Slashdot Mirror
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.' "
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
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.
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.
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!
seriously me too
ertainly, 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).
Ok for one they specifically said its a Pentium 4. Secondly, the xcode benchmarks were EMULATED you fucking fool. Native performance is much much better. Third, he's an idiot Intel will have x86-64pentiums out well before apple completes there switch to Intel.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
They have the same exact supply issues as apple numbnutz.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
So that the developers don't bitch about suddenly having to transfer all their programs in one month to x86 you fucking idiot.
Not to mention Intel has a much better mobile roadmap then IBM or AMD.
Overall this guy is a fucking idiot.
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.
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 like your answers.. except for Question 4.
Cringly has a point. If the Mathmatica CEO can get called on Wednesday night the week before, asked to bring the source code to Apple, and turn around a native Intel program in two hours of changes, then your developers don't need a year advanced warning. Right?
The downside is that several people I've been talking into making the switch are now holding off another year until the Intel macs come out. (I'm persuading them for selfish reasons -- I get less support calls from my friends)
From a developers POV, isn't Panther->Tiger a bigger change? Except for getting the binaries available for customer systems when the system begin shipping?
My guess, Steve Jobs will announce an Intel laptop this year. I'm holding off on replacing my laptop until the Intels come out, and so is my partner. Even if they come out next year.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
- 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.
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.