Speculation on Real Reasons Behind Apple Switch 659
/ASCII writes "There is an article over at Ars Technica with some insider information about the reasons behind Apples x86 switch, given that the new IBM processors seem to be a perfect fit for Apple. The article claims that Apple hopes to power its entire line, from Servers to desktops to iPods and other gadgets with Intel CPUs, and that by doing so, they will gain the same kinds of discounts that Dell get."
Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Options? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultimately look at it this way, If the Mohammed won't come to the mountain, get a big crane and get ready to do some heavy lifting.
"hope" has nothing to do with it (Score:4, Insightful)
If this theory is in fact the plan (for large values of if) then it's not just hope. It would be written in stone.
Re:gay (Score:1, Insightful)
The real reasons are obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or just use the oldest trick in the book ("We are looking at using some chips from AMD."), and then see what "discounts" you qualify for
AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's also about marketing (Score:1, Insightful)
You're joking right? $200 difference? In your (and my) dreams maybe.
iPod is Apples Future? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:2, Insightful)
Proprietary PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly everything except the BIOS will be standard on the Mactel platform. Seems to me like the perfect occasion to introduce a "trusted", DRM-enabled platform from the ground up.
Now Apple can tell the RIAA & MPAA: on our platforms, your stuff will be secure.
He's right about the Mac being "the past" (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1996 Fortune interviewed Steve Jobs and asked him what he would do if still running Apple. He responded that he would "milk the Mac for all it is worth and move on to the next big thing."
This doesn't mean that those of us with an investment in Apple hardware (or more risky, custom Cocoa software like we have) mean that Apple is going to abandon the Mac....
They are going the milk it for all it is worth.
With OS X, we have a NeXTSTEP/Mac fusion that Steve likes, and Apple will keep profitably pushing out software updates that they sell, but that isn't Apple's growth.
Their growth operations: software, when Steve rejoined they had recently gone from free OS upgrades to selling two upgrades, OS 7 and OS 7.5, IIRC, maybe 6 was sold as well.
Now, Apple sells new OS Versions every 1 - 2 years. They put out an iLife upgrade annually. They will probably put out iWork annually. And they replaced their free iTunes system with a nicely growing
The average Mac customer pre-Jobs bought a Mac and used it for 6 years.
The average Mac customer post-Jobs buys a Mac, and uses it for 3-4 years with 2 OS upgrades, 1 or 2 software purchases, and 20% of a
Apple will keep innovating the Mac to milk the cash cow... They will NOT enter price-wars or otherwise fight with MS or Dell or HP for market-share. They will milk the cash cow, try to execute and expand markets, but they are NOT interested in growing to a 10% market with the SAME profits as now by cutting their margins by 75% which would make the software developers happy.
It isn't a zero-sum game, they are selling the iMac or Mac Mini as a digital life system. Sure you have a Windows machine for whatever... but add a Mac Mini and a KVM (and annual OS X + iLife upgrades) to easily put your kid's Soccer Games on DVD and send to his grandparents. That is their "growth" strategy.
It isn't a bad strategy, but selling easy-to-use digital toys is how Apple is a growth company, and Microsoft is becoming a mature company that will steadily increase its annual dividend.
Good for Steve Jobs, good for Apple shareholders, and hopefully good for its customers as long as Apple keeps putting out new products that we want to buy because we are the cash cow to be milked, but we aren't going to benefit from price cuts from a price war because market-share and PC growth just don't interest Apple...
That said, I'm sure at some level Apple sees Linux entering the network market for office networks, and realizes that with the best (and easiest to use) desktop Unix... he can enter that market. If you like Linux, if Apple gets the BEST WINELIB performance, the BEST Qt performance, and best Gtk performance, and has KDELIB and GNOMELIB ported... well how tough is it that Apple is able to compete with Linux for SOME share of the corporate desktop market.
Apple is in a position to make SOME gains in PC market-share, but growing back to 10-20% over 10 years isn't giant tech growth... the iPod and OTHER SIMILAR projects is.
It's a smart business move, and Apple has set themselves up to grow profits steadily in their core markets, and then swing for the fences with new products like the iPod, iTMS, etc.
Alex
Re:I don't understand the advantage... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the olden days, when chips were still designed by small teams on reasonable budgets, somebody noticed that hand-written assembly was rapidly becoming passe. When the assembly is being written by a compiler, it makes sense to design the chip with that in mind, and make an instruction set that is efficient at the kind of simple instructions that compilers like to write.
This led to a simpler design that could be made somewhat faster than a complex one. This led to many predicting the demise of so-called CISC chips. This prediction, like the "Internet in danger of collapse" and "Apple to go bankrupt" predictions, is no closer to actually happening than it was when it was first made.
The surprise was that Intel wanted a chip that had the speed advantages of RISC but used the same interface as their older chips, so they designed one. So they built a chip called the Pentium that translated CISC instructions into RISC ones. Since this operation is essentially O(n), they got good performance, and they've continued that basic design to the present day.
So to answer your question, it's already true that any operations that are not simple are emulated in software -- it's just that in x86 processors the emulation is on the CPU. Today there is no important difference between CISC and RISC, whether we are speaking of mainframes or desktops.
Re:"hope" has nothing to do with it (Score:2, Insightful)
If Apple ever ordered chips from Intel, Intel could overproduce and then if Apple never followed up, Intel could sell the excess to another vendor.
Basically, Intel is designing products for personal computer makers. IBM is designing products for embedded or big-iron makers.
Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't anyone take the announcement at face value? Clearly IBM (and Moto/Freescale) don't want to develop new top-end chips for a small market. Who can blame them?
But Intel is going to build their next generation anyway. Apple's small marketshare is meaningless in this context, they're in a race with AMD for a huge market no matter what else happens.
Let's remember that Intel has been courting Apple for well over a decade now. They're also clearly unhappy with the crappy boxes being offered by their existing vendors. Having Apple onboard making cool products with their systems must be a dream come true -- "See, THIS is what an Intel machine can do".
But no, not enough of a conspiracy in that I suppose.
Re:(Mac == past) && (iPod == future) ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real reasons are obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
If you honestly think that one of the two reasons that apple switched to x86 was so "Dual booting between Mac OSX and Windows" is possible, you're smoking crack.
If that were true then it would mean that Jobs secretly thinks that windows is somehow better than OSX and that it needs to be supported by their hardware in order for Apple to survive.
Comparisons can hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's also about marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
You're talking about the current price differences. The poster of the original comment was saying what might happen with a switch to Intel processors. And this theory (that the switch is to be able to lower the price of Macs) was pushed in a lot of articles about the PowerPC->Intel switch. So the poster's conditional statement is a very valid point.
Re:If they'd gone with AMD... (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM and Freescale also have some PPC chips that are used in embedded systems that could have also worked for the IPod.
The Dell comment does make me think though. I would if it not the server market more than the IPod that is driving the change.
It is very likely that IBM is limiting Apples access to server cpus. Why are there now 4 or 8 cpu Apple servers? Maybe IBM does not want Apple to compete with IBMs Power based servers?
Intel would have no problem with selling Apple any thing they want.
Re:Elements (Score:4, Insightful)
1.) First of all, the article is ancient (Sept 2003).
2.) Second of all, the revolutionary thing promised was 64 bits, which we have today.
3.) Intel is not behind AMD in 64 bit chips. AMD chose a differant design, which sacrificed a lot of transistors for x86 compatibility, limiting the scalability and performance of their chip. It makes sense now, but it further embeds x86 cruft in the market place. Intel was working on 64 bit chips when AMD's main product was making pentium 1 clones.
4.) 90nm wont allow for gigabytes of memory on the die. Cache SRAM takes 6 transistors per bit. There just arent enough transistor now to do it. In addition, regular SDRAM cells take a transistor and a capacitor. They are the same speed, no matter where you put them. Delays from SDRAM sense amps aren't going away, either. I know it's a nice concept, but the L1 / L2 cache structure won't be changing drastically anytime soon.
5.) The last point just doesn't make sense to me. Backing store is normally a fancy word for a hard-drive, which virtual memory uses to store pages that are not in main memory. RAM and system memory are the same thing. All modern operating systems are smart enough not to cache file's in the on-disk memory backing store, because the same data is already located elsewhere on the drive. Why cache the data twice? To extend this concept further, the user can use mmap to map a file into user space as a memory block, and work with the file as if it where a block of memory.
Re:There are more pragmatic reasons for the switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple got pissed off that the PPC was getting very few performance increases compared to the x86, and probably had a poor price/performance ratio. They also would have liked to release a more powerful laptop.
They quietly had OS X running on x86 architecture for years, in case IBM fucked them over, and when they saw that Intel had a decent processor in the pipeline (pun not intentional), and know that AMD already has decent processors, they decided to make the switch.
Re:Elements (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real reasons are obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't mean anyone thinks Windows is better than OSX. It just means that Apple would be delivering the most flexible solution. People used to have to decide between Windows or OSX. Now they will be deciding between a Windows-only machine and a Windows/OSX machine. That makes the Mac a much more attractive solution.
Inside Information? (Score:3, Insightful)
As to Overshoot's comments, no.
The 970 wasn't intended to be a "custom processor chip." Had IBM hit its performance targets, it would have had ample alternative outlets for the 970. The great speculation was that IBM would push its own line of inexpensive 970 based Linux servers. But IBM wasn't up to the task.
And the suggestion that Apple isn't flush with cash? Again, no. Apple's sitting on a mountain of it.
Finally, Apple, no matter how egotistical its corporate culture may be, would never think itself large enough to bully Intel for volume discounts.
No, the reason Apple has switched is because marketing told it to stop fighting the dominate paradigm. When the Macintosh runs on the same base hardware as everyone else, marketing can concentrate on the OS and sundry applications. Sure, Intel *probably* sweetened the offer knowing that Apple's cutting edge design would reflect well on it. And the Apple premium will probably justify selling top of the line chips, forcing Dell and the like to buy premium chips for marketing purposes.
The only thing surprising about the decision to go with Intel is the fact that Apple thinks it technologically and commercially feasible to run on multiple architectures. Once Apple became convinced of their ability to do so, the decision made itself.
Hardware is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
> machines, and they are hard to compare. When the PPC is better,
> people don't believe it. They are either behind in performance or
> MHz/GHz, or something.
I don't believe it either, and it's not "just marketing".
I bought a 17" 1 GHz PowerBook G4 back in April 2003. Then in January 2005, the hard drive failed on that PowerBook, and I didn't have time to deal with it (and I couldn't be without my PowerBook), so I went out and bought a 17" 1.5 GHz PowerBook. A month later, I finally got around to swapping out the hard drive in the first 17" PowerBook, and I gave it to my wife.
My intention was to replace my PowerBook G4 with a PowerBook G5, but to my shock, there wasn't a G5 PowerBook.
When I took home my new PowerBook, it was almost exactly like my previous PowerBook. The first 17" PowerBook G4s were released in January 2003 and in the two years that had elapsed, there was no real difference in performance. In fact, I forgot that I had actually replaced my PowerBook -- that's how similar they were.
Note that while desktop machines are stagnating in sales, laptops are where the growth is. The fact that Apple's flagship portable had basically remained the same for two years is horrible. Contrast this with the changes in operating system. Mac OS X 10.4 is wildly better than the OS that came with my previous PowerBook. So from a software perspective, Apple's doing great. From a hardware perspective, the changes just aren't keeping up.
Ars seems to downplay the fact that IBM missed their 3 GHz target for the G5. More than that, they missed the laptop ready version of the G5, which some could argue is even more serious. People seem to want to blame Jobs or Apple's arrogance, but the point is, IBM hasn't been delivering. Results matter, and Apple's hardware is falling behind. Jobs is a smart guy to say, "we can't keep doing this" and he found a solution in Intel. I say, good for him. Now give me a laptop where two years of progress is noticeable.
Re:Elements (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for Intel, multi-year schedule slips and disappointing real-world performance results make that irrelevant. Starting earlier to develop something doesn't matter if the results of your efforts turn out to suck.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend of mine and I were talking and he came up with this:
If you could spend just a little more on a machine and get one that would run OSX and Windows vs. the cheaper one and just run Windows, which would you get? We talked and came up with stuff like this:
$0: no brainer, sure get the OSX-able one
$100: probably get the one that runs OSX
$200: probably not get the OSX one
As you say, the Mac faithful will buy whatever Steve puts out for them to buy. However, some of the Windows folks might just shell out a little more to get the option (even if never used) to be able to run OSX... if the price difference is reasonable enough. I think Apple will gain by switching to Intel parts, even if the performance is comparable, it just allows a wider market easier access to Macs and OSX.
Re:The real reason... IBM can't get 90nm together (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't dismiss your post, but I swallow it with a very large grain of salt.
Did Apple dump IBM, or did IBM dump Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)
Limited fab capacity? Check
Huge orders coming in from next generation console manufacturers? Check
Struggling to meet future demand, IBM had to choose between Apple and console manufacturers. IBM chose the latter.
just my 2cp, of course
XBOX360, PS3, Revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong about success (Score:3, Insightful)
Businesses care (should care) about the net present value of business decisions.
If you can establish a monopoly in say, 5 years, like MS did going from 3.1 -> 95, then it is okay to make "okay" profits or even losses for 5 years because the NPV of a 10+ year monopoly is HUGE. Otherwise, market-share is IRRELEVANT, because it doesn't get you monopoly rents.
Job's doesn't win/lose based on market-share.
He wins/loses based upon the NPV of future cash flows based upon his current decisions, which will effect Apple's long term financial outlook and whether he has returned an adequate return to his investors based upon the estimated Risk premium of Apple's business.
Right now, based upon Wallstreet's evaluations, he has returned a terrific ROI to shareholders from the time he joined Apple. However, now Wallstreet pays more for a dollar of Apple's earnings, so to maintain that ROI, he needs to increase his cash flow faster to make an investor in 2005 happy.
He doesn't fail if market-share is 5%, he fails if he fails to make an adequate return to his investors.
Alex
Re:Options? (Score:3, Insightful)
Only to a slashdotter does it make sense to buy a nice Apple computer so that it can run non-Mac programs and other operating systems like you can on a cheap PC.
To other people, Apples are nice because they have a mature robust operating system thats integrated with top of the line hardware and applications to match.
Case in point, recently I hooked my powerbook up to my iMac with a single ethernet cable (not a crossover cable, no switch or whatever) and transfered 50 Gigs of data in about 1/2 an hour over a gigabit connection that took me less than a minute to set up. Its hard to believe that in 2005 that only Apple has thought of making something so useful and trivial both possible and easy to do. To my knowledge, this is not even possible on any other equipment without 1st having a gigabit switch lying around, or take an order of magnitude hit in performance with a 100mbit switch, and 2 ethernet cables, and then trying to coerce the OS to share over the newly established link (probably accompanied by a few reboots if using Windows).
So do I wish I had BSD, Linux or Windows on any of my Macs? Nope.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:5, Insightful)
High end PPCs are used in a lot of places, but not in significant volume (when compared to a Pentium).
I don't see why anyone cares what hardware is under the hood in an apple, no one uses an Apple because it has a PPC. They use it because Apple owns & supports the entire system and the OS is good.
I call bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? What pocket universe have you been living in? One of Apple watchers' biggest complaints about APPL is that they have been sitting on a tremendous amount of cash for years, when they could have spent some of it to shore up their market position in many, many different ways. I argue that one of the biggest mistakes Apple made was not buying Netscape before Sun and AOL divided and conquered it, or CS&T/Steltor before Oracle subsumed it. Think of where Apple might be today if we had an improved Netscape SuiteSpot running on Mac OS X. What if Apple spent some of those billions in cash developing a successot to the Apple Network Servers to run the above server software? Wouldn't you like to see a product that could absolutely destroy Microsoft Exchange using Internet Standard protocols?
And, speaking of Oracle, how many years did Larry Ellison sit on Apple's board without producing an Oracle server for an Apple platform? But, I digress..
Motorola in particular, has written off hundreds of millions of dollars in losses caused directly by the erratic actions of Apple Computer
Umm, how about..."Motorola in particular, has written off billions of dollars in losses caused directly by the erratic actions of Motorola? Hey, let's just completely ignore MOT's complete mishandling of the entire PowerPC agreement/concept. We weren't stuck at 500MHz because of Apple--it was MOT's inability to make a gracful transition to a new process line that caused *that*. Not to mention Motorola switching all internal operations machines to WinTel and ditching *their own product* in favor of a competitors?
And how, exactly is the example of one of IBM's "regular" customers in any way relevant to Apple? You may have forgotten that Apple *owns*, at least partially, the PowerPC IP, not to mention the fact that *no other manufacturer* uses PowerPC in a general purpose computing application, other than Apple and IBM, themselves. Yes, IBM has "other customers", but none of these have the same needs or relationship with IBM that Apple has. IBM is doing as much damage to their own product line by not moving the Power and PowerPC lines forward as aggressively as possible, unless of course IBM intends to pawn off their workstation, mini, and mainframe lines to China, as well...
The bottom line is, no matter how much Hannibal would like to wish it otherwise, IBM screwed up royally, and in the process, screwed Apple and Steve Jobs. You may want to go back and read my Slashdot post from 2005-04-15 to see my evaluation of the possibility of Apple moving to Intel (which , I may add, was well before any speculation/rumors on the part of C|Net or the WSJ).
May I direct you to http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146200&c id=12245408 [slashdot.org] ?
And I quote:
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I think IBM had the ability to produce chips that were what Apple wanted in terms of power (as the article points out - the newer batch of PowerPC chips are more like what they want).
What does Intel have that IBM didn't? Better support for DRM type stuff in the processor. From http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,1 2449,1504558,00.html [guardian.co.uk]
Here's my theory. Steve Jobs has a long-term goal to position Apple as 'the' online media company. He already dominates the online music business with the iTunes/iPod combination. Now he wants to repeat the trick with online movies.
But Hollywood studios won't do a deal with him because they are worried about piracy. They want a platform with rock-solid 'digital rights management' (DRM) built in. And it just so happens that Intel has been moving technical mountains to build strong DRM into its processor architecture, whereas IBM doesn't see it as a priority.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a few who care. And the likelihood that a random Mac user who also frequents /. cares about the CPU should be much, Much, MUCH higher than that of the total population (of Mac users =)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand the advantage... (Score:3, Insightful)
So Apple, thinking Intel would languish in their fat and happy X86 monopoly and X86 architecture difficulties, made the move to Power. It was fast and it had the backing of IBM.
What changed? Why didn't that hold up? AMD.
Prior to Athlon, Intel was on a fairly steady schedule of speed upgrades. You get a few 33's of Mhz every once and a while. They could take their time. Speed bumps were about money, not a race. When Athlon hit and Intel suddenly found themselves behind in the speed race with a processor that could run the same software, Windows, then their attitude shifted drasticly. From the 500Mhz intorduction of Athlon straight through to the 3+Ghz finalies. It was a rapid race to the top of the speed charts. Without that competition, I doubt Intel would have reached 3 Ghz by now.
That speed race also introduced enough new designs to overcome some of the advantages the RISC architectures had, either through redesigning the internal pipelining, or through material design and pure Mhz maddness that other less cash rich chip makers simply could not keep up with. So Intel caught up with PowerPC in the speed race and is in a position to provide cheaper prices to Apple. With the performance advantage gone, so is the incentave to go with something other than Intel.
AMD improved Intel enough to make them competative with all the RISC out there. They should thank AMD for the boost. Somehow I doubt they would be gracious enough to do it though.
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:2, Insightful)
Every incremental advance Apple makes in interface or capabilities for their media devices can only stay a true advantage for 5 to 6 months before some company hacks a piss-poor mass-marketable approximation.
One way they can again leap ahead of the competition is to introduce a complete system for video instead of a gradual release of supporting products.
If apple can integrate DRM into a MythTV style family mac to satisfy content providers, produce a vPod and begin offering H.264 video content on the iTunes "Media" Store, they will have a fully integrated solution available for the public at least a year before anyone could compete directly with them.
That would mean a rise in hardware sales, a tighter grip over portable media content sales, and a glut of leverageable IP patents for future licensing.
Gross speculation? Of course, but is it possible? Certainly.
Or... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Inside Information? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasoning put forth in the article that Apple was too demanding doesn't hold when you consider IBM's "Power Everwhere" strategy. The parent poster is right -- IBM could've pushed the 970 into other markets, but they failed to reach 3 Ghz and couldn't sell it. Calling it a custom job for Apple after the fact is just sour grapes.
IBM can whine, but they used Apple to catapult themselves to the top of the list for custom processors for things like the XBox and the PS3. Once they had those contracts, Apple was a fish they could throw back. Bait, if you will. Meanwhile, the XBox 360 is water-cooled, and the Cell chip that powers the PS3 is not a viable desktop processor.
And let's not forget that the PPC970FX is horribly underpowered. Clock-for-clock, the G5 is shows no major real-world performance improvement over the G4. The main reason the G5 is so great is that it hits clock speeds up to 2.7 Ghz. The G4 is a full 1 Ghz behind. But the 970FX, IBM's "low-power" chip, is clocked even lower than the current G4, and its power consumption is STILL higher than the Pentium M. Meanwhile there are new G4 chips out NOW that reduce power requirements even more drastically.
The only thing the 970FX brings to the table is 64-bit compatibility, which is only necessary if you have more than 2 GB of RAM -- not a likely prospect in a laptop. The fact of the matter is that IBM's "low-power" offering is the weakest of all major chip manufacturers. Even Freescale is ahead of them. Intel is just plain out of their league.
With that in mind, Apple's reasons for moving to Intel were exactly as they stated -- better performance per watt. IBM couldn't hit the goal, pulled the plug, and is now trying to blame Apple for the fallout in order to save face with other clients.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
The elephant in the bedroom that everyone ignores (Score:5, Insightful)
Put more bluntly, Apple is switching to Intel so that Wine and VirtualPC/VMWare will work at full speed. Right now, I know many many people who would switch to a Mac in an instant, except they need some small, vertical application that only runs on Windows. By switching to Intel, Apple gets the opportunity to build Windows compatibility into their OS (using WINE code, customised) and capitalize on that market.
I'm not looking for this to be good enough to kill the market for native Mac apps (let's face it: emulating Windows is hard)--just good enough to let me continue using the 2-3 windows applications that I absolutely must have to do my business.
I can tell you this: the instant an Intel-based powerbook is available, I will be buying it so that I can run Windows in VMWare (or equivalent software) and get rid of my Windows laptop at long last. It's a convenience thing.
Crap, crap, crap...and more crap (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm sure Intel chips will cost Apple less than the IBM chips, and could lower their costs, this wasn't about price. This was about saving Apple from death in the PC business.
Fact: despite the early promise of PowerPC, Intel's offerings are beating the dog shit out of that line. There's no comparison in performace. Yes, PPC does more work per clock cycle, but they're so far behind in terms of clock speed that it doesn't matter. There is no megahertz myth here. Clock speeds DO matter. And no one making PPC chips, Freescale nor the mighty IBM, can keep up with Intel. For PCs, Intel is the king . AMD makes some better desktop offerings, has some better prices, but doesn't have Intel's product range, especially in laptops.
Make no mistake...while OSX is the best PC operating system on the market, the supporting hardware was starting to suck. Compared to the PC world, most of Apple's offerings were stuck in late-90's levels of hardware performance, while charging a premium price. Is it any wonder that some anaylists were predicting a drop of Apple's market share to around 1.5 percent by 2008?
Apple did this so they could be a viable competitor. That's it. Intel has better chips, especially for portables. No one makes anything as good as the Pentium M for laptops. Not AMD. And certainly not IBM. Big Blue was never going to get a G5 into a Powerbook anytime soon. And when they did, it would still lag performance-wise (especially in battery usage) compared to it's Intel rivals.
Apple cannot survive at their present size on Ipods alone. This was a cold, calculated decision by Jobs and Co. to get competitive again. You can now take off those foil hats.
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:2, Insightful)
The only company that could touch the PSP is Nintendo and even that is in question, due to their Sega-esque "3 headed monster" portable offerings of the Advance, DS, and advance successor.
Microsoft could buy their way in, but they want your living room, not your backpack....but I digress.
Re:This is my experience with Apple MACs (Score:3, Insightful)
Goddamn, buddy, your coworker is just a moron who you didn't train enough.
This isn't Apple's fault. They don't cause trouble. Instead, your utter lack of training of the staff caused it.
How much productivity would've been lost if you had a two-hour basic training session for members of your staff? Not much, and it would've saved lots of trouble.
Jesus Christ, don't blame Apple for your shortcomings.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:4, Insightful)
well the truth is schools is a misconseption. the install base for Dell in schools is MUCH lower than they claim
Do you have data to back this claim up?
their turnaround rate though is much higher which is why they can claim they sell to more schools, BUT in truth there are almost the same number of computers as before, they just replaced their 1.5-2 year old Dells which crap out extreamly fast in a school enviroment, sometimes within a year (thank god for service plans)
I'm a network admin in a school, and we still have Dell's from 1999 kicking around. They're being replaced this year due to speed, other than that they're fine. Even the hard drives are still good. My experience with Dell equipment is that they're well built cheap machines that last. I am, of course, talking about their business line (Optiplexes). I wouldn't put Dimensions in a school (or any other large network) because they're not designed to handle that level of abuse or management.
Macs on the otherhand last a MUCH longer time. Up untill 2 years ago I still had fully used and working 5500s in some of our buildings in some labs. We still have at least 200-300 1st gen iMacs and infact barely ever buy macs, even though our install base is over 1500. They barely break and are easily repaired and do everything they need to do so why replace them. The only time we ever actually replace them is either cause the CRT goes out, or the motherboard dies. harddrive and optical drive problems are easily repaired by ordering parts even on iMacs.
My experience is that hardware-wise, Mac's last just as long as PCs. Software-wise is a different story. We're usually pushed to upgrade our PCs sooner due to newer software and OSes that slow them down. Mac's don't seem to have this problem, which is nice.
I'm not trying to argue against Mac's here, just dispell some Windows FUD that is so prevalent on Slashdot. I'm writing this from my 15" Powerbook, so I'm obviously an Apple fan. Additionally, at this point I can't see any logical reason for recommended PCs over Macs at schools these days, especially in an already mixed or a brand new environment. OS X clients and OS X server are like Oreo's and Milk, way better than anything from Redmond. But, if I could run OS X on Dell hardware, I wouldn't think twice about doing it.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:1, Insightful)
When Dell says they might switch to AMD, Intel probably shudders...if Apple said it, they'd probably laugh.
I wouldn't go that far. While I doubt that Apple would ever buy as many chips as Dell would, Apple is a major player in the computer field. Pulling Apple away from a major competitor like IBM would be a big feather in Intels cap for marketing purposes.
BUT.... (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but rock bottom price wasn't the goal here.
1- Apple wanted not only better chip prices, but better laptop chips. While AMD arguably has better desktop processors, they have nothing that can compete with the Pentium M in terms of performance and battery life. And the Powerbook is what drove this change, not the desktop stuff.
2- Steve Jobs is a label whore, marketing gear to the label whore public. In his mind, Intel = Levi's, while AMD = Wrangler. Good jeans, those Wranglers, but only those low class Wal Mart rednecks wear them. It just wouldn't do to put those low cost AMDs into an Apple.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, why are you tied to a hardware architecture? Is it because you truly believe it is vastly superior enough that you are willing to tolerate vendor lock-in? Or is it because you hate Intel?
If it's the former, educate me. What about the apple architecture is so superior that it's worth locking in to? Why is the IBM architecture, although not as ideal, still so preferable as to want to lock-in?
If it's just hating Intel, I'd suggest that is the wrong attitude. We can distrust Intel, but tolerate them as long as there is AMD. We ought to similarly distrust IBM, but tolerate them as long as there is Motorola(Freescale?). Locking in everything to one vendor is in all cases the wrong thing to do, unless whatever that vendor offers is so incredibly superior, that it's just impractical to consider anyone else.
I have seen no evidence that the Apple architecture is supremely better. It is better from a customer support standpoint, and always will be. It is inferior from a price standpoint, and for the same reason, always will be. I don't see the Apple architecture suffering even one bit from using a Pentium instead of a PowerPC.
Re:I call bullshit. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not a reactionary to all things not positive to Apple--but this seemed to be a total miss on what is usually technically astute reporting by Ars Technica.
One glaring issue that struck me (and I am not a CPU compiler professional; IANCCP), is that Apple was deliberately sacrificing speed for size by compiling for size. Wow. What kind of conspiracy would make that one profitable? More than likely, with the size of cache and the size of RISC instructions (and more so in 64 bit), size is more important to speed because it means you are less often having to read code from a disk. But, what, if anything has this to do with Steve Jobs moving from IBM because of a tantrum?
Why wouldn't Apple want to have leverage? And, if you can't have leverage, at least know that the company you are with is going the same direction. But now IBM is distracted by games and blades the way Motorola was distracted with cell phones and embedded system. I think Steve learns from his mistakes and he saw that after IBM had Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft-- Apple would not be getting as much service. So I totally agree with the previous post here from "amper". But I think that Steve's ego was less of an issue than what he thought was best for Apple's future (Steve is directed towards his legacy-- I think his poor temper towards fools gets mixed up with arrogance a bit). I would just like to add that it isn't just about costs or laptops or future performance--it's about all those things and probably about things that Ars Technica and the readers of Slashdot can only speculate about. Intel may not make the absolute best chip at every time of the year, but Apple will get to save so much in all the components that make up a motherboard. They can spend more time coming up with great software, and yes, a nice curvy case. From a marketing perspective, it gets rid of distracting issues of price versus performance (which most can't really understand anyway) and let's Apple compete based on a better computing experience.
But I don't think Intel is all a Panacea. There is a real issue with how Apple will make Windows applications compatible while still getting developers to make applications "Intel/Mac" compatible and not just "emulator" compatible.
But, I think that Jobs is smarter than that. He is looking at Cell phones and entertainment integration, and realizing that "Device compatible" will be more important to most home users than "Windows Compatible". So my guess is, that Steve will allow Windows applications to play, but only Mac compatible will get to work with iTunes, the set-top box and your cell phone. Steve has given up fighting for yesterday because he has confidence in innovation. I also think that is a win/win for people who stay with the Apple platform. I don't want to have headaches with Win/Tel just to ensure a profit margin.
IBM is not sitting still--I still think that their upcoming dual core will be a best of class CPU--but I'd be pretty worried if Apple were not involved in WiMax.I'd also like to know if the CELL chip will live up to hype and what it will be compatible with.
On a related note, did everyone know that Steve Jobs and Wozniak started by hacking set-top boxes? Follow the patents people.
Re:Article Text (Score:1, Insightful)
The reduction in memory consumption can also be a performance win on constrained systems. If you're already fighting for space (which OS X typically is on the more modest Macs) having a global optimization for space can be a win in user-visible performance as less is pushed into a pagefile on disk. On slower disks like you find in Apple laptops and Mac Minis--which also have little memory by default--that might translate into a nontrivial performance gain.
Let us also keep in mind that GCC isn't particularly well-optimized for any member of the PPC family. It's entirely possible that Apple has found that optimizing for size is the biggest win for them overall, due to the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph, or because of an increase in bugs, or for other reasons. There are also situations where attempting to micro-optimize software isn't any sort of real win, because the algorithms or datastructures being used far outway any benefit. Take for instance anything that relies on Cocoa on OS X. Objective-C message dispatch is slow, because it's implemented using splay lists, hashed strings, and a lot of indirection. Unrolling a loop that sends messages to objects in Objective-C is probably not frequently going to be a win, because the dispatch overhead makes the loop unimportant. The only optimization that would be a big win here, would be to have a JIT compiler create a specialized loop where the dynamic dispatch mechanism of Objective-C is unnecessary. Then aggressive unrolling might be helpful. It might also not be.
I could probably give you a lot of further commentary if you wanted, but I don't know for certain what Apple has determined to be a performance win for their platform. I can really only give you hypotheses grounded in some technical expertise.
Trolling turned on it's ear! News at 11! (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps we are talking about hardware that ships with only one mouse button, apparently under the assumption that their developers are smart enough to create an intuitive UI that doesn't require two or three. However, if you feel inclined to use two or three, you still can - and the functionality is even there out of the box.
They seem to be doing a pretty good job of it, too. Unlike you.
Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
SGI tried this. They built Windows NT PCs [designnews.com], in attractive custom cases, with workstation-derived interconnects and graphics. Basically all the hardware advantages of an SGI workstation with the software base of a Windows OS.
Sounds great, right?
Not only did they flop in the market, but it basically destroyed SGI. The PC people thought they were too expensive compared to Dells, and the SGI-IRIX loyalists felt abandoned.
Re:Apple v. Dell?1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice AMD bias.
On one of these tests (http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050627/athlon_f x57-07.html [tomshardware.com], http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050627/athlon_fx 57-08.html [tomshardware.com]), encoding lame mp3, the P4 came out on top of the A64 FX-67. On five others, encoding mpeg1 to mpeg2,
The $1042 A64 X2 4800+ [tomshardware.com] tied the $544 Pentium D 840 [tomshardware.com] (1:17 vs 1:18). In single-core performance, the $610 P4 660 [tomshardware.com] beat the $1101 A64 FX-57 [tomshardware.com] (1:35 to 1:44).
mpeg2 to divx,...
Results were very similar to above, except the $1042 AMD dual-core beat the $544 Intel dual-core 3:30 to 3:44, and AMD's $1101 single-core tied Intel's $610 single-core (4:58 to 4:56).
Hardly.
The comment [slashdot.org] you called a "troll" admits that he thinks AMD64 beats Intel EM64T in everything except multimedia encoding. At worst, he might have a reasonable misconception. He is not a troll.
Re:The elephant in the bedroom that everyone ignor (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because it'll go one of two ways:
- Wine will continue to be what is has been on Linux - useful for certain (commodity) apps that stick with the documented, well-established APIs, but melts down in ugly ways with apps that make liberal use of the many poorly (if at all) documented APIs in Win32. Apple won't go for this, because it _must_ "just work".
- Apple expends huge amounts of work into eking out all those undocumented API hooks, and makes Wine work flawlessly. Well, that's great - they've now entirely obviated the need for OS X ports of their apps. All major developers will say "wow, we can write/build for Windows, and get perfectly working software on OS X as well? Gee, no more Apple specific builds! Saves us a bundle! Let's snort some more coke off this hooker's ass!" (Okay, they probably won't say that last part. Maybe not. Okay, they might...)
Either way, it's not going to happen. Either scenario. Because whatever else you can say about Steve Jobs, he does have a sense of self-preservation, and I don't think it would fail him in this case - he'd see what a huge blunder that would be and declare "That's the dumbest suggestion I've heard all month. We're not doing it. Not only that, whoever suggested it, and anyone that supports it, is fired." (Again, he might not say that last part, but who knows.)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think that Apple will purposely want to cripple their OSX? Have they not always designed their hardware and software as a unit, regardless of the different chips they used over the years? Why should they design their products now with any other consideration besides building a reliable over all system? If that means the OS and hardware are tailored for each other as before, it is highly likely that the software will not run on an existing generic white box x86. A processor alone is still a long ways from a complete integrated computer system, encompassing all aspects, including all sofware. Apple will certainly not supply all the software for a million different PC designs, as Microsoft does now. They are also not very likely to release a set of specs to computer makers, detailing exactly what is needed to make an OSX compatible box.
I suspect that some very highly skilled geeks, such as those populating
Windows in business (Score:3, Insightful)
for business a Windows machine is usually required because much special software for business only works with that OS
They said it had to be Windows, but they didn't say it had to be on a PC ;-) As it is now, and has been for many uears, you can run Windows on a Mac along with all the software you'd normally run in Windows. However you can't run MacOS or Mac software on a PC in Windows though you can software ported to Windows. With Macs you have both Mac and Windows, with Windows you only have Windows.
FalconRe:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt Sony (ahem, Columbia) Pictures gives a frak about what the rest of Sony does. The only strategic thing they've done for Sony Corporate lately was agree to issue their movies on the UMD format for the PSP. Before that, Sony Pictures supported DVD exclusively (and refused to license their films to Circuit City's DIVX joke-of-a-platform) and also agreed to provide content for Sony's mini-Beta (I forget the brand) portable video players. Video-8. That's what it was.
Of course, you can count on Sony Pictures not licensing any content to HD-DVD and will exclusively support Blu-Ray.
Music wise, Sony Connect doesn't seem to have that many more exclusive cuts available versus iTunes. Although that could be due to the influence of BMG, since they co-own Sony BMG Music. I noticed one exclusive track of The Killers that was available on Sony Connect and not iTunes, which did piss me off since I am a fan and got the rest of their music courtesy of Pepsi/Mountain Dew and their iTunes promotion.
Sony Corporate probably wouldn't care about an Apple iMovie/iTunes Movie Download service as long as their was a plug about viewing the movies in the living room on Sony LCD televisions...
Re:And you are *still* wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I tap out "Shave and a haircut" does it emulate a third button?
Oops, except "Open in new tab" is right there in the menu. You still don't know what you are talking about.
Tools seem inelegant to those who know not how to use them.
I'm not saying that the OS should be designed so you HAVE To use a command line, just give me the option. Do you have any idea how much easier it is to administer even a Windows server with Secure Shell instead of Terminal Services, VNC or PC Anywhere?
Yes, I do know, because I do it daily on the AIX, Mac OS X, and Linux servers that I administer at work... from my Mac, using SSH. Built in. Instead of third-party installed. Like Windows. You still don't know what you're talking about.
How about copying Tetrabytes of data from one server to another, which I have to do on a regular basis as part of my job? If you use a GUI, you have a lot of waiting around. The command line tools for moving data around are far more flexible. If I need to copy just the 900 GB that's been added since the last update, I can do that with a single command line in Windows or Linux. Until Mac was built on top of a decent operating system (BSD) and had a decent command line, the kind of data transfers I have to do would require hours of work by hand, third party applications or applescript.
I don't know what a "tetrabyte" is, but I'm really not interested in talking about the six-year-old Mac OS 9, which is what your entire experience seems to be predicated on. Go ahead and go back to Windows 98 and tell me how easy administration is, cause that's what you're doing here. This is a complete non-sequitur filibuster.
I'm sorry, but if you honestly think a command line is a bad idea, then you've already demonstrated that you don't do a lot of the things that require more advanced tools.
The dumbed down Apple interfaces are good enough for you. Glad to hear it. You shouldn't have to learn to program to use your computer. Apple makes a nice entry level computer, and it can do a lot of the things that most computer need.
But a Mac would be a pathetic joke for my line of work. It's less of a joke now that it's Unix based, but there's a lot of NeXt crap that needs to go before it's worth my time, and a lot of things that just can't be cone from a command line.
I do plenty on the command line, and I'm glad it's there. However, I'm also smart enough to realize there is value in having an OS that doesn't require it. This seems to be the point you are missing.
Yeah, I guess it would be a pathetic joke to have a system that talks to everything easily, without having to jerk around with it constantly. I sure have a hard time filling my day up without having to reinstall drivers, clean spyware, check for viruses, and pray that I won't have to reinstall Windows.
I work on windows, but I can work *with* my PowerBook.
Knowing how to do various things from the command line is a great benefit. Even when you have to use Terminal Services, it's generally a hell of a lot faster to log in, open a command prompt, and do what you need to do as opposed to opening a window, waiting 30 seconds, opening another window, waiting 30 seconds and so on for ten minutes just to get to an interface to check a setting.
Hmm, maybe this is why on Mac OS X you can type in ">console" at the login prompt, which drops you to a text console to do everything you're talking about? Oh, I guess you still don't know what you're talking about.
I'm sorry you're upset by my having seen your toy computer for what it is, but to tell the simple truth, it's clear you just don't have computing needs that are sufficiently advanced to encounter many of the brain dead ways in which Max is castrated. You're also so brain washed by the Mac marketing machine and the "cult of Mac" that you can't examine your OS objectively.
While you can call me all the names you want, it still doesn't change the fact that you are not playing with a full deck of cards. I say again, try to know something about a subject before talking about it.
Have a day.
Re:Apple v. Dell?1 (Score:2, Insightful)
What are you talking about, copying implementations? They license Intel's proprietary instruction sets, they didn't COPY them. They are paying Intel to have them. And having them is important for compatibility reasons. EM64T is also licensed by Intel from AMD. Nobody is stealing or copying anything.
Did you even read the complaint against Intel? They have been using anti-competitive methods to keep OEMs pumping out more Intel and less AMD. They have even gone so far as to threaten company heads that were going to attend the Athlon64 launch parties.
Actually I must ask if you even understand what anti-competitive behavior is. Intel releasing the Pentium M, a cooler and potentially faster chip, is perfectly acceptable. AMD did it with the Athlon64, after all. Selling new and advanced technology that you developed is how those companies function. If the Pentium M just happens to be better than Athlon's offering at the time, that doesn't mean it's anticompetitive.