "There are dependencies with the OS and the hardware. Until we know what the final hardware is like, it's difficult to know how it will work," she concluded."

That's a long way from a commitment to release an Intel-Mac version of Virtual PC. Aranhamo 19:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft made a commitment today - to no longer develop Virtual PC for Mac. Aranhamo 21:55, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOSX[edit]

"OpenOSX WinTel is just Q renamed and sold without giving anything back to the original developer, not even credit for their work."

Can you prove that? And even if it's true, does that mean that people reading the wikipedia article should not allowed to be aware of its existence? I'd bet that whoever owns OpenOSX probably would dispute your claim (I have no idea if it's true or not). It's a virtualization solution that's available, so it should be mentioned. Aranhamo 19:36, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOSX WinTel and Q are both ports of QEMU. OpenOSX WinTel is sold under the GPL, according to their website. Since your assertion that "OpenOSX WinTel is just Q renamed" is false, I'm putting the mention back in the article. If you think that OpenOSX is doing something wrong in their marketing of WinTel, maybe you should add a mention to the Q article, or create a WinTel article (since it looks like there isn't one yet). Aranhamo 19:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The OpenOSX people are notorious for doing this kind of thing.[2] BTW I was getting the WinTel people confused with the IEmulator[3] people. OpenOSX do give credit. On their website "Special thanks to Gwenolé Beauchesne for his excellent Intel port of Fabrice Bellard's fast Qemu opensource virtual machine."[4] Beauchesne's work went into Q.[5]

Happy now? AlistairMcMillan 22:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. You still haven't given any reason why WinTel should not be mentioned in this article. It is not "Q repackaged", but it is based off of some of the same code. Q has a different set of features than WinTel, while WinTel has superior performance. If WinTel was simply a commercial repackaging of Q, then they would have the same features and performance. Can you give any good reason why WinTel should not be mentioned? Are you the final arbiter of which virtualization solutions get mention in wikipedia, so that you can exclude WinTel just because you don't like them? You're obviously biased against WinTel and toward Q. I don't use either, nor any other virtualization solution, and I don't see any reason why WinTel should not be mentioned in the article. And so far, all you seem to have come up with is that you don't like the WinTel developers because you think they ripped off Q. If there is some kind of dispute about that, it belongs in the Q or WinTel articles, not here. Merely deleting any reference to WinTel because you don't like them is called "censorship". I guess it's not possible to have even one NPOV article on wikipedia, even on a technical subject. wikipedia is such a sham; you can have it. Aranhamo 07:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can see no reason to exclude a particular product, though Wikipedia isn't a catalogue. One key point, however, is that this WinTel thing doesn't have a Wikipedia article, while Q does. References to things with articles are always preferable. Of course, that does lead to the suggestion that there be an article created for the other software; if there are properly sourced criticisms of its provenance, that is the place to document them. Notinasnaid 10:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aranhamo, perhaps you should read up on the subject first. You said "It is not Q repackaged, but it is based off of some of the same code."

Perhaps you could try reading their website, "WinTel is our popular Cocoa graphical user interface used to control the included powerful underlying open-source "Qemu" x86 virtualization/emulation software."[6] All they have done is create a GUI that configures and launches Qemu. Specifically the version of QEMU ported to Mac OS X, otherwise known as "Q", hence the line "Special thanks to Gwenolé Beauchesne for his excellent Intel port of Fabrice Bellard's fast Qemu opensource virtual machine."[7]

If you still don't believe me how about reading some reviews of the product.[8] [9] [10] They all agree that Wintel does NOT have superior performance. They all agree that Wintel is just Q repackaged (previously it was Bochs repackaged). AlistairMcMillan 17:59, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I may just be misattributing quotes, but didn't you say "not even credit for their work", and now you indicate that their web site gives two specific credits? And what is wrong with creating a GUI for an open source product? Notinasnaid 18:03, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yup I said that, then I corrected myself.[11] There is nothing wrong with creating a GUI for an open source product. However some people think that if you take someone else's work and sell it, that you should give something back to the people who did the actual work. OpenOSX give nothing back, and they only credits the people whose work they sell because people complained repeatedly.[12] AlistairMcMillan 21:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So is Wikipedia policy to only list free software, but not commercial packaging of that software we don't approve of? This discussion is full of moral judgements. Notinasnaid 10:02, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Trusted Platform Module[edit]

In a recent article [13] Amit Singh not only claims that the latest Mac models don't have a TPM chip, but that Apple never actually used it for anything. Lars T. 17:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this Amit Singh is a respected researcher and have covered Mac OS X indepth. I've changed the article accordingly, if anyone has a good reference showing the TPM is used by Apple please provide it. New299 22:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the Dubious tag should be removed and the discuss tag left behind. That it was thought early on that TPM was used--as the article now states--does not appear to be dubious, as it was widely rumored and believed. 24.117.141.119 (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BapCo ??![edit]

Bapco (and un disambiguated link) is in See Also - what has this to do with Apple-Intel? Is it spam? --LeedsKing 01:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disambiguated it. I assume the theory is that 1) Apple is one of the members of the BAPCo consortium and 2) they did it either because you can run Windows on an Intel Mac (native or in emulation) or because the hardware is more comparable with IBM PC compatibles, so they joined for reasons that are a consequence of switching to x86. I'm not sure it's all that strong an argument for its inclusion, however.... Guy Harris 02:47, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Intel ≠ Windows[edit]

I wasn't very impressed by this article I was hoping to find something about Intel Macs but found an article largely about BootCamp - ie windows on macs Intel Macs and Windows running on a Mac are not the same thing (Intel Macs came first btw) - they could even be separate articles as they're not technically related Stonysleep (talk)

Fair use rationale for Image:Core2duomac.jpg[edit]

Image:Core2duomac.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 12:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why does this article exist?[edit]

Discussion of BootCamp and Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext seems irrelevant to the computer architecture. The only relevant parts seem to be EFI and GUID tables, and even those are just subsets of standard Intel PC architecture.

Also most of the Google results for "Apple-Intel architecture" seem to point to copies of this page. Is there any proof that Apple ever actually used this as a term? Or is the whole premise OR? 64.171.162.74 (talk) 06:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removed most of the irrelevant fluff. If there's any salient technical differences between an Intel Machintosh and a standard x86 PC, feel free to add. I figure OS X copy-protection should be discussed elsewhere. 71.134.252.36 (talk) 05:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The deleted stuff was restored on 16 June 2010 by 192.102.209.29 and has since been revised.
IMHO the article's existence is justified, but its lead sentence is not. This 2005 Economist article mentioned "Apple-Intel architecture" but I think the term has not become "an unofficial name". It would probably suffice just to rewrite the lead paragraph accordingly. - Fayenatic (talk) 16:24, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In what way is virtualization on a Mac different from virtualization on any other x86 machine?[edit]

The only difference is that Apple allows macOS itself to run as a guest on some hypervisors, such as VMware Fusion and Parallels Workstation; other than that, it's pretty much the same type of virtualization you can get on Windows and Linux and, for some hypervisors, other OSes. I'm not sure why it deserves a discussion here. Guy Harris (talk) 01:20, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for the name[edit]

What sources can be found that it's called Apple-Intel architecture, and moreover "Mactel." I found a few publications referring to it as such, but never anything official from Apple. In fact, it seems Apple prefers to gloss over CPU architecture entirely, which makes sense given their status amongst the community.


I considered emailing Apple about this directly, but I cannot find an applicable address on their website. Silvanathecat (talk) 19:39, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]