Slashdot Mirror
Speculation on Real Reasons Behind Apple Switch
/ASCII writes "There is an article over at Ars Technica with some insider information about the reasons behind Apples x86 switch, given that the new IBM processors seem to be a perfect fit for Apple. The article claims that Apple hopes to power its entire line, from Servers to desktops to iPods and other gadgets with Intel CPUs, and that by doing so, they will gain the same kinds of discounts that Dell get."
Are u kidding, these G5 cpu's would melt the plastic cases they came in in seconds. yeah they may be good chips but to compete with the windows market this had to happen, a not so perfect fit after all.
To Hell with the Queen of England!
I had been using Apple MACs for quite a long time and a few months ago I suggested to my boss that we replace a few of our client machines with them just as an evaluation. After some persuasion he finally agreed to the idea - mainly due to the fact that our IT manager had been using an Apple MAC for quite some time.
It all was really good to start with. OSX was better than our expectations and my boss was happy with the switchover - I had even been nominated for a promotion at the end of the year. Unfortunately we encountered one problem. One employee lost a whole project due to not being able to right click on the program he was using at the time.
My boss wasn't happy with me at all. I was called into his office and given a stern reprimand. A few days later I was looking for another job from home. A word of advice: don't use Apple MACs as all they seem to do is cause problems.
AMD chose a differant design, which sacrificed a lot of transistors for x86 compatibility, limiting the scalability and performance of their chip.
Um... Intel did the same thing, but worse. IA-64, or the Itanium architecture, or whatever Intel wants you to call it this year spent tons of transistors on X86 compatibility, and the performance and scalability sucked. Not only that, but the compatability wasn't that great and the chips have all but failed in the marketplace.
"Fact: despite the early promise of PowerPC, Intel's offerings are beating the dog shit out of that line. There's no comparison in performace. Yes, PPC does more work per clock cycle, but they're so far behind in terms of clock speed that it doesn't matter. There is no megahertz myth here. Clock speeds DO matter. And no one making PPC chips, Freescale nor the mighty IBM, can keep up with Intel. For PCs, Intel is the king . AMD makes some better desktop offerings, has some better prices, but doesn't have Intel's product range, especially in laptops."
Congrats nimrod!
You just embarrassed yourself.
Intel fanboy?
Apple rationalizer?
Both?
Who the fuck cares.
This is just an advert for Jobs and Apple.
The Apple that everyone knew is dead. It formally died when the great Steve told everyone Apple would be moving to Intel. But the clues were there with Tiger.
Tiger was an official announcement that innovation was dead with Apple and poppy, goopy, bloated stuff aimed at the masses was the direction of the future. Lifestyleware was the way to go.
It's not a conspiracy theory that Jobs had planned the move to Intel since he came back to Apple. Turning the Mac into another PC platform has been the goal, at any cost.
The funny thing is, there are no real winners here in the long term as you are suggesting.
Here is what will really happen:
I expect some half baked, half assed attempt at 'taking on' Longhorn will follow, then the inevitable announcement that OS X will be licenced for certain strategic 'partner' manufacturers.
By that time OS X will be such a sluggish bloated ugly useless mess that Apple will have already lost about 70% of it's orginal customer base who have long since jumped to Windows or Linux.
Out of desperation, the decison will be made to have OS X sold standalone for any PC out there. Shortly after there will be millions of the DVDs in clearance baskets at PC World.
All hardware development will be wrapped up, with Apple becoming just an iTunes company. Eventually it will just be bought out by Microsoft or someone else.
The end.
Don't kid yourself this is some wonderful new world Apple is entering by going to Intel. It is the beginning of the end of Apple.
Let's look at a typical scenario.
I'm looking up possible solutions to an SQL problem during lunch. I'm eating with one hand, while using the mouse with the other. Before my hand became occupied with food, I used it to type some search terms into Google.
I now want to skim through the first 20 or so hits on both Google and Google groups.
On Windows or Linux, I fire up my favorite web browser with tab support, and middle click on the relevant links. By the time I finish clicking, the first few links have loaded. I go skim through each page, looking for something that's helpful.
On a MAC laptop without an external mouse, I have to put the food down and hold down the Option key to do what evolved operating systems simply give you a button to do.
The simple fact of the matter is, Mac is using the "Better UI design" claim to cover up the use of inferior hardware. Their marketing has been so effective that Mac users have actually convinced themselves that having fewer features and more restrictions is somehow better. This isn't even feature bloat we're talking about here, but useful features that Apple just can't be bothered to actually make easy.
The "aesthetic" is always more important that actual utility with Apple. If the feature would save the average user time, but require something that doesn't fit Steve's vision of what the OS should "look" like, the feature just doesn't happen.
Don't give me that "Better UI design" crap. Scroll wheels and three mouse buttons are damn useful things, and anyone running around saying otherwise is just kidding themselves. It's the whole "I can't have it so I'll mock it," mentality.
Keep in mind, we're talking about a company that took until version Ten to add a command line to the consumer OS.
Hardly a sign of an advanced OS in my opinion, given how much faster and more elegant a command line can be.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA