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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."
Does Apple really sell as much (volume-wise) as Dell does?
This is a really interesting take on the switch that I hadn't considered before. This move to intel makes all the sense in the world if Apple is trying to cram an intel processor inside the iPod, and for pure volume discounts alone, this could really help apple's overall profit margin.
I'd worry about putting all my eggs in one basket, but I suppose as far as baskets go, intel is a relatively safe bet overall.
:::: the insomniac's digest
Right now, Apple has to market Apple machines vs. Windows machines, and they are hard to compare. When the PPC is better, people don't believe it. They are either behind in performance or MHz/GHz, or something.
This lets a comparison with Dell/HP be VERY clear.
If the Apple hardware is $100-$200 more than a Dell, it is a straightforward question, is it worth this premium to get OS X. It makes for a straightforward comparison. In addition, if Apple's manfuacturing gets better (and they grow their share from the #8 player in the PC space to #3/#4, which is probably around a 10% market-share), then they can price equally to PC players and STILL make good margins, because they don't have to pay MS their fee.
Forget JUST the processor difference, they can really enter a straight competition with a minor price premium for a superior system... Plus, if Microsoft stumbles and looks vulnerable, they can compete in the OS market.
Also, think about Government/Corporate contracts. Someone can write an RFP: runs Linux + random software that is x86 only... or runs Office XP... Since the Apple can, they can now compete for that contract.
Lots of good things for Apple, and some minor fears for those of us suffering the transition. (I have in-house Cocoa apps that will now need to be QA'd on two platforms, even if development is "click a button.")
Alex
Doesn't the choice to change processor basically give Apple and their users more options? If Apple release hardware that can run not only their own much loved OSX operating system, but also Windows, Linux and *BSD that it removes one of the major arguments about getting an Apple. Namely, "I can't run XXX piece of software, it doesn't support Apple". As long as a dual or even triple boot is possible then I can't see any reason to not get an Apple.
Ultimately look at it this way, If the Mohammed won't come to the mountain, get a big crane and get ready to do some heavy lifting.
misspelled Teh
And why does Apple need to switch from plain-Jane ARM processors to Intel's greased-lightning XScale? What do they need that extra power for? Why, to bring back the Newton, of course!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Lord Steve may seem insane, but if so, one of his disorders is obsessive-compulsive. He would not pull such a major change as switching to Intel unless he had a thick contract in hand with every i dotted and t crossed.
If this theory is in fact the plan (for large values of if) then it's not just hope. It would be written in stone.
If such a move was made, does this make AMD's anti-trust case against Intel more convincing?
Maybe now (because of the lawsuit), intel will not provide such deals to Apple. Is then, Apple in deep shit?
Yes!
Apple is planning to do for hot air what they've done for music with iHeat, the world's first ergonomically-designed space heater. iHeat will be the first space heater to use Apple's exclusive scroll wheel technology for setting the temperature, and only Intel has what it takes to get the job done.
Irrespective of whether The Steve dealt properly with IBM, the reality is and has been for many years that developing their own CPU (or having it developed for them) was just too expensive for Apple.
The original idea of the Apple-IBM-Motorola coalition was that they would be able to compete with Intel by combining forces: CPUs for servers, workstations, and embedded systems; and by creating a third-party systems market to drive demand for these CPUs (PReP). This never really took off, so IBM and Motorola were stuck with having to compete with Intel for price/performance for a single customer that would only buy a fraction of what Intel and AMD would churn out. I have no idea how much it costs to keep up a competitive CPU architecture, but it must be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions per year.
Cell might be cheap, but it doesn't allow Apple to compete with PCs on a price/performance or performance/watt level. And paying IBM to continue to develop the 970 architecture was just too expensive: people might be willing to pay a bit more for Apple systems, but only so much.
Just look at all other contenders in the high performance CPU market: there's nobody left except for Sun and Fujitsu/Siemens, and they announced last year that they will cooperate on SPARC. From a pure market standpoint, Apple had little choice.
The second coming of Newton, a video iPod or perhaps a PSP killer. Or all of the above, but with an integrated cellphone. And a pony!
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
I have to post this anonymously... You'll see why below. The real reason Apple switched from IBM is because IBM just hasn't gotten their shit together with 90nm. I know this because I recently left a job at a large semi-conductor manufactorer that used IBM for our digital fab. IBM repeatedly promised, "we'll fix the problems in our process" for YEARS, and just couldn't get their act together. With run after run of silicon, IBM couldn't manufacture the parts correctly (or other other customers parts). Finally, my company became fed up, and bit the bullet to switch to another manufactorer. It was a 4 engineer year sunk cost (to update some the design), and the design worked out of the chute (and at pretty good yields). You heard it here first... IBM just doesn't have their shit together at 90nm.
They claim -Os is to remove bloat, not increase performance :-) Thing is, for kernel type code the resulting code is actually _faster_ than with gcc -O2, since there is a lot less cache pressure.
The Fedora kernel people have benchmarked this quite a bit (and now compile kernels with -Os too), the difference is quite measurable, 5%:ish in some benchmarks.
Thanks - the image of Isaac Newton with two bolts to his head (and stitches) growling "I live again" will haunt me today.
It's too bad they didn't go with AMD processors instead. Then the iPod could have doubled as a hot plate / coffee warmer. That would be a useful technology fusion if you ask me. Far better than a crappy cell phone in an iPod!
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
First off, I RTFA... It implies that the iPod & iTMS, not the Mac, could drive Apple's future. What is Apple without the Mac? What is Apple without OSX? If the simple answer is a "portable media player company with ties to the RIAA & MPAA", then so be it - But that answer is shortsighted. This can be seen by Microsoft's foray into this arena (witness Windows Media and Media Center PC's), along with Linux's abilities (Myth) in this same subset of the market. It's the Media stupid! The media is *not* the player. If Apple, which the article supposes, is out to drive the hand-held player market with it's technology, then it may very well succeed - In hand-helds that is. If it ignores the Mac as the center of *their* digital world, they may end up with a cute player and nothing more.
You know Apple's not the only PC manufacturer that's been pushy. Dell has been dropping hints about using AMD for some time now and you can believe that everytime they do, Intel gets to shell out for another advertising campaign or something. I mean, how much 'testing' does Dell have to do to magically realize (like everyone else has) that AMD has the upper hand in most performance areas? I say that Dell merely does this to get more consessions from Intel.
But look at it this way. Intel knows that Dell secretly fears Apple in it's space. What this is REALLY all about is Intel getting more leverage. I can just hear it...
INTEL: "Oh? What's this Dell? You want to use AMD? Ok, then I guess you won't need this advertising spiff more than Apple will..."
Intel is the real winner in this scenario, not Apple, although I have no doubt that Apple will thrive regardless.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Compiling with "-Os" (optimize for smaller code size) is not always at odds with speed, as is implied in the article.
While for some trivial benchmark code -O4 may generate faster code, for real-world applications keeping your code in cache is worth more than loop unrolling - so in real-world stuff often -Os is better than -O[2345].
www.eFax.com are spammers
No. Volume discounts are not illegal. Only offering volume discounts to customers who stay away from your competitors products might be, but that is not the same thing.
If bulk discounts where illegal, Wallmarts would be out of buisness and everyone would have to shop at 7-11.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
With its switch to Intel, Apple is going to succeed where MS couldn't: build a "proprietary" PC that doesn't rely on anything legacy such as the BIOS.
Nearly everything except the BIOS will be standard on the Mactel platform. Seems to me like the perfect occasion to introduce a "trusted", DRM-enabled platform from the ground up.
Now Apple can tell the RIAA & MPAA: on our platforms, your stuff will be secure.
The desktop wars are over. Commodity IBM PC-compatibles with Microsoft OSes and Intel chips won. Sure the market is HUGE and niche markets (even #1 player Dell doesn't dominate the market, it owns the niche for moderately supported business machines with semi-custom orders) remain extremely profitable if done right, but Intel and Microsoft have extracted most of the profits. Even highly innovative AMD can only capture 20% of the market.
.Mac system, where the cost of the storage is going to zero but their annual subscribers are growth.
.Mac subscription (or some similar number). That means that Apple can sell a low-margin system like the Mini, pocket $100 on the system, and hope to grab another $200-$300 in software sales over the system's lifetime... So a $500 Mac Mini sale is as good for Apple as a $2000 PowerMac with 40% margins was 5 years ago.
In 1996 Fortune interviewed Steve Jobs and asked him what he would do if still running Apple. He responded that he would "milk the Mac for all it is worth and move on to the next big thing."
This doesn't mean that those of us with an investment in Apple hardware (or more risky, custom Cocoa software like we have) mean that Apple is going to abandon the Mac....
They are going the milk it for all it is worth.
With OS X, we have a NeXTSTEP/Mac fusion that Steve likes, and Apple will keep profitably pushing out software updates that they sell, but that isn't Apple's growth.
Their growth operations: software, when Steve rejoined they had recently gone from free OS upgrades to selling two upgrades, OS 7 and OS 7.5, IIRC, maybe 6 was sold as well.
Now, Apple sells new OS Versions every 1 - 2 years. They put out an iLife upgrade annually. They will probably put out iWork annually. And they replaced their free iTunes system with a nicely growing
The average Mac customer pre-Jobs bought a Mac and used it for 6 years.
The average Mac customer post-Jobs buys a Mac, and uses it for 3-4 years with 2 OS upgrades, 1 or 2 software purchases, and 20% of a
Apple will keep innovating the Mac to milk the cash cow... They will NOT enter price-wars or otherwise fight with MS or Dell or HP for market-share. They will milk the cash cow, try to execute and expand markets, but they are NOT interested in growing to a 10% market with the SAME profits as now by cutting their margins by 75% which would make the software developers happy.
It isn't a zero-sum game, they are selling the iMac or Mac Mini as a digital life system. Sure you have a Windows machine for whatever... but add a Mac Mini and a KVM (and annual OS X + iLife upgrades) to easily put your kid's Soccer Games on DVD and send to his grandparents. That is their "growth" strategy.
It isn't a bad strategy, but selling easy-to-use digital toys is how Apple is a growth company, and Microsoft is becoming a mature company that will steadily increase its annual dividend.
Good for Steve Jobs, good for Apple shareholders, and hopefully good for its customers as long as Apple keeps putting out new products that we want to buy because we are the cash cow to be milked, but we aren't going to benefit from price cuts from a price war because market-share and PC growth just don't interest Apple...
That said, I'm sure at some level Apple sees Linux entering the network market for office networks, and realizes that with the best (and easiest to use) desktop Unix... he can enter that market. If you like Linux, if Apple gets the BEST WINELIB performance, the BEST Qt performance, and best Gtk performance, and has KDELIB and GNOMELIB ported... well how tough is it that Apple is able to compete with Linux for SOME share of the corporate desktop market.
Apple is in a position to make SOME gains in PC market-share, but growing back to 10-20% over 10 years isn't giant tech growth... the iPod and OTHER SIMILAR projects is.
It's a smart business move, and Apple has set themselves up to grow profits steadily in their core markets, and then swing for the fences with new products like the iPod, iTMS, etc.
Alex
You misunderstand RISC. As do most people these days, it seems.
Back in the olden days, when chips were still designed by small teams on reasonable budgets, somebody noticed that hand-written assembly was rapidly becoming passe. When the assembly is being written by a compiler, it makes sense to design the chip with that in mind, and make an instruction set that is efficient at the kind of simple instructions that compilers like to write.
This led to a simpler design that could be made somewhat faster than a complex one. This led to many predicting the demise of so-called CISC chips. This prediction, like the "Internet in danger of collapse" and "Apple to go bankrupt" predictions, is no closer to actually happening than it was when it was first made.
The surprise was that Intel wanted a chip that had the speed advantages of RISC but used the same interface as their older chips, so they designed one. So they built a chip called the Pentium that translated CISC instructions into RISC ones. Since this operation is essentially O(n), they got good performance, and they've continued that basic design to the present day.
So to answer your question, it's already true that any operations that are not simple are emulated in software -- it's just that in x86 processors the emulation is on the CPU. Today there is no important difference between CISC and RISC, whether we are speaking of mainframes or desktops.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
And all this time I thought putting the "Intel Inside" stickers on the MACs when I was in in college was a cruel gag done to piss off the MAC users. Not I'm a bloomin' prophet.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
First, we had the Wintel monopoly.
Then some competitors came along and the non-Intel processors running Windows carved out a large enough market share to justify splitting the terms off into ChipZilla and Wintendo.
Now, we have MAC going Intel. What the HELL do we call this?
MacTel?
Intelmac?
Apptel?
Intenapple?
What terms can we use now???
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Is it just me, or are the "insiders" who can't even spell just a tad less than credible?
Why can't anyone take the announcement at face value? Clearly IBM (and Moto/Freescale) don't want to develop new top-end chips for a small market. Who can blame them?
But Intel is going to build their next generation anyway. Apple's small marketshare is meaningless in this context, they're in a race with AMD for a huge market no matter what else happens.
Let's remember that Intel has been courting Apple for well over a decade now. They're also clearly unhappy with the crappy boxes being offered by their existing vendors. Having Apple onboard making cool products with their systems must be a dream come true -- "See, THIS is what an Intel machine can do".
But no, not enough of a conspiracy in that I suppose.
You, sir, seem to be suffering from a serious humor deficiency.
My recommendation: Go read America's finest news source until you begin to laugh again. Then come back here.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
My Powerbook boots faster than my new Thinkpad. So this could go the other way. Apple fans could find that the Apple hardware my behave considerably different. Even if not, now Apple has to compete with high-end gamer boxes when trying to be the fastest. Perhaps they won't try to be the fastest, but faster than Dell/HP. It's going to get very interesting, to say the least.
I'm wondering if the 360 has something to do with this, or if it at the very least nudged Jobs over the edge.
;-)
Hear me out. Most people have heard about Jobs' pathological reaction when he loses face, and everyone knows that he *hates* Bill Gates, right?
So awhile back Jobs' predicts 3Ghz G5's in 2005 (which I guess became the "3GHZ Promise"). IBM fails to deliver. However, Microsoft announces shortly before E3 that the 360 will use a 3.2 GHZ triple-core G5. I can only imagine that Jobs was pissed on some level that Bill Gates trumping him in Apple territory.
Of course, there have been a few reports that the 360's G5 is essentially crippled, and that the chip will effectively be only twice as fast as the original xbox's cpu. Even if it's true, I don't think that changes anything. Jobs may have figured figured (and I'd be inclined to agree) that even if the 360 chip is not really as powerful as it seems, it represents time&effort that IBM was dedicating elsewhere instead of working on improving it's offerings to Apple.
In fact, when you consider that IBM is working w/ Sony and Nintendo on other customized G5's, it seems pretty clear where Apple stands in terms of priority. Not that I blame IBM -- why the hell would you care about the rantings of Steve Jobs when you are going to be selling your product to 3 out of the 3 biggest players in the console market, with each one amounting to way more sales that what you'd ever get with Apple.
Not sure if it's the case, but it sounds plausible enough. At least he kept the promise though, right?
Wow! Do you think perchance that this Pentium V will also have something to do with "code morphing"? I heard this technology should really be revolutionary!
I suppose Einstein, with his hairdo, will make a fitting bride of Frankenstein... :)
I'm not sure what you mean by this. You should read up on the Church-Turing thesis. Basically, it can be proven that a very simple instruction set (I think the minimum is 3 instructions[1]) can run any algorithm. The question then becomes, what instructions should be implemented as a single instruction on the chip, and which ones should be implemented as a combination of instructions. Generally, it turns out, it is a good idea if all of your instructions take the same length of time to execute - this makes interleaving different instructions much easier. It therefore makes sense to have a relatively simple instruction set.
The trend towards CISC ended with things like the VAX. Back when people used to program in assembly, it made sense to have complex instruction sets to make things easier for the programmer. The VAX included things like an evaluate polynomial instruction, for example. Of course, this was quite unwieldy, and so a lot of the instructions were implemented as microcode - you they were automatically translated to a set of simpler instructions.
With the development of high-level languages, it emerged that compiler writers were not using these complex instructions, they were implementing them directly in simpler instruction. It then made more sense to focus on making a small set of instructions run quickly (which, it turns out, is easier and therefore cheaper).
Note that `CISC' chips are not really CISC anymore. They do the same `emulation' that RISC chips do. When you run x86 code on a Pentium each instruction is broken down into simpler instructions and then these are executed on the RISC core. The Pentium 4 (and, I believe, the Pentium M) cache these micro-instructions, so they don't have to do the translation twice.
[1] Zero, Increment, and Conditional Jump, for example - try it, you can do addition simply, multiplication by repeated addition, then build more complex algorithms from there.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I wonder what The Steve will break in a fit of rage if and when AMD's case against Intel results in a ruling that renders the volume deal illegal and void. You'd almost think that AMD (lawsuit) and IBM (PPC announcements, Cell) banded together to flip The Steve the finger after he had already made the decision.
Why is this modded up?
1.) First of all, the article is ancient (Sept 2003).
2.) Second of all, the revolutionary thing promised was 64 bits, which we have today.
3.) Intel is not behind AMD in 64 bit chips. AMD chose a differant design, which sacrificed a lot of transistors for x86 compatibility, limiting the scalability and performance of their chip. It makes sense now, but it further embeds x86 cruft in the market place. Intel was working on 64 bit chips when AMD's main product was making pentium 1 clones.
4.) 90nm wont allow for gigabytes of memory on the die. Cache SRAM takes 6 transistors per bit. There just arent enough transistor now to do it. In addition, regular SDRAM cells take a transistor and a capacitor. They are the same speed, no matter where you put them. Delays from SDRAM sense amps aren't going away, either. I know it's a nice concept, but the L1 / L2 cache structure won't be changing drastically anytime soon.
5.) The last point just doesn't make sense to me. Backing store is normally a fancy word for a hard-drive, which virtual memory uses to store pages that are not in main memory. RAM and system memory are the same thing. All modern operating systems are smart enough not to cache file's in the on-disk memory backing store, because the same data is already located elsewhere on the drive. Why cache the data twice? To extend this concept further, the user can use mmap to map a file into user space as a memory block, and work with the file as if it where a block of memory.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
I think the most simple answer is probably the right one.
Apple got pissed off that the PPC was getting very few performance increases compared to the x86, and probably had a poor price/performance ratio. They also would have liked to release a more powerful laptop.
They quietly had OS X running on x86 architecture for years, in case IBM fucked them over, and when they saw that Intel had a decent processor in the pipeline (pun not intentional), and know that AMD already has decent processors, they decided to make the switch.
It's been obvious for a while that the "real reason" is that Apple's needs are met better by Intel's roadmap than IBM's, and Apple doesn't have enough marketshare to make it worthwhile to change that.
Yes, the new 970FX chips are an improvement over the current tech. On the other hand, it's not mind-blowing compared to Intel's current line-up, much less what's in the pipeline. I'm supposed to be impressed by an announced 13W @ 1.4GHz and 16W @ 1.6GHz when Intel has been selling 10W @ 1.5GHz for months?
Even the dual-core Yonah core, slated for volume production first quarter of 2006, is quoted as staying within a 25W envelope @ 2.13GHz. Speeds for the low voltage, ultra low voltage, and single core parts aren't released yet, but Intel has made it clear that it's aggressively pursuing lower power designs and that notebooks based on the next generation of chips will "use approximately 33% less power".
As to Overshoot's comments, no.
The 970 wasn't intended to be a "custom processor chip." Had IBM hit its performance targets, it would have had ample alternative outlets for the 970. The great speculation was that IBM would push its own line of inexpensive 970 based Linux servers. But IBM wasn't up to the task.
And the suggestion that Apple isn't flush with cash? Again, no. Apple's sitting on a mountain of it.
Finally, Apple, no matter how egotistical its corporate culture may be, would never think itself large enough to bully Intel for volume discounts.
No, the reason Apple has switched is because marketing told it to stop fighting the dominate paradigm. When the Macintosh runs on the same base hardware as everyone else, marketing can concentrate on the OS and sundry applications. Sure, Intel *probably* sweetened the offer knowing that Apple's cutting edge design would reflect well on it. And the Apple premium will probably justify selling top of the line chips, forcing Dell and the like to buy premium chips for marketing purposes.
The only thing surprising about the decision to go with Intel is the fact that Apple thinks it technologically and commercially feasible to run on multiple architectures. Once Apple became convinced of their ability to do so, the decision made itself.
> Right now, Apple has to market Apple machines vs. Windows
> machines, and they are hard to compare. When the PPC is better,
> people don't believe it. They are either behind in performance or
> MHz/GHz, or something.
I don't believe it either, and it's not "just marketing".
I bought a 17" 1 GHz PowerBook G4 back in April 2003. Then in January 2005, the hard drive failed on that PowerBook, and I didn't have time to deal with it (and I couldn't be without my PowerBook), so I went out and bought a 17" 1.5 GHz PowerBook. A month later, I finally got around to swapping out the hard drive in the first 17" PowerBook, and I gave it to my wife.
My intention was to replace my PowerBook G4 with a PowerBook G5, but to my shock, there wasn't a G5 PowerBook.
When I took home my new PowerBook, it was almost exactly like my previous PowerBook. The first 17" PowerBook G4s were released in January 2003 and in the two years that had elapsed, there was no real difference in performance. In fact, I forgot that I had actually replaced my PowerBook -- that's how similar they were.
Note that while desktop machines are stagnating in sales, laptops are where the growth is. The fact that Apple's flagship portable had basically remained the same for two years is horrible. Contrast this with the changes in operating system. Mac OS X 10.4 is wildly better than the OS that came with my previous PowerBook. So from a software perspective, Apple's doing great. From a hardware perspective, the changes just aren't keeping up.
Ars seems to downplay the fact that IBM missed their 3 GHz target for the G5. More than that, they missed the laptop ready version of the G5, which some could argue is even more serious. People seem to want to blame Jobs or Apple's arrogance, but the point is, IBM hasn't been delivering. Results matter, and Apple's hardware is falling behind. Jobs is a smart guy to say, "we can't keep doing this" and he found a solution in Intel. I say, good for him. Now give me a laptop where two years of progress is noticeable.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Unfortunately for Intel, multi-year schedule slips and disappointing real-world performance results make that irrelevant. Starting earlier to develop something doesn't matter if the results of your efforts turn out to suck.
The Xbox 360, PS3, and the Revolution are all supposed to be powered by PPC chips. IBM Can't keep demand as it is. Alot of time and effort will be placed on the console gaming system chips. Apple had to leave IBM becuse there is no way IBM would have kept up with demand.
With all the horseshit I've seen on this topic, I knew there had to be a pony around here somewhere.
WTF? What pocket universe have you been living in? One of Apple watchers' biggest complaints about APPL is that they have been sitting on a tremendous amount of cash for years, when they could have spent some of it to shore up their market position in many, many different ways. I argue that one of the biggest mistakes Apple made was not buying Netscape before Sun and AOL divided and conquered it, or CS&T/Steltor before Oracle subsumed it. Think of where Apple might be today if we had an improved Netscape SuiteSpot running on Mac OS X. What if Apple spent some of those billions in cash developing a successot to the Apple Network Servers to run the above server software? Wouldn't you like to see a product that could absolutely destroy Microsoft Exchange using Internet Standard protocols?
And, speaking of Oracle, how many years did Larry Ellison sit on Apple's board without producing an Oracle server for an Apple platform? But, I digress..
Motorola in particular, has written off hundreds of millions of dollars in losses caused directly by the erratic actions of Apple Computer
Umm, how about..."Motorola in particular, has written off billions of dollars in losses caused directly by the erratic actions of Motorola? Hey, let's just completely ignore MOT's complete mishandling of the entire PowerPC agreement/concept. We weren't stuck at 500MHz because of Apple--it was MOT's inability to make a gracful transition to a new process line that caused *that*. Not to mention Motorola switching all internal operations machines to WinTel and ditching *their own product* in favor of a competitors?
And how, exactly is the example of one of IBM's "regular" customers in any way relevant to Apple? You may have forgotten that Apple *owns*, at least partially, the PowerPC IP, not to mention the fact that *no other manufacturer* uses PowerPC in a general purpose computing application, other than Apple and IBM, themselves. Yes, IBM has "other customers", but none of these have the same needs or relationship with IBM that Apple has. IBM is doing as much damage to their own product line by not moving the Power and PowerPC lines forward as aggressively as possible, unless of course IBM intends to pawn off their workstation, mini, and mainframe lines to China, as well...
The bottom line is, no matter how much Hannibal would like to wish it otherwise, IBM screwed up royally, and in the process, screwed Apple and Steve Jobs. You may want to go back and read my Slashdot post from 2005-04-15 to see my evaluation of the possibility of Apple moving to Intel (which , I may add, was well before any speculation/rumors on the part of C|Net or the WSJ).
May I direct you to http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146200&c id=12245408 ?
And I quote:
I think IBM had the ability to produce chips that were what Apple wanted in terms of power (as the article points out - the newer batch of PowerPC chips are more like what they want).
What does Intel have that IBM didn't? Better support for DRM type stuff in the processor. From http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,1 2449,1504558,00.html
Here's my theory. Steve Jobs has a long-term goal to position Apple as 'the' online media company. He already dominates the online music business with the iTunes/iPod combination. Now he wants to repeat the trick with online movies.
But Hollywood studios won't do a deal with him because they are worried about piracy. They want a platform with rock-solid 'digital rights management' (DRM) built in. And it just so happens that Intel has been moving technical mountains to build strong DRM into its processor architecture, whereas IBM doesn't see it as a priority.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Oh, you stupid people, you don't grasp what's really happenning here. I have to tell you everything.
:-D
Apple is turning to Intel because The Evil Empire (AKA Microsoft) will at last buy 100% Apple stock and Mac OS X 11.0 will be the much-hyped Longhorn.
RISC is a type of instruction set, of which the ARM instruction set is one. ARM also refers to the company that created it, to several of the processors they themselves produced (e.g. ARM 2, ARM 3, ARM 600, StrongARM) and to the cores they sell to other people.
Umm.. a Intel fanboy
...
As has been said in previous replys to your post, it's obvious that intel (altough keeping it's position as a player on the microprocessor ground) it's really falling behind competitors, such as IBM itself and obviously AMD, wich has demostrated recently that can do more than just "cloning" PI's or PII's
It makes me wonder why Apple didn't choose AMD, we all know that in terms of price AMD is also winning, and could pretty much kill Intel in the foreseeable future.
New players come in to town with different architectures such as IBM/Sony with their Cell chip, and only IBM with the new line up for the PPC cores, so
Definetly something that will we need to follow later on.
You're right in that Intel started developing 64 bit chips earlier, but as already said, they did it the wrong way.
Put more bluntly, Apple is switching to Intel so that Wine and VirtualPC/VMWare will work at full speed. Right now, I know many many people who would switch to a Mac in an instant, except they need some small, vertical application that only runs on Windows. By switching to Intel, Apple gets the opportunity to build Windows compatibility into their OS (using WINE code, customised) and capitalize on that market.
I'm not looking for this to be good enough to kill the market for native Mac apps (let's face it: emulating Windows is hard)--just good enough to let me continue using the 2-3 windows applications that I absolutely must have to do my business.
I can tell you this: the instant an Intel-based powerbook is available, I will be buying it so that I can run Windows in VMWare (or equivalent software) and get rid of my Windows laptop at long last. It's a convenience thing.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Ahh, the tinfoil hat conspiracy mongering at Slashdot.
While I'm sure Intel chips will cost Apple less than the IBM chips, and could lower their costs, this wasn't about price. This was about saving Apple from death in the PC business.
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.
Make no mistake...while OSX is the best PC operating system on the market, the supporting hardware was starting to suck. Compared to the PC world, most of Apple's offerings were stuck in late-90's levels of hardware performance, while charging a premium price. Is it any wonder that some anaylists were predicting a drop of Apple's market share to around 1.5 percent by 2008?
Apple did this so they could be a viable competitor. That's it. Intel has better chips, especially for portables. No one makes anything as good as the Pentium M for laptops. Not AMD. And certainly not IBM. Big Blue was never going to get a G5 into a Powerbook anytime soon. And when they did, it would still lag performance-wise (especially in battery usage) compared to it's Intel rivals.
Apple cannot survive at their present size on Ipods alone. This was a cold, calculated decision by Jobs and Co. to get competitive again. You can now take off those foil hats.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I too have to post anonymously because of where I used to work (Apple), and frankly your story is a load of shit.
I was part of the project team that maintained the x86 core of OS X and we in on a lot of the conference calls that Apple had discussing the impending switch. What acually happened was that senior management was extremely unhappy with IBM sharing the PowerPC technology with Apple's competitors Sony and Toshiba (via the Cell work, as well as other stuff that hasn't been announced yet). Apple disagreed with IBM as to what their technology licensing agreements said they could and could not do, so Apple basically laid it out on the line and told IBM to cease sharing the technology with Apple's competitors or they woud go somewhere else. I wasn't there when IBM said no, but Jobs was livid at the last meeting I was in on, and demanded to know how soon we could get our work out the door into some Intel based systems.
What might be a killer app to design a video iPod around is the DV (or HD) camcorder. Clip your iSight onto your iPod. Now you have a camcorder that's smaller than any other on the market and records approximately forever, strait to hard disk, no messing with tapes. Maybe in H264. I think that's what a "video ipod" is going to be.
Have and iPod Video and want an HD camcorder? It'll cost a heck of a lot less than buying a DV camcorder, all you need is the iSight, which, by the way, you can still use as a webcam. Want to upgrade to an HD camcorder? Instead of giving Sony another $1000 to replace your DV camcorder with HD, pay Apple a quarter as much for their new HD iSight and plug it into your existing iPod Video.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
So what's this about "any" P4 vs A64 tests that show that P4s are superior in audio & video compression?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
This is a lame excuse. Steve was just in a hissy fit, decided to break up with IBM, and now IBM has just made a liar out of him, perhaps for spite.
My bet is that the move had something to do with Intel's DRM, and making the Music Industry happy - since Apple's focus now is iPod/iTMS.
Also, each iPod sale is a potential "switcher". iTunes is available for Windows, yes. But each iPod sale is a person who may be curious about OS X, might actually buy an iMac, or Mac Mini. (the Mac Mini is aimed at "switchers" - who already have a keyboard, mouse, monitor, but want to front a minimal investment to switch platforms, just replace the CPU.)
But what if iPod potential "switchers" can't be supplied with enough PPC-powered Mac Minis, or Mac Minis are still a tad too costly, or what if Apple can't slip a powerful enough chip into that enclosure due to heat issues? The switch to Intel chips solves all of these issues. The difference between a Windows iPod/iTMS user, and an OS X iPod/iTMS user? The OS X "experience" - the same schlock any cross-platform software producer can do: make their Native version better than the ports. Like IE Windows compared to IE Mac. iTunes Mac will be kept more up to date with features than iTunes Windows, and it will only cost an iPod/iTMS user a couple hundred bucks to switch. And with Intel chips, they can ramp volume to meet demand now.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Apple doesn't have deep enough pockets to make this happen."
While I agree with most of your sentiment, if you flip your argument, Sony should have deep enough pockets to beat Apple in the MP3 player market. They have deep pockets, but they've done jack to dethrone Apple. Sony has deep enough pockets to make Sony Connect successful, but they haven't. Sony has deep enough pockets to make MemoryStick to become successful, but they haven't.
Substituting the name Microsoft into such an argument also is noteworthy. Microsoft has enough cash to make anything successful, but it hasn't worked. The Xbox would be dead if it were not for the Xbox Live system and Halo. Using your argument about developer relationships, Microsoft should be #1 in videogames considering their relationships with the game developers and the fact that the Xbox is easier to program than the Playstation2. But reality paints a different picture.
"End of story: Apple can't kill the PSP."
Apple doesn't have to kill the PSP because Nintendo will do the job just like it has done to every other handheld competitor. The PSP is awesome, but it is the 2005 version of the Atari Lynx, which judging from my user name, you should conclude that I am very fond of. Twenty + year olds are buying PSPs, not the kids nor are the parents buying them for the kids...just like with the Atari Lynx 16 years ago. The kids still get the Gameboys. All Apple has to do is add videogame functionality and better movie playback to a video iPod and it would split the demographic that the PSP appeals to. Even more so when the Video iPod is coupled with an Apple online movie store which would demolish the Sony UMD market for PSP movies.
The games would just have to be nice. Couple that with Apple's "cool" factor and its advertising campaign, and the Sony PSP would be toast. Having the absolute best technology in the handheld gaming area has never led to success. Otherwise, the Atari Lynx would've won out over the Gameboy. And the Gameboy did not have great third party support when it debuted. Its success was due to its low price, the leveraging of Super Mario Bros. on the machine, and the fact that Nintendo had a larger production run and better distribution than Atari with the Lynx. Third party title strength came later.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
The G5 was a dandy machine, and our customers couldn't get enough of them. The trouble is, neither could Apple!
Apple was leaving a pile of money behind, every single quarter that they had to put up with IBM's supply limitations. I didn't have access to the figures, but I would estimate that sticking with IBM was costing Apple upwards of a billion in revenue per quarter.
One thing that Apple knows they're going to get from Intel, is reliable supply of all the CPUs they can use.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."