Apple Dumps IBM/ Does Apple Have A Secret Plan?

[Urra Dipschitt]

Apple just keeps making it easier to buy PCs. (lol)

Said the posterboy for the importance of birth control.

 

[keith]

A couple of interesting tidbits (for anyone who cares anymore):

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050710.ars

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1824781,00.asp

 

[Scott Ellsworth]

A couple of interesting tidbits (for anyone who cares anymore):

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050710.ars

I have a sneaking suspicion that IBM was not willing to meet Apple's
supply requirements for the 970FX, thus we would still not see a G5 Mac
laptop, even if Apple had decided to stick with the PPC. Why? Because
that is how it has gone in the past.

Figure, this is not a cheap transition, and it is one that is going to
take place over a distressingly long time. Two years, for goodness'
sake. Had Apple the choice, I suspect they would have wanted to do a
_complete_ transition over a year, rather than starting in a year, and
taking an additional year and a half.

Hannibal's letter quotes some Motorola folk about how much the end of
the clone decision cost, claiming that this 'whipsawing' cost Apple
marketshare in each step. I cannot entirely agree - I know a lot of
people who fled the platform, and it was not because of the end of
cloning. It was because Apple at that time did not offer compelling
products. Killing clones and introducing the iMac made Apple _more_
attractive to the people I know, not less.

Frankly, I discount much of what Hannibal's unnamed source had to say.
Motorola liked to blame Apple for that debacle, but note that Apple was
the only company putting Motorola chips into desktop machines. No
matter how much they have ticked you off, it is not wise to give the
cold shoulder. Yet after that, Motorola clearly did. Witness -
Metrowerks produced the most popular compiler on the Mac, which did not
get critical updates for a long time once Motorola bought them. It took
quite some time post MacOS X to even support long file names, and they
dropped java support completely.

As a result, I do not see that Apple could trust Motorola to continue to
make substantive changes to the PPC line in accordance with Apple's
needs. Thus, PPC implies IBM as the only vendor, and I suspect that
fast Cell processors were not going to be given to Apple first. At
least Intel has competition, and publishes roadmaps.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1824781,00.asp

Fluff piece, as best as I can tell. There are similar technologies
available today that do not require the CPU to help. Ask anyone doing
biometric verification.

Scott

 

[keith]

I have a sneaking suspicion that IBM was not willing to meet Apple's
supply requirements for the 970FX, thus we would still not see a G5 Mac
laptop, even if Apple had decided to stick with the PPC. Why? Because
that is how it has gone in the past.

Silly speculation. Have the black helicopters arrived yet?

Figure, this is not a cheap transition, and it is one that is going to
take place over a distressingly long time. Two years, for goodness'
sake. Had Apple the choice, I suspect they would have wanted to do a
_complete_ transition over a year, rather than starting in a year, and
taking an additional year and a half.

<oh, crap, let me try this again - typing one-handed>

.... and Apple is drawing the process out because IBM won't give them
enough parts?

Hannibal's letter quotes some Motorola folk about how much the end of
the clone decision cost, claiming that this 'whipsawing' cost Apple
marketshare in each step. I cannot entirely agree - I know a lot of
people who fled the platform, and it was not because of the end of
cloning. It was because Apple at that time did not offer compelling
products. Killing clones and introducing the iMac made Apple _more_
attractive to the people I know, not less.

Frankly, I discount much of what Hannibal's unnamed source had to say.

....because you have better info?

Motorola liked to blame Apple for that debacle, but note that Apple was
the only company putting Motorola chips into desktop machines. No
matter how much they have ticked you off, it is not wise to give the
cold shoulder. Yet after that, Motorola clearly did. Witness -
Metrowerks produced the most popular compiler on the Mac, which did not
get critical updates for a long time once Motorola bought them. It took
quite some time post MacOS X to even support long file names, and they
dropped java support completely.

Never ascribe malice when incompetence can be more easily be blamed.

As a result, I do not see that Apple could trust Motorola to continue to
make substantive changes to the PPC line in accordance with Apple's
needs. Thus, PPC implies IBM as the only vendor, and I suspect that
fast Cell processors were not going to be given to Apple first. At
least Intel has competition, and publishes roadmaps.

Apple doesn't want, nor need Cell.

Fluff piece, as best as I can tell. There are similar technologies
available today that do not require the CPU to help. Ask anyone doing
biometric verification.

I bow to your superior intelect.

 

[Scott Ellsworth]

Silly speculation. Have the black helicopters arrived yet?

Speculation yes. Silly, no. Previous new processors from IBM had a
fair delay before they showed up in systems.

I had misread the press release, and had thought that the 'no word on
availability' line applied to both the MP and the FX, but I note that
supplies of the fastest IBM cpus announced have thus far always been
supply constrained for months.

<oh, crap, let me try this again - typing one-handed>

... and Apple is drawing the process out because IBM won't give them
enough parts?

I submit that if Apple had been able to ship a 3GHz G5 and a G5 laptop
around WWDC, they would have delayed the Intel transition until next
year. Until they had machines fairly close to 'ready to go', rather
than requiring developers to rent a 3Ghz P4 in a G5 case, with
performance characteristics quite different from the final product.

<shrug> Dunno, but it made Intel.

Could you elaborate?

...because you have better info?

Because I had contrary information, and neither source has been named.

Never ascribe malice when incompetence can be more easily be blamed.

Thing is, we had not seen great incompetence on the part of the
Metrowerks coding folk previously. They were clearly up to the task of
moving to MacOS X, and of adding appropriate code, but they did not. I
would suspect that they were told other things, like support for
embedded processing, was of higher priority.

Do malice and incompetence look different at the management level?

Apple doesn't want, nor need Cell.

Agreed. If nothing else, Cell is targeted for consoles, whose life
cycle is very different than desktop PCs.

My point was that the river of money pouring into IBM from the Cell
effort and sales of same to game consoles was not likely to give Apple a
whole raft of new, fast CPUs.

I bow to your superior intelect.

Bow accepted. Assuming irony, though, I really do not think on-chip DRM
is enough to justify a platform switch. They could get much the same
with some cheapo silicon already used for other purposes, and thus would
not need any developer effort. Heck - put one of those keen hardware
identity/encryption key chips used by Cisco on their high end vpn gear,
and you get a secure data store as a by-blow.

Scott

 

[clvrmnky]

As part of a college assignment, my colleague and I were asked to do
research on Apple switching to the Intel microprocessor. Here is a
result of our findings
http://www.mochima.com/net/apple_intel

In brief, we found that there is a lot of speculation in regards to the
implications of the switch. It could hurt sales until the Apple Intel
machines are made available. It may also hurt Apple's share price on
the Stock Market. In either case it could cause severe damage to Apple
in the short term and long term.

[...]
There is some speculation that Apple needs the hardware DRM in Intel
silicon to convince the MPAA to greenlight some sort of iTunes Movie
Store concept. Sort of a movies-on-demand server much like the iTMS.
This, more than anything, would explain a lot.

The fact that Apple *needs* faster chips that run cooler and consume
less energy is a more obvious and immediate concern. Those speed bumps
are crucial to selling desktops (as bogus as raw MHz values might be.)
The last two are crucial to maintaining their edge in the laptop world.
As it turns out, IBM was not particularly interested in pacing Intel or
AMD on any of these criteria. Given their move to a more "embedded" OEM
market, this makes a lot more sense.

In the long term, these reasons may overshadow any short-term drop in
sales. After all, nobody really cares now that iBooks are about to be
updated shortly. I imagine more than a few laptop purchases will be put
off until after 2006 (or whenever) at which time there will be a serious
peak in sales. I'm guessing Apple has planned for this. It's not like
iPod sales will suffer -- at least as a result of /this/. The iPod
concept has it's own issues coming up, and the market is pretty
saturated at this point, I suspect.

Of course, I certainly never believed this rumour (switch to Intel) when
it surfaced (again.) It does make more sense when considered in the
long-term.

If you ask me, share price is a red herring. Share price and
profit-per-share is important to some investors, but as long as Apple's
board is clear about setting expectations over the next 6 quarters I
suspect this is the least of their worries. AAPL is slightly
over-priced anyway; they can take a hit if they have to. For a company
with as much liquid assets as Apple, they have nothing to worry about.

Time will tell, I suppose. Does anyone care that much about what
silicon is on the mainboard? Apple did a fine job convincing the people
who have some professional interest (i.e., developers.) I'm not
convinced consumers (and that includes me, as I couldn't be arsed to
code on OS X -- the tools are all there, but I just don't find it
interesting anymore) should be all that concerned.

Unless, of course, Apple is dying. In which case switching to Intel is
just a last-ditch effort to save a doomed company killed by decades of
mismanagement.

 

[Tony Hill]

As part of a college assignment, my colleague and I were asked to do
research on Apple switching to the Intel microprocessor. Here is a
result of our findings
http://www.mochima.com/net/apple_intel

In brief, we found that there is a lot of speculation in regards to the
implications of the switch. It could hurt sales until the Apple Intel
machines are made available. It may also hurt Apple's share price on
the Stock Market. In either case it could cause severe damage to Apple
in the short term and long term.

[...]
There is some speculation that Apple needs the hardware DRM in Intel
silicon to convince the MPAA to greenlight some sort of iTunes Movie
Store concept. Sort of a movies-on-demand server much like the iTMS.
This, more than anything, would explain a lot.

While Intel was one of the driving forces behind DTCP, having this
"feature" in Intel's chipsets is hardly sufficient reason to switch
processors.

One important distinction that the mass-media totally failed on with
these Intel DRM stories is that Intel CPUs do NOT have any DRM in
them, it's all in the chipset. Apple makes their own chipsets (with
IBM's help) and could easily specify DTCP support into a product.
Doing so would be MUCH easier than switching processors.


Now, that being said, my guess is that chipsets *do* factor into this
decision, but for a rather different reason. I wouldn't be surprised
if the chipset in the PowerMac was one of if not the dominant R&D cost
for the entire system, and they only designed one of the three chips
(AMD did the other two)! This is an extra expense that can be totally
wiped out by going to Intel processors where they can easily chose
off-the-shelf chipsets to suit their various needs.

The fact that Apple *needs* faster chips that run cooler and consume
less energy is a more obvious and immediate concern. Those speed bumps
are crucial to selling desktops (as bogus as raw MHz values might be.)
The last two are crucial to maintaining their edge in the laptop world.
As it turns out, IBM was not particularly interested in pacing Intel or
AMD on any of these criteria. Given their move to a more "embedded" OEM
market, this makes a lot more sense.

It makes sense from IBM's point of view as well. Apple currently
purchases somewhere around 5M processors per year from IBM. The three
next generation gaming consoles will probably bring in close to 100M
processor sales for IBM. Which do you think is the more important
customer?

With Intel's chips Apple is just buying the same stuff that Dell,
HPaq, et. all are buying.

 

[Eric Lindsay]

In the long term, these reasons may overshadow any short-term drop in
sales. After all, nobody really cares now that iBooks are about to be
updated shortly. I imagine more than a few laptop purchases will be put
off until after 2006 (or whenever) at which time there will be a serious
peak in sales. I'm guessing Apple has planned for this.

I believe that, as people think through the implications of the switch
to Intel, that the next few generations of PowerPC based Macintoshes
will actually sell exceedingly well. I believe the early Intel based
models may be slow sellers.

My reasoning is that anyone who already has lots of (older) applications
will want to continue to run them. If they can run on Classic, you need
a PowerPC, not an Intel. If they are Carbon, they may or may not be
converted, and they may or may not run under emulation. So, anyone
committed to older Mac applications will need to ensure they have a
Last-n generation PowerPC for their legacy work. As owners of older
Macs realise this, they will buy their last PowerPC based Mac.

When the new Intel based Macs appear, they will be more use to new
buyers who don't have legacy applications. Traditional Mac buyers will
avoid them until the applications they need are ported, and until their
older Macs either die or just can't keep up.

For instance, as a switcher 16 months ago, I didn't have any legacy
applications. I have deliberately avoided applications that need the
classic environment. For any application I buy, I can decide whether a
Carbon based app is worthwhile, or whether I would prefer to look for a
Cocoa based equivalent. I can tell you that after the Intel
announcement, I am favouring Cocoa based apps. I look on developer web
sites for some sign that they intend to do universal binaries (despite
this being a bit early to worry about it).

However long term Mac buyers don't have that luxury. They have a lot of
old applications, and may need to run them for a number of years.

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

My reasoning is that anyone who already has lots of (older) applications
will want to continue to run them. If they can run on Classic, you need
a PowerPC, not an Intel. If they are Carbon, they may or may not be
converted, and they may or may not run under emulation. So, anyone
committed to older Mac applications will need to ensure they have a
Last-n generation PowerPC for their legacy work. As owners of older
Macs realise this, they will buy their last PowerPC based Mac.

You haven't been able to boot into OS 9.x on new Macs for some time now.

 

[Joe Heimann]

You haven't been able to boot into OS 9.x on new Macs for some time now.

And this means what? He was talking about applications running in the
Classic environment, not booting into OS 9. Most applications that
used to work under OS 9 and earlier work just fine in the Classic
environment. For those that don't, some have OS X upgrades or other
replacements. But for those that do work and replacements do not exist
already, then Classic is enough.

Joe

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

And this means what? He was talking about applications running in the
Classic environment, not booting into OS 9. Most applications that
used to work under OS 9 and earlier work just fine in the Classic
environment. For those that don't, some have OS X upgrades or other
replacements. But for those that do work and replacements do not exist
already, then Classic is enough.

Wake up and smell the coffee...native OS X is where the development is
at.

 

[Joe Heimann]

Wake up and smell the coffee...native OS X is where the development is
at.

You still have not explained your pointless comment about booting into
OS 9, it is not necessary for running Classic applications. Not all of
the people out there can afford to replace all of their software at one
time, it is nice if you feel you can.

Joe

 

[Brad Everman]

In a contingent reality, Joe Heimann possibly said:

You still have not explained your pointless comment about booting into
OS 9, it is not necessary for running Classic applications. Not all of
the people out there can afford to replace all of their software at one
time, it is nice if you feel you can.

Isn't this a pointless argument though? I'm guessing if an app is meant to
run on OS 9, it probably doesn't need as much processing power as an app
coded for OS X. You probably also wouldn't even notice a difference using
fast hardware as opposed to slow hardware where those apps are concerned.
Further, you mention cost. Instead of spending $1500 on a new Mac, why
not get some OS X native sw and run it on your older machine? You make the
implicit argument that you HAVE TO upgrade your hardware for some odd
reason, yet cannot afford to upgrade the software. That's pretty asinine,
especially considering your software shouldn't even be running on the
newer hardware. Seriously, just get an older G4 and boot into OS 9 and
stop with this idiotic nonsense that Apple is somehow dicking you over
because they're changing processors. The same thing happened to all of us
with the transition to PPC and it really didn't even affect me. I had just
bought a 660av at the time when the switch happened and thought "Oh well".
It was around three or four years before I felt the need to get a PPC, and
I picked up a 7100 fairly cheap.

 

[Benoit Leraillez]

You make the implicit argument that you HAVE TO upgrade your hardware for
some odd reason, yet cannot afford to upgrade the software. That's pretty
asinine, especially considering your software shouldn't even be running on
the newer hardware.

Well there are people who are stuck with apps that have never been
upgraded to OS X. So they have to run Classic. And these same persons
also need to upgrade their machines because speed is after all something
not that bad for the rest of their apps.

Please look a bit farther than your nose when you think before you
talk/write ;-)

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

Well there are people who are stuck with apps that have never been
upgraded to OS X. So they have to run Classic. And these same persons
also need to upgrade their machines because speed is after all something
not that bad for the rest of their apps.

You can choose to stay in the "old world" if you want to, but you
shouldn't bitch because your ancient application doesn't run on today's
OS or hardware. You should all know by now that computers, Windows or
Mac, are constantly changing and evolving.

 

[Benoit Leraillez]

You can choose to stay in the "old world" if you want to, but you
shouldn't bitch because your ancient application doesn't run on today's
OS or hardware. You should all know by now that computers, Windows or
Mac, are constantly changing and evolving.

I think you are a bit too young to now what it's like in the real
world. Consider replacing a few hundred machines and you have an app
that's in the way and how much it'll cost to have it rewritten if the
processor speed is not the problem. Now go back to play with Doom 9.6.34
and come back when you'll have two digits for your next birthday.

PS just a little idea of what can happen: a French leading car
manufacturer had it's part catalog on Hypercard, all garages had to have
Mac to know part numbers and to order parts. When Apple dropprd
Hypercard, guess what happened to Apple's market share in that company,
with your big brain.

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

I think you are a bit too young to now what it's like in the real
world. Consider replacing a few hundred machines and you have an app
that's in the way and how much it'll cost to have it rewritten if the
processor speed is not the problem. Now go back to play with Doom 9.6.34
and come back when you'll have two digits for your next birthday.

PS just a little idea of what can happen: a French leading car
manufacturer had it's part catalog on Hypercard, all garages had to have
Mac to know part numbers and to order parts. When Apple dropprd
Hypercard, guess what happened to Apple's market share in that company,
with your big brain.

Hey genius! I'm over halfway to triple digits and have extensive
experience in the computer industry. I'm well aware of the problems
keeping old apps going, but you still can't expect some piece of
software written years ago to work with today's operating systems and
hardware. Go bitch to Microsoft or Apple.

 

[George Kerby]

I think you are a bit too young to now what it's like in the real
world. Consider replacing a few hundred machines and you have an app
that's in the way and how much it'll cost to have it rewritten if the
processor speed is not the problem. Now go back to play with Doom 9.6.34
and come back when you'll have two digits for your next birthday.

PS just a little idea of what can happen: a French leading car
manufacturer had it's part catalog on Hypercard, all garages had to have
Mac to know part numbers and to order parts. When Apple dropprd
Hypercard, guess what happened to Apple's market share in that company,
with your big brain.

Bonjour, Benoit. Speaking of the French, I understand that American athlete,
Lance Armstrong is in danger of having his Tour de France title taken away
from him. The French Government and the Tour de France officials found
several items banned in France in his hotel room. They were a tooth brush,
tooth paste, deodorant and soap.

 

[Benoit Leraillez]

The French Government and the Tour de France officials found
several items banned in France in his hotel room. They were a tooth brush,
tooth paste, deodorant and soap.

First of all this has nothing to do in these groups.

Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Accounts Starting At $6.95 -

But to stay in tune with you, we dont need to find uncensored ways to
speak here.

 

[keith]

First of all this has nothing to do in these groups.

Perhaps not, but it was *FUNNY*. Speech in these groups isn' tightly
controlled by a NG-Dictator. ...and I got a lot of play from this one
today, and may copy it to a few other groups I hang out on. ;-) Do you
have a problem with humor? Yes, it was directed a bit too much, but it
*was* funny, given the circumstances.

But to stay in tune with you, we dont need to find uncensored ways to
speak here.

His choice of a news server is rather expensive (and the tag is
obnoxious), but is that any business of yours? Many people speak through
pseudonyms here, so?