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)
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
Re:Apple v. Dell?1 (Score:5, Informative)
So what's this about "any" P4 vs A64 tests that show that P4s are superior in audio & video compression?
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's face it, Intel would love to be associated with a company that seems to have a touch of genius in marketing and design.
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.
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 =)
PPC matters to some (Score:3, Interesting)
That isn't strictly true. There are tons of people, myself included (to my shame), who find alternative technologies attractive. I mean, let's face it, Windows _would_ let me do everything I need to, but I use Linux because of basically irrelevant technological advantages it has. The same goes with PPC. Sure, it might not *really* matter, but PPC is sexy, PPC is "cool," and PPC is a selling point for Apple machines.
To be quite honest, I think OS X is the wors
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
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, really, without getting into all the greeblies of X86 vs. PPC CPU design, at a primal level I can probably best characterise my preference that I'm drawn to purposeful design over attrition. That's not to knock X86 performance, and that's not to say that PPC is by any means perfect, but they're driven by different design philosophies (and different strengths) and I find the Power architecture to be a much more elegant expression of deliberate intent than X86's design-by-attrition: for e
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, this was in 1997 and she's comparing her 11 year old Mac to a brand new Windows box and thinking that is a fair comparison.
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:3, Interesting)
Not even close.... yet.Apple has about 3% of the world's PC market and Dell has about 18% of the world's PC market. [cnn.com]
Apple is probably counting on this deal to increase their volume of sales considerably.
Reasons:
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who is OS agnostic, dislikes M$ but doesn't feel Linux can replace Windows completely any time soon due to lack of software (no flames please, I'm talking about Photoshop, Avid, After Effects etc), I'd love to have OS X as my system (especially since I love BSD).
However, Macs are terribly expensive. I think that's mainly what has been keeping them at 3% of the market.
If they can lower their prices (which I'm sure had something to do with the decision to switch), and I can run Windows, Linux and OSX natively on the same hardware, I'm switching - simple as that.
In fact, I'm sticking with my AMD64 for a little while longer until Apple announces their prices... then I'll decide.
If their prices come down enough to warrant a switch, I'll switch. Having been a PC guy for 20 years, that's big - and if even 10% of the market thinks like I do, Apple's market share can easily quadruple in a year. Now, that should be incentive enough for Apple.
Re:Apple v. Dell? (Score:4, Informative)
ARM = lots of things (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ARM = lots of things (Score:5, Informative)
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:Apple v. Dell? (Score:3, Insightful)
interesting take on ipod centric-business planning (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd worry about putting all my eggs in one basket, but I suppose as far as baskets go, intel is a relatively safe bet overall.
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:5, Funny)
Whatever the plan, we need new terms. (Score:5, Funny)
Then some competitors came along and the non-Intel processors running Windows carved out a large enough market share to justify splitting the terms off into ChipZilla and Wintendo.
Now, we have MAC going Intel. What the HELL do we call this?
MacTel?
Intelmac?
Apptel?
Intenapple?
What terms can we use now???
Re:Whatever the plan, we need new terms. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:5, Funny)
With all the horseshit I've seen on this topic, I knew there had to be a pony around here somewhere.
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:5, Interesting)
What might be a killer app to design a video iPod around is the DV (or HD) camcorder. Clip your iSight onto your iPod. Now you have a camcorder that's smaller than any other on the market and records approximately forever, strait to hard disk, no messing with tapes. Maybe in H264. I think that's what a "video ipod" is going to be.
Have and iPod Video and want an HD camcorder? It'll cost a heck of a lot less than buying a DV camcorder, all you need is the iSight, which, by the way, you can still use as a webcam. Want to upgrade to an HD camcorder? Instead of giving Sony another $1000 to replace your DV camcorder with HD, pay Apple a quarter as much for their new HD iSight and plug it into your existing iPod Video.
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree with most of your sentiment, if you flip your argument, Sony should have deep enough pockets to beat Apple in the MP3 player market. They have deep pockets, but they've done jack to dethrone Apple. Sony has deep enough pockets to make Sony Connect successful, but they haven't. Sony has deep enough pockets to make MemoryStick to become successful, but they haven't.
Substituting the name Microsoft into such an argument also is noteworthy. Microsoft has enough cash to make anything successful, but it hasn't worked. The Xbox would be dead if it were not for the Xbox Live system and Halo. Using your argument about developer relationships, Microsoft should be #1 in videogames considering their relationships with the game developers and the fact that the Xbox is easier to program than the Playstation2. But reality paints a different picture.
"End of story: Apple can't kill the PSP."
Apple doesn't have to kill the PSP because Nintendo will do the job just like it has done to every other handheld competitor. The PSP is awesome, but it is the 2005 version of the Atari Lynx, which judging from my user name, you should conclude that I am very fond of. Twenty + year olds are buying PSPs, not the kids nor are the parents buying them for the kids...just like with the Atari Lynx 16 years ago. The kids still get the Gameboys. All Apple has to do is add videogame functionality and better movie playback to a video iPod and it would split the demographic that the PSP appeals to. Even more so when the Video iPod is coupled with an Apple online movie store which would demolish the Sony UMD market for PSP movies.
The games would just have to be nice. Couple that with Apple's "cool" factor and its advertising campaign, and the Sony PSP would be toast. Having the absolute best technology in the handheld gaming area has never led to success. Otherwise, the Atari Lynx would've won out over the Gameboy. And the Gameboy did not have great third party support when it debuted. Its success was due to its low price, the leveraging of Super Mario Bros. on the machine, and the fact that Nintendo had a larger production run and better distribution than Atari with the Lynx. Third party title strength came later.
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:5, Funny)
Re:interesting take on ipod centric-business plann (Score:4, Funny)
If they'd gone with AMD... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If they'd gone with AMD... (Score:5, Funny)
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:If they'd gone with AMD... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Elements (Score:5, Funny)
There are more pragmatic reasons for the switch (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple did everything ti could to kill the old architecture. What better way to force people to upgrade to OS X software than make it impossible to run "Classic Mode" applications without the performance hit from running a PPC emulator on Intel?
And think about this, IBM is a major force behind Linux. What's an OS that's a threat to Apple? Gee, you think the FREE Unix based OS with the most momentum could be a threat? In which case, why on Earth would they want to pay money to IB
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.
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:DRM (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't be serious. IBM doesn't care about DRM because nobody has asked for it. If Apple wanted DRM they would simply ask IBM to include in into their CPU and it would be done. Another option would be to include it in the G5 chipset that Apple already designs. If Apple wanted hardware DRM they would already have it.
Re:There are more pragmatic reasons for the switch (Score:3, Informative)
You can purchase a spare parts kit. In essence, it's an extra copy of all the components that could possibly fail. Between this and a call to tech support, I could have a server running in a few minutes. If I use a part, they ship me a new one.
Dell doesn't even sell spare logic boards. The last time we called for hardware support, the instructions they gave would have erased our RAID array. This for a simple diagnostic. The mac equipment will TEL
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: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:Elements (Score:3, Interesting)
As has been said in previous replys to your post, it's obvious that intel (altough keeping it's position as a player on the microprocessor ground) it's really falling behind competitors, such as IBM itself and obviously AMD, wich has demostrated recently that can do more than just "cloning" PI's or PII's
It makes me wonder why Apple didn't choose AMD, we all know that in terms of price AMD is also winning, and could pretty much kill Intel in the foreseeable future.
New players come in
It's also about marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
This lets a comparison with Dell/HP be VERY clear.
If the Apple hardware is $100-$200 more than a Dell, it is a straightforward question, is it worth this premium to get OS X. It makes for a straightforward comparison. In addition, if Apple's manfuacturing gets better (and they grow their share from the #8 player in the PC space to #3/#4, which is probably around a 10% market-share), then they can price equally to PC players and STILL make good margins, because they don't have to pay MS their fee.
Forget JUST the processor difference, they can really enter a straight competition with a minor price premium for a superior system... Plus, if Microsoft stumbles and looks vulnerable, they can compete in the OS market.
Also, think about Government/Corporate contracts. Someone can write an RFP: runs Linux + random software that is x86 only... or runs Office XP... Since the Apple can, they can now compete for that contract.
Lots of good things for Apple, and some minor fears for those of us suffering the transition. (I have in-house Cocoa apps that will now need to be QA'd on two platforms, even if development is "click a button.")
Alex
Funny - IBM is to Apple as Intel is to Dell... (Score:5, Interesting)
But look at it this way. Intel knows that Dell secretly fears Apple in it's space. What this is REALLY all about is Intel getting more leverage. I can just hear it...
INTEL: "Oh? What's this Dell? You want to use AMD? Ok, then I guess you won't need this advertising spiff more than Apple will..."
Intel is the real winner in this scenario, not Apple, although I have no doubt that Apple will thrive regardless.
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:Hardware is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
This is unlike the situation two years ago when I upgraded from a Win 98 / PIII / 15" XVGA laptop to my current XP / 3 GHZ P4
Re:It's also about marketing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's also about marketing (Score:3)
Only if you write exclusively in assembly code and you don't use the GUI, in which case you're not likely to sell many copies to Mac users anyway.
Computing has changed since the 4502 days... you're writing to an OS, not an architecture, unless you're writing the aforementioned ultra low level code. You can write cross
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.
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 o
Snappy (Score:4, Funny)
misspelled Teh
"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:"hope" has nothing to do with it (Score:5, Funny)
what about AMD? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe now (because of the lawsuit), intel will not provide such deals to Apple. Is then, Apple in deep shit?
Yes!
Article is crap, I know the real reason! (Score:3, Funny)
The real reasons are obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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.
High handed or not (Score:5, Interesting)
Irrespective of whether The Steve dealt properly with IBM, the reality is and has been for many years that developing their own CPU (or having it developed for them) was just too expensive for Apple.
The original idea of the Apple-IBM-Motorola coalition was that they would be able to compete with Intel by combining forces: CPUs for servers, workstations, and embedded systems; and by creating a third-party systems market to drive demand for these CPUs (PReP). This never really took off, so IBM and Motorola were stuck with having to compete with Intel for price/performance for a single customer that would only buy a fraction of what Intel and AMD would churn out. I have no idea how much it costs to keep up a competitive CPU architecture, but it must be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions per year.
Cell might be cheap, but it doesn't allow Apple to compete with PCs on a price/performance or performance/watt level. And paying IBM to continue to develop the 970 architecture was just too expensive: people might be willing to pay a bit more for Apple systems, but only so much.
Just look at all other contenders in the high performance CPU market: there's nobody left except for Sun and Fujitsu/Siemens, and they announced last year that they will cooperate on SPARC. From a pure market standpoint, Apple had little choice.
The real reason... IBM can't get 90nm together (Score:3, Interesting)
The REAL real reason: Apple didnt like IBM sharing (Score:3, Interesting)
I was part of the project team that maintained the x86 core of OS X and we in on a lot of the conference calls that Apple had discussing the impending switch. What acually happened was that senior management was extremely unhappy with IBM sharing the PowerPC technology with Apple's competitors Sony and Toshiba (via the Cell work, as well as other stuff that hasn't been announced yet). Apple di
AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
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 lab
Compile flags (Score:5, Informative)
The Fedora kernel people have benchmarked this quite a bit (and now compile kernels with -Os too), the difference is quite measurable, 5%:ish in some benchmarks.
Re:Compile flags (Score:5, Interesting)
iPod is Apples Future? (Score:4, Insightful)
-Os (Score:5, Informative)
While for some trivial benchmark code -O4 may generate faster code, for real-world applications keeping your code in cache is worth more than loop unrolling - so in real-world stuff often -Os is better than -O[2345].
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:He's right about the Mac being "the past" (Score:3, Interesting)
The desktop wars are over. Commodity IBM PC-compatibles with Microsoft OSes and Intel chips won.
I think what really matters is who makes the best product, and in my opinion the success of Apple is in the acheivement of OS X. Now, I am not so naiive to think that the b
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 c
I thought I was kidding (Score:5, Funny)
The Microsoft Factor (Score:3, Funny)
Chip H.
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.
Comparisons can hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs ego factor and 360? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hear me out. Most people have heard about Jobs' pathological reaction when he loses face, and everyone knows that he *hates* Bill Gates, right?
So awhile back Jobs' predicts 3Ghz G5's in 2005 (which I guess became the "3GHZ Promise"). IBM fails to deliver. However, Microsoft announces shortly before E3 that the 360 will use a 3.2 GHZ triple-core G5. I can only imagine that Jobs was pissed on some level that Bill Gates trumping him in Apple territory.
Of course, there have been a few reports that the 360's G5 is essentially crippled, and that the chip will effectively be only twice as fast as the original xbox's cpu. Even if it's true, I don't think that changes anything. Jobs may have figured figured (and I'd be inclined to agree) that even if the 360 chip is not really as powerful as it seems, it represents time&effort that IBM was dedicating elsewhere instead of working on improving it's offerings to Apple.
In fact, when you consider that IBM is working w/ Sony and Nintendo on other customized G5's, it seems pretty clear where Apple stands in terms of priority. Not that I blame IBM -- why the hell would you care about the rantings of Steve Jobs when you are going to be selling your product to 3 out of the 3 biggest players in the console market, with each one amounting to way more sales that what you'd ever get with Apple.
Not sure if it's the case, but it sounds plausible enough. At least he kept the promise though, right?
AMD timing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really anything new here... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the new 970FX chips are an improvement over the current tech. On the other hand, it's not mind-blowing compared to Intel's current line-up, much less what's in the pipeline. I'm supposed to be impressed by an announced 13W @ 1.4GHz and 16W @ 1.6GHz when Intel has been selling 10W @ 1.5GHz for months?
Even the dual-core Yonah core, slated for volume production first quarter of 2006, is quoted as staying within a 25W envelope @ 2.13GHz. Speeds for the low voltage, ultra low voltage, and single core parts aren't released yet, but Intel has made it clear that it's aggressively pursuing lower power designs and that notebooks based on the next generation of chips will "use approximately 33% less power".
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.
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.
Compiling for Size.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems to back up this fairly depressing review [anandtech.com] of Tiger/G5 I've just finished reading. Say benchmarkers comparing Tiger to Linux on XEON:
Top level of the review here [anandtech.com]. Note this review is really only relevant to high load server applications.
XBOX360, PS3, Revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
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:
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.
Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Apple is turning to Intel because The Evil Empire (AKA Microsoft) will at last buy 100% Apple stock and Mac OS X 11.0 will be the much-hyped Longhorn.
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.
Lame (Score:3, Funny)
The OS Xperience (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, each iPod sale is a potential "switcher". iTunes is available for Windows, yes. But each iPod sale is a person who may be curious about OS X, might actually buy an iMac, or Mac Mini. (the Mac Mini is aimed at "switchers" - who already have a keyboard, mouse, monitor, but want to front a minimal investment to switch platforms, just replace the CPU.)
But what if iPod potential "switchers" can't be supplied with enough PPC-powered Mac Minis, or Mac Minis are still a tad too costly, or what if Apple can't slip a powerful enough chip into that enclosure due to heat issues? The switch to Intel chips solves all of these issues. The difference between a Windows iPod/iTMS user, and an OS X iPod/iTMS user? The OS X "experience" - the same schlock any cross-platform software producer can do: make their Native version better than the ports. Like IE Windows compared to IE Mac. iTunes Mac will be kept more up to date with features than iTunes Windows, and it will only cost an iPod/iTMS user a couple hundred bucks to switch. And with Intel chips, they can ramp volume to meet demand now.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Informative)
If bulk discounts where illegal, Wallmarts would be out of buisness and everyone would have to shop at 7-11.
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:I don't understand the advantage... (Score:3, Interesting)
Regular instruction set - all of the instructions are the same number of bits in length. CISC processors often have some instruction that are 2 bytes long, others are 4 bytes long, etc. Decoding this in a timely fashion was a problem back in the late 80's, early 90's. Today, there are lots and lots of transistors on the CPU to throw at t
Re:I don't understand the advantage... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure what you mean by this. You should read up on the Church-Turing thesis. Basically, it can be proven that a very simple instruction set (I think the minimum is 3 instructions[1]) can run any algorithm. The question then becomes, what instructions should be implemented as a single instruction on the chip, and which ones should be implemented as a combination of instructions. Generally, it turns out, it is a good idea if all of your instructions take the same length of time to execute - this makes interleaving different instructions much easier. It therefore makes sense to have a relatively simple instruction set.
The trend towards CISC ended with things like the VAX. Back when people used to program in assembly, it made sense to have complex instruction sets to make things easier for the programmer. The VAX included things like an evaluate polynomial instruction, for example. Of course, this was quite unwieldy, and so a lot of the instructions were implemented as microcode - you they were automatically translated to a set of simpler instructions.
With the development of high-level languages, it emerged that compiler writers were not using these complex instructions, they were implementing them directly in simpler instruction. It then made more sense to focus on making a small set of instructions run quickly (which, it turns out, is easier and therefore cheaper).
Note that `CISC' chips are not really CISC anymore. They do the same `emulation' that RISC chips do. When you run x86 code on a Pentium each instruction is broken down into simpler instructions and then these are executed on the RISC core. The Pentium 4 (and, I believe, the Pentium M) cache these micro-instructions, so they don't have to do the translation twice.
[1] Zero, Increment, and Conditional Jump, for example - try it, you can do addition simply, multiplication by repeated addition, then build more complex algorithms from there.
Re:I don't understand the advantage... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:(Mac == past) && (iPod == future) ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:This is my experience with Apple MACs (Score:4, Informative)
My recommendation: Go read America's finest news source [theonion.com] until you begin to laugh again. Then come back here.