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Cringley Thinks Apple & Intel Are Merging
SamSeaborn writes "In Bob Cringely's latest column he talks about the Apple switch to Intel and concludes:
'what's behind the announcement is so baffling and staggering that it isn't surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now. Apple and Intel are merging.' "
I have an idea for a new Slashdot section. Instead of doing interviews, we should pit two self-proclaimed tech pundits against each other in a FUD deathmatch. For week #1, I suggest Dvorak vs. Cringely (not Cringley, Taco). The rules: they each post their own hilarious Nostradamus-like predictions about the future of tech. The winner is the one who gets the most slashdotters posting "what the fuck?" in the comments that follow. Also acceptable are "Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.", or "The goggles, they do nothing!", with other variations (such as clever Soviet Russia jokes) subject to approval by the editors.
Apple merging with Intel is a brilliant first move by Cringely. What say you, Slashdotters? Begin!
Apple + super heated Intel blowtorches = hot apple pies?
I wish I could get some of the crystal meth that Cringely and Dvorak are regularly smoking.
Random is the New Order.
Sounds like a Belgian lager, doesn't it?
Is Cringley always this batshit insane?
That's about as likely as Apple switching to x86.
Oh wait...
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Jeez another shot-in-the-dark merchant looking for his 15 minutes. meh......
What do you get when you put Apple and Intel together?
Intel.
My mom's Compaq has an AMD chip! COMPAQ AND AMD ARE MERGING!!!111ONE! No, they are not merging.
It does seem apparant. Seems like a good move.
IBM is then going to take revenge by acquiring Appintel.
Apple Intel merger ?? NICE TRY !
if apple+=intel
wintel-=intel
wamd profits, intel dies
Macintrino has a nice ring to it, no?
"If I was right about Apple switching to Intel, maybe some of my other crack-induced hallucinations are true too!"
No Fucking Way. My asshole may still be stretched after all the monkeys flying out of it from the intel announcemet, but I am still willing to say that there isn't a chance in hell of this happening.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Now all they need to do is stop supporting Windows on Intel platform... muhahahahahah....
fuvoo: watch something
Only in someones acid induced dream, will this happen. Or if the CEOs have done some serious fuck ups no one knows about.
Yay, I have a sig.
They DID hug.. though I think it's pretty obvious Jobs enjoyed it more. After all, he's a mac user.
<ducks>
iPod, iBook, iSight.
I don't see Intel liking their relationship with Microsoft much, but I don't see a good reason for them to piss them off anymore than they need to either.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Nor MacIntel. Nor InPod. But I suppose I should start registering domain names anyway.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Jesus, I'm glad the last CPU I bought was AMD.. ;)
Okay, that's quite far-fetched: which interest would Intel have to merge with Apple anymore than they would have had in the past to merge with Microsoft? Intel is a hardware company... and one that benefits tremendously from all the windows-based computers out there. Certainly, they wouldn't be interested in Windows suddenly working a lot better with AMD CPU's? Two people can play such a game...
see a Text Widget
Aren't Apple Corps going to complain about the Intel fiasco - as they have the prior Apple art on really crap business ventures.
i thought news was suposed to get posted , hints the title "Stuff that matters" for some odd reason i doubt that an OS company would merg with a CPU maker that they currently don't have support for. i know they are moving but moving and being there are to completely diffrent situations. let me know when something real gets posted to the main page.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
"Apple and Intel are merging."
It's official - The Macintel Speculation Circus has now officially "jumped the shark".
I can only expect that soon Fonzie's long lost nephew will arrive on the scene dressed as Charlie Chaplin, advertising the new "Macintel PC Jr EXTREME".
the guy rambles on about shit he half read up on.
...and will offer stiff competition for the Goodyear Blimp!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Intel didn't become the giant it is by doing stupid things like competing with their customers.
Not only that, but there is really very little synergy between Apple and Intel. All in all, this "prediction" is really easy to dismiss.
Sigged!
Apple and Intel merging is probably not a good idea. The relationship Intel has with Microsoft would probably suffer as a result. Intel will want to keep Microsoft sweet, the sales of CPUs for the Microsoft market is huge, Intel would have to think of what might happen if MS put its money behind AMD.
Just my 2p.
J.
All spelling or grammatical are entirely intentional.
Well, I sure would hate to be the one who has to break it to the Blue Man Group to start thinking different or leave.
Quoth Cringely: "Certainly, he never said WHICH Intel chip they'd be using, just mentioning an unnamed 3.6-Ghz development system -- a system which apparently doesn't benchmark very well, either (it's in the links)."
Those stupid benchmarks are comparing a G5 running native PPC code to the 3.6 Ghz Pentium running PPC code under emulation. Follow Cringely's link to an article that in turn links to ThinkSecret which then explains that the benchmarks are for Rosetta.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
This just in,
AMD and Snapple are merging to create the world's first 64-bit fruit beverages!
ALL HAIL SNAMDPPLE
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
It's a suppository
My favourite :
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
Maybe to let developpers some time to port applications ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
It doesn't matter how confused I am about this change of CPUs by Apple, I'm not buying the merging argument.
:)
It's clear, however, that the most affected is Microsoft. My guess is that sooner or later Apple will turn into more of a software company (that "The soul of a Macintos is its OS" comes to mind). Maybe Intel or HP will be the hw partner, so to speak.
But anyway, every day that passes I'm more glad I got hold last October of a PowerPC iBook... although my next CPU I guess will be AMD
What worries me most are the years spent at university hearing that the GHz thing was meaningless and some processors outperformed others with a lower clock-speed.
To me it's all marketing and getting attention by the media. Business, indeed. Has anyone had a look at Apple stocks value? I haven't but it would be interesting to see how they go up and up.
While it seems unreasonable, if not unbelievable, at this time, it may indeed happen in the future. The computer industry is undergoing the same consolidation that the auto industry underwent five decades ago. The many smaller companies (ie. DEC, Cray, Amstrad, Olivetti, Digital Research) merged together, leading to larger bohemoths such as Compaq, Dell, HP, Packard-Bell, SGI, Sun, Apple and IBM. Now we're seeing the larger companies merge or leave the industry, such as Compaq and HP joining, and the downfall of SGI (and perhaps soon Sun). Soon there'll only be the big players of Dell, HP, IBM and Apple. Eventually we might end up with the "Big Three" of computing. Will this consolidation be good for the industry? Well, it's difficult to tell at this time. But it is a foregone conclusion that it will eventually occur.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
But I'll bet on "getting in bed together", "sleeping together", so on and so forth.
As for the rest about Microsoft, I'll buy that. In fact, I think that the whole "Mac on Intel" thing will sell well because of Microsoft.
At first.
See, there's several people who, upon considering a Mac, say this:
"I'd get one, but I'd have to rebuy all of my old applications."
"I'd get one, but I like to play games."
Those are the 2 biggest reasons - not performance, not quality, it's always "apps and games".
Now, with an Intel based Mac, they can say:
"Well, I'll buy the Apple because they make good machines, and if OS X is crap then I'll just install Windows."
If Apple really works on shining up Wine (or buys out some other Wine based company - Crossover I believe?), then they can offer Windows compatibility with a certain number of apps, perhaps a solid list such as Photoshop, Office, etc (and grow the list as necessary).
So now if a Windows user buys a Mac, they can have the best of both worlds: they can keep their apps, and they can run either Windows via dual boot for what they *must*, or (emulated? translated?) the Wine type service instead of rebooting (even better, since they can keep all the Apple goodness with them.)
Windows sells the same as before, everybody's happy.
Except that if this works, and *if* Apple's market share climbs, more app writers make Mac versions of their products for their customers. Sure, there's the "Oh, no, they won't because they'll just wrote for Windows for compatiblity" - there will be those, but the ones that see a competitive market edge giving "*FULL* OS X compatibility" over their competition (sorry for using compet* so often) will make OS X based apps.
And lets face it, what are the big applications?
Browser
Email
Music
Office Suite (assuming that Microsoft keeps its promise and makes the next Mac Office more "exchange compatible", this will be more true)
Photoshop-like products
Movies
Apple will have all of those, and everything else is just gravy.
Then it becomes a feedback loop: more OS X apps, more market share. More market share, more good hardware drivers written. More good hardware drivers written, more hardware OS X can work with so more people buy since it supports their stuff. Apps have to keep up, so more OS X apps, etc.
Now, fast forward 5 years from now, when Apple announces OS X for all beige machines, sold on Dell computers with a specific hardware list. If your hardware isn't on the list, it won't work - and how long will that take hardware developers to go "Shit! We'd better work on this thing before our competitors do!"
Then Apple can go to the Enterprise and say "Hi! We're more secure than Microsoft, easier than Linux, and we run all of the apps you care about natively - and what we don't, we emulate so well you won't know the difference! Buy us!"
Then the very Windows compatibility that helped Intel based Macs in the first place starts to hurt Windows.
Of course, Microsoft will be doing their bit on the side, but now it will be *true* competition, which means we the consumers win. Linux is still around innovating and updating and dong well in the server end, Jobs makes even more money, and everything's good.
Too optimistic? By far, I'm sure - the "OS X on a Dell" will probably never happen. But I don't see Intel and Apple merging - just Intel using Apple to sell more products and hold AMD, Microsoft, and Dell in control, and Apple selling more products and using AMD to threaten Intel when they need a better deal.
Of course, this is all my opinion, things may change and I could be wrong - but let's just wait and see what will happen. I'm just excited about running Final Cut Pro Express and Half-Life on the same box within a year or so.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
That is all
If this did happen, and the kept MAC OS locked up, AMD wouldn't be able to keep up with demand (short term) and people who wanted new computers would have to buy the ones with a MAC OS (as supply decreases, price increase, making AMD based Microsoft computers more expensive)... people would start using the MAC OS in droves...
Really, it's quite a crack pot theory, but if it worked just right it could force people to switch to a new OS (or just wait for AMD to increase output...)
either way, we win. Microsoft loses market share or AMD products become cheaper... (short term, at least.)
so let's hope he is right!
http://www.pterrys.com
SCO + M$ + RIAA + MPAA with Roland Piquepaille as CEO.
Now go bitch about that organisation!
AT&ROFLMAO
FUD! This guy is even worse than Dvorak. The guy does not make a single credible point. Jobs will not let his baby (Apple) go that easily, sell it to Intel and become CEO of Disney/Pixar??? The Guy is smoking crack.
-- time is a peanut --
Is if Jobs was given CEO title of Intel/Apple and a buttload of control. Anything less than that, there is no way Jobs gives up power. Jobs is a control freak -- yeah, like he's going to hand over the keys to Apple and say to Intel, "Have fun with my personality-based cult!"
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
They are the market leader in CPUs. They don't need apple. Apple may (or may not) need them, but Intel doesn't need them.
Also, wouldn't this alienate Microsoft? I can't see Intel going out of their way to alienate the MS.
methinks cringe overreaches on this one a bit. I think it's just IBM's inability to get the G5 heat dissipation and power use down for a laptop that triggered the chip switch. but I do agree that intel and m$ have been strange bedfellows lately, on the order of IBM and m$ when WNT (VMS plus one, if you remember NT 3.1) pushed out OS/2 as m$' product line of choice efforts.
I am surprised that nobody made a joke on the order of Apple OS/IX.MMLCXVII or their 63.99784372 bit OS when the first pentium-family macs come out. c'mon, dotters, reach for the punch lines....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This silly hypothesis is entirely based on the fact that Cringely can find no logical reason for Apple to choose Intel over AMD. But the real reason is much less interesting than the one he made up. The real reason is that AMD is already maxxed out on production capacity, and could not guarantee enough chips to Apple to make the switch. Imagine what would happen if Apple announced the switch to AMD, and then had to delay the launch of their new x86 products due to CPU shortages. That is the nightmare that Steve Jobs will avoid at all costs, and Intel is the only Tier-1 CPU manufacturer with excess capacity.
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
Gap is breaking, and there are many other advantages of Intel/x86.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Just because Intel's 64 bit is expensive now, doesn't mean it will be in a year.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
Who knows if it will be supported, but AMD doesn't have the supply of chips to deal with Apple. Plus, Intel has better brand recognition and probably more muscle in negotiating a contract.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
For developers... ?
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
Probably not.
Apple loved to pull Phil Schiller onstage to do side-by-side speed tests showing how much faster in real life the G4s and G5s were than their Pentium equivalents. Was that so much BS?
:)
Not really. But, how many things REALLY take such advantage of Altivec that its worth keeping it around?
yet Intel's 64-bit chips -- Xeon and Itanium -- are high buck items aimed at servers, not iMacs.
Someone wanna tell this guy about EM64T?
Where the heck is AMD?
Maybe Apple talked to AMD, and Intel offered a better deal. Maybe Apple wanted to ensure there'd be no supply problems (I'm sure Intel fabs a lot more CPUs than AMD does).
Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
I wondered about this one too. Especially after Jobs showed how easy it is to port apps.
Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
Gah! I sure as hell hope not!
The vaunted Intel roadmap is nice, but no nicer than the AMD roadmap, and nothing that IBM couldn't have matched.
Could have, but would they? I sincerely doubt it. IBM is more interested in all the CPUs they're going to put into the next generation gaming consoles. They'll sell far more CPUs, AND they won't even have to worry about making them faster.
Enter Apple. This isn't a story about Intel gaining another three percent market share at the expense of IBM, it is about Intel taking back control of the desktop from Microsoft.
That'd be sweet.
Remember, you read it here first.
C'mon, Dvorak predicted this years ago.
Apple Market cap: 31 billion
Intel Market cap: 171 billion
Intel could swallow Apple, but why would it merge? And why would it push its biggest driver of demand, Microsoft, into its rival's, AMD, camp? Even if Intel were insane enough to do this, and Jobs were willing to become another Intel executive, wouldn't this open the door to MS buying AMD to stay competitive? Now there would be a battle royale.
Once again, Cringely successly applies his National Enquirer sensibility to Nerd-World and concocts yet another bizarre headline guaranteed to funnel slashdotters to his site.
It's a damn shame that the recent fore-grounding of tech in our culture has attracted so few real journalists or credible commentators rather than hucksters like Cringely. If you want a rough idea of just how little this guy knows or understands, check out the lousy forums he ran for years, little more than a spam-harvester's playground and now, thankfully, defunct and archived. If this guy doesn't even know how to install a forum to properly capitalize on the hype he generates, Hell, his opinion isn't worth much.
The Cell processor is not at all geared towards desktop/laptop use for a couple of reasons:
So I think that the switch to Intel is at least partly technological, especially if you consider how critical the laptop market is for Apple, and how badly IBM screwed the pooch on that. Pentium M to the rescue!
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
...
If Apple is willing to embrace the Intel architecture because of its performance and low power consumption, then why not go with AMD, which equals Intel's power specs, EXCEEDS Intel's performance specs AND does so at a lower price point across the board? Apple and AMD makes far more sense than Apple and Intel any day.
See, that's the first question I would have asked. Perhaps he's right and the execs at both companies have arranged a stock-for-stock swap and aren't admitting to it until they have all their ducks lined up in a row
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes. This is Phil Schiller, Vice President of Marketing. Of course it's BS.
See Ars.
My God, a development prototype doesn't fare well in benchmarks run through a prototype emulator. Amazing, never would have guessed. Personally, I'll trust firsthand usage.
Apple is looking at long-term, and has spent the last dozen years chasing great technology from (relatively) smaller players. They want a reliable source of great desktop and notebook chips. Meanwhile, although AMD has done an excellent job of the Athlon, the Pentium M has done extremely well in the laptop arena, and that's what the upcoming Intel desktop chips will be based on. See the Ars story above.
Because he needs developers to be working on it - Rosetta is great but we need native apps. However, a lot of other people dismissed the rumor on the same grounds.
Apple is in this for the long haul, not a handful of years. IBM is certainly capable, but they clearly didn't have any focus there. This is Intel's ONLY focus.
Complete and utter bullshit.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Apple and Intel are merging?
Hey, that's funny, the moon has never been that shade of red before.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
That the P4 3.6Ghz Rosetta benchmarks outspec my Dual 800 G4.
:)
I have never felt so inadequate in my life. I know my machine is nearly 4 years old, but to get owned by a machine doing binary translation? Ouch.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Disclaimer: Personally, I have no idea on how much faith to put in this particular prediction, either. I just keep my money in the S&P 500 and don't loose any sleep over the specifics.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
This guy is way out of the loop. He doesn't understand why Apple would switch from PPC? Because IBM doesn't give a damn about Apple. They are doing as little as possible in development of the G5, and they were never going to get a G5 in a PowerBook. Why not AMD? Are you on crack!? Sure, if Apple only sold desktops, and only cared about this generation of processors (which is what got them into this mess in the first place). The Athlon64 is a great desktop chip. But they don't have anything that comes close to Centrino. That is what Apple really likes the look of. And you can bet that Intel isn't planning on letting AMD beat them in desktop CPUs next gen like they did this one. It makes perfect sense for Apple to choose Intel. That was their only choice really.
Seriously, intel and apple are i would say both the big #2's in the computing world. I really hope they end up killing each other off. Id rather see amd vs powerpc and linux vs windows.
id buy the popping corn for that!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1283&aid=-1/ Apple-Intel alliance: A good idea?
PtPete
Remember Steve Jobs already made hell freeze over by making iTunes for Windows, Quicktime 7 for Windows.
He's taking over the x86 world and Bill Gates is in on it, he really loves the Mac.
See here and of course here
Wintel == windows on intel
... mactel?
So, mac on intel ==
And KDE on Linux on intel is, err, K-tel?
Bring on those cheesy 80's compilation albums!
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
Before you know it, Microsoft and Intel will start to get (more) hostile towards each other, with the result being that Microsoft has to rely more on AMD.
It's official. There is no longer any difference between 'good' and 'evil'. Just like how successful Democrats and Republicans are mostly just moderates with different names, good and evil have met in the middle in the tech industry.
It's too painful. Apple (good) with Intel (bad) and so Microsoft (bad) with AMD (good). I can't take it anymore!
no, he wants to continue his day job as an industrial designer--this is a guy who went through two cubes until he got us to buy the mini--who periodically revamps his computers to mimic their accessories and vice versa--not to mention that the whole point was to reclaim the Mac (on humiliating terms, true) not to kill it
Okay, before you take apart Cringley's idea entirely, read "iCon; Steve Jobs, the greatest second act in the history of business" by Jeffrey Young--just published recently by -umm- Wiley & Sons. Young makes a pretty convincing argument that Jobs is not done yet, and that his NeXT "project" is Microsoft. Young does not speculate on this merger, but these two stories surely fit well together.
--if I only still had my Apple ][
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Intel has shown a willingness to support anyone on their CPUs. They even invested in Be and Red Hat.
I think we need more proof than speculation.
Bill Gates announced today that Longhorn was in fact smoke and mirrors and that M$ has purchased world wide rights to Linux for an as yet undisclosed amount. Effective immediately it becomes the default opsys of M$. No transition was felt necessary since no one was developing anything worthwhile for Windows anyway. The subscription price for M$L will be $200/year with a substantial educational discount of 5% offered to grades K-6. On a side note given recent events it should be noted that Hell is now offering excellent year around ski packages.
First off, Intel has had 64-bit Pentium 4s for a couple of months now, their 6xx series. These are far from the Xeon and Itanium prices. Secondly, Apple's timeline seems to suggest that they are going to be using Intel's new roadmap which consists of processors based on the Pentium M core, which is both higher IPC and lower power than any AMD chip. Lastly, he's just an all-around moron. Good effort though.
In a digital world there can be only one..
The one, the only, MrDigital.
If Cringely's right, Dell would have to be a part of a merger between Intel and Apple since Intel would never screw over it's biggest and blueiest customer by going into competition with them. So with Intel, Apple, and Dell on one side, that leaves Microsoft, AMD, and HP on the other side in a war for the future of the PC business. Guess who will win? No way to know, of course, but maybe it's time to buy some AMD stock...
"This announcement has to cost Apple billions in lost sales as customers inevitably decide to wait for Intel boxes."
Actually, this is the only dumb statement Cringely makes. If anything, I suspect, Apple's sales will quadruple as people line-up to snap up Macs before they get Intelanalized.
I think it was '97 or '98 that Intel quietly announced an initiative to make an operating system, IIRC it would have had an OS/2 style Windows emulation layer or VM. Way I heard it, Microsoft freaked and told them basically that they would subsidize copies of Windows on AMD chips to the tune of $0, so they just better cut that shit out. So intel dropped it. Funny, I google'd for 15 minutes and couldn't find anything, but I distinctly remember it. Anyone else remember it?
If I do remember it correctly, Cringley's little conjecture might have some weight to it. Intel finally gaining control of a market that it figures it should own.
In other news the blue man group is now known as the green man group...
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Its not a merger if one company has the cash on hand to buy out the other, its a a straight up buyout/takeover.
Cringley is missing an important part of the puzzle.
Apple cannot survive as a generic PC manufacturer unless it can beat everyone else on price, including Dell. Apple has only one lever to do this with.
The relative cost of HW to SW is shrinking to the point where the MS tax is beginning to equal the price of HW. As HW becomes even cheaper, the cost of Windows will surpass that of the HW - probably within a year or two.
Apple can bundle the OS at cost while Dell and friends are hobbled by the MS tax.
This leads Apple into direct competition with Dell and friends and indirectly with MS.
The question is if they can pull it off and if they do, for how long.
and it's clear you made this guy's day by putting that utter nonsense on your frontpage.
In the present case, it doesn't make any sense for intel to become a computer maker with a 2% market share and start competing with and alienating the other 98% of wintel box makers which are its biggest customers.
Yeah yeah, that's not 98%, sorry Sun.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
That's pretty much what I was thinking as I went through this article.
I'm astonished how badly people are missing the target on this one.
Inpple = too close to nipple, and it's creepy
Aptel = sounds like a crappy wristwatch
Macintel = too much like the original
Howabout Matel!
Close enough to both... and we can make toy company jokes too!
Statesmen serve to better the country and help the people.
Politicians serve to better themselves and help friends.
Throwing more gasoline on the conflagration, The Motley Fool has an opinion piece stating that Apple will eventually ink a deal with AMD, and I have to say that it makes sense. Jobs' bombshell on Monday really sent the message that Apple is willing to jump ship if their CPU supplier can't deliver the goods. Having been burned by their erstwhile AIM partners (Motorola and IBM), His Steveness will not be embarassed a third time by a chipmaker. I'd have paid good money to have heard Mr. Meltdown's tirade when it became apparent that IBM had left them holding the bag.
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel? [snip] Was that so much BS? Did Apple not really mean it? And why was the question totally ignored in this week's presentation?
No, the problem was not with the current PowerPCs, which are still competitive. The problem is with the next generation of chips. Apple isn't happy with the effort IBM is putting into them, and needs to keep competitive with the x86 world. By joining the x86 world, they are guaranteed to be competitive.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system? [snip] Certainly, he never said WHICH Intel chip they'd be using, just mentioning an unnamed 3.6-Ghz development system -- a system which apparently doesn't benchmark very well, either (it's in the links).
Did Cringely bother to watch the Keynote? I could go back and look, but when Jobs chose the "About this Mac" menu item, it said 3.6GHz Intel Pentium 4, as I remember. But that's irrelevant: that's what they're using FOR THE DEVELOPMENT systems. Odds are, when Apple ships Intel-based Macs next year, it'll be on a chip that Intel is finishing up development of now. Why on earth would they ship it on old tech if they didn't have to? Again, this switch is not about NOW, it's about the FUTURE.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
There's a fair question. My guess is that either Jobs doesn't trust AMD's market position or doesn't trust AMD's future. Again, we're talking about where Apple is going in the future, not where things are at present. Is Steve's crystal ball a bit cloudy? We'll see in a couple years.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
Let's see... where did he announce this? At the WWDC, Apple's huge developer's convention. You want to make sure that you have native programs available when you ship. Same reason Apple announced the switch to PPC before shipping, same reason they announced the switch to OS X before shipping. The Osborne is a much less relevant example than the switch to PPC, which didn't kill Apple.
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
I think Cringely gets this one right: NO.
Now my question for Cringely: how do I get a job where I'd actually get paid to write crap like that?
For some weird reason I cannot explain Apple + Intel keeps comming off as nipple to me! I got to get out more...
Its been announced that Cringely and Dvorak are merging today, ending weeks of speculation that they had gone so far over the edge that any statment made could be contributed to either statement maker
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
If you throw out your conceptions of what a processor is, and what a personal computer is, this kind of makes sense.
The old balance used to be: Intel made the processors, Microsoft made the OS, and neither the twain shall meet.
Microsoft blurred the lines with Xbox. Xbox did or will do a lot of what people bought PCs for - games, media playback, etc. And this was fine when it contained Intel CPUs, but now it doesn't. Every Xbox 360 sold will mean that an HTPC or gaming PC may not be, and Intel is not amused.
Microsoft is now promising backwards compatibility, too, with the new Xbox. So, in other words... they're shipping a processor. A software-based emulation type processor, but it is clear that they've developed x86 emulation as a part of their technology portfolio, and like most things MS, it'll get better with time.
Intel also remembers the great ARC/ACE debacle, when Microsoft attempted to loosen Intel's vise on the industry by promoting a multi architecture vision. MS did this again with Windows CE - but Intel again prevailed (and their StrongArm has, well, strongarmed itself to dominance in the small device space).
So: why can't MS push another multi-architecture vision? Why not non-x86 Windows boxes? Why not break the x86 oligarchy? Don't they want the hardware to be close to free of cost, with the user only paying for the software? Kind of like the Xbox? This is clearly only possible with freeing Windows from x86. And like the Xbox 360, they probably have a vision of new classes of devices that would greatly benefit from other architectures.
So: would it be so unthinkable that Intel pushes back? After all, under the traditional Intel/MS detente, they could simply say: we're not making PCs, we didn't buy a PC company - these are Macs. Moreover, Intel has been trying like crazy to get into the consumer electronics space for many years. What better way than with the Apple brand? Where all the PCs use x86 (or even Itanium), and all the iPod/Consumer electronic stuff has Intel ARM cpus. Hmm.
This could make a lot of sense.
jh
I could see Intel licensing the Mac OS down the road, under a cost-per-copy and profit-sharing agreement with Apple - but even that makes little to no sense if AMD eventually ramps up production.
Licensing Mac OS X to Intel would allow Intel to sell Mac-compatible PCs and chipsets to PC makers, thus locking AMD out of what could be an expansive Mac market. If the PC-based Mac became a hot seller, PC makers might be all for it, ensuring success and AMD lock-out. Microsoft would be hacked off in a bad way, with two major threats:
1. Kill Mac Office. Not bloody likely if they're selling xmillion copies.
2. Increase Windows licensing costs for PC vendors or yank Windows licenses. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot - this could lead to PC manufacturers pushing Intel Macs even harder.
Intel buying Apple? Once again, Cringely allows his logic to lead him to a conclusion that's way outside the bounds of reality. I don't think it'll happen - but Intel licensing the Mac OS is a distinct business possibility, and it could be a way to slowly erode Microsoft's hedgemony in the PC operating system space.
Think about it. The Xbox360 is powerful enough to be a serious PC. It has native HD output that is better than most PC monitors. It has DRM to make sure there are no viruses or trojans. Is there anything in the developer contract that says your xbox360 title has to be a game??? Welcome to hell intel.
With all these OS vendors pairing up with processor vendors, I feel AMD would miss the bus if it doesn't seriously think about wooing MS. Intel taking sides now will cause serious damage, we know how Apple works, they might want a specific processor from Intel tailor made for their requirements and will take care of the rest of the packaging. This means Intel will be restricted to Apple for business if it ignores MS. Intel is in for serious trouble soon. Wintel has been a formidable combination, if Intel ignores MS it stands to loose and AMD stands to gain. I personally want to see AMD emerging on top Intel, Intel has seriously run out of ideas and are now trying to save their face by attracting some media attention. IA64 was a super dooper flop and AMD capitalized on that. On one side IBM is contented with its CELL and has found a niche market in term gaming consoles. All said and done PPC is going to be history soon, so think twice before you junk your old MAC :-)
This guy comes across as someone who slipped off his meds and he gets paid for it.
Is there somewhere I can apply to work in this racket, it seems like more fun than my day job.
if intel and apple did merge, can you reeally imagine that they wouldn't want to release their OS to all PC users? it would be in their interest then.
Consider that in the past, Wintel machines were exactly that, Windows + Intel. Often the MS Windows taglines were followed by the "Intel Inside" outro to an advertisment. How would Microsoft feel if Dell advertisments featured "Apple Inside" with that annoying chime at the end. The positive advertisment of Apple combined with the misrepresentation of the relationship (and possible consumer confusion) could no doubt account for a percentage point of sales amongst users not clued into the actual situation.
But this is not a good day.
The PPC->x86 move is about protecting the iTunes revenue stream by providing DRM that IBM wouldn't or couldn't do.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Still there. Notice Steve didn't say much about current performance. Sure, a lot of it had to do with marketing hype, and some of it had to do with Altivec. The PowerPC PowerMac marketing will not go away until there is a replacement Intel machine. Check Apple's website if you doubt that.
Folks who've bothered to pay attention know that the move to Intel is all about low-power ( i.e. laptop ) chips; that's why Steve talked about processing power per watt.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Well, it's only 64-bit on the PowerMac G5, and I'm willing to believe that when the PowerMac line is updated to Intel processors, there will be some 64-bit machine in that lineup. That, or there will remain G5s or who knows? Maybe an AMD chip? The fact is, though, few people really care about 64-bit on the desktop. Sadly.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
Sssh! ( see answer to previous question ). Ixnay on the DAM-ay !
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
That's the dumbest question yet. Who was the announcement made to? DEVELOPERS. Who needs to be doing stuff and using their development boxes so programs are available to run on the new machines when they're available? Why would Cringely ask such a stupid question ? Steve doesn't want a product launch without apps to match. Sure, Apple will lose some sales in the mean time- but mostly on the low end, and not many. If you want OS X, getting a Macintosh is still the only way to do it. Kids going back to school this fall will still buy Powerbooks and iBooks, because the only other choice is Windows. Science geeks and other power users hot for 64-bit and Altivec are may snap up dual-core PowerMacs that are likely to be introduced before the Intel switch in that lineup. Legacy users addicted to Classic are going to snap up PowerPC machines even while Intel machines are available. They'll take a hit, but they've got the cash, and they'll still make some sales. It's not Osborne Computer by any stretch.
Besides, Intel machines are available. Just to developers. And they have to return them. But the fact remains, if you're totally hot to get yourself a developer kit, plunk down $500 bucks for a Premier ADC membership, order the $999 "kit", and you're good to go- MacIntel yours to use for the next year and a half or so.
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
Cringely actually gets this one right. It's obvious, when you think about it, though. Apple plans on supporting current G5 machines for a good, long time. Let's say another 4 years at a _bare_ minimum. I'm certain it'll be much longer, but let's say 4 years. Will those G5s get no DRM while the Macintels get DRM? Next question.
Oh, wait, it's all about "Why is Apple _really_ switching to Intel?" isn't it? Why not believe Steve Jobs? It's about processing power per watt, it's about the current state of Apple's laptop lineup. Let's not play stupid. Apple's moving to Intel because people are buying more laptops than desktops and IBM is not making powerful laptop PowerPC-based chips. Nothing more, nothing less.
Apple, looking to compete with Microsoft?!? Please. They'll go to great lengths to avoid doing so where they can. Microsoft for the most part chooses to compete with Apple ( say, on music downloads and portable players ), not the other way around. From where I sit, it looks like Apple is doing their best to provide Microsoft with even more chances to sell copies of their OS and application stack on Apple hardware, without having their OS compete with Microsoft in the same way.
What's the incentive for Intel and Apple to join together? They both have more, better options as partners, and they're going to stay that way.
Intel is already promoting the growth of the non-Microsoft desktop market by supporting Linux.
See: LinuxWorld: Intel Counsels Desktop Linux Movement.
Therefore, although Cringely is probably right about Intel's current goals, he is wrong in thinking that Intel needs Apple, and the risky step of a merger.
Besides, if Intel was supplying both the hardware and the OS, then, in order to avoid lock-in, people would start avoiding Intel, the same way that they avoid Apple today. Instead of Apple's market expanding to match Intel's, we would see Intel's market shrink to match Apple's.
Plus, let's not forget the difference in cultures. Apple has always aimed for the high-end user. Thus they are a high-margin company, that can afford to be a little fat and lazy, which is the opposie of Intel's "low-price + high-volume" business. Thus, while the hope might be to provide Apple software at Intel prices, the merged company could just as easily end up supplying Intel hardware at Apple prices.
Like what i found on my face before I squeezed it :)
Time for my annual Cringely bash. Actually, I'll skip it this year. Why do so many people respect Cringely?
IBM is resetting their priorities. They have sold much of their manufacturing for instance. Could it be that changes at IBM are driving Apple into the Intel camp?
Why is everybody treating this like it is big news? Apple's market share is puny compared with Microsoft. Apple could double its market share and still not be nearly the threat to Microsoft that Linux is. Apple's value network is not going to change. Microsoft's value network is not going to change. Linux is the disruptive technology that is going to upend both of them.
If this is true will the resulting company be called iNtel?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
What would happen if Intel decided to sell all processors at 10 times their normal rate except the ones it sold Apple AND what if Apple found a way to keep people from running Windows on Macintosh PCs.
Two things could happen.
1. AMD suddenly has to figure out new ways to keep up with demand.
2. People stop buying buying windows. I don't think AMD would be able to keep up with demand and I think Windows would not die but diminish very quickly.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
With all these columnist bashing, no one stopped to consider that Cringely is the first to look at the Apple/Intel deal from Intel's perspective. Everyone is speculating about what motivates Apple into this deal, but what motivated Intel? Cringely at least stood back and questioned it, which is more than I can say for most of you ./er.
Agreed. I still wonder about the Cell as the basis of a killer real-time video processing system. The G5 with AltiVec does a pretty decent job of this stuff now, and it seems like the Cell would be dramatically better. Parts of Tiger even seem to be built in a way that could take advantage of the Cell for such tasks (Core Image / Core Video and the GPU offloading stuff).
Apple is clearly king of PC based video processing, and it seems like they would need something along the lines of the Cell in order to keep up. Of course, Apple doesn't need to completely discontinue Power based systems. They will retain the option of making a Cell based workstation if it were to make sense.
Otherwise, nothing stops Intel from coming up with a slightly more abstract version of SIMD that acts more like AltiVec, and adding something like the Cell streams processor to the mix.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
1. The cheap intel machines for sale in Comp USA would look and work much better than they used to, would come bundled with all sorts of juicy Apple media-oriented software, and would have developer's tools built in (or at least, available on the OEM CD).
2. Because PCs wouldn't get hit by a virus or spyware thirty seconds after you plugged it in, you could get your grandparents/parents/siblings a good, cheap computer you would BARELY HAVE TO SUPPORT!
Think about this one: Your family would have computers they would be happy with and understand how to use, but you wouldn't have to spend all your weekends unfucking them.
3. Manufacturers would fall all over themselves producing gear that would work with OS/X (intel), so you would finally have a Unix box that you could use with all your toys. Don't get me wrong, Linux works with almost everything, but there's still that teensy chunk of cool gear that doesn't work. That problem goes away if a merger happens.
4. Microsoft dies the humiliating death it deserves, and over time, the number of Wintel boxes dwindles away, taking with it the huge crapflood of spam and virii that currently slows down the web. Utopia dawns!
I'm for it. Go, Steve, Go!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
The interesting point here is that, although the announcement happened at a Mac conference, it was intel that went to apple, not the other way around. Intel could easily have made apple an offer they couldn't refuse. This explains why AMD was never in the picture, why IBM does not seem to care, etc.
I don't know why anyone listens to Cringely at all. He doesn't appear to have any kind of credentials in anything. I mean, this is a man who's sole reason for you to be listening to him is "I have 20 years in the field, I know what I'm talking about.". 20 years doing what? Speculating wildly?
In fact, if you look at the about page on him, he even admits that he doesn't have any credentials. Kinda seems like he's little more than a mouthpiece to me.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
>Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
2 E16819116198
Dissapearing as we speak and that is part of the reason for the move.
>Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
intel Pentium 4 630 Prescott 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 EM64T
$289 NOTE the EMT64T.
The Chip in the dev platform is reportedly:
Nntel Pentium 4 660 Prescott 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 EM64T
Again note the EM64T
>Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
To me this is the lamest question people ask. There are so many reason that it would be a much bigger surprise if it were AMD. Want some:
0: Better deal, simpler engineering if you stick with one.
1: Intel provides the whole platform from a single vendor. Massively simplifying engineering the new platform
2: The myriad of reasons that Dell does the same. Most of them Dollars.
3: Pentium-M Laptop platform.
4: Truly massive Fab capacity, vs AMD history of production problems.
>Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
As said before Developers. Because there is no other way you can give ALL the developers a heads up and keep it a secret.
VHS beat Beta because of proliferation, NOT because of quality
VHS had two hour capability, Betamax had one hour.
Sony kept Betamax to themselves. VHS was a consortium and many companies built VHS machines.
The vaunted quality of Betamax was only on the video, and not enough to really notice, given how crappy TV is anyway; the audio was worse. A small loss in quality, probably not even noticeable most of the time, in exchange for double the time was a pretty good deal to most people, and then throw in competition from multiple manufacturers and lower prices and different features and lots of choices, and Betamax was doomed.
Here are some links:
Guardian
Wikipedia
Infuriate left and right
There is plenty to comment on, but this is the part that interests me. I think this is very possible. Steve killed the clones, but why? Because they undercut Apple. But he is allowing iPod "clones." Why?
The difference is between "clone" and clone. The Mac clones were different hardware (asthetically, possibly physically) based on the platform. The HP iPod is nothing more than a Apple iPod with a different brand on it. Otherwise it is EXACTLY the same.
If Apple were to let HP sell Macs (in the same way they sell iPods) what would that do for them? It would give them another HUGE company saying "Macs are good!" (not to mention taking some of the tech support burden). Add onto this the economy of scale they could get on Intel processors if they put their weight in with HP. They sell the same thing, maybe in a different color. But the guts, software, everything else is the same (except for the word "HP" everywhere and maybe a bundled DeskJet).
So Apple takes a small hit on revenue per box if HP sells some. Big deal. In exchange they get all that marketing muscle, all that brand loyalty, and the economy of scale of making machines for HP too (which would probably cover HP's share of the machine's proffit). It would also get them into stores that don't carry Macs but do carry HPs (Office Max would be one example, I think).
In exchange, if HP wanted, they could slowly get out of the Wintel business and into the Mac business. They are having trouble competing with Dell, and this would give them something to sell that Dell can't. It would also lower their R&D budget because they would be sharing it with Apple. Who knows, maybe Apple will get back into the printer business with Apple branded LaserJets and DeskJets.
Very interesting. I'd find it less shocking than the Intel annoucement.
PS: Apple to merge with Intel? No way. Besides, wouldn't the SEC turn that down (it would make most computer makes dependant on another computer maker).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Of course they will. Now Steve can fix all the chips to only run with other Apple hardware forcing PC manufacturers to die!!! ... or switch to AMD whatever you know.
Support these days is outsourced, it does not take all that long to retrain these hard working sub-minimum wage paid folks to read off a seperate page of instructions while atempting a north american accent.
It would not be any challenge for the support company to set up seperate support departments for Mac and Windows, with differing call in phone numbers.
Yes, and in that same column we see:
"I'm fairly sure that the PowerPC, too, has an individual CPU ID. Every high end microprocessor does, just as every network device has its unique MAC address."
Being as everyone knows MAC addresses are unique and hard-coded into the network device. There are no routers with flash memory containing the MAC addresses. Nor have certain companies ever produced several exactly-identical network devices with hard-coded MAC address, and this has never resulted in great amusement when two ended up on the same net.
InfoWorld still runs a column by yet another columnist who goes by the name Robert X. Cringeley. It's sort of an IT industry gossip/society column, and it's often actually pretty good.
Breakfast served all day!
The move to Intel is to appease hollywood. The new Intel chip will have BUILT IN copy protection which apple must adopt in order to offer an imovie service
Ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA ha ha ... wheeze wheeze ... HA HA HA ah
Philosophy.
- What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
- What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
- Where the heck is AMD?
- Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
- Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
He then bangs on about Microsoft for a bit, as if Apple would ever be a threat to Microsoft, who have a whole new OS on the cards and have been running on these fabled Intel processor things for decades. I'll tell you the real reason: IBM have given Apple the cold shoulder. Look at it this way: Apple represents so little business for IBM that it doesn't make sense to keep developing new chips for them. IBM have their work cut out with the next gen consoles, and Apple is a teeny tiny spec compared to the massive quantity of chips IBM will have to produce to meet demand for these consoles.Absolutely nothing. The article he refers to in Question 2 answers his question here. The introduction of the PPC 970MP with a 90/65nm fab process would allow the G5 CPU to hit 3.5 GHz and use less power too. This wasn't bullshit. The G5 was clearly faster for raw calculating power (agreed, the linked article shows some dire results for MySQL and so on, but this is more likely down to how the OS handles threading, or how MySQL was compiled).
Nothing. I assume that the new Apples will not use Xeons or Itaniums, but Intel's next desktop chip (Pentium D?) with AMD64/EM64T 64-bit extensions.
AMD's fab plants are running to maximum capacity, as are IBM's (all next gen consoles are using IBM's chips). They are not the sensible choice. Intel has the capacity and the know-how. Apple are also free to switch to AMD if Intel turns out to suck, although this will cause another uproar.
To prepare corporate customers and their user base for the switch. To give developers time to port software to the new architecture so that it will be ready on release of the new system. Cringely's answer to this question is stolen from The Register, and it is unlikely that Apple will suffer greatly from this. They have other products such as their iPod and iTunes services to support themselves. Sure, sales will fall, but it's my prediction that AAPL will fall and then pick up as market analysts predict a rise in Apple sales in the next few months due to a new product release (Intel Macs). The Osborne Effect doesn't really hold water, Apple already have a development system available, and have already ported their OS. They have been planning this for five years. They do have a product to deliver, and they are very, very good at hype.
He's right on this one. No.
AMD aren't that interesting to Apple, they're already at maximum capacity as I mentioned, and they're quite happy producing chips for PCs. They also don't have the marketing clout of Intel and they're less well known. Apple chose Intel because they've been dumped by IBM, and Intel are more than happy to help Apple out because it secures them some more market penetration, which they need because they've made a considerable amount of blunders recently. Both are helping eachother out. It's simple symbiosis. If they didn't, their futures are unpredictable.
Intel could still have bought Apple as Cringely states, but I deem this to be highly unlikely. Intel is not in a good position to make acquisitions like this, and value their PC market a lot too.
His theories are generally internally consistent but they often have little basis in reality. He also has trouble distinguishing what he would do from something that a company like Apple would do.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Ok, just MacIntel.
Intel is big into making all kinds of chips these days, not just CPUs. For a while they've been big on this "digital home" kick, too. Clearly they see the future for the semiconductor market being in more than just PCs. The only problem there is that Intel just has absolutely no clue how to market products to end consumers. They know how to move chips, not Webcams. If a partnership with Apple means Intel can get its chips into future digital consumer devices more easily and see those products become market leaders through Apple's genius product design and marketing, that can't be all bad.
Breakfast served all day!
... iNpple?
People have been saying for years that Apple would go belly-up if it didn't let third party OEMs manufacture Apple clones. The truth is that all the clones did was eat into Apple's customer base while at the same time damaging its platform's brand image among consumers (because many of the clones sort of sucked -- a Umax Mac may have been cheaper, but certainly was not better than a genuine Apple, by a long shot).
Apple's more financially successful now than it has been in years. Why would they bring back the clones now?
Remember, folks: Clones are a subversive plot by the evil Emperor. Vote no on Apple clones.
Breakfast served all day!
In the unlikely event that he's right, and Apple and Intel decide to merge, what are the chances the government will actually let it happen? Don't we have enough problems with monopolies as it is? Or would Apple+Intel not qualify as a monopoly? Would they allow it just so they can compete with Microsoft?
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
but he's almost always right. and if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, nothing will.
Well, gotta hand it to the Cringe... he's not gonna get any dates from this article, either!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Moving to Intel was probably done for supply and roadmap reasons, but switching architectures gives Apple the opportunity to grow their market share through piracy, a phenomenon that has been exploited by Adobe and Microsoft in the past.
Apple will only sell OSX with official Mac hardware at their traditional prices to their traditional customers, but I suspect a cracked version will emerge and will displace Windows for a significant number of under-the-table users.
Over time, pirated software often earns back more than its cost. Users who pirate because they cannot afford to purchase eventually become professionals who do purchase, and users who pirate but never purchase help exclude competing products from getting a foothold. Pirated copies of OSX may also increase the market for Mac software in general, not only because there will be a larger installed base, but because more programmers will become familiar with OSX.
Maybe I'm wrong, and Apple and Intel will work so closely together that no cracked version of OSX-for-Dells will be out there, but if there is, Apple will have set themselves up for a real contest with Microsoft. They won't have to officially support the wide variety of hardware that Microsoft does, but they'll be able to benefit from having their software on it.
Still wrapping my mind around the switch, but in the long term, this could be a big deal.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
There's no real money left in hardware. It's about content creation and distribution. I can see Apple becoming just a software developer. That trend began to be obvious with ipods and itunes. Apple needs to evolve away from the little niche market it has, or it will slowly die. Very nice OS, but few want to develop apps for less than 5% market share.
If someone builds a machine with an AMD processor and some custom support chips to run Apple software, neither Intel nor Apple will be in a strong position to stop them legally. Especially since the Lexmark vs. SCC decision that "lock out codes" are not copyrightable.
This issue has already been decided in the game console area, in the Connectix case. Connectix sold a VM that ran Playstation I games on a PC, and won against Sony on that issue. Nobody builds game console clones because they're sold at a loss, not because it can't be done.
We'll probably see low-end machines from China that boot Windows, Linux, or MacOS as requested. In the end, this will boost Apple's market share.
Intel is a very very oportunistic company where the sole driving force is to make as much profit as possible. This may not be a bad thing in theory but in practice it's ugly as shit to se this kind of monster, a souless zombie. Now, because they are in bed with Apple it means that Intel wants something. We have Steve on a big scene being a good father for all the Apple kids but it should be very clear that this thing is happening because Intel wants to. What does it want? More money. How? They need some soul and Apple has plenty. Intel hopes to push some blood in it's cheeks with Apple, especially now when it's image is very bad compared to AMD in the all-profitable high-end arena so they want to ensure the masses and the masses are marketing frags. .NET Framework running on both Linux and Os X.
The sad thing here is the fact that the more Intel succedes with this move, the more we'll see Microsoft being pushed towards AMD and we all hate Microsoft and love AMD and we want it to remain like that. The good thing could be that if Intel makes 25% - 30% room in the desktop OS garden for a second choice from Apple this will mean that between Apple and Microsoft there will be an 20% gap, easy fillable by a third choice: Linux. This could be very very good, but I spy a big surprise from Microsoft with it's
The good times are coming.
We all know that the Cell is no good for general purpose computing. But IBM can change the design to add a G5 or G6 coprocessor on die. It has been done before. A great example was the Amigas dual CPU upgrade boards that had 68040/060 CPUs running alongside the early generation of Motorolas RISC CPUs. They started by running the OS and older software on the CISC chip while running the newer software (or routines) on the RISC chip. They then switched to newer OS cores and ran the OS on the RISC chip and ran extra routines on the CISC chip to utilise the fact that there were two CPUs.
Now my dream world has Apple/IBM/Nintendo doing a deal to switch the Mac to a Cell varient, Apple sharing OSX with Nintendo for its next gen system and nintendo sharing its hardware chips to Apple so Macs could play the most kickass games on the desktop. I see this solution as solving three companies problems with one deal.
And my nose is merging with my dick!
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Point by point this has got to be the most inacurate article I have read in a long, long time.... Someone please tell me that this was a huge joke... but for those who think this is serious, let me take it down, point by point:
1) SSE3 is no AltiVec, but its not like SIMD instructions arent supported by x86 CPUs. Its a small price to pay for the many advantages of leaving PowerPC behind. And who is to say that this new relationship will not give Apple more say as to what Intel includes in SSE4...
2) Flat out wrong, wrong, wrong. Intel already sells desktop 64bit CPUs, cheap ones too.. and by the end of the year you will be able to buy a cheap Celeron with EM64T... does this guy have a clue?
3) Sure... AMD's roadmap is better than Intels... sure... thats why SOOO many x86 laptops have that cool new fast, low heat, low power AMD CPU.... Oh wait! They dont! Apple's #1 complaint to IBM was getting the G5 laptop ready, IBM didnt deliver, AMD has just started to compete in the laptop world, yet Intel has the well known Centrino line that can provide longer battery life and lower heat output than the best G4 laptop Apple makes today. I am sure I will piss off some AMD fans by saying this but AMD is not the chosen company of CPU makers. They still have a long way to go before they are really competing with Intel, so why would Apple once again choose the smaller company, its failed them before, why take the chance again?
4) Sure, lets make every single Apple developer from Adobe to Joe Coder sign an NDA, no one will leak it, not a chance... Lets see, tens of thousands of NDA's, one person lets something slip, and poof, its all over. Apple gains its power from its amazing marketing abilities. It would NEVER chance letting Joe Coder be the one to break the big news. It would rather roll the dice, take its chances on sales, but be the one to break the news FIRST.
5) Wrong, Wrong, Wrong... Anyone who has taken 5 minutes to read up on LeGrande Technology knows that it is so very different from the P3 CPUID concept that created that huge stir. Will LeGrande cause some people to wonder about privacy? Sure, but mostly it will be the OS's implementation of LeGrande that will define its use. It will be Apple or Microsoft who will define just how the hardware will be used, and thus define the privacy policies that people will have to ponder. Intel with LeGrande is just trying to offer software developers to say "this code is trusted", which could mean DRM, but could also mean less viruses, less security issues, safer computing for the end use as well as for the high end servers.
As for IBM matching the Intel or AMD roadmaps... lets see, IBM sold its Laptop/Desktop unit a few months ago, has not pushed to make the G5 laptop ready, considers Apple a high priority client, so where the heck is the desire for IBM to "match" the Intel Roadmap... I dont see one, do you?
In conclusion... WTF! This has to be a joke... because no minimally aware person could ever write this and believe it.
I'd hate to see Linus get hurt :)
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Cringely's mascot is outdated. It should be this instead. By the way, has anyone here checked out Tom's Hardware's article on Pentium M performance? If you haven't, read it now. You will see the real reason why Apple wants Intel chips.
You are only as much as what you do with what you know.
Remember, folks: The evil Emperor was the also president of the old republic. Vote NO on giving Steve Jobs any special powers during the upcoming crisis.
Apple has never competed on price (until the Mac mini). They've survived a while.
mbbac
So is 64-bit really nothing to Apple? And why did they make such a big deal about it in their earlier marketing[emphasis mine]?
Question answered.
2: A year from now Intel will have boatloads of VT (Virtualization Technology nee Vanderpool) enabled chips available. So unless there's an SSE4 instruction set hiding somewhere, expect Apple to make use of this feature which, coincidentally will prevent OSX from running on all the old Pentium 4's out there, as well as AMD chips since Pacifica does the same things, but with different instructions.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why has everyone forgotten Microsoft? I am a Mac user (not a fanatic). I do believe M$ will fight back. I do remember that M$ purchased the same emulation tech from the same comapny as Apple. M$ announced that its software will be used for emulating XBox on the Xbox 360.
If this emulation technology is used to run Mac and Linux code directly on Longhorn then it has the capability of killing off Apple and neutering Linux development. M$ needs a couple of new ideas before this would work. Firstly they would need to rethink their prices and business practices. Secondly they would have to make Longhorn "just work" and stable. I also note that it will be interesting times ahead in 18 months with Apple releasing its x86 machines at the same time M$ releases its Longhorn to the biggest advertising campaign the world has ever seen.
The question should be "Has Microsoft learned its lesson?".
I'm pretty sure that Apple has admitted to the devs at WWDC that Rosetta is in fact a Transative-powered technology.
We all knew that Transative believed they had something big. Evidently they do. The Mach-O binaries with their lazy symbol lookup provide a very nice, natural framework for Rosetta to run.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
oh my fucking god I don't know what to think any more.
C++ and Python merging you say? But only in order implement a better Ruby interpreter running PHP web sites in enterprise deployments in foriegn nations behind a firewall that's being upgraded to OS/2 machines.
Pardon?
Where am I again? Oh, I would love to see the look on Microsoft's face.
Um.
If it had a face. Damn faceless thing.
-pyrrho
thanks, now i have to poke out my minds eye for that mental image...
"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
I'm pretty sure even Xtra is outsourcing support to India. Either that or they've got a lot of immigrants working for them.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Cringely can find no logical reason for Apple to choose Intel over AMD
but other SMRT people can. Other than your obvious point, which is clearly the #1 driving motivation, as Jobs could see IBM devoting more and more effort to game boxes and embedded and its own POWER servers.
(2) AMD is associated with "#2", "loser", etc. There's a big advantage for Apple to be seen with the Winner---finally!
Shit, big companies won't buy AMD based computers even though they are 99% Intel compatible. On the other hand, many of them are tired of getting raped by Microsoft. Maybe there's something to the OSX thing---they'll think "not Windows, but without Linux geek crap".
(3) Intel has MONEY that it gives to hardware manufacturers when they use that dorky "intel inside" ding dong ding dong in their advertisements
(4) Intel has other chips, like networking, that AMD may nto.
(5) Intel has mediocre desktop chips, but great low-power laptop chip*sets*.
Guess who really sells lots of nifty notebooks with fancy well-integrated hardware?
(At my latest scientific conference, I'd say that >40% of presenters had a Powerbook/iBook).
(5) Apple gets almost half its revenue from iPods now. What stuff does AMD make, besides flash, that's really good for iPod?
Wild ass crackhead prediction:
Apple will never allow Dell or Compaq or beige boxes to run OSX.
But there may eventually be a OSX-box, and especially "blade servers" which do make it into Windows-centric company rooms: they will say Intel on it, as Intel becomes a high end *systems* maker. Yup, the other companies will scream when their supplier starts competing against them.
Intel's response: OK, you go ahead and bitch. If y'all want, you can open up a few dozen of your own multi-billion chip fab plants. But I think we'll be seeing ya back around here.
It all works because of chip making economics.
The capital required is now so immense that not only is there a huge barrier to entry, there's a huge barrier to even just increasing capacity.
AMD doesn't have the capacity. Even if Sun and HP and Dell get all huffy and got to AMD they can't get enough supply there, and since the margins on the boxes are so low, the clients can't supply AMD with enough capital to greatly increase capacity either.
And Intel has a habit of busting down the price just when AMD looks like it's starting to get ahead (financially). So AMD and its bankers won't take the risk of massive new expansion.
The new realignment:
Team 1
---------------------
Intel, Apple
Intel produces chips, Apple produces OSX and Macs for the consumer, and Intel Systems produces boring server boxes and desktops. Because it "owns" or has a "special deal" for OSX, it can undersell the Windows-based monopoly servers.
And finally Intel can have good looking "sexy innovative demo hardware" which WORKS---i.e. a Mac---instead of that embarassing crap they've pushed before.
Team 2: Sun, Dell, Microsoft, AMD
Microsoft can't put too much favoritism towards AMD (like cutting out Intel support) because AMD can't supply anywhere near enough capacity. Sun and Microsoft are congential competitors too and despite the detente, they don't know how to work together, as Microsoft's impulse is 'crush'. Dell gets pissy as Intel starts competing against them, but again, AMD can't supply big enough volumes, so they're stuck too. And don't forget those low margins, so how much strategic power do they have?
Centrifugal forces will push away all but Dell+Microsoft, slave and master.
Team "L is for loser": HP/Compaq
More expensive than Dell, no distinguishing features, innovation controlled by Microsoft
Itanic's dead and Carly obliterated their geek cred--Agilent is gone and printers are boring. Linux is strangling HPUX and IBM has services locked up.
Sun will probably end up here too but they may hang on a little longer.
Remember back in the 80's when there was a television adv for Folgers: "We have secretly replaced the fine coffee usually served in this restaurant with Folger's instant coffee"? This is what Apple has done!
Dvorak held the position before Mark Stephens. When Stephens came to Infoworld, the mag decided to use a pseudonym rather than have to change the by-line, I assume, every time another Dvorak/Stephens came & left.
So Dvorak's departure is probably the reason for creating the pseudonym R.X. Cringley.
But Stephens wanted to keep the pseudonym after later leaving Infoworld. Hence the lawsuit with Infoworld publisher IDG, likely because both Infoworld and Stephens had built the reputations of the column / columnist on the Cringely name.
The resulting settlement out of court is why Stephens can't use the Cringely name for publishing in a computer publication.
So hopefully I clarified the parent.
Cringely Story
It's not that hard to find low grade crack...
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Companies like dell are not shelling out $200 per copy of windowsxp. Not even $100. With that said, how cheap do you think hardware will get?
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
It would be a cold day in hell though. I mean intel powers dell, gateway and most of the HP's that most people buy. Only us nerds buy AMD machines. I just dont think at this point its going to happen.
I enjoy Cringley's columns, but the guy rarely even asks the right questions, much less answers them. And like Dvorak, he loves making predictions - even if his track record is worse than the broken clock that's right twice a day.
Cringley starts off his essay by asking some questions. His odd answers to these questions lead directly to his bizarre thesis. But let's see what happens when I put my Mr. Half-A-Brain Hat on and try to answer them according to the known facts.
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
The real question is, what happened to the 3ghz G5? Where are the mobile G5s? Answer: none of these items exist. An Intel chip that actually exists in this universe is always superior to a PowerPC chip that is only vapor, even if the PowerPC is a much better design in theory.
Sure, some cool stuff is happening in PowerPC-land, like the Cell (co-developed by Apple's new archenemy, Sony). But if you think the Cell would be a good choice for Apple then you simply don't know much about it. Bottom-line here is, neither IBM or Freescale were capable of providing the chips Apple needs - 64-bit, ever faster, ever improving, with ever more variety of flavors, on a reliable roadmap...
Obviously Apple expected that IBM was going to be able to really pull this off, or they wouldn't have introduced the G5 or bragged about the coming 64-bit era and 3ghz right around the corner. I think we all expected that IBM could pull it off. But anybody who follows the silicon press knows they've hit snag after snag... Hey, it's a tough business.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Again, what happened to the G5? Why didn't they scale better; why aren't there low power parts powering every iBook and PowerBook and Mac mini by now? Apple stopped worrying so much about 64-bit when their 64-bit chip couldn't live up to its promise. Hardly any 64-bit machines means hardly any 64-bit software means why bother. Though I'm sure we'll eventually see this focus return for EMT64 Pentiums.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
All of these problems were caused by even mighty IBM having technical setbacks. So Apple is going to run into the arms of... tiny AMD?!? That's insane.
Licking their wounds from processor problems and determined never to go through this again, they did the only sane thing - make a deal with the biggest, most reliable chip company on the planet. (I run AMD myself, but c'mon...) And, like Dell, they don't need to actually buy AMD chips to benefit from the competitive pressures AMD places on Intel.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
Apple has made two big transitions in the past, and the last one was really rather painful. If another transition had to happen, huge focus had to be put on minimizing that pain for users and developers. So get the developers started early, so there's actually something (native) to run on the Intel Macs when they hit the stores. This wouldn't have been the case without a good deal of lead time. A year is about right.
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
You really think IBM couldn't adopt whatever DRM Hollywood demanded in their future roadmap? Nothing fundamental to any DRM scheme requires a Pentium or even an Intel chipset. This goes beyond the usual mere Cringley ignorance and ventures into conspiracy theory territory.
Oh, Cringley... will he ever learn? Hey, Dvorak, wipe that smile off your face. And no, you can't borrow the hat.
Shitting Monkeys out his asshole when the rumor was true...
When they sell 50 million copies of OS X on Intel too will be shitting monkeys out my asshole as well.
Your Average Joe
To a dyslexic? Not bad. It reminds me of Natalie Portman for some reason.
people are buying more laptops than desktops and IBM is not making powerful laptop PowerPC-based chips.
IBM isn't, but IBM isn't the one who makes low power PPCs. I can't conceive of why anyone would even be talking about G5s in laptops... that's not IBM's job. That's Freescale's. And Freescale have some really tasty new chips coming down the pipe.
Microsoft, it is all about Microsoft. I will buy that Apple and Intel make an interesting hardware combination regarding competition with Microsoft x86 and all that. But everyone failed to consider, Intel making the Apple GUI Open Source GPL which doesn't mean Apple's OS or software would disappear. They could still sell it. But also the Open Source community would have an interesting unifying GUI to compete with Microsoft. That would be most interesting. That I believe would put Microsoft, for the first time, on unsteady ground for sure.
"Now look at Steve Job's head. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. It's all there on film"
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
iNtel
Who ever says it's compatible with Windows? Making it ever-so-slightly incompatible would be easier because it's not just legacy-free, it's a fresh start. They'd want to use commodity parts without having to license Microsoft's hardware spec.
Watch the speech. Jobs didn't say he had OSX running on a PC, he said he had OSX running on an Intel-processor platform. Right now it's a Pentium-as-we-know-it, it may or may not be by the time they ship systems. And he didn't say that Windows would run on it natively, either.
Using commodity memory, bus,parts, etc. they get the price down comparable to a PC, removing one of the acceptance obstacles.
This could work. I hope so. I want my Intel stock back up where it was when they laid me off.
Applications, applications, applications... Apple can't write their own fast enough nor switch the market over to a platform that simply lacks *Apps*.
iCoolness iTunes, iPhoto style couldn't help Apple's marketshare problem.
In the end, it didn't matter that OSX could rev 3 times to Windows 1 new rev. OSX didn't have the apps.
Intel & Apple are not merging.
Apple's "Intel Inside" program is not about the CPU. OSX is CPU agnostic.
Look for dual-core coolness in the "Intel inside" Apple program downstream that will run x86 apps *native* in MAC windows, seamlessly. That's as close to a merger as Cringly will ever see.
On the heels of the Apple/Intel merger Microsoft and AMD have announced a merger of their own. ....remember, you heard it here first.
Wow, anyone can do this!
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Hey, this was supposed to be funny but it's actually real Insightful. Wait. Now it's funny again.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
I thought the proper way to report this was that Mr. C says, not that he thinks something. We have evidence that he says things.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
You're kidding, right? You sound a bit on the naive side. To say that your entire product line for the next year or year and a half is obsolete is extremely dangerous. Jobs may be a bit wacky, but stupid he isn't. Your shallow answer doesn't hold water, as Cringely writes in his own. NDAs are more than enough. Apple cares about big software products, whose manufacturers routinely sign NDAs, and much less about Joe Mac Hacker or the many small-potatoes products out there.
The point being that Jobs must have something pretty big up his sleeve in order to take such a colossally perilous risk.
So Apple finally dicides to use Intel processors and so you instantly assume that they're merging? Yeah Right! Did Apple ever merge with Big Blue or with Motorola?
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
It's a Slashdot cliche, but the truth is this is all about Microsoft.
Microsoft killed Itanium the day they decided 64-bit Windows would only run on AMD64, and never on Itanium. That was also the day Intel had to swallow their pride, go back on all earlier statements, and adopt AMD's 64-bit technology as their own. For the first time, a competitor truly led x86 chip development, and that - combined with the billions lost on Itanium - had to STING.
Now, you might say that Itanium was still-born and Microsoft only put the final nail in the coffin. But I'm telling ya it doesn't look that way when you're Intel and you've got billions of dollars and your entire reputation invested in that thing.
People joke about the "Wintel" platform, but the day Microsoft supported AMD64 was the day it became clear that the "Win" matters a hell of a lot more than the "tel" ever did.
It's in Intel's interest to have a variety of operating systems out there in the market, running on their chips. It's against their interest to have all of that power instead invested in a single, huge monopoly. The Apple deal is a BIG win for Intel.
Why are you reading this? I'm talking about the parent!
R(k)
what do you mean accidentally!? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
My friend worked at a CSC for printers. They took calls for various companies (like Espon, Canon, Panasonic, Okidata, maybe not those exact ones but you get the point). The calls were routed with a flag on the screen that indicated how to answer the phone, Hi, thank you for calling [company X] printer support hotline, how can I help you today.
Yeah, I'm sure Intel would give up Dell and all the others who buy massive amounts of x86. Intel has no reason to merge with Apple.
the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people under the supervision of the reverse vampires are forcing Apple and Intel to merge!
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
He missed the boat on almost every question that he asked himself. Did he do any research at all for this article? There are obvious reasons that Apple didn't go with AMD, and even more reasons that they would not want to use the cell processor.
And I believe that even the low benchmarks that he mentioned were incorrectly performed using Rosetta.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Everyone always brings up the "AMD cant supply enough" argument... I know theres a lot of amd b0xen out there, i mean a LOT. Apples share is what 6% supposedly atm? Does anyone have any figures to actually prove they cant handle this?
Brain(s): 0.0% user, 1.3% system, 0.1% nice, 98.6% idle
Apple is reviving Star Trek.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Seriously however this latest post is so full of word conclusions its a joke. Lets deconstruct this crapola:
...Apple loved to pull Phil Schiller onstage to do side-by-side speed tests showing how much faster in real life the G4s and G5s were than their Pentium equivalents. Was that so much BS? Did Apple not really mean it? And why was the question totally ignored in this week's presentation?"
"Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
Steve said consumer end Macs would get the Intel treatment first. I.E. The iBook/iMac/eMac/Mac Mini. Looking at the CPUs we have...G4/G5/G4/G4. G4's get their ass handed to them by P4s/AMD 64. Moving these models to Pentium Ms would be a performance boost for these systems! AltiVec is not used as often as one would think. Everything is not a vector problem! PPC in the form of G5 does compete well still against Intels Netburst CPUs. Also, performance wasnt talked about because it was a developers confrence and this was the beginning of the process so things will only get FASTER moving forward as things are optimized, ported, etc.
Myth: Busted
"Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
OS X 10.4 -- Tiger -- is a 64-bit OS, remember, yet Intel's 64-bit chips -- Xeon and Itanium -- are high buck items aimed at servers, not iMacs."
Not ALL of Tiger is 64-bits, only certain libraries. To quote from Apple's Tiger webpage:
"Initially, only libSystem, the Accelerate framework, and a few other low-level support libraries are available in a 64-bit format. This means that only basic, command-line functionality is available to 64-bit applications. GUI applications that need more than 4 GB of memory will have to split their functionality into a 64-bit back end and a 32-bit GUI that communicate using interprocess communication."
Plus, the high end Macs are going to be the last to move to Intel CPUs because of...64-bitness! The idea that Apple would use Itanium is sheer comedy. Itanium is a dead chip. Cringley didn't read the bloody Universal Binary Guide Apple wrote because it talks about IA-32 architecture explicity!
"Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
If Apple is willing to embrace the Intel architecture because of its performance and low power consumption, then why not go with AMD, which equals Intel's power specs, EXCEEDS Intel's performance specs AND does so at a lower price point across the board?"
Lets see, AMD is nowhere to be found because:
1. It's fabs are barely able to keep up with demand for the new whiz-bang CPUs. AMD will have some breathing room when its new Fab in Dresden open up in...uhm 2007 i think?
2. AMD makes no motherboard chipsets unless forced to.
3. It's CURRENT line of CPUs are better then Intels CURRENT line of CPUs but Apple is going to be using NEWER CPUs (Yonah for mobile I suspect, and perhaps Conroe for desktops). The Pentium M is very competitive with the AMD chips and many people have wondered out loud why in the sam hell Intel doesnt push Pentium-M to the desktop to regain the fast, cool, and neat crown.
"Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?"
It is a DEVELOPERS CONFRENCE you IDIOT! These are the people who NEED TO KNOW FIRST. God, Cringley, you can be brillant sometimes but then you say shit like this and I have to wonder if your cat started typing for you while you were away. Take note that you have to go hunting on the Apple.com website to find the announcement of this transition.
"Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?"
The only DRM this will be about is Apple using the LaGrande technology to insure that only Apple motherboards will run OS X along with Windows, Linux and any other OS you so choose. DRM exists only to insure you only run OS X on the hardware Apple certifies and sells.
Intel will not buy Apple, IBM couldn't have improved their roadmap to suit Apple and thats that. Cringley is dead wrong on all counts here. You read it here first.
When was the last time Cringeley's column wasn't merely an expression of his neuroses?
Come to think of it, when was the last time I read one straight through without thinking that?
Bank on it.
You may be right, but, he has a cooler nick name than you!
Drakonian = Dark, Evilish?
TheKidWho =
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
The big question is:
What is he smoking and why doesn't he share?
It's gotta be some great shit man.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Apple got the rights to SONY music library for itunes. SONY gets Apple OSX for their INTEL hardware. With IBM selling to Lenovo it opens the door for SONY dominance as the secondary laptop vendor. SONY gets OSX for the PlayStation / Settop box. Apple gets iTunes/iMovies to play on the SONY hardware. SONY/APPLE -- and INTEL compete for the living room against Microsoft......
"..., I see Apple using Dell/HP/Lenovo to build their hardware."
Either Gateway, or whoever the fuck Wal-Mart's OEM is.
With all of the NRE (Nonrecurring Engineering) expenses Apple must endure to incorporate Intel processor/chipset/DRM while still trying to compete with the commodity market bottom feeders,
sacrifices (like quality) will have to be made. Apple cannot afford to piss off both their loyal users AND their shareholders, so a rapid increase in market share must prevail. No doubt, lackluster Mac Mini sales convinced Apple management that their price point was still too high. Whoever told Steve Jobs that Apple could sell just as many Mac Minis as iPods is assuredly no longer in Apple's employ.
Come ON!!! Intel has got windows-based software so far up its ass that it would never abandon MS/merge with Apple. What is Cringely working off of besides a hunch? Intel is a massive corporation that specializes in extremely complex chip manufacturing. Apple makes software and hardware. The two are not going to mix The strain involved would be ridiculous.
Cringely doesn't seem to mention that Apple has had x86 versions for years. It's just gotten to the point where IBM isn't up to Apple's standard.
Instead of making accusations like this, base it on hard fact. At this point, it would be almost equivilent to say that France and Germany are merging out of common goals. EU, my ass.
Apple is going to stay independent. That's it's whole image. The underdog. Hey, I'm totally for Apple kicking MS. But it's not going to happen.
Due to financial difficulties, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
iThink it would be the perfect name for their new computers. iDon't know why iDidn't think of this before. iApologize if someone thought of it first, but if not iWill have to patent it quick so iCan get my royalties.
Cringely got to this part:
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
OS X 10.4 -- Tiger -- is a 64-bit OS, remember, yet Intel's 64-bit chips -- Xeon and Itanium -- are high buck items aimed at servers, not iMacs. So is Intel going to do a cheaper Itanium for Apple or is Apple going to pretend that 64-bit never existed? Yes to both is my guess, which explains why the word "Pentium" was hardly used in the Jobs presentation. Certainly, he never said WHICH Intel chip they'd be using, just mentioning an unnamed 3.6-Ghz development system -- a system which apparently doesn't benchmark very well, either (it's in the links).
So is 64-bit really nothing to Apple? And why did they make such a big deal about it in their earlier marketing?
Umm.. what about EMT64? Umm.. you know, that technology that's in those new-fangled P4 chips?
No need to read the rest of it.. conclusions based on false "facts" aren't very good conclusions at all.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Cringeley's logic doesn't add up. Apple picked Intel, rather than AMD, because they're merging, rather than just going for the best brand-name marketing? Or just readying their rollout for the followup blow: "it also works on AMD just fine", which would have much more impact than announcing AMD first (and alienating Intel), then adding Intel, and looking like the biggest player was an afterthought. And Intel's hated their Microserfdom for years - why would that compel Apple to merge with them? Then his speculation about Apple dropping its new 64-bit OS, when that OS is the key to the "easy transition", including their lessons from 68K->PPC. Nothing backing that up, and extremely unlikey. His "Osborne" point is valid, but Jobs can easily fix a "billions in sales" slip by offering a tradein on PPC Macs < 2-3 years old, and score huge PR, underscoring his "switch" message. He could even get mileage on offering the tradein to Windows owners, kicking a huge "switch" tsunami. A year of hype about the switch is extremely valuable, and Apple has billions in the bank to invest in the transition, even if it means lost "Osborne" sales.
I think all that really happened is that Jobs blew Cringeley's mind. A story this big, and Cringely (who's usually right, and pretty prescient) didn't predict it in his column the week before? And it's a fundamental crossing of the streams? BOOM!
--
make install -not war
Attn Mods:
crypto55 is a known racist troll. many of his posts have been modded down. please make sure this person is not rewarded for his extremist and supremacist views.
Micosoft will move Longhorn to the PowerPC platform in the next two years. Since people will need to buy new apps, as Legacy Windows apps will have a hard time running on Longhorn, Gates and Ballmer decided that if the XBox 360 using a PPC chip was good enough, then Microsoft branded PCs using the PPC chip was the next logical step.
Microsoft just licenses the new design of the MSPPC system to its OEMs for Windows, and sells a copy of VirtualPC with XP Home on it to run Legacy Windows apps to anyone who wishes to run the old X86 programs on the new boxes.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Start here.
All this mirth and joviality is inappropriate, considering the prolific author Steven King has died today at age 55.
As a gesture of respect, let's abstain from jokes about hot grits being poured down pants, Natalie Portman, and the pathetic pasttimes of old people in Korea and take a quite moment to imagine a beowolf cluster of Apple computers running on Intel architecture!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Of course, they could just wait for TI stock to wind down into the single digits before they buy it. Such a deal!
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
We really don't need the other three reasons (which are all valid). Laptop sales topped desktops this year. Apple ain't got a next-generation PPC mobility chip in the pipeline.
"Hello, Intel? Steve here. Look, if you'll save our asses with a new Powerbook chip, we'll give you a market for 64-bit desktop Pentiums. Deal? Great!"
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
There a number of PC makers with a bigger market share, and it would be stupid to align with any computer maker, anyway, even if it were the largest, because you piss off your other customers.
Here's the real story: Apple will sell the same shiny boxes to Mac customers at the same prices, and pocket the savings from the lower priced Intel hardware, with respect to whatever IBM is gouging them on for the PowerPC.
Vote for Pedro
The article brings to mind two different kinds of cobuyitaphobias -- two different fears of "synergy."
It shows that the MS-Intel synergy isn't what it's quacked up to be. But also that Apple-Intel have high potential synergy.
-Dan Cobuyitaphobia
Anyone familiar with these two companies has been driven stark raving mad (including Jobs himself) For the last remaining investers of NeXT, Jobs return to Apple was a big ol' Christmas present. For customers and employees, it may sound moronic, but others laughed their way to the bank.
Seriously. That was retarded. That was like 24 hour news channel, I won't even both to google for facts, monkeys hurling poop retarded.
That was one of the most unintelligent tech articles I've read in a while.
Question 1: Google for some benchmarks you moron.
Question 2: Pentiums support x86-64... but you'd know that if you went to www.intel.com.
Question 3: AMD can't play on the weekends. Also, they have crappy productions problems like IBM.
Question 4: Seriously, you're retarded.
Question 5: No, its about unicorns. Also its about the fact that a PowerBooks G5 would weigh 15 pounds and would need to be recharged after 30 minutes.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
That would explain the huge difference in tone of the writing that appears under this name. Wouldn't Infoworld want to note the difference between the two. In my ignorance I would just type "Cringely" into Google and read whatever came up.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Hello, I would like to purchase a copy of Windows for the PowerPC processor. Where is the link on Microsoft's website for this version? Thanks in advance.
there are no mergers.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I've heard the rumors of Apple licensing HP to make Macs, but I don't see how that makes sense.
Right now, Apple doesn't make Macs... companies in Taiwan build them and Apple sells them. This seems to be a much better deal than letting HP sell its own Macs made by some other company in Taiwan.
If Apple directly contracts with the manufacturers they can:
1) loose less money to a middle man. Heck, isn't this why
Apple is opening its own stores.
2) have more control over quality.
3) reduce the number of different models if some start to cannibalize each other.
4) maintain their strong brand.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
It is so blatantly obvious what Apple's long term business plan is.
NeXTStep for Intel is ported to PowerPC and renamed to Mac OS X.
Apple announces that they are switching to the x86 architecture, complete with BIOS and all. Even go far as stating that Apple x86 Macs will be capable of running Windows. Essentially, 100% PC-compatible.
Apple announces that only Apple x86 PCs will be capable of running Mac OS X for Intel. Obviously to not peeve MS so that MS will continue to develop MS Office for Macintosh. Same reason Apple has not decided to develop it's own office suite (iWork does not count, that competes with MS Works not Office.)
Slowly, x86 hardware vendors will develop drivers for Mac OS X for peripherals. The Open Source Darwin core of Mac OS X will be hacked to allow unsanctioned use Mac OS X on non-Apple PCs.
Apple will eventually stop producing PCs and compete soley as a software company (against MS).
This I think people are missing the real point to the Intel/Apple deal -
1. Intel is trying to gain ground on the AMD/Intel war by pulling even more capital together for some crazy next generation projects or something. Remember how much Merced cost? Remember how much they lost with the last few P4 CPUs?
2. Apple is going to eventually release Mac OS for the PC - the Microsoft killer, and maybe do some kind of cross-platform work with Linux, this would then leave Microsoft out of the loop and hopefully kill it. If Apple however also made a deal with IBM for a Mac for Cell PC then they would have definately gained an amazing future for themselves.
The real "victims" are AMD & Microsoft - who I can see creating some kind of deal to help bury the Intel/Apple initiative.. this leaves, Novell (cough), Linux/Unix, Sun, IBM and HP.
I can see some form of IBM deal with someone to help get back the market they lost with the Apple/Intel deal - maybe even an IBM/Microsoft platform running on Cell. Then what? We find Microsoft Windows running on the PS3? HAHAHAHA
But merge? Please. Why would Apple want to get into the CPU market? Why would Intel wish to get into PCs and OSs? The idea is almost offensive. The worlds largest non-PC non-Server Computer Manufacturer merge with the worlds largest (PC) Server CPU manufacturer?
I have spoken - but I should really get a username.
There are a couple of significant flaws in this suggestion:
1) That Pepsi thing
A while back, Pepsi entered the fast food industry by buying a couple of chains. Thus, Pizza Hut and KFC always offered Pepsi instead of Coke. Problem was, other fast food companies all identified pepsi as an enemy at this point and moved away from them. This is a slightly different situation because intel is far more powerful than pepsi was at the time - but AMD is lurking in the wings, and it wouldn't take too much for Microsoft to try and push AMD into a being a far surperior rival to intel, perhaps even locking intel out of the top-of-the-line Windows server market..
2) Jobs doesn't work like that
Jobs has consistently demonstrated that he wants Apple to be just the sort of company it is now. Selling computers, making cool software, waving a stick at other companies.
Believe with me, my saplings.
It seems to me that Apple has not in recent history announced product long before its actual release (Two years in this case). This announcement about Intel is just so out of charactor for Apple. Unless Intel is going to have a really new 64 bit "x86" processor, Apple is actually planning to revert from 64 bit to 32 bit, because Intel has no x86 compatible 64 bit CPU. At least not that I know of.
Add on top of that, Apple has had problems with promised CPU speed upgrades and delivery issues with their CPU makers. Honestly, I think Apple is pulling a stunt to worry their CPU makers into quicker R&D and better delivery.
Why not? Essentually, Apple has given IBM two years (well, 14 mos probably) to get it right. Apple has to realize they are shooting themselves in the foot by announcing this so early. So, how do you rebound from that? You have to follow that announcemnt with something big! They introduce in late summer a 3.5ghz PM that could be released by Christmas. That's how. Followed by an announcment that Apple and IBM have reconciled. Come February, 4.0ghz PM announced and 2.5ghz PowerBook. Then, follow that up with OS-X on standard x86 hardware. It's gonna run slower, of course, but that is incentive to actully buy Apple hardware. Once hooked on the OS, you WILL upgrade to Apple hardware.
Nuff said,
I hate opinions....especially my own..LeX
My post was never meant to explain the issue, just link to the explanation. Some other people have pointed out that there are currently two writers using the RXC name, so there may be more to it than I linked to or you explained.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
It's an interesting (not fully impossible) point of view what Cringely says - but with the "Steve beats Bill" a broader historical perspective came to my mind: Could it be Steve Jobs now sees the big chance to win a life-long race against Bill Gates with this switch? Surely, his EGO is much bigger than Bill's - and I'm sure he thinks of himself as being the one guy in PC history with the big ideas and visions. From his point of view, the top position should belong to him and no-one else. If he'd go on - switching to Intel and then turning Apple in a Software Company taking care of the hardware too by licensing its OS to "good" hardware only - he could win this race during the next 10-20 years ... putting Bill back to where he belongs ... (see below...)
For the moment, in fact, coming out with an x86-based and even more advanced OS X more than 6 months before Longhorn would be an ideal position to make manufacturers and people think about "Why not switch to OS X?" It's secure, fast (enough) _very_ usable and has all the features Longhorn maybe will have...
Here's my favorite joke on Steve: The soul of the pope arrives at Heaven's Gate where a long long line of souls is waiting to get in. The pope goes to the top of the line and knocks on the door. After a while, Saint Peter is opening a small window: "You here? You just died - you'll have to wait in line with the others!" - "Come on, I'm your successor, you should not let me wait for so long!" - "No. In front of God all souls are equal. You have to wait!" So the pope goes back to the end of the line, which takes 3 days! When he arrives, a big big american car goes by - and in there is Steve Jobs! Heaven's Gate opens, the car goes in without even a stop. The Pope gets angry and walks back to the gate. "Peter, what was that? You said, you can't let me in immediately, because all the souls are equal in front of God. And now you let Steve Jobs in - with a car??" - "This WAS GOD!"
My compliments on a very interesting analyst piece. Easily as entertaining and not as far-fetched as the Cringely one. I have mod points, but since you're already pegged at +5, I'll just post this instead.
Some funny comments in this thread, n'est pas? Almost worth filtering at +5 Funny...
HBH
"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
what's behind the announcement is so baffling and staggering that it isn't surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now.
...baffling to you, not me. I'm not baffled. I'm the smurt one."
aka
"what's so baffling is that i am so much more cleverer than the rest of you. combined.
Microsoft acquires AMD
IBM releases Linux-Cell Platform
And then we'll have a real fuckin' fight.
C'mon. Tell me you wouldn't love to see this. Three vertically integrated 'computer companies' (very loose here) all vying with their own integrated approaches to hardware and software on a specific platform. I've always though the problem with Apple is that there are not more Apples to compete with it. This is not to say that Apple actually needed more competition from a market-share point; rather, they have not realized their potential (which is huge). Microsoft, either. The AMD thing less likely since they are exhibiting some (very early Apple-like) behaviour and going it alone with a single pc-in-drag called the Xbox 360. But in response to something like what Cringely guesses, I could see them picking up AMD in a panic. They've certainly bought crazier things, for more money, and less payoff. Finally IBM with its new lax dress code and hippy Linux ties - they have seen the writing on the wall with the direction the Cell is going. Those things are going to be fucking everywhere, you just watch. The Cell will be THE answer to streamed digital media. It is like a DSP on crack, turned up to 11. And it will be sooo cheap with the economies of scale that Sony can bring to the table, because everyone and their dog knows that they will bang off 75 million of those puppies without even doing anything different. Combine that with a truly forward-thinking symbiosis with Linux and good lord you just might have the final chapter of the computer revolution written by some truly idealistic guys. Linux+Cell makes me drool in ways I haven't since I saw a running Amiga - ways that actually move beyond the technical and into the political, for me personally.
Ah, but what do I know, I'm high. Interesting times are definitely afoot in the computer world again, that's for sure, if we don't run out of power first.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
My iChat/AOL IM icon is my head in a bald cap and painted blue. Before the WWDC keynote I joined the AIM chat room AppleInsider to talk about it. I thought nothing of it, because I use that icon a lot, but then this conversation happened and it amused me:
chat person 1: who teh fk is the guy with the blue face
chat person 1: thats scary
chat person 2: thats an intel man
chat person 1: how apt
Hehe, I found it amusing. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was a harbinger of things to come.
Which is the #1 selling Apple product sold today. You did know HP sells HP-Branded iPods right?
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
he is dead right. Most people don't know what an O/S is and 95% of the users I know, including some with >15yrs using confusers, couldn't install an O/S if their life depended on it.
"Install Windows [or BSD or linux] or die!"
"Please give me time to write my will?"
When I mention that I use linux or some other unix variant, most think its a word processor (or whatever) or a computer (hardware) name. About the only people I know who know what OS X is are Mac users.
It seems to me that at least part of what has held the Mac back is price at least until the Mac-Mini. Lots of folks see a computer as a fancy toaster & just want the cheapest thing that works. Much cheaper than the Mac-Mini seems unlikely to be reliable for long.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
... the massive snowstorm continues. at this stage of the blizzard, gnomes are turning blue. intel blue.
Worldwide, in 2004, Apple's market share was 10% of Dell's and about 12% of HP, on the desktop. Apple had only 1.75% of the desktop market worldwide, but HP only had 15%! It's not the crushing that so many assume.
I really think the reason is that the old Apple, IBM and Motorola pack has now been canceled.
IBM is abandoning hardware for the consulting industry to go head to head with the likes of KEANE and others. Reasons are they see more profit from the consulting but failed to realize it was from their hardware sales that won the contracts.
Another way of putting it is that IBM is relying on its sales staff and will stop inovating when companies realize there are cheaper options.
So what happened is that Motorola could not sustain the sale of their chips with only Apple. This forced apple to go with Intel besides all the benifits Intel has with mass production.
Desktop market share, 2004. (Courtesy IDC, rest of industry not broken out)
Apple - 1.75%
Acer - 2.17%
NEC - 2.19%
Lenovo - 2.74%
Gateway - 3.00%
Fujitsu - 3.12%
IBM - 4.18%
HP - 15.28%
Dell - 17.30%
Your mission: find the AMD chips. Hint: there are not many to find.
The Apple deal would have meant >1 million additional top-tier CPU units per year by 2006 from AMD. That is a significant percentage of their business in that segment.
Pretty much, yeah.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
...that I don't know about you, but I generally don't use images of stretched assholes to hold my lunch down...
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
What would happen if the CEO of Apple and the CEO of Intel decided to merge the two companies?
Just another classic case of too many chiefs and not enough endianness.
Don't you hate people who always repeat themselves and are long-winded and overly redundant and talk too much?
you just can't compare apples and intels.
Error: Id10t detected
subject: The Real Question
The real question is which would you buy, Windows or Mac OS ?
Assume identical hardware, just like your desktop right now.
Assume identical price for Windows or Mac OS.
Which would you want to use?
Can little Apple really compete with Microsoft on a level playing field?
I don't use Apple, I study Microsoft and all things Microsoft.
So I just can't believe that Apple is a contender.
So tell me the truth.
Which would you use if you had an easy choice?
Would your customers choose Mac OS if they had a choice?
If all those Dell PC's could run MAc OS, would users consider switching?
If the answer to the above is, yes, Mac OS is the choice, then the Cringly article is 100% correct, and Steve Jobs has conquered the world. At the last minute. In overtime.
Wasn't the whole point with PowerPC that it is better bang per [buck|watt]? And isn't AMD more efficient at lower clock speeds?
I mean, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo choose PowerPC as the core for their next console. They are in a market where every extra penny hurts. So why didn't they, especially Microsoft, not go with x86 for their next console?
I'm not sure if they're going to merge, but some kind of big deal is going between Intel and Apple.
Companies that have moved to intel arent doing very good now
Well, the key to understanding the switch lies internally in IBM rather than with Apple and you said it "IBM devoting more and more effort to game boxes and embedded and its own POWER servers"
Having worked both in Apple product managment and in IBM with marketing of POWER and PowerPC based servers, I believe this is all about IBM protecting its server business and that Apple and IBM simply disagreed on which markets to run the G5 and more powerful systems in (dual core and multiprocessor configurations). Remember it made quite a stir inside IBM when the Xserve suddenly started popping up in supercomputer configurations at a fraction of the cost of the same performance from IBM?
IBM's Enterprise Division simply cannot afford Apple establishing a much lower pricepoint for low and midrange POWER performance thereby shaking the foundation of an ecosystem inside IBM that probably accounts for 40% or more of their total turnover. High performance systems from Apple with IBM's processors are much more threathening from IBM's point of view because customers can make a direct comparison of price and performance.
They can always talk customers out of premium pricing compared to Intel based server systems with all kinds of RISC superiority rara, but not when the competition comes from THEIR processors.
There is no way IBM could not fix the performance issue just as good as Intel can. If that was the case IBM is in deep, deep trouble.
I made a comment on this on May 23 (after the first story in Washington Post) in my blog that I think helps shed light on what is really going on here. Please ignore the first paragraph in Norwegian; the rest is in plain English: http://www.andwest.com/blojsom/blog/tatle/2005/05/ 23/Apple_og_Intel_Chips.html
Now, for the timing of the announcement it seems like the decision on Apple's part is quite hasted. It does not make sense from a business, product managment nor development standpoint that they make this announcement such a long time before having new hardware available. It kinda seems like someone got really upset with someone.
The future is in beta
You can't go and say "if..." and say that the G5 has a performance advantage based upon a chip that doesn't exist. Part of the reason Intel has a performance advantage is that they have superior process technology and are more willing it use it on their CPUs.
And besides, what until you see what 65nm does for Intel...
Anyway, Intel has been faster than PowerPC since DAY ONE. When Apple announced 60/66/80 MHz PowerPC 601s (40MHz FSB tops), Intel already had had 66MHz Pentiums for a year. Two months later, Intel had 90 and 100 MHz Pentiums with a 66MHz FSB.
And beyond that, Pentium outperformed the 601 in everything but floating point. Check Microprocessor Reports' report on it. 601 was superscalar with the ability to (sometimes) execute an integer, floating point and a branch instruction all at once. Pentium had the ability to often execute two integer instructions at once plus a branch (sort of). Microprocessor Reports correctly showed that Pentium was able to execute multiple instructions per clock far more often than a PPC 601 could. And as noted above, it was also running at a higher clock rate.
Despite being CISC, Microprocessor Reports took the uncomfortable stance that the Pentium was a better chip than the vanguard of RISC's entry into the mass market.
PPC's next step was the miserable 604, which at 120 and 132MHz was choked by its still awful 40 and 44MHz FSBs. Pentium was already humming along along at 133MHz with a 66FSB. And it was only going to get worse. Pentium Pro had already been out for a few months, at 200MHz and an on-package 1:1 L2 cache.
Around this time, Apple released machines using the 603ev, which at 275MHz marked the last time PowerPC was faster (in MHz) than Intel's offerings. It still couldn't match up in real-world performance, as Pentium Pro and followons were capable of significant parallelism, and the 603ev did virtually none.
Much later, Apple released the PowerMac 9600/250, 300 and 350, with 50MHZ FSBs and a still slow 1:2 off-chip cache. By this time, Pentium II was at 400MHz with a 100MHz FSB.
Apple was in a deep hole now, because the entire 604 line was killed when its next chip, the overly complex 614 was killed. After some scrambling, the 613 took off. Apple named this the G3. It was a much simpler, but it was the best PPC had to offer, and helped Apple make up some of the huge gap in performance between them and Intel.
Apple's absolutely terrible memory latencies and bandwidths held them back through all the G3 and G4 days. This perhaps reached a peak when Apple released G4s that used DDR, despite the fact that the 133FSB on the G4 meant it couldn't get any more performance from DDR than from SDRAM. Meanwhile, over on Intel, Intel had 800MHz (effective) FSB processors, with dual-channel DDR RAM that provided 6.4GB/s theoretical memory bandwidth, compared to an Apple G4's 1.04GB/s. Yes, the gap in performance was as large as it sounds.
The next time Apple would even come close in performance was the early days of the G5, which with dual processors and a very fast and tricky bus architecture was capable of beating a single fast P4 in general performance at times. It also was capable of beating the P4 handily on performance, at least until SSE2 took off and the gap closed a bit.
And now the new frontier is notebooks. Intel's fastest Pentium-Ms are capable of providing 2/3rds of the performance of their fastest desktop processors. Apple's laptops meanwhile with their G4s are only capable of perhaps 1/3rd the performance of a single G5 chip.
Apple/PPC simply started out behind and never caught up. It's a wonder Apple was able to hold out this long.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
sorry testing to see if my subnet is still banned. damn trolls
cat
The desktop CPU competition except the duopoly of Intel and AMD is over.
I say "desktop", e.g. guy buys a game from Blizzard, it runs without any emulation etc.
There is no CISC and RISC competition at home anymore. There is no Altivec for home anymore.
It became OS war now and as a ex Linux user, I know who is still number 1 desktop OS maker on planet and what SDK 99% of games run on.
They're within the same realm of reason as when retired cabbies at the pub discuss "obvious" political solutions that would fix the economy, bring the rest of the world in line ("just park an aircraft carrier off the coast of France, that'll scare them"... yeah, right), cure cancer, and generally make it all a wonderland. Or to put it otherwise, they're what you get when you think from a business/marketshare perspective... without having half a clue about either business or market share.
You get stuff that sounds all smart and believable... as long as you don't let reality get in the way. (See his ranting about "unspecified" CPUs.) In Cringely's case, the sad thing is that he sounds all smart precisely _because_ he misses all the points, strings together some truisms and mis-representations, and appeals to an equally uninformed and slightly paranoid readership.
Not meant as an insult to the readership. The fact is, yes, the business world doesn't make sense to most normal people. As someone else put it on slashdot a long time ago, if individuals acted the way corporations do (e.g., someone in the same day saying that you're his best friend, and that you're the incarnation of evil and must be killed), they'd be put in a loony bin.
The business world is made of power games, veiled threats, PR press releases that intentionally mis-lead or mis-represent, and alliances that are formed, broken, and hinted at just to put pressure on a third party. E.g., see Dell's yearly announcing that they consider AMD chips -- and at one point they even let you order a replacement Athlon for your Athlon-based Dell... which didn't exist "yet" -- when they have to re-negotiate their discount from Intel. E.g., see Sony's big PR fuss about a HDD and Linux on the PS2... which turned out to be just a maneuver to get it clasified as a computer instead of a console in the EU, and thus not pay import taxes.
For most normal people the real power games and motivations behind them are just ranging between "nuts" and "petty", or at the very least would if an individual did them instead of a corporation.
So a whole class of pundits, Cringely included, exist just to rant some utterly false, but understandable by normal people, explanation about such events. They tell you not what is, but what you want to hear. Again, it sounds good and believable precisely _because_ it misses the real points. They're what _you_ would do if you were looking for market share and had no clue how that works (and fail miserably), not what a corporation would do.
And of course, all complete with a shotgun approach to making predictions that are vague enough to look sorta fulfilled by such power games.
It has nothing to do with "a religious vast-chasm viewpoint". I'm not even an Apple fan. By most Mac fans' standards, I'm a "wintel fanboy" and have been known to be modded as a troll for questioning Mac issues before.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
> > Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
> As said before Developers. Because there is no other way you can give ALL the developers a heads up and keep it a secret.
Noooooooo. You guys are dense.
They announce the chip one year before so they don't osborne they current hardware.
OF COURSE, the hardware will be ready for the end of the year (and maybe even sooner). They will announce it when they'll have sold the current stock.
Wow, forward the parent post to jobs et al. Intel COULD undercut every one, including dell:
;-) Who here thinks that Intel came up with this whole scheme and apple decided to play ball??? With the full backing of Intel pushing OS-X the two could make a real killing and you know what, even if they announce the scheme tomorrow nobody could stop them in time. It would take AMD 2 years to ramp up output to supply the whole industry and even then they will be lacking OS-X support. What system would you want?; one that supports OS-X, Windows, and Linux/BSD or one that supports only Windows and Linux/BSD? Sorry I think I'm just restating everything you said, do you work for Apple or Intel?... Also no other "company" (remember Compaq/BIOS) could reverse engineer the special chip that prevents OS-X from running on "other" computers thank to a little DRM and the DMCA. Bend over Microsoft, your about to get your shit pushed in.
(a) They make the CPUs.
(b) They make the Chipsets.
(c) They already make mainboards.
(d) They make just about everything else too.
All they need now is an operating system (OS-X), memory, and a case.
Apple can give Intel some sort of exclusive agreement to make white box clones with OS-X on them. This leaves the "designer jeans" computer/ipod/etc. market for Apple, which is already there niche, licensing income from Intel for OS-X, and money from OS-X upgrades to keep them #1 in the "designer jeans" market.
If everyone plays their cards right Microsoft will get a major bitch slapping
With all the debate surrounding whether Dell/Lenovo/HP will provide the Intel range of Apple's, we should not forget the Apple portable range is already made by Taiwanese manufacturers, Asustek and Quanta Computing http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20050114A7040.html
Perhaps these snaps http://store.agearnotebooks.com/asuss5nphoto.html can be considered 'sketches' of what's to come..
Just offerring the OS for the same price doesn't level the playing field. MS holds all the cards by being the incumbent. You could give OSX away for free and it wouldn't really be a threat.
If offered both here is what would happen. I would order the computer with OSX and when it arrived, I would then set it to dual boot with my current copy of Win2k.
In my opinion that is what the majority of OSX buyers would do as well. So even if there were massive market penatration by OSX it would quickly look something like this: (grossly oversimplified to make a point)
Windows Only Machines: 60%
OSX + Windows Machines: 40%
Now can you does this 40% penetration lead to wonderfull goodness? NO! it leads to the end of OSX.
Because a SW Dev will look at the above an realize he only has to write Windows Apps to target 100% of the market. OSX can be ignored completely.
This is why it will never make sense to sell OSX for generic HW.
When I heard of the Apple-Intel move, I was one of the "What the Heck is going on" folks.
After reading the Cringley article, I am convinced
that he's probably right.
I have been a bit of a Mickey-Slosh basher for
years, not so much because it's popular, but
because they continue to control the (USA) market
by providing mostly inferior products.
I'm not saying I could write anything better, but there are plenty of folks out there WHO CAN AND DO.
I would LOVE to migrate to a MAC type OS, or LINUX
variant at work. I can (and do) do anything I want at home, but business tend to stick with what
they've invested in.
I'll be keeping my eye on THIS one for SURE!
"Some folks nibble, and some just BYTE"
~{:o)
You have it right, I feel, especially the trap Microsoft is in,
You may have missed some aspects:
- Apple's competition with IBM over high-end servers, as a cause for the break-up between these two companies.
- HP's adoption of Linux, enabling it to compete against IBM for server sales.
For the rest, a powerful and convincing projection.
My blog
I think Jobs is betting that the iPod money will tide them over.
I think I will look into buying a G5 machine to run Linux/PPC on -- if they're such good hardware -- when they start going cheap.
Obviously, Google is the buyer of choice. Give MS a run for the money.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
The split, Mr. Cringley, is appliance versus tool.
Most people when asked, "why do you need a computer" will answer, "email, internet, taxes, photography".
Why do you need a wristwatch? "To tell the time".
Most people don't care what's inside the watch and most don't care what's inside the computer. The major differention between competing products in the applicance market is style. Most consumers don't even consider ergonomics!
The 'consumer' market for computer as appliance is huge, the market for computer as tool is much smaller. Apple wins on style. UI, ergonomic, and packaging. IMO, the Apple package on Intel is the death of MS. *IX will kill it on the tool front.
Now why would they merge? I can think of two reasons...Economy of scale and exit strategy for Jobs. Fact or not, in SJ's mind, Apple can not survive, as it is, without him. Apple-Intel, can or at the least, he'll end up with more $ than he can figure out how to spend...
Another clue comes from HP, where a rumor is going around that HP selling iPods could turn into HP becoming an Apple hardware partner for personal computers, too.
Steve knows the Windows market isn't going away. (Remember "it's not necessary for Microsoft to lose for Apple to win", or something of that nature?) If Apple can deliver kick-ass Macs, and then also pick up a chunk of the Windows box market without diluting its brand by selling through HP, isn't that a net win?
The One Thing Apple can't do is make it too easy to install OS X on a Dell. (A narrow crack like XPostFacto might not be so bad...)
Itanium? why does he think the Mac OSX box would have anything to do with itanium? Itanium is fucking dead. Cringley should be fucking dead, hes a clueless old bat.
Intel P4 EE (Extended Execution) is standard now and gives the 64 bit memory use that is refered to as x86-64.
Go jump off a bridge cringley, and take bush with you.
It is articles like these that remind me why I choose to bite my tongue sometimes.....
[1]
If Apple was willing to consider a processor switch, moving to the Cell Processor would have made much more sense than going to Intel or AMD, so I simply have to conclude that technology has nothing at all to do with this decision
[2]
If Apple is willing to embrace the Intel architecture because of its performance and low power consumption, then why not go with AMD, which equals Intel's power specs, EXCEEDS Intel's performance specs AND does so at a lower price point across the board
Apple might design the manufacturing process for its products, but as far as I know, it doesn't own any more manufacturing plants it just outsources to companies in Taiwan (and perhaps other places). Maybe this is not the case for some of the higher-end hardware, but iPods, iMacs, and iBooks are definitely not coming out of "Apple" factories. So the whole manufacturing cost thing is a red herring.
Exactly! The OS/2 vs. Windows debate totally went in Microsoft's favor because there was no compelling reason to run OS/2. There are a ton of compelling reasons to run OS X, security and usability being at the top of the list. The second is the Apple only software. The iLife applications simply rock! There are a ton of really cool OS X only applications out there. OS X has a lot going for it, and there's only one thing really holding it back and that's compatibility with Windows only applications.
That's why moving to Intel at this moment is such a great move. Things are different this time around than they were when it was OS/2 vs Windows and here's why. People are sick and tired of the Windows and are looking for an alternative. The only thing holding them back are various Windows only applications that they depend on. People didn't have that mindset when it was OS/2 vs. Windows. People weren't fed up with Microsoft. OS/2 vs Windows was bascially a "which shell are we going to run on top of DOS" question. That is a fundamentally differnt issue than what customers are facing today. Now it's a "one platform versus the other issue". You've got one platform that people are sick of but tied to and another platform that is up and coming, new, secure and interesting with some really great software of it's own.
Enter OS X on Intel. People like me who are tied to Windows only app's (for me it's mostly games) but are fed up can dual boot, run Virtual PC or run the app's under Wine. All the while we're learning the ins and outs of OS X. The next time a fried or family member asks what system we'd recommend buying, we point to Apple. Price is an issue? We point to the Mac Mini. If they need to run some legacy Windows apps I recommend the above solutions. If they don't want to spend the extra money of another copy of Windows and/or Virtual PC, we explain to them how much time and money they'll save when Windows doesn't need to be reinstalled every 6 months. Plus we explain that since we won't be using any new version of Windows released after XP, we won't be able to help them if they have problems in the future and they'll have to pay to get things fixed.
Not true. VHS had three hour tapes, Sony had a multi-loader unit called the Beta Stack that would load extra tapes automatically, for up to five hours of recording time on the SL-C7.
Not true. Betamax was licensed to Sanyo, Toshiba, NEC, Pioneer and Aiwa. Sanyo , Toshiba and NEC certainly sold Betamax VCRs, I'm not sure about all the others.
Possibly true on NTSC TVs, but the superior quality of Betamax was very apparent on PAL systems.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
What I find weird is that the dot replaces two Is. Doesn't that seem a bit pointless?
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Well, I don't Apple wants to compete head on with Microsoft, and in fact there are those that say that easily running Windows on Apple hardware, either through dual-boot or a VM takes away Apple's justification for existence (they're wrong, of course, but it would certainly benefit Microsoft if only incrementally, and not at a cost to Apple).
However, a good relationship between Apple and Intel does put Apple in a good position if MS stumbles. It's a bonus, but potentially, a very, very, big one.
This sounds too interesting
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
Its not so much of a performance problem, rather a heating issue. The lack of a G5 PowerBook is little bit of a problem for a company that its dependent on its notebook sales for market share.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Did anyone really say that Apple is going to be using 32-bit Intel processors?
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
They are more or less the same as IBM. Great server processors. Not a lot on the notebook side.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
What the fuck is the chip supposed to run without developers providing software for it.
I thought that this guy knew what he was talking, with his iTunes Video talk. Hmm?
>Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
As said before Developers. Because there is no other way you can give ALL the developers a heads up and keep it a secret.
I think more to save face for the whole "3GHz in a year!" promise of 2 years ago. This announcement gives Apple an excuse for failing to deliver the 2 things every Apple customer has been expecting/hoping for: a G5 Powerbook and a 3GHz Powermac.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I have mod point, but you are already at 5. Just have to say that THAT IS TEH FUNNY!!!
It makes at least as much sense as Oracle/People Soft or GM/EDS, probably a lot more.
But then, as wacky as Steve can be, he ain't Larry.
I already have an HP iPod... I can't wait to buy an HP OSX box with an intel chip from the sams club. I'm not even gonna miss HPUX. I will morn for Solaris tho.
But the real impetus behind this is that it would pose a graceful way out of the big cat naming convention. It's either sell the company or discover a larger species of feline.
Is that like Bennifer?
Remember Apple announcing that they were going to drag ISVs kicking and screaming into a new API, called "Yellow Box", and existing Mac apps were going to run in the "Blue Box" emulation environment?
Remember Adobe and the rest digging in their heels?
Remember Apple coming up with a stopgap called "Carbon"?
Remember Yellow Box becoming "Cocoa" and Blue Box becoming "Classic"?
Remember Apple cancelling the last "OS-9 bootable Mac". And backing down? I think that happened a couple of times, actually.
Well, that happened again, last year, and it's stayed gone. Classic Mac OS is no longer supported on any shipping Macs. Carbon apps are going to have to go through a much larger upgrade process than Cocoa to run on OSX on Intel.
I think that if the ISVs hadn't screamed, Macs would have gone to Intel some time between 2000 or 2002. "Marklar" wasn't "Just in case", it was "When we can get away with it".
The 3 GHz G5 and G5 on Powerbook complaints? They're just excuses. IBM and Freescale haven't actually dropped the ball nearly as badly as people claim... and IBM's actually done better than Intel in clock speed improvements. No, this isn't because IBM did anything wrong. It's not a new transition. It's the last step of the transition that started when Steve came back to Apple and brought NeXTstep and its CPU-agnostic architecture with him.
Instead of categorizing this as "Intel" could we make a new category for Cringley? That was I can change my /. prefs to remove all his ludicrousness from my sight and I won't be provoked to waste time writing these stupid troll comments.
Besides, Intel machines are available. Just to developers. And they have to return them. But the fact remains, if you're totally hot to get yourself a developer kit, plunk down $500 bucks for a Premier ADC membership, order the $999 "kit", and you're good to go- MacIntel yours to use for the next year and a half or so.
If Apple is smart they'll start practically giving these things away. Like free to Premier members and heavily subsidized to Select members. I have to assume at $999 they're even making some money on these machines. That's not cool and it won't get them on every developer's desk.
Sure, Adobe, Microsoft, and Quark will buy one, no sweat. But I want to see all the shareware developers have one too. $299 and you get to keep it - that's what a Select developer will probably pay. Apple can afford to take a loss on these. In fact, they need to.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Taking a long view, though, I'm gambling the S&P 500 will have more ups than downs. Since it has a historic return of 11.5% and an index fund has almost no overhead to it, I believe there's very little risk there, especially if I only assume a 9% return for all my long term plans. Frankly, the risk of my savings being gobbled up by inflation if left in a lower interest money market or savings account is more disturbing to me. I view the S & P 500 (or any other broad index, for that matter) as a good, low maintenance way to mediate the inherent risk of the stock market over the long term.
The key to this or any stock based investment strategy, of course, is being able to ride out a few tough years. I'm already mulling how to change the distribution of my investments to bonds as I approach retirement. Taking a 20% hit in my 401K at 36 is frustrating, but recoverable. I still have time. Taking it at 63, when I'm already eying a rocking chair (or bicycle trip along the Great Wall of China - whatever), is not.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
but switching architectures gives Apple the opportunity to grow their market share through piracy
I've thought about this too. It would be really really hard to make OS X non-crackable without destroying a huge part of the value of the OS, and without pretty much abandoning their commitment to open source. And, of course, Apple would benefit from the resulting stealth market share over the long term... so long as it didn't cut too heavily into their sales.
I've also worried about this. Because if Apple really did apply some kind of strong rights management to OS X half the things that I find valuable in the system, including its comparative reliability and robustness (compared to Windows at least) and the ease of digging in and fixing things when it does stumble, would vanish.
But Steve Jobs has indicated that he does understand why DRM is at best a stopgap, so you could be right. I hope you are.
Ooops, I screwed up again. $999 is the dev kit price for *either* Select or Premier membership developers. The 'free' level developer can't even get it.
And you're right, something like $299 is what a non-paying developer ( 'Online' developer account ) is going to get... to keep, in the form of an Intel Mini, when it's publicly available. Actually, it may cost more than $299, at least when it first comes out.
Of course, if you're going to be cheap about it, you can always be careful with your code, and compile your universal binaries without testing the Intel side. Not that I'd do that.
What, you want Apple to *lose* money on these dev kits? Not going to happen. Pretend you're leasing a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 for a year and a half. $999 ain't so bad, plenty of folks are going to get these. Everyone else is going to buy whatever Intel machine comes out first.
If not enough developers bite on the dev kit, you may be right, Apple will drop it's price. I don't think they feel they need to, though, especially given the performance numbers Rosetta is turning in. If you don't provide a Univeral Binary for your app, it'll just seem slower than the competition's app for early Intel users. If that's your choice, that's your choice, but Apple's not going to take a loss to help you out- they're a business, and their top tier developers who they really count on will pop for these developer kits.
Maybe the potential for people pirating OS X and running it on Thinkpads will convince Apple to come out with a Powerbook that's got a better keyboard and pointing device.
That's what's kept me from buying a 'book... I can't stand typing on that weird flat keyboard after using a good laptop.
I think we all knew the only way Apple was going to have a chance in competing head on with Microsoft was if they switched to the x86 architecture. It's obvious by now, Apple, over the past few years, has finally been trying desperately to reach the everyday consumers. (IPod, Mac Mini, Apple Store) Although the Apple store is nothing more than a museum with pricey computers. I think switching to the world's most dominant desktop/server CPU architecture (IA) is a last ditch effort and probably the one Apple dreaded the most.
If it works, don't be surprised if down the line, Apple decides to open up their system to 3rd party hardware vendors as they did before with Umax, DayStar, Power Computing. Focus on a making a good OS. Who cares about the hardware?? Hardware sales do not have high profit margins unless you either sell in tremendous bulk (ie, DELL) or your prices are really high (as Macs are now). Why do you think all the "mom and pop" PC shops are going out of business?
Years ago, companies like Big Blue used to give the software away for free when you bought their expensive mainframes. At that time, the hardware was the profit. As time went on tides turned. Today, the opposite is true. Software is everything. Microsoft and Linux proved that.
I think Apple is realizing that selling a complete closed system ala IBM, SUN, SGI to the general public is not going to take them to the next level in the consumer market. Sure, a "beefed up" G5 Mac may make some dork in his basement cream in his pants cause he has a "specialized" system no one in is his neighborhood has, but Mom, Dad and Uncle Henry, could care less. These people are simply not going to pay $1500 for a Mac when a $600 DELL DOES THE SAME DAMN THING!!
Bottom line is... the Moms, Dad's and Uncle Henry's of the computing world wan't variety in price, performance and competing vendors and Mac Mini doesn't cut it. These people don't need a $2000 G5 to browse web pages, check e-mail and play Solitaire. To put it frankly, I think Jobs finally woke up.
Interesting. That's more likely than any of the other "IBM is the problem" theories I've seen. I'll have to think on that one, because IBM hasn't been really misbehaving in public, other than the way they seem to have run into the same clock-speed wall as everyone else.
1) You said:
If Apple really works on shining up Wine (or buys out some other Wine based company - Crossover I believe?), then they can offer Windows compatibility with a certain number of apps, perhaps a solid list such as Photoshop, Office, etc (and grow the list as necessary).
Am I missing something here? I thought Photoshop was originally an Apple-only product, and the Windows version was a port. Also, MS provides a version of Office that runs natively on OS X. So why would I need Wine to run PS or MS Office on the Intel version of a Mac?
2) Why does anyone really care about games on their Windows box anymore? I mean, it seems to me that what it costs to buy one of the current or soon-to-be-released gaming colsoles gives you much more than the same amount of money will get you on the equivalent gear for your PC. Plus, it seems that there are more game titles available for consoles. And if you don't want to pay full price for a console-based game, there are bazillions of them available used at pawn shops and specialty stores.
Seriously, the only reason I can think of anynoe not chosing a better gaming experience on a console, and a better computer experience on a Mactel machine, is money. It's probably more difficult to pirate games for PlayStation than it is to pirate the Windows version. My prediction: In a few years, the whole issue of gaming on Windows will disappear as a reason to not go to Linux or OS X.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Cringely is one of the most profound columnists on earth and knows the computer industry inside out, so pay attention to his analysis.
The reason his theory sounds so strange is because Apple had done something even stranger.
Unless Robert X. Cringely is correct with his profound analysis, this could be the greatest strategic blunder in the history of technology, for at least 4 reasons.
Firstly, there is zero, nada, diddly-squat technological reason for switching horses. The top range Power Mac G5 outperforms the best x86 PC for many computational tasks, based on benchmarks from System X at Virginia Tech, Digital Video Editing and Apple. PowerPC also benefits from a clean and elegant RISC architecture, free from the archaic x86 legacy ISA hated by virtually everyone except Intel designers. For comparable performance, the G5 (PowerPC 970FX) chip is half the size and consumes half the power of the Intel Xeon P4 , with 58 million transistors in G5 instead of 169 million in P4.
Secondly, the PowerPC has more headroom to evolve, which is why even Microsoft has chosen IBM over Intel for its next generation Xbox 360 game console, not to mention Sony's PowerPC based Cell processor for the revolutionary PlayStation 3. With a small sum from Apple's $7 billion war chest, IBM should be more than happy to match whatever roadmap that Intel can offer, without the worry or the bad blood.
Thirdly, Apple has the technology to consolidate its core PowerPC base and simultaneously carve out a new market in the x86 world. That would be the best for all worlds and make everyone happy.
Lastly, it doesn't make any sense to destroy you core business for the next 2 years by announcing the transition 12 months in advance, This is so uncharacteristic of Apple. Maybe Steve Jobs is too tired, but is he concerned about the inevitable Osborne effect or has he lost the plot entirely?
Read more Switching is a loser's game at The CDCer.
...It also was capable of beating the P4 handily on FLOATING-POINT performance, at least until SSE2 took off and the gap closed a bit...
Sorry about that.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This is Slashdot, everything will remind someone of Natalie Portman.
IBM does not misbehave in public you know :-) ... is is more like passive agressive behaviour in this case. I think what they have not done speaks volumes.
I mean, you should think any company who delivers a general purpose, high performance processor would have a vested interest in ensuring market proliferation of their products?
Honestly, I cannot say that Apple has gotten much help from IBM in marketing the G5 (or PPC 970 if you want). As a matter of fact I cannot recall having seen any joint marketing.
Also, if IBM really wanted Apple to succeed with the G5, why did they not port their own software to OS X?
...even for TSM there is only a half-baked Mac client without the command-line support that many system managers want in their backup software.
I could only mention Notes Domino Server, Tivoli Storage Manager server (TSM), DB2, and large portions of WebSphere - which should be reasonably easy to port either from AIX or Linux. But you've seen nothing like that.
The future is in beta
Were the pundits right? For my money I don't think it's a bluff. Apple has already switched to other industry standard technologies (USB, PCI) and harmonizing it's CPU technology is another logical step. What makes apple special at this point is a user-friendly OS more than a unique harware design. Cringly's second theory, that Intel is shopping for a company to write Operating Systems that do the best job of showcasing their hardware, seems to fit this. I don't understand what some folks have against Cringly and Dvorak. Are their predictions accurate or not?