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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.' "
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.
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.
actually, I've had this suspicion too. It's the only thing that makes all the little things really add up. I doubt it's a done deal at this point. But I suspect it is on the table, and beyond just an idea floating around too.
What about the Intel CEO on stage? I've never seen him speak before...does he always come across as if he's barely repressing some great joyous secret? If not, what exactly is it about Apple deciding to buy Intel chips that would make Intel's CEO act so much like a puppy dog being fed?
I think Cringely may be right.
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.
I don't think so, I think Intel is thrilled to have another platform using their chips. His competition just became AMD again.
I don't see Intel merging with Apple, I see Apple using Dell/HP/Lenovo to build their hardware (at worst). I'm not even sure about that as MS has a lot of control over these companies.
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.
It's only been about 10 years since Sun tried to buy Apple and let Apple build low-end SPARC-based Sun systems.
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.
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
Sun will be purchased by Microsoft for around $2/share, or about $5billion, in about 8-9 months, after another 2 quarters of abysmal sales. The deal is already on, and SUN will be a microsoft division, so MS gets java and a real unix to compete against IBM.
The reason why Sun bought Storagetek is that Sun needed to convert its cash reserves into company stock, because that can be depressed below actual value, and cash can't. Microsoft might also have wanted to acquire Storagetek tech, because while it sells hardware, the magic of the company is in the software, and that's up MS's alley (imagine real one-button disaster recovery built into Office).
Sun has already abandoned SPARC. They don't have the cash to hire the engineers they need to make it a go. MS will promise to do that, but won't.
Apple and Sun? Yes. Where does that leave AMD? with Nvidia, catering to the very high end gamers, and the e-machines of the world, and linux boxes (lots of them really).
Apple + Intel means software and hardware in proprietary tandem. This will make AMD much less competitive, edged out like alpha and sparc to a fringe, then to nothing, IF apple and intel successfully market their new Apple OSX Intel Inside laptops. If not, then AMD takes the cake and Intel gets edged out long term (which is my prediction).
Sun customers are either moving to linux / z/OS on IBM mainframes or Linux on Dell servers. If Sun does not get acquired, it will end up like SCO.
There are enough forward-looking statements in my post that you should bring your salt shaker.
"Piter, too, is dead."
There are interesting nuances to this, though, for one that Apple is using PC BIOS -- alone, this represents a phenomenal technological setback for their company. APPLE may be selling a version of OS X that will only run on Apple hardware, but who said ANYTHING about other vendors co-branding and selling their own, different versions of OS X?
Sure, Apple-released OS X will run only on Apple hardware, but what is to say you won't be able to buy an HP Computer with HP OS X on it? Apple knows what it has is valuable -- their brand. They will continue to keep it exclusive to the extent that it helps them make money. If they choose to co-opt or rebrand their products for additional profit, they'll do it. Right now, their market share is so low overall that even if letting HP sell a version of OS X as an option cannibalized 50% of Apple hardware sales, and they got a 1% kickback on the HP machine sales, they'd be coming out ahead.
Honestly, aren't there any PC mega-vendors that are getting sick and tired of supporting MS Windows in the face of all its insecurities and problems? Spyware-ridden machines with millions of instabilities and quirky problems are as much a pain to them as to their customers. Dell, Sony, HP, et al. are probably thinking one thing: "How can we shaft MS and at the same time, have something worthwhile to give our customers?" The ensuing discussion: "Linux still isn't quite ready for the desktop, and good luck getting commercial apps we can resell -- I know!! We'll get Steve Jobs to sub-brand OS X to us!"
I agree with Cringely on one thing: I think this whole 'phase' may just be to get developers to ready their applications for the x86 platform before they understand the ideology-breaking bombshell Apple will be dropping later.
Jasin NataelTrue science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
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
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.
I think that's temporary. The only thing that is uniquely good about Apple's computers (let the flames rage on) is their OS & software. Yes they make the $ on the hardware, but it's a side effect. Otherwise it's just yet another computer system. The only part of their hardware worth copying is the fact that their hardware spec is tight and centrally driven resulting in a cleaner system. This can be dealt with in other ways than actually having them build the HW themselves. Already PC hardware is going in the same direction, how much of your PC is truly configurable anymore? What new applications have come around that aren't standard in every PC? Your video card? Your hard drive? Your total system RAM? You can change those on a Mac (afaik). The only other things I can think of are niche's for tech developers such as myself. The day will come with the "PC" is as rigid as an Apple.
If not for their OS Apple is a developer of yet another incompatible computer system that was once insanely popular, but fell behind due to overbearing, unresponsive, greedy, elitist corporate governance. Those types of companies tend to get what is coming to them.
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.
In other words, it was an PA-8000 emulator, running on PA-8000. And it very often ran faster!!!! (Between 5 and 40%, occasionally slower, but then it switched itself off and ran natively.)
Obviously there was a trick; and it was that it was able to do stuff like straighten out code, which improved cache usage, and measure how the code actually ran, rather than how the compiler thought it might run, and generally do great run-time decisions.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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."
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
That said, I don't think Apple picked Intel based on AMD's capacity. I'm convinced its about Centrino. AMD might be rocking the desktop world, but the Turion's power consumption is too high and I suspect that Apple is rightfully suspecting that x64 will show up on the Pentium Ms before AMD can come up with a power-efficient end-to-end solution like Centrino. AMD just doesn't have the cash or partnerships to stay in the lead in desktops and laptops.
Intel on the other hand has a good roadmap that is heavily targetting mobile computers, something near and dear to Apple's heart.
I think Cringely is a moron - if Intel bought Apple, Microsoft would buy AMD and then Dell and a couple of the other vendors would announce a 5 year migration plan to AMD after a call from Redmond. AMD begins to ramp up their production, with Intel chips filling the steadily shrinking gap. Apple and HP have problems increasing their own production for the rest of the box and enterprises are slow to throw out their entire IT infrastructure in exchange for a brand new one with no real enterprise experience, so their market share doesn't raise much. If things go sour for Redmond, they sweeten the deal by lowering the cost of Enterprise upgrades to Longhorn (or heck, giving it away entirely to "Gold Customers").
Microsoft keeps the enterprise customers, especially when everyone gets spooked as Intel's revenue drops like crazy. With substantial growth and deep pockets, along with being the "safe bet", Microsoft/AMD finds itself in a position of greater revenues then they've ever had. With Microsoft's backing, Turion beats Centrino over several years, Intel collapses under its own weight, Intel/Apple dies.
Now not only does Microsoft own the software market, but they own the hardware market as well.
Only Sony could get away with the gambit of buying Apple on the business side, but wouldn't survive the culture shock. I'm confident Apple will be under the leadership of solitary Jobs for some time to come.
And I'm no real Mac fan, but MacOS X is far nicer than XP/Longhorn.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
At some point, if Apple sales don't improve, Intel will make the same decisions that IBM made. "How much of our sales does Apple contribute to? 0.005%? We need them about as much as Wal-Mart needs Rubbermaid."
The whole point is that Apple's needs are aligned with where Intel is going anyways. That's the beauty of going with the commodity architecture.
The biggest issue with PowerPC is that Apple was the only real customer for comsumer machines using the architecture. IBM only uses it for their servers. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are only using it for their console. And virtually everyone else is using it as an embedded processor. The market for x86 chips, on the other hand, is very much driven by the needs and trends of the consumer market.
Don't buy the "but Apple could have moved to Cell!" rubbish. All indications thus far are that it would be an exceptionally poor general purpose processor. The PPE core that the operating system would run on is far far slower than the existing G4 and G5 lines, despite the additional clock speed, due to significantly fewer execution units (2 on the PPE core v. 8 on the G5) and the lack of branch prediction on the chip. The "workstations" that have been mentioned in the past are most likely going to be heavily geared toward specific workloads.Cringly's "this isn't about technology" assertion really falls flat once you take that into account.
He also brings up the choice of Intel over AMD, which is not all that hard to understand either. Intel has massive massive fab capabilities, and is much less likely to have production issues. If they were going to use desktop chips in their initial production designs, this might not be a concern, but given that it seems pretty clear the first machines will be portables and consumer machines, they'll likely be using chips from the Pentium M line (yonah will be out then, and include the move to a 65nm process, sse3, and dual cores). Though AMD has a chip in this line (Turion) their limited penetration in the notebook market means fairly low production levels.
Of course, AMD probably did play a part in Apple's decision as well. If Intel ever fails to deliver on their roadmap, there's another major player in the market they can turn to.
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.