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Motorola To Spin Off Chip Division
dafz1 writes "According to an article
at CNET News, Motorola
has announced they will create a new company from their Semiconductor Products
Sector (SPS), which builds chips such as the PowerPC. Reasons cited include 'surrendering to IBM a key role in delivering the PowerPC for Apple Computer's top-of-the-line desktop'. This follows earlier news that Motorola's CEO will step down, citing a 'difference
of opinion' with fellow executives."
What the, snip away pieces of shielding. Wedge what, bent bottom. Well unless there thousands of users with bent up snipped on TiBooks around, I'd say that I wouldn't trust you to change my channel let alone touch my PB. Then again my Pismo is the ultimate in simplicity, raise the kb, connect the antenna, pop in the card. Then again I'm sure you'd find a way to have to remove several of the keys on the keyboard to do the install.
Oh and, good idea about going with the Dell. After all, their designs are perfect. Lord knows, doing anything with a Latitude is very straight forward. I guess you would cut off a couple of lug nuts if a rim didn't fit on your car right and then swear off Chevy's and only drive Hyundais right.
Oh, and as for the card going IN the machine, hey, beats the hell out of having the stupid pccard catch on my laptop bag, or get knocked around (I've been seeing a lot of tattered looking Cisco cards around the office lately), or scream to everyone "HEY LOOK AT ME, I GOT ME THAT WIFI".
Now mention drivers for 3rd party 802.11a cards, and then you'll get me venting too, though that isn't Apples fault.
Are you just trolling? If not, this might help you next time. These things are easy to do.1 33
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=95
Metrowerks is part of Motorola SPS. Thus, it will be part of the spin-off.
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
I graduated in '93, and I got a job at Motorola in the cellular division. I worked there for 5 years, and couldn't take it anymore. Their "culture" is manufactured, and I was very surprised that they got anything accomplished. But it depends on the different divisions and how they are doing. Ours (cellular services) did OK, but we were riding on the coattails of the divisions that were doing really good (phone mfgr and radios comes to mind). They had a bonus plan in place were every 6 months you got a bonus if you met the goals set out for your division. It was given to you as a percentage of what you made in the previous 6 months. My first 6 months there we got 11%, then 4%, then 1.3%, then they cut it out all together. The year before I got there, one division got 34%. They capped it after that. It would actually produce animosity within the company. It was generally a solid company that was on a steady decline. People who had been there 10 years who were just skating on their "time served". People who had been there 20+ years who were called "lifers" and they could pretty much do as little as they wished. Ten years was called "getting your tenure". Boy, those people got a wake-up call a couple of years ago. Some people have only worked there, and they don't know what goes on outside of Moto. If you have ever met someone who has worked there for a long time, you know what I mean. Many people I know that left there have had similar experiences.
It is a very weird place. After I lost my job at the place I left Moto for (company investors pulled out during the bubble burst), I went back to Moto. I thought "it can't be as bad as I remember it." It was. I went to have a meeting to do a pre-interview. Some HR drone talked to me to gauge my skillset. I was told it would be about 4 weeks for my paperwork to be processed, and if I was a fit anywhere, I would be contacted for interviews. It was such a sterile, devoid atmosphere that it was creepy. I told her "thanks, but no thanks" and walked out, vowing to never go back.
This is just further proof that nobody sits on top forever, and that keeping a very large, multinational business dynamic is a tremendously difficult task.
I got to see just one small piece of the company, and if the rest of it was anything at all like where I worked, good riddance. Of course, I do own stock that I purchased while there. It was around 90, then did a 3 to 1 split, and now it is around 11. Yay.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Motorola made most of their microcontrollers for the automotive sector where massive volumes ruled. One unfortunate consequence of this was their absolute minimum of support for anyone designing lower volume applications, which I feel has really hurt them in getting mindshare of engineers working for smaller companies and expanding their market. Good tools were horribly expensive and most of their documentation was even worse (I still have nightmares about the horribly inconsistent Dragonball documentation). The only decent document I've seen from them is for the HC11, which is really a shame because they have some great chips. Companies like Atmel and Microchip are absolutely killing Motorola in the 8 bit market amongst smaller shops because of their readily available tools, decent documentation and support.
Speaking as an ex-Motorolan, I have to agree that this guy is spot-on. I worked there for two years, and this place was as close to Dilbert-land as can be possible in real life. "Steady decline", lifers, guys who have not done a stitch of work for years, baffling political undercurrents etc. I quickly learned that some of the secretaries are mines of information. I befriended a pretty one to whom all the bosses were known to spill the beans to make themselves seem important, and learned of important stuff weeks (sometimes months) before public pronouncements.
During the two years I worked there, I worked on at least 5 different projects that were subsequently canceled. Motorola does not believe in canceling projects efficiently. What happens is that funding for the project dries up, and the politically savvy guys get out. The naive ones (I was one for a while) show up to work and keep working, desperately trying to fix bugs etc while their bosses try to feign interest.
Motorola does not have much longer to run. Samsung and Nokia will kick their asses.
Magnus.