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Daring to Dream: Apple & IBM
Anonymous writes "The Register has
a comment piece of the marriage (speculative) between IBM and Apple. Although wildly speculative, it is not improbable. With IBM already supplying PowerPCs to Apple and Apple having not signed up to IBM's PowerPC consortia, there are hints in this get-together. Apple would also supply IBM with the "lifestyle" side of things. If it does happen, it would be most interesting."
Do people not remember Taligent?
IBM makes far more money selling POWER-based machines and their other non-Intel hardware than they do selling PCs.
Apple computers now use chips made by IBM; the PowerPC CPU was a joint venture by IBM, Apple, and Motorola.
IBM has very little to lose considering it's size and product diversity. IBM will open a whole new market for apple and if apple is the target of a takeover it will command a premium, thus the value of the stock will go up.
This is just speculation to get attention, as near as I can gather. "IBM and Apple should merge!" sounds neat if you don't look at any of the context, but if you look at the actual products they sell it doesn't make really much sense at all. IBM targets almost exclusively corporate customers. Apple targets almost exclusively consumer customers. There's no good way to tie these two things together at all, especially since the existing product lines of each have no particular relevance or connectivity to one another. Okay, yeah, like the article mentions, IBM doesn't have a presence in the "lifestyle"/enduser demographic. Why is this a problem? That's just not their market.
About the only obvious place the products could tie together is if IBM wanted to sell macs as corporate desktops. But as far as I'm aware when IBM sets up corporate desktops, it's just to sell their server infrastructure and such-- that is, IBM's push isn't "we'll sell you all this infrastructure stuff and give you better corporate desktop machines as well!" it's "we'll sell you this infrastructure stuff and it will work with the corporate desktop machines you were going to sell anyway!" In fact as far as I'm aware despite IBM's great use of Linux in the server space they have yet to use anything but Windows on the desktops their solutions people set up-- they're transitioning to Linux desktops internally, but haven't shown signs that they want to try to change the general corporate-desktop status quo. Given all this, it would seem from IBM's perspective suddenly springing "and you should switch to macs for your desktops!" on their customers would make things a lot harder to sell. So I don't think that Apple's systems have much relevance to IBM. Conversely, I don't see IBM selling DB2 en masse to the end-user consumer market.
Meanwhile the article's support for itself is full of nonsense, for example:
Then of course there is Darwin, Apple's version of BSD Unix at the heart of its Mac OS X operating system, which would nicely provide IBM with a non Linux semi-open source alternative, and one that is focused on its on benchmark beating P (sorry G) 5 microprocessor
Why on earth would IBM want a non Linux semi-open source alternative? First off IBM has been making lots of money out of actually just selling Linux; second off if they needed an alternative to Linux they sell several "real" UNIX derivatives themselves; third off Darwin is very highly specialized for the needs and APIs of OS X, and many of the design decisions therein don't make really a lot of sense except in OS X's context. If IBM wanted to repackage BSD they'd have done it themselves by now.
I could maybe see it making sense if IBM tried to integrate their products better with Apple's-- I.E. trying to twist things so that XServes can be dropped into a IBM infrastructure package, or trying to sell packages of G5s as modeling boxes and IBM hardware as a render farm to places doing industrial graphics work. That would be neat, and definitely wouldn't hurt the situation for either company. However I don't see there being some kind of "missing puzzle piece" either Apple or IBM could fill in by working with the other the way the article seems to imply, and the article doesn't give me good reason to think there is one.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
They actually do have a sub-$1000 computer - it's called the eMac.
Basically though I agree with the point you are making.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Still, I think IBM could pull it off ( IFF Steve Jobs wanted them to ), technically. IBM's market cap is something like 6 times Apple's. What such a move would do to IBM's stock price is an interesting question.
Still, until Steve Jobs starts knocking on doors looking to sell Apple, it's just silly to talk about stuff like this- it's just not going to happen unless it's Steve's idea... rrright. That's what he's been building the company up for, a sale! Ha!
Ok, now that I think about it like that, this is the dumbest story slashdot has covered since, uh, the last really dumb story... which would probably that one about the big "young people use the internet" news...
IBM is a company focused on growing its services biz and Apple has none.
...and both companies have long tradition in attempting to get a beachhead on the other side. Apple's beachhead on the b2b is the xServe, IBM tried many times to build their position on consumer market with "consumer" ThinkPads.
Apple is primarily a B2C company and IBM is B2B.
Cultural differences make east vs west like the definition of homogenized
Steve Jobs and his amazing ego
Both are overrated. IBM and Apple had to overcome their cultural differences dozen years ago when their founded the PowerPC joint effort. Even then it turned out to be surprisingly easy, although there is an anecdote about IBM engineers wearing jeans and T-Shirts and their Apple counterparts wearing business suits on their first meeting - both sides wanted so badly to please the other side. It's been a long time since then, Apple is no longer a bunch of jolly hippies, IBM is no longer a deadly serious behemoth. Whatever they do together, they do it pretty well, and they did many things together since founding PowerPC platform - to name the powerbook 2400 outsourced to IBM Japan and PowerMac G5. Steve's ego also was no obstacle in striking a deal with Disney, striking a deal with Apple (to buy him back), striking a deal with RIAA to start iTunes Music Store. So I thik all the obstacles you mention actually do not exist at all.
I am going to refute this quote:
* Apple's product designs are created with no input (as far as anyone can tell) from customers.
This is a problem. Business computers have different needs than personal computers. They don't need a monitor,and need management tool integration (ARD is nice, but it needs integration with at least Tivoli, CA, and BMC).
I have met with many product managers, marketing managers, etc. and have been asked very specific questions about existing products, such as suggested improvements to existing products (down to, is it worth $100 to have X integrated, $50, $etc.) or known issues keeping us from achieving our goals (such as advanced IT training). In most cases, the majority of our requests were actually met, albeit in later products, or non-free "upgrades" to products (the same case with most proprietary software, unless you have a maintenance contract).
So, to say that they don't listen is overblown. True, Apple is focused on the consumer/prosumer markets. But, I have been flown in to Cupertino twice to specifically address our needs. The first time, I was not expecting much. But when I saw most of our needs met by the next invitation, I was really pleased with the changes. Having just met with their Pro Apps product manager and sales director, I'm confident that they hear our message and might even do something with it.
Apple has sucked in the past, but they suck less now...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Look up Taligent and Pink, circa 1993. IBM/APPLE has been working together now for over a decade.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Pink became the Taligent OS. There were several other projects in the Apple/IBM alliance: PowerPC, OpenDoc, and some secret ones that weren't/aren't public. You can still see the remains of the Taligent sign on Sunnyvale-Saratoga road across the street from the Apple campus in Cupertino.
Well, I can say that your wrong on that point. I purchased an xServe from apple for my company, and I also got a 3 year support contract with it. lets see what it covers:
Yes, i have had to have my xServe serviced, and they were there in the allotted time, And I also get excellent detected phone support. That was all for my own personal business. I also work for a school:
Maybe you have not had the opportunity to work directly with Apple's education channel, but it's a little more then ok, and far from whacked. For the last 5 years, I have been purchasing computers for my program directly through the education channel and am pleased with thier service. I have an education sales agent assigned to me that helps me coordinate all my purchases, and an educational consultant to help me build solutions to work in my special environment. They've even provided me with possible funding sources for certain purchases.
-= Who are The Headlocks? =-
Apple: Black turtlenecks and Levi's (don't forget the Birkenstocks)
No, more like:
IBM: Denim workshirts embroidered with the IBM logo, dark blue jeans.
You've got the Jobs uniform down, however.
IBM: Atlanta (ewww) Apple: Cupertino (ewww)
No, IBM is in Armonk, NY.
They're both stubborn. Your point is?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Statistically speaking the company getting bought out is the one that sees a stock price increase. Of course you may have already missed the boat on Apple's stock given it's value of $65.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
IBM is not a traditionally Intel-based house.
Apple used Motorola processors for a long time, but many (soon to be all) of the processors they now use are manufactured by IBM, and were developed jointly with IBM and Motorola.
This marriage is not as mixed as TFGeditor seems to think. The inference in his original post was that IBM was strongly Intel and Apple was strongly Motorola, neither premise is true today, if either ever was. That post attempted to show dissention where there is none. I attempted to illustrate this by pointing out two facts, which I will now recap in detail:
1. IBM makes more money from POWER technology than they do from Intel technology, which, based on the financials you linked, is certainly true. IBM makes money on POWER and its related PowerPC line through the System group AND the Microprocessor group (through sales to Apple and others). You can add in some percentage from Global Services and the software support contracting, since much of this income is predicated on the sale of IBM server hardware, including RS/6000, AS/400, zSeries and ESS SAN technology, and that heavily leverages POWER.
2. IBM and Motorola helped develop the line of microprocessors that Apple now uses. Demonstrably true; the AIM group (Apple, IBM, Motorola) was established to do just that.
As far as your replies to my posts, I'm afraid I've now lost what point you were trying to make.