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Apple, Scully, And Intel vs. Motorola
fsharp writes "I've heard too many comments suggesting that Apple should have moved to Intel (x86). The Register has an article exploring John Scully's recent comments about his failure to move the Mac to x86. Scully critiques his decisions based entirely on hindsight, and in doing so, identifies Dell as a the chief competitor and the way Apple could have slayed this evil dragon would have been to move to Intel early on in his tenure. Not so fast. Hindsight can be 20/20, however it can also be quite myopic if one suffers from selective memory. The article does a good job of examining the options available at the time when Apple rewrote the MacOS for the Intel x86. How safe a bet or great a risk would it have been for Apple to switch, given the quality of chips offered (at that time) from Intel?"
Its killed KDE/LINUX!. Its fun to trick people into thinking I've got a macintosh!
All the Apps are there
Itunes = JuK
Safari = Konqueror
Finder = Konqueror
Dock = Kicker
Menubar = Kicker
bbedit = Kate
Quicktime = Kmplayer!
Appleworks = Koffice!
At the time that the Mac moved to PPC there is no way that Intel could have offered such a seamless transition. The ability of the PPC to emulate the 68k at good speed was what made the transition work. If Apple had tried to move to the x86 platform they would have lost a lot of customers with a big investment in software as the x86 could not emulate the 68k at usable speed.
Using an alternative archetecture has also allowed Apple to hold on to its uniqueness, which has in turn guarded it somewhat from fierce comparison to the x86 crowd.
No-one in the PC business saw Dell coming, if Apple had been just another x86 vendor with a nice OS they would be facing the same problems as HP, Compaq etc did when confronted by Dell's better supply chain model.
I think that Sculley is being remarkably revisionist in his views. The article points out a lot of the folly in his musings.
The G5 and the relationship with IBM is more than enough to now justify the choie of the PPC architecture.
I want to use these Mod points but I can't find anything Interesting, Informative or Insightful on Slashdot.
I'm not going to dump $1500 or so for the priviledge of getting some overpriced, proprietary hardware platform.
... and all the reasons for running Linux (open source tools) are just as valid now under OSX, so ...
I did. And I do not regret it. I've been a computer-user since the 70's, and as far as I'm concerned this tiBook has been the best computer I've ever invested in, and I've owned many. I've gotten more done with this than I ever did with a PC, I've had *NO* virus problems, no crashes (really, not a single system-failure type crash in the 3 years I've had it), and it has been around the world with me, twice, and still keeps on running.
I had to work on PC hardware today for a few hours. Man, I'm so sick of having to deal with PC hardware problems.
Just give me a machine that works, a decent operating system, and get out of the way. Thank you, Apple.
That said, if I could find an Intel laptop with the same design as a tiBook, I'd probably run Linux or FreeBSD on it - but, frankly, I doubt it would be more cost effective to do so than just upgrading to a newer 17" alBook
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Selected quotes from a confidential memorandum from Bill Gates to John Scully of Apple dated June 25, 1985.
Source: Wired Magazine, November 1997, page 126-128.
A memo on "Apple Licensing of Mac Technology."
Apple's stated position in personal computer is innovative technology leader. This position implies that Apple must create a standard on new, advanced technology. They must establish a "revolutionary" architecture, which necessarily implies new development incompatible with existing architectures.
Apple must make Macintosh a standard. But no personal computer company, not even IBM, can create a standard without independent support. Even though Apple realized this, they have not been able to gain the independent support required to be perceived as a standard.
The significant investment (especially independent support) in a "standard personal computer" results in an incredible momentum for its architecture. Specifically, the IBM PC architecture continues to receive huge investment and gains additional momentum [...] The investment in the IBM architecture includes development of differentiated compatibles, software, and peripherals; user and sales channel education; and most importantly, attitudes and perceptions that are not easily changed.
Any deficiencies in the IBM architecture are quickly eliminated by independent support [...] The closed architecture prevents similar independent investment in the Macintosh. The IBM architecture, when compared to the Macintosh, probably has more than 100 times the engineering resources applied to it when investment of compatible manufacturers is included. The ratio becomes even greater when the manufacturers of expansion cards are included.
Conclusion:
As the independent investment in a "standard" architecture grows, so does the momentum for that architecture. The industry has reached the point where it is now impossible for Apple to create a standard out of their innovative technology without support from, and the resulting credibility of, other personal computer manufacturers. Thus APPLE MUST OPEN THE MACINTOSH ARCHITECTURE TO HAVE THE INDEPENDENT SUPPORT REQUIRED TO GAIN MOMENTUM AND ESTABLISH A STANDARD. [emphasis mine]
The Mac has not become a standard:
The Macintosh has failed to attain the critical mass necessary for the technology to be considered a long term contender.
[...]
Recommendation:
Apple should license Macintosh technology to 3-5 significant manufacturers for the development of "Mac Compatibles".
US manufacturers and contacts: ideal companies - in addition to credibility, they have large account sales force that can establish the Mac architecture in larger companies:
- AT&T, James Edwards - Wang, An Wang - Digital Equipment Corporation, Ken Olsen - Texas Instruments, Jerry Junkins - Hewlett Packard, John Young
Other companies:
[ list of companies and contact names deleted ]
Apple should license the Macintosh technology to US and European companies in a way that allows them to go to other companies for manufacturing. Sony, Kyocera [...] are good candidates for OEM manufacturing of Mac compatibles.
MICROSOFT IS VERY WILLING TO HELP APPLE IMPLEMENT THIS STRATEGY. We are familiar with the key manufacturers, their strategies and strengths. We also have a great deal of experience in OEMing system software.
Rationale:
1. The companies that license Mac technology would add credibility to the Macintosh architecture.
2. These companies would broaden the available product offerings through their "Mac-compatible" product lines:
- They would each innovate and add features to the basic systems [...]
-
The company has to decide: is SUN a hardware company? that would mean investing a lot in the development of SPARC, killing the Solaris x86 line and fighting Linux
Well, you can buy a 1U Sun SPARC now for less than a comparable 1U Dell. Sun is price-competitive now at the low end, for the first time. And, they have an edge Dell can't match, namely that Sun guarantees forwards compatibility - you can take an old app from old hardware and an old Solaris, and run it on the latest kit and OS. If you can't, and you stuck to documented APIs in your code, Sun treats it as a bug in Solaris and fixes it. Dell can't provide that because they don't control any of the OSs they offer. Not only that, but Sun's hardware is of a higher quality. I recently experienced my first Sun hardware failure in years - two SPARC processors failed in a production server. The machine just kept right on running, as it was designed to do, and we swapped a new board in when it was convenient. What can you hot-swap on a Dell these days, just disks?
What I'm getting at is that Sun is not a hardware company nor a software company. It's a platform company, like IBM's mainframe division, and like Apple. If you want to compare it to Dell, a more subtle analysis is required than just "price per box".
You're forgetting the third way Apple could do itself a favour. They could open source Aqua. Imagine the possibilities: 1. I'm pretty sure that a project would have Aqua running on Linux or FreeBSD in a few months. In the meantime, Apple gets free development and bugfixes for Aqua, and when it's finished, we get the modern, excellent X Windows replacement (with a backwards compatible rootless X Server) people have been wanting for years and years. 2. Apple can still sell their own hardware, and they can limit key products like iTunes to PPC binary. This way, they don't loose out to comoditised x86 boxes. 3. Microsoft won't be pissed and stop producing Mac Office (which is important to a lot of people on the Mac), because again they can just produce PPC binaries instead of x86 binaries. Instead we get OpenOffice.org for Aqua (hopefully faster after they dump the horrendous toolkit they're using now).
I have one quibble with this - is the x86 market still expanding? In the developing world, I suspect pretty much everyone who needs a computer already has one, and unless they do video or games their raw hardware is fast enough for what they do (word processing, spreadsheets, email, web browsing).
If this is true, then what we're left with is competition of style (ease of use, fit and finish) versus externalities (compatibility with the rest of the universe). If there's any justice, Apple ought to continue to grow.
Though I hope they don't "win" - a monopoly Apple would probably become just as fat, lazy, and obnoxious as Microsoft.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.