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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.
"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!
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.
"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".
...and will offer stiff competition for the Goodyear Blimp!
Best Buy can have you arrested
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.
It's a suppository
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
SCO + M$ + RIAA + MPAA with Roland Piquepaille as CEO.
Now go bitch about that organisation!
AT&ROFLMAO
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.
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.
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!
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.
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."
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
>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
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
- 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.
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.
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.
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!?
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."
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
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.
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
Note that the current design already has a POWER processor as it's core. The problem is, a lot of the chip is dedicated to the fancy vector processing units. There's no way to make up for that. The entire win with the Cell processor is that it's got so much of it's transistor budget dedicated to something that CPUs do relatively poorly: vector processing. The rest of the design is very standard. So the best you can do is match what you're doing with other POWER CPU's in terms of performance, but you'll be significantly more expensive because of all those vector coprocessors.
sigs are a waste of space
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.