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What is the Intel Switch Costing Apple?
SenseOfHumor writes "A Business Week article says that it costs Apple $898 for an Intel iMac before loading it with software and packaging. From the article: 'But for Apple, the switch to Intel chips is less about saving money in the short term, and more about hitching its wagon to Intel's longer-term product road maps, particularly in the area of notebooks. IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers.'"
If they don't know, why ask us? Everyone knows slashdot crowd knows nothing. But we'll always comment. So I'll say it's costing them at least a hundred pigs a month in tribute. Maybe some biscuits (you Yanks call them cookies).
In the mid 1990s, Apple showed the famous picture of a Pentium grilling a hot dog and claimed Intel's chips were power hungry and ran hot compared to the nice cool sleek PowerPC. That was one of the supporting reasons that Apple ostensibly switched, according to all the engineering presentations at WWDC. So when did this change?
The main reason of course was that RISC processors were on a much faster performance incline than the fuddy duddy old CISC processors like the x86 line. The graph comparing the two in the period 1995-2005 showed CISC acceleration continuing to slow and RISC acceleration continuing with, I believe, a skyrocket attached to the top of the graph. We all know how that turned out.
Wasn't this the publicly stated reason for switching when Steve announced the move last summer? They said IBM makes great server chips, but the future of personal computing is laptops, something Intel is putting more R&D into than IBM, and thus provides a better solution.
why is this news?
It should be easier to switch to AMD or other X86 platforms in the future, opening up more negotiation possibilities.
The pentium-m processors are incredibly power efficient and perform very well. Sure there desktops are absolutely horrible from the Northwood to the Prescott core (and perhaps some new cores since i've stopped paying attention to what intel releases on the desktop now) but that doesn't exclude the fact that they do infact have one of the best, if not THE best solution for notebooks.
Hmmm... Pie...
This wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, Appple was unable to build a fast laptop, and IBM couldn't offer them anything competitive with what was happening on the x86 side of things. I've got the latest Powerbook G4, which is the best, fastest laptop Apple could offer until now, and it's just too far behind the curve. Would you rather they remained there, while IBM worked on other things and didn't care?
"IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat..."
In a related news item, IBM chips are now running for elected office worldwide.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This is why I'm confused about the push to "All Intel, All the Time!" Apple, with Mac OS X's Unix and NeXT roots, should embrace a multi-platform strategy to get the most bang for its buck wherever it can. The PowerPC-derived Cell will rock for workstation and servers, and the Meron will kick major butt for home user kit. Best tool for the job, and just compile for the famous NeXT "Fat Binary." Back in the day, the same NeXT executable would run on 68040, Sparc, PA-RISC and Pentiums. Why not now? Why tie yourself to x86 alone, when there are better alternatives to fit the niche you're targeting?
Too much politics, and not enough engineering.
~ SoupIsGood Food
The Core Duo is a great laptop chip, have you seen the benchmarks and reviews lately? IBM had no real roadmap for a laptop version of the G5. Shortly after the switch was announced, IBM made some vague statement saying that they had a low power G5 design, and they could have made it if Apple wanted it. I seriously doubt that their chip would have come near the performance of the Core Duo, or that it would be ready today.
The CPU benchmark numbers tell the tale. The Core Duo is 4-5x faster than the 1.67GHz G4 in the PowerBook, but only 2x faster than the single-core 1.8GHz G5 in the old iMac. So you can assume that the Core Duo is at least twice as fast core-for-core as the G4, but about the same core-for-core as the G5.
The G5 was a decent chip, IBM just didn't have a mobile chip to sell Apple and was too distracted by Xbox 2 and PS3 to care.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
What is stopping Apple or another software company from offering the best darn interface for programmers and users to work with, and then find the processor to wrap the interface around?
Apple is not a software company. They are a hardware company. It's that simple. They build really solid, nifty hardware that apparently reaches fetish level for a certain market, and they've learned to turn that market into money.
The problem with being completely platform agnostic is that they would compeltely have to change their product line and manufacturing processes far too often, plus all of the porting from platform to platform would be a nightmare of its own.
Your assumptions are somewhat flawed here. The Core Duo chips don't save power vs the G4, but versus the G5 which simply wouldn't work in a laptop at all.
The G4 had a great processing/watt ratio -- for its time. So did the G3. So did the 603. However, each new generation of laptop used MORE power to get FAR MORE processing done.
I don't know what it costs Apple, but I sure know the change to Intel will cost me about 2000 .
Actually if you consider Apple's overall "profit margin" for the last quarter, they grossed 5.65 billion and netted 565 million, so if you go just by last quarter, their overall profit margin is 10%, IIRC still much greater than Dells, but nowhere near what the article makes it out to be.
Monstar L
Why would the general populace ever want to buy a Mac?
Almost every person that I've induced to switch or helped to switch were prompted to do so to escape the Windows virus nightmare.
The G5 is a "brainiac" design, a big complex chip with a long highly parallelized pipeline. This is a relatively new approach for RISC chips, which have typically concentrated on a small core, short pipeline, and simple design with a lot of "close" cache.
:)
Intel's Pentium chips have all been "brainiac"s to some extent, but none so much as the P4... which they've backed away from. The new chips in the new Macs are less like the G5 or P4 and, while not exactly as clean and tight as the G4, are closer to it than they are to the real brainiacs.
But there's nothing wrong with the G4 core as a core. Taking the G4 core and giving it a faster bus, the way Intel's taken the PII/PIII core and given it a faster bus in Yonah, would have made a lot more sense. And Freescale's got one like that in the pipeline. They could have called it the "G5 Mobile".
Luxury auto brands like Acura, Infinity, Lexus, Cadillac, and Lincoln should all be folded, because they are super dumb. I mean, who's going to pay the "Cadillac Tax" just to get a glorified Chevrolet? Corporations aren't going to switch; our fleet here doesn't even SEND requests for bids to any of these brands--they go to Chevy/GMC or Ford, because they provide us with machines that get the job done. And sure, all the Cadillac fanbois will tell you that the user interface is so much nicer than a Chevy (even if underneath the gloss they are indistinguishable), but at the end of the day who really cares? Price/performance is all we look at.
In conclusion, Apple will definitely go out of business, just like luxury car brands, because nobody in their right mind will pay extra for something nice.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Everyone forgets, but Apple has had a smooth transition between architectures before. They moved from the Motorola M680X0 architecture to the PowerPC by using mixed binaries, and had very few problems. There were some initial growing pains (extensions that would bomb the system, etc,) but by and large the transition went smoothly.
.exes run under OS X as if they were native applications.
And that was on System 7; OS X is a much more portable operating system. A simple recompile is all that's necessary for most programs without a lot of assembler optimization.
They'll maintain differentiation with case design. Don't expect Apple to ship ATX systems; they moved to Intel because laptops are quickly becoming the standard, not desktops. Every laptop manufacturer uses custom designs anyway, and the IBM chips were really designed for servers and workstations (the POWER line at least,) not laptops.
One bonus is that they no longer have to emulate the x86 to do windows emulation, just translate the APIs. Apple has also written stuff like this before; with Classic mode on OS X. In 2 or 3 years I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows
Apple has their foot in the door of consumers' wallets/minds with the iPod. Now that everyone and their mother (literally) has an iPod, they'll be more open to purchasing a Mac as their next computer. With users becoming increasingly fed up with viruses and spyware, Macs are a very attractive option to many people. Once the price comes down a little bit (which I suspect it will once they ramp up full scale production on Intel) I see nothing but good things for Apple.
It might be worth noting that Intel based Macs will *not* support Classic mode in any way. I seem to recall reading a knowledgeable article saying this directly, but I can't find it right now. However, if you refer to http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Co nceptual/universal_binary/index.html#//apple_ref/d oc/uid/TP40002217 you'll see that both older applications AND Classic itself are listed as things that Rosetta can not run. If Rosetta cannot run a Classic app, then it's not GOING to run as it's still PPC.
Now, I'm sure emulators will eventually appear, but this isn't the best example to present to demonstrate Apple backward compatibility =)
Apple has, at the very least, shown it's operating system to be more flexible (or morphable) than Microsoft's Windows.
Apple has always kept the Intel jump as an Ace card in its back pocket. Rhapsody was developed for both Intel and PowerPC, and Apple kept Darwin x86 up to date. For many of us, the only surprise was that Apple actually made the jump, not that they could do it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
OS X derives from NextStep/OpenStep, and has been developed for n86 from day 1. They ported every release to PPC. Yes off course it needed aftercare, but still: first for n86, then to PPC.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Very true. Volume-wise, the game console market beats Apple's meager volume hands down. No wonder then that IBM chose to devote its Microelectronics division's resources to making the PowerPC derivatives for the Nintendo Revolution, XBox 360 and PS/3. Not to mention embedded versions you find in consumer items and under the hood of cars. The Cell processor alone will find its way in many consumer electronics appliances, not just the PS3.
So the choice was between making a laptop chipset for Apple (volume: hundreds of thousands a year) and making a high-volume chipset for several consumer markets (volume: millions a year). Guess where IBM prefered to invest. Can't blame them for telling Apple to go fly a kite.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Just within the last 12 months has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power.
False. Your statement isn't giving Intel enough credit and is not supported by the numbers. Since the original Banias Pentium M's were released back in March of 2003, we've seen Intel's mobile products have very good performance per watt ratios and overall power usage numbers. In fact, the overall power usage was the lowest in the original Pentium M's out of the entire line. You statement would be correct if you it said this: "...within the last 34 months (i.e. ~3 years) has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power."
Data pulled from Intel Product Specifications at http://www.intel.com/
Banias (the normal voltage models-i.e. 1.7 GHz, 1.6 GHz, 1.4 GHz, etc):
Thermal Design Power: 24.5 W (Full speed) / 6 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 1.7 W
Deep Sleep Power: 1.1 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 0.55 W
Dothan (any model #):
Thermal Design Power: 21 W (Full speed) / 7.5 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 3.2 W
Deep Sleep Power: 2.5 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 0.8 W
Core Duo (any standard power model #):
Thermal Design Power: 31 W (Full speed) / 13.1 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 4.7 W
Deep Sleep Power: 3.4 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 2.2 W
The Pentium M chips were a step towards lower power, but the Intel Core Duo that ships in the imac is the first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems.
Again, False. The first part of that sentence has already been proven false with the numbers I've posted. The second part of your AMD fanboy'ism is also incorrect. AMD offers two TDP ranges in their "Lancaster" single core Turion64 mobile processors: 25 watts and 35watts. As you can see with the data presented above, both of these TDP's are larger than Intel's single core Pentium M offerings which have been available since March 2003. AMD's Turion didn't even arrive on the scene until 2005 which gives Intel a solid two year headstart. What's even more interesting is that more than half of AMD's entire single core Turion line consumes more power than Intel's dual core Core Duo mobile processors. AMD has yet to release their dual core Turion processors. So your statement that the Intel Core Duo is the "first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems" is complete wrong. Intel has had AMD beat since March of 2003 in the mobile market and still continues to beat it. Please check your facts before posting lies or put an AMD fanboy disclaimer on your posts.
Note: I didn't both including Intel's various Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage Pentium M, Core Solo and Core Duo processors that have an even lower TDP than the standard voltage processor numbers I posted above. Adding this information would only serve to futher prove that your statements are wrong.
I would argue that they're not a software company, but they're not a hardware company either. Instead, they're an integrated system company. Years ago, before the PC and Windows (and Linux, which has the same model) took over, you bought both an operating system and a computer. The two were pretty much inseperable. (This was how the IBM PC started out, as well as the Mac, the Amiga, the Atari ST, the Commodore 64, the Apple ][, etc. And the same thing was true before personal computers: VAX machines had VMS, IBM machines had one of IBM's 99 different operating systems, etc.)
These days, not as many people are doing the same thing. Certainly if you buy a machine from Dell, Dell is working with Microsoft to make sure the system has all the right drivers. But that's not quite the same thing as an integrated platform where hardware design and software design are done by the same organization. Integrated hardware and software designs are available from Apple and also a few other companies like Sun. And the interesting thing is that both Apple and Sun have now adopted some x86 chips. Sun has Opteron servers and workstations available but continues to make new SPARC chips (including Niagara, a whole new series of chips), and Apple is using Intel chips in desktops and laptops.
For what it's worth, there is some value in an integrated system. Knowing that all the hardware and software come from the same place gives you a greater degree of confidence that it will all just work together. And if it doesn't, when you call for support, you are dealing with only one organization, so the blame game ("it must be the other vendor's product, not ours") is less likely. A certain percentage of the people are willing to pay a bit of a premium for these advantages, so that gives Apple (and Sun) a market that is a bit different from the regular market, which gives them a niche to play in.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Apple has really snazzy industrial design and that people look at an Apple laptop and instantly want one without yet even knowing what's inside. Think of the amount of appeal PowerBooks have had for the last few years even despite the fact that they still contain slow G4 processors.
Apple has been trying to kill the classic Mac OS and replace it with NextStep, I mean OpenStep, errr, Rhapsody... since 1997. The original plan was for all new development to be in what's now Cocoa and was at the time called Yellow Box, and legacy apps would run in a simpler version of Classic that basically ran a whole OS 7 or 8 session in a single window, called Blue Box.
The ISVs, paricularly Adobe, plotzed. There was a major row with threats of abandoning the platform, and Apple backed off, improved Classic, came up with Carbon as a transition API, and brought out OS 9 and eventually OS X.
Steve Jobs reportedly had wanted to go with Intel as soon as possible. He thought Apple had made a mistake switching to the Power PC while he was away at NeXT. OpenStep ran on Intel, of course, and Apple had versions of Rhapsody that ran on Intel boxes, even on generic clones. They had a fat binary mechanism in OpenStep that supported by the end as many as five different processor architectures.
And that's why intel. Not because IBM screwed up, but because it was in their long term roadmap and had been for years.
But obviously... that wouldn't fly if they couldn't even cram classic Mac OS off in Blue Box.
But they kept their Intel code base alive, and every other year, about, they tested the waters by trying to stop offering a Mac that could boot up into OS 9.
Every time there was a user revolt.
Until late 2004. The last G4 that could boot to OS 9 disappeared from the Apple store, without any fanfare. And, apparently, there just weren't that many people dependent on OS 9 to make enough noise to notice.
A little over 6 months later, they announced the Intel switch.
Rosetta will run all legacy Power PC applications... well, all legacy Carbon and Cocoa applications that run on OS X. They're not running Classic under Rosetta. Classic is dead.
And nobody's bitching about that, either. Which means they guessed right, and Apple can finally drive a stake into the heart of Classic Mac OS and leave it behind for good.
And that's why they did it now. Because they could.