Hi everyone. I have a question, I'm hoping this forum can resolve. A friend and i are having an argument. He says that high end macs have gotten preferential treatment from intel in the past. He claims that high end mac products have received next gen intel processors before anyone else. Is this true or false?
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MP All Models Apple/intel relationship
- Thread starter gc2010
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It’s true, but not necessarily related to the Mac Pro. The first generation MacBook Air used a CPU that was not otherwise available at the time. There may have been other instances as well.
It's true. When Intel was making significant advancements in performance year over year it was not uncommon to see some Mac models getting the latest CPU before anyone else.
However, in the last few (5?) years, since the performance improvements were not really significant it seems like Apple didn't bother waiting for Intel at all (and why would they, honestly) so the 'preferential treatment' is mostly a thing of the past.
However, in the last few (5?) years, since the performance improvements were not really significant it seems like Apple didn't bother waiting for Intel at all (and why would they, honestly) so the 'preferential treatment' is mostly a thing of the past.
Were Mac's getting latest CPU's well in advance or was it more like a month or so? Was it an agreement they had with intel or was it related to the launch date?
I think it may have been somewhat less than a month. Probably just long enough for Jobs to make some latest and greatest claims on stage for Apple product announcements.
It WAS true under Jobs. It was what probably got Apple to move from PowerPC to Intel CPUs.
I strongly doubt they still get this level of preferential treatment over other computer builders anymore. Lately Intel even neglects to make the CPUs needed to upgrade some of the macs easily at all.
I strongly doubt they still get this level of preferential treatment over other computer builders anymore. Lately Intel even neglects to make the CPUs needed to upgrade some of the macs easily at all.
It seem like apple may have had a slight advantage of possibly a month or two. What you are saying is that it may have had a lot to do with Steve Jobs and his keynote presentations, makes sense. How better to generate interest in a product, than announcing the latest and greatest processor.
From what I remember sometimes within days of the announcement of a given Intel CPU (maybe in the same week) Apple would release a new Mac using it. So the CPU may have been *technically* available at the time but Apple was the first manufacturer to include them. Other manufacturers would follow, I'd say within a month. Certainly not much more than that.
It's false.
The first gen Air used a standard Intel CPU in a package that wasn't used by other vendors. (It was offered to them, but the other vendors didn't want to use it.)
Another case of a supposed Apple 'first' was the 3.0 GHz in the cheese grater. Intel binned some 3.0 GHz CPUs early and offered them to vendors - Apple jumped on them, but the rest of the vendors passed on those early 3.0 GHz CPUs because lower power 3.0 GHz CPUs were coming in a couple of months.
It's all kind of a moot point since Apple is moving to put cellphone CPUs in the Mac systems.
