CNBC had an interview with Steve Jobs. In the interview, Jobs talks about the new Apple store in New York which will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The interview is quite lightweight – Jobs doesn’t reveal anything we haven’t heard before and the questions aren’t particularly incisive. One interesting comment is made towards the end of the interview though. When asked about AMD, Jobs says that AMD is strong in the high-end server sphere but that Intel have the best notebook and desktop chips (he mentions Intel’s Yonah chip) which is where Apple’s primary focus lies.
Apple is the most tight-lipped tech company on the planet. Even the CEO can’t talk about stuff, not even as 20% as freely as other big company execs can (e.g. from Sun, MS etc). And their engineers are banished from talking to journalists or having blogs that talk anything about their jobs. As a geek, I hate that. I think Apple is overdoing it with their tight PR. While it makes sense to not reveal much and potentially get in trouble with the SEC, Apple simply overdoes it. And that decision is all Jobs.
I tried many times getting interviews from engineers, and that was out of the question according to their PR. Once only they said “ok” to publish a canned interview with a marketing person, which of course I declined, as osnews is more about geeks rather than fluffy marketing ppl.
Edited 2006-05-20 22:10
I am unable to mod your comment up Eugenia…I click it and the page refreshes, but nothing happens.
Thanks, no idea what’s up with that. Adam changed the modding code a few days ago. You can email him with a bug report.
“I tried many times getting interviews from engineers, and that was out of the question according to their PR.”
I’m at a loss to understand why you think you deserve to know what they don’t want you to know. They have a right to privacy just like you do. Part of Apple’s business model is in creating that expectation and excitement surrounding a new, unannounced product. I prefer that rather than Microsoft’s long, drawn out typical “SuperVaporWare(tm)” model.
They don’t overdo it, they milk it. No-one cares about what Dell or Microsoft have in store, because everyone knows in advance. However there have been a multitude of stories on rumour sites (which make their way into news sites) about what’s in store for Leopard.
By keeping everyone guessing, they tend to engender a huge buzz, which gets everyone (even stockholders) excited for the big events.
Better yet, as far as everyone knows, almost all of their products are a success; and those that fail (e.g. the Cube) still tend to fail well. Who knows how many products have been started inside Cupertino, and then scrapped.
It’s a pain for journalists, but it’s great PR for Apple, as it keeps everyone talking about them.
Apple prides itself on innovation to keep ahead of the copycats, it needs to create new markets and dominate them as long as possible in order to stay alive as it foots the bill for R&D.
If Apple was a open book and everybody new what was coming, then there would be excitement, no impulsive buying, no lust.
With Apple on Intel, and Intels roadmap is pretty clear, we know now what sort of machines are coming processor wise. So that alone should be enough to satisfy most geeks needs for corporate purchases.
Apple is a consumer products company, the hype and mystery is part of the Apple experience.
When has anything been exciting out of Dell or HP or Microsoft?
“Apple is a consumer products company”
Apple also sells lots of computers for education. And they have the XServe, which is definitely not a consumer item.
Hi Eugenia
Another potential reason, especially for restricting engineers from talking openly about what they’re doing: patents. If you don’t know how something works internally, you may not be able to sue a company. Just a thought… could be wrong on their intentions.
Jagin
There is probably only 1/2 the story there. Apple’s historical processor choices were mostly about rocking the establishments and locking the user base in with rare hardware, not to get the best value for the platform.
My reasons Apple went for Intel:
#1. Same reason Dell is exclusive to Intel – money, discounts, co-marketing.
#2. To lock its users into another “proprietary” platform – EFI. I bet Apple got that for free when they agreed on Intel’s offer.
Whatever the reasons Steve chose Intel – I know it’s not for customer’s benefit. Steve is just your average “classic” car salesman – he’ll sell you the rust-proofing and undercoating without even blinking.
Yeah you are right.
Apple have locked so much its users with intel that you can now install windows and almost open source OS on it (for those who don’t, its just a question of time).
I feel so locked …
but you cant install os x on a dell (yet). or atleast not legaly.
thats the thing, apple is first and formost a hardware company. as long as it sells their computers and other electronic devices, they will do so.
why do you think they ported itunes to windows? to sell more ipods. why do they make boot camp? to sell more macs…
this is hardware lock-in, not software lock-in…
Edited 2006-05-21 05:58
While your first reason is real, I don’t think the second one is. And you are missing an even bigger picture: Intel provides not only the CPU, but also the chipset and peripheralia hardware. Not only that, but Intel has full development tools (software and hardware) to help both developers and hardware engineers to create a solution. In other words, Intel offers a bigger solution package to its big customers than AMD does. And given the fact that Apple was new to the PC market, they needed all the help they could get. Intel was the right choice for them — at the time.
EFI is open. Anyone can write software for it. This is how Windows was originally hacked onto the Macintel
Exactly. And of course BIOS is a perfectly modern and open and system that should have gone for…
(It occurs that that might not read as sarcasm. It is!)
yes, but it makes it harder to allow os x to legaly run on any other x86, as they use bios.
allso, there is that other chip that locks os x to the hardware.
its about locking the apple branded software to the apple branded hardware, not about not letting other software in…
I’m sorry, but this is just a tired and old argument that will not change.
“it harder to allow os x to legaly run on any other x86”
It’s not legal to run OS X on non-Apple hardware, period. EFI didn’t “force” this to happen, it’s just been the way it’s been (with the exception of the clone years).
Plenty of companies lock software to their hardware. I don’t hear you pounding on Toshiba/Panasonic/Sony/Etc’s doors for not letting you install their TV and DVD player software on other machines. Sheesh.
but then DVD’s and tv’s are designed to do one thing and one thing only. and mostly the software is custom written to the hardware at a very intimate level.
now if they where using of the shelf x86 component i would maybe be interested in trying to run one on the other
still, apple is bending over backwards in trying to lock the software to the hardware so that even tho people want to try and run os x on a non-apple machine, they cant. atleast not simply (and legaly).
thing is that even when EFI based motherboards become of the shelf hardware, apple will have os x locked to specific EFI’s. this means i cant just grab a of the shelf motherboard if my old one blows. i have to shop apple
But who’s to say that Apple can’t tie their software to their hardware. Their software is written at a very intimate level with the hardware just the same. It’s one of the reasons Macs “just work”. Just because you’d like to run OS X on non-Apple hardware doesn’t mean that needs to be the case.
If the mobo on my PS2, for example, were to blow, I’d have to go through Sony. When some computer chip in my car malfunctions, I have to go through the manufacturer. This is nothing new. Apple has always done this. Just because they made the move to x86 doesn’t mean their business model is gonna change. It’s still Apple, and it’s still a Mac.
and that why im not going to buy one any time soon
im not saying they cant keep doing what they are doing, just dont expect me to bow to the lords of the fruity logo…
LOL
Oh, then I totally hear your case.
Apple really isn’t for everyone, the same way Dell/IBM/HP/Etc aren’t for everyone and the way *nix isn’t for everyone.
The beauty is that we really do have choice in the market place.
true. but to realy maintain this ability of choice we have to make sure that the big corporations do not put their big fat as down on any standards…
as long as we have standards that are free for anyone to implement and use, and if they extend on them release equaly free documentation on the extensions, the level of choice can remain.
You don’t think Intel’s strength in laptops had anything at all to do with the move?
I believe the “lock in” technology Apple uses is their own, so I don’t understand how this would somehow not be possible using AMD chips?
locking the user base in with rare hardware
“Pff* How about some examples? Apple was never in the game for the cheapest hardware in town and their choice of hardware in the past were far better then most other vendors. Just because Apple did not went with the masses does not make their hardware choice bad (I distincly remember SCSI vs craptastic IDE; ADB vs. inferior PS2;
FireWire for external drives vs. lame USB 1.1, the much more advanced OpenFirmeware (and now EFI) vs. the oldster “BIOS”, etc.,).
As for the best value for the platform: I also remember a lot of hardware buzzwords from the past which were hyped like crazy but were in fact nothing more than fanboy wet dreams..
One can assume that the switched to Intel had also financial benefits. Contrary to other vendors, Macs are not littered with the usual sticker parade for Intel / Ati / etc. and one look at their website would have been enougth to see that they don’t use the Intel marketing materials. I therefore guess that they don’t get any discounts for hardware/software like Dell for putting Intel and Windows all over their marketing materials.
I’ m sometimes really astonished how pure troll comments like your’s get a score of 4. Must be a nest somewhere …
No Intel marketing? ^_^
http://youtube.com/watch?v=viTN1gTPm7s
Dont get me wrong. I totally agree with your points. Just had to point that one out.;)
Dell is going to use AMD processors
I thought that the most insightful part of the interview was when the interviewer asked Steve about Apple making a phone. It looked like it took him by surprise. He seemed to blush and stumble for a bit and then say something like “We don’t like to talk about future products. If we do bring out a phone, I’ll be happy to tell you.” That seems to me as if Apple are working on a phone, otherwise he would have said something more like “No, Apple isn’t interested in phones.”
I suppose Steve doesn’t want to slag off AMD. He wants to keep his options open for the future. Or maybe he learned his lesson from slagging off Intel and then having egg all over his face when it seemed like he did a u-turn and switched to Intel.
I thought that the most insightful part of the interview was when the interviewer asked Steve about Apple making a phone. It looked like it took him by surprise.
Maybe what took him by surprise what that she owned an iPod Shuffle, and wasn’t afraid to admit it. You don’t see many of those in the wild these days… 😉
The iPhone rumor has been going on and on.
If Apple wanted to produce a iPhone they wouldn’t have made the deal with Motorola.
The market for cell phones is completely saturated. Deals and downright used car salesman tactics are used to hustle people into getting a cell phone. The carrier’s like Cingular are the real money makers, they got stores everywhere. Jusk asking about a phone and the next day a bill arrives regardless hoping you just pay it.
I have a feeling it’s a market Apple doesn’t want to participate in.
What Apple should look at, (and recent patents have been issued) is a device that can access and download iTunes music separate of a computer with optional devices to burn cd’s, boom-boxes etc.
This way the dumb blonde can enjoy music too, instead of just the geeks.
I have a feeling it’s a market Apple doesn’t want to participate in.
It’s a shame too because I have a feeling Apple could make a damn good smartphone. I’ve had a Treo 650 for about a year now and the UI reminds me quite a bit of the pre-OS 8 MacOS. It seems like Apple already has most of the pieces – their past PDA experience with the Newton and their current handheld experiences with the iPod line.
And with Palm moving towards Windows mobile for their smartphones, they could probably pick up a lot of disgruntled former Treo owners. I’ve read that Palm employs (or employed) a “tap counter” to make sure that no common task required no more than 2-3 taps of the stylus. It seems that Palm is giving up that fanatical attention to usability detail by moving to Windows mobile, in favour of raw functionality. And it also seems that fanatical attention to detail is what Apple does best (the application of thermal compound notwithstanding).
Well, I can dream…
That’s a laugh… On EVERY benchmark I see for desktops (Linux and Windows) I see AMD killing Intel. People need to look past the damn money and gifts and go for what counts… Performance… Hell, Dell is now
What gives???
Well, the new Intel processors are probably going to smoke the current AMD processors. AMD still has the superior bus tech (which apple dumped..I think they should have used AMD to keep HyperTransport).
Maybe Steve’s comment means that the XServe will be AMD based? Now that would be pretty sweet.
-pojo
I chuckled when Jobs said that AMD is better on high-end market. Now I’m waiting for AMD based PowerMac G5 and Xserve replacements since it’s the best for the consumer based on what he said
Who’s Steve Jobs? Is he the guy that sells a unix OS that has about 5% or less of the PC market?
Who’s Steve Jobs? Is he the guy that sells a unix OS that has about 5% or less of the PC market?
Yup, that is the guy.
Yeah, that’s him. It’s also largely because of him that we are able to use GUI based computers today. Xerox invented many things, but Steve catalyzed in bringing it to the regular user. He was neither the inventor, nor the engineer, but one of the main people to push computing in that direction, and everyone else tagged along.
I wonder how things would have been today, had Apple kept going with Apple II style computers with BASIC. Maybe GUIs would still be restricted to expensive workstations. Would someone else have picked it up? Who knows.
Anyway, a bit off topic. 🙂
I wonder how things would have been today, had Apple kept going with Apple II style computers with BASIC. Maybe GUIs would still be restricted to expensive workstations. Would someone else have picked it up?
Other companies, most notably Atari and Comodore did pick up the ball and run with it.
GUIs had been around since Sutherland’s experiments in the 60s. It was merely a matter of enough time passing for the hardware to get cheap enough before they ended up on someone’s PC.
If Apple hadn’t done an emasculated version of the Xerox GUI, maybe things would have gotten better sooner than they did?
Other companies, most notably Atari and Comodore did pick up the ball and run with it.
They did, but was it really because they came up with the idea themselves or was it because of the Macintosh or even the Lisa and saw that this was a good idea?
For a long time the Amiga was going to be a game console. It wasn’t until fairly late in development that they decided the the OS for it would be a real desktop OS and that the machine would be a real desktop computer.
Back then most computers still presented a BASIC prompt, when you started them, a trend that the Apple I/II arguably started. This kept the machines only usable to people who had the time to learn them and to people that found computers to be interesting.
GUIs had been around since Sutherland’s experiments in the 60s. It was merely a matter of enough time passing for the hardware to get cheap enough before they ended up on someone’s PC.
That’s right, but a GUI isn’t just a GUI: There were many different incarnations of a GUI with many of the pieces available in different systems, the mouse, vector graphics, menus, icons, desktop metaphor. It’s more than just being able to graphically display a piechart or being able to display a mouse pointer.
The Lisa brought many of these things together into a usable system, the Macintosh refined it for cheaper hardware and was then released under great fanfare to many people’s marvel while some people started arguing against GUIs.
I’m not sure that AmigaOS would have looked anything remotely the same, had the Macintosh or the Lisa not been released. It might have booted into a BASIC prompt or a simplified menu system to start your programs from. The programs themselves might have been as advanced looking as the GUI workstation programs of the 70’s, but the desktop metaphor wouldn’t have been there.
Everyone were in the “we gotta do this too” stage, including Microsoft, the guys who invented X-windows and those that started layering GUIs on top of existing machines, like GeOS for Apple II and Commodore 64 and GEM for the PC.
you are confusing history – fact is: the Amiga along with its OS was developed at the same time Apple developed the Lisa and the Mac. The decision that the Amiga would get a window based GUI and a cmd-line interface was felt long before Commodore wend in. And back in 1984/85 the Amiga OS and its GUI was advanced compared to the Macintosh. Indeed Commodore failed to market the machine as a workhorse instead of let it mutate to a comuter mostly used for games.
Edited 2006-05-21 10:01
Historical timeline:
1978 – Development on Lisa (including OS and GUI) begins
1981 – Development on Macintosh (including OS and GUI as we now know it) begins
1982 – Development on Amiga (game-oriented hardware) begins
1983 – Lisa released (January)
1983 – Development of Amiga OS 1.0 w/GUI begins (of particular note is that it took “seven months of 100-hour weeks to get it finished in time for the launch of the Amiga”)
1984 – Macintosh released (January)
1985 – Amiga 1000 w/OS 1.0 released (September/October)
Edited 2006-05-21 23:16
They did, but was it really because they came up with the idea themselves or was it because of the Macintosh or even the Lisa and saw that this was a good idea?
Neither. Check the literature, especially the ACM’s SIGGRAPH periodicals from the period. A lot of people, at a lot of companies, were striving towards a GUI. If Apple hadn’t done the Lisa/Mac, things would have gone differently, but we’d still have gotten here eventually.
The Lisa brought many of these things together into a usable system,
Having had a Lisa, I will say that people differ as to the usability of that system.
the Macintosh refined it for cheaper hardware and was then released under great fanfare to many people’s marvel while some people started arguing against GUIs.
I’m sure that you can find literature from the 70s arguing against GUIs. The Lisa GUI had a lot to argue against, as did the MAC GUI. Systems that are pure GUI without CLIs shackle expert users and limit their productivity.
The GUI might have been different if the MAC hadn’t come along. It might even have been better earlier. But we’d still have it.
They did, but was it really because they came up with the idea themselves or was it because of the Macintosh or even the Lisa and saw that this was a good idea?
Neither. Check the literature, especially the ACM’s SIGGRAPH periodicals from the period. A lot of people, at a lot of companies, were striving towards a GUI. If Apple hadn’t done the Lisa/Mac, things would have gone differently, but we’d still have gotten here eventually.
So, I assume what you are suggesting here is that Commodore et al, came at their designs completely independently of Apple’s initiatives?
The GUI might have been different if the MAC hadn’t come along. It might even have been better earlier. But we’d still have it.
..and here you are suggesting, that without Apple’s influence, GUIs may actually have been better, better earlier in fact.
So which is it? If other companies did not copy or emulate Apple then why did they not come up with better GUIs? Furthermore, if GUIs may have been better ealier without Apple’s influence, then what was it that Apple did to stifle/suppress the good designs of others?
So which is it? If other companies did not copy or emulate Apple then why did they not come up with better GUIs? Furthermore, if GUIs may have been better ealier without Apple’s influence, then what was it that Apple did to stifle/suppress the good designs of others?
None of the above. You raise false dichotomies. We were speculating on what might have happened if Apple had not done the Mac. The mistakes they made that were copied might not have been made.
The Mac did influence the choices others made.
All I’ve argued is that if there had been no Mac, there’s still be GUIs, evidenced by the number of companies working on them at that time, and that they’d probably have been different, since Apple pushed the ‘desktop metaphor’, and someone else may not have.
Sometimes, priority indicates novelty, as with Einstein and general relativity, but more often than not, it merely indicates winning a race between similar but different approaches, as with Newton and the Calculus.
He’s also the guy behind the whole “PC market” concept in the first place 😉
but without the woz to build the machines in the first place, there would no product to base the concept on…
Mac OS X is not Unix.
Mac OS X is not Unix.
I knew someone would say that.
This is not entirely true that OS X is not Unix. The OS X kernel is based on BSD and BSD is a version of unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley. While OS X is not unix its kernel is unix based. Technically the kernel is the OS – ergot, OS X is a derivative of unix.
But Apple sells PC’s. They may run OS X, but at the end of the day they are nothing more than a combination of hardware components.
Switching to Intel was likely a no-brainer. It’s no different the way other OEM’s support Microsoft. You get a complete package with little effort involved for development or support, because they do it all for you.
Yes, it must have hurt the afficionados to see Intel-based shared graphics (OMG!) on the mini Macs and lower end notebooks. But that’s precisely what Apple was looking for, reduced cost from using commoditized and readily available components.
Hell, BSD built the generic underpinnings of their OS for them, why should it be a surprise that they’d rely on Intel to build the generic underpinnings of their hardware? It’s smart business to outsource your R&D when you can without impacting your finished product.
And let’s face it, that’s what has happened here. Apple has outsourced their R&D. Does it matter? At the end of the day, if you like OS X, then you likely won’t care. That’s the only unique component Apple produces and it’s the cornerstone for their computing strategy.
AMD cannot offer that. Yes, AMD kicks ass in the server room and is a contender in the workstation market. But everyone aside from the fanbois know that Apple hardly exists in the server room, and frankly OS X’s architecture probably wouldn’t realize a performance impact from high-end Intel vs. high-end AMD in the workstation space. And laptops? No question, Intel wins.
I’m not an Mac zealot, and my own personal system purchases would lean towards AMD, but if I was running Apple I’d probably have chosen Intel as well. It simply makes business sense.
Now, the one thing I find interesting is that you don’t see those tacky “Intel Inside” labels plastered over Mac’s the way you do with other OEM machines, and that’s part of the requirement for the marketing funds. So, unless Intel made some concessions it could be that Apple passed on the funding. Dell sells a hell of a lot more Intel product and they have to put those stupid logos on their products and their ads. Then again, Dell finally caved and chose AMD as well, so who knows?
Anyways, let me close off by saying I’m really not overly impressed by Macs, I find them overrated, but I do respect what Jobs and Apple have been able to do from a business point of view. It’s simpy outstanding.
And let’s face it, that’s what has happened here. Apple has outsourced their R&D. Does it matter? At the end of the day, if you like OS X, then you likely won’t care. That’s the only unique component Apple produces and it’s the cornerstone for their computing strategy.
I disagree. Apple have used BSD and Intel and KHTML and other projects so they could focus on R&D. Their R&D brought us stuff like Exposé, Spotlight etc. which sets Mac OS X apart from other OSes.
Just like with the new Macs, Apple let Intel take care of the boring, yet necessary, stuff like CPUs and GPUs and motherboards so Apple could focus on incorporating iSight and Front Row into their new Macs.
So, Apple have outsourced their R&D on the ‘boring’ stuff but their R&D on the ‘important’ stuff seems to be alive and well.
When I worked at Apple and prior to that, at NeXT, I could careless about the media and their “inquiries.” Nothing that Steve says about keeping tight-lipped is foreign to you when you work for a company that is actually worth working for and holding pride in being a part of something worth a crap.
Having left during a group transition with a divorce looming at the time, I can still say that every job since has paled in comparison.
When Steve says, “Sun is no Apple,” he’s not insulting Sun. He’s stating that the feel is different.
I’ve more than once thought about returning and then the crashing reality that is the Bay Area; and in particular, its living standard reminds me why I had to leave that dream in the past.
I modded your comment about Xserve/AMD up because he is eluding to this obvious future marriage.
In the same way SUN, DELL, IBM and others are deploying servers on AMD it is quite sensible that Leopard Server and XSan will run on AMD and Intel.
I can imagine AMD’s laptop CPU in the future will be even better.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/pentiumm-vs-turion64/index.x?p…
Read the entire review if you want.
Of course AMD don’t have an excellent CPU/MOBO combo like Intel.
Edited 2006-05-21 10:57
That store looks AMAZING! regardless of if you like Apple or not. Can’t wait to visit it in person the next time I’m in NY