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Terra Soft Withdraws Plans for PowerPC Motherboards
DamienMcKenna writes "Terra Soft has just announced it is not going to produce PPC motherboards: 'We regret having launched a product initiative and built expectations prior to receiving first shipment. We have clearly learned a powerful lesson and do extend our apology to you, our existing and potential customers. As the Teron mainboard and associated systems will be made available through other resellers, we will encourage them to sign-on as official Yellow Dog Linux resellers in order that we may continue to support movement of what we hope to be a very popular product.' This leaves Genesi as the only company who still has PowerPC motherboards for sale, with a new board design due later this year."
...is why this would have been a Good Thing in the first place. I'm genuinely curious about this, but why would anyone shell out cash for a PPC mobo that only supported G3s? It's a good chip, yeah, but for similar cash you could get a much better x86 solution and run some variety of Linux on it, no?
Obviously there must be some advantages to a PPC board running YDL as compared to an x86 board running a comparable Linux distro that I don't understand, but I can't imagine what sort of market would pay for a board that would run such an aging processor.
This is the major problem with Apple, I think.
You raise some good points but I think there's an important piece of this equation that you're missing. The lack of clones is the major problem with Apple? Sure, it keeps prices high and marketshare low. It's true. It is the worst thing about the platform.
And yet, it is also the one single thing that makes them unique in the market and gives them value. The vertical integration they have (hardware/os/iapps) allows them to a) innovate their product line faster and more radically than some other hardware/software makers and b) allows them to sell an entire end-to-end solution (like firewire-imovie-idvd-superdrive) with a user experience better than anyone elses. These things are at the core of what makes Apple Apple. Take them away - take away the vertical integration by doing clones - and what you get is cheaper boxes and much rejoicing...and a dead/dying platform within 2 years because it has lost that which made it valuable to begin with.
Bonus point: Why should anyone care? Certainly Mac users should care, but others should, too. Apple has an influence on the personal computer industry that is vastly disproportionate to its marketshare. They innovate. Others follow. Therefore, a healthy Apple is good for the industry. Mac clones = bad for Apple = bad for the pc industry.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?