Was it Palol Rossetti that one said, “People in glass house shouldn’t throw stones?” Push away the Intel this, the Pentium-M that, or perhaps the ability to use the Dual Core Pentium 4, Apple has a much bigger challenge ahead of them. For years, they have been throwing down the MHz myth and now? They are sleeping with the “enemy” according to PowerPC zealots. The MHz Myth was basically Apple’s defense against higher speed Intel processors. They may be fast, but are they efficient? Benchmark after benchmark showed that Apple, under just the right circumstances, would easily destroy the fastest Pentiums of that time. Intel processors under the right circumstances would do the same. What happens now? An uphill battle to try to destroy the MHz myth that Apple and Intel both helped to create. The future of Apple’s hardware design can be dismissed by the myth. After trying to make the x86 platform sound like a dinosaur platform that needs brute force to run applications, Apple needs to kill their old stance on x86 so they don’t sound like a hypocrite. Worse, in the eyes of Apple zealots, Apple already is a hypocrite.
Before releasing the news of a switch to Intel chips, you would think Apple would delete this web page? According to Apple’s benchmarks a Dell Dimension XP Gen4 that has a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 was 98% slower than a Power Mac G5 that has Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC G5 for a design and print benchmark.
“Nearly Two Times Faster Than Pentium 4
To demonstrate the superiority of the Power Mac G5, Apple conducted tests using Adobe Photoshop CS 8.0, the most widely used application among creative professionals. Adobe Photoshop is a particularly effective cross-platform measure of system performance because it has been optimized for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Apple ran the tests using a 600MB Photoshop file and a suite of 45 commonly used Photoshop actions, including file saving, image adjustments, mode changes and filters. Apple measured the time to execute each filter or function and compared the performance of all actions using an indexed score.” – Apple
How about how a video rendering benchmark? 84% faster than the Pentium 4. The tests were run using Adobe After Effects.
“HDV Rendering: 84% Faster Than Pentium 4
One of the final stages of any film or video project is the processor-intensive task of rendering. Apple measured the time to render a two-minute video project with various commonly used effects and filters, including color corrections, transitions, compositing and basic text treatments, on Power Mac G5 and PC systems. To demonstrate video rendering performance, Apple tested Final Cut Pro 5 on the Power Mac G5 and Adobe Premiere Pro on various PC systems using virtually identical projects in DV, SD and HDV formats.
Video editors and producers add innovative motion graphics and effects to film, video, DVD and web projects using tools like Motion and Adobe After Effects. To demonstrate the performance of Power Mac G5 hardware when rendering effects for video, Apple tested After Effects on the Power Mac G5 and an array of PC systems. After Effects has been optimized for both the G5 and PC architectures.” – Apple
Want more benchmarks that dismiss the Intel Pentium 4? How about a 3D rendering test by LightWave 3D or a video effects test done by After Effects that proclaims “Over Two Times Faster Than Pentium 4”, or a Bioinformatics Benchmark System that shows the Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC G5 is 80% faster than a Dual 3.6GHz Xeon?
“Over 80% Faster Than Dual Xeon at Scientific Analysis
To demonstrate the performance advantages of the Power Mac G5 for processor-intensive scientific analysis, Apple used Bioinformatics Benchmark System version 3 (BBSv3). This benchmark is based on current, popular applications and data sets from the bioinformatics community and thus represents the day-to-day workload of a typical research scientist. The current benchmark uses bioinformatics application suites NCBI BLAST and HMMER as the workload. For this benchmark, Apple used FASTA databases dated January 1, 2005; NCBI BLAST version 2.2.10; and HMMER version 2.3.2.” – Apple
The only thing next for Apple to do is do a complete about turn about x86. Here is the catch-22: If they do a pro Intel campaign, they rise being called a hypocrite that pawned “cheap” but “expensive” hardware to the masses. Not only will people feel betrayed by the this form of deceptive advertising, they may just not buy Apple hardware because of it. If they don’t do a major push for an Intel campaign, they will then be labeled sellers of “cheap” but “expensive” hardware that does not have the power to compete with the yesteryears of the old PowerPC platform. However, to zealots alike, Apple wouldn’t be hypocrites. The zealots still wouldn’t buy the Intel hardware though. PowerPC won’t die instantly, in terms of being associated with Apple, thanks to universal binaries and Rosetaa. I personally think that Apple has a huge uphill battle, people in glass houses.
All graphics here are Copyrighted by Apple © and can be found with rest of this information.
Copyright© David Kuhn.
At one time we would hear, “Its the OS, stupid”. Then we heard, “Its the apps, stupid”. Now we hear “Its the integration, stupid.”. The whole, “Its the CPU, stupid” argument was something that become irrelevant years ago. CPU prowess is mainly a branding/marketing thing because all of the CPUs deliver about the same (unless you are in a niche application space, which is a very low volume business anyways).
Unfortunately, Apple was in a bind: they were stuck with a single supplier who was not producing either quantity or variety (where are the G5 portable chips?). Then they found themselves in the unfortunate circumstance that they would have to be explaining why their $4000 “supercomputer” desktop had less horsepower (and arguably the same chips but not as many of them) as the XBOX 360.
If you like the PPC, buy a game machine. That’s what the new mantra is becoming and Apple, being a system provider trying to get into the enterprise space can’t allow themselves to be measured against that stick.
Anyone who says they bought an Apple solely for the PPC is lying through their teeth. 100% gauranteed.
People, where did you see laptops nowadays?
In my (probably outdated) mind, laptop is lightweight thing which you can hold in hours on your laps without danger to burn something important inbetween and without need to have AC-power near you in hours (workday estimatelly).
So, show me such laptop with all your 4 GHz truths and myths.
Please!
In next two years laptop market will also turn in low-margin commodity market with lot of OEMS and weird “european” and “US” companies selling something form China under various names, like it happens, e.g. with bicycles, which is an mass such half-anoymous products assembled from unified parts made by noname subvendors.
As Apple was positioned itself as “exclusive HW manufacturer”, in nearest future, especially with that transition it will get really hard time.
To get those margins they used with in competence with “Wallmart-laptops” for USD 400.
And i don’t see High-clock rate -> Heat pollution ->Short battery life as argument which can help them.
So idea about G$ inability to catch Intel’s clock rate don’t play for me.
And again, in that future low-premium market i see idea to stay as “HW-vendor” very strange. If Apples gem is really OS X – why don’t sell it for “usual” PC-s???
Those pro-Intel guys here, who said that PowerPC don’t matter, OS X does now tend to omit that idea for misterious reason
are they(apple & intel) merging?????? are they planning to merge in the future??? i really wonder if this is the real plan and they want us to be ready. ahhhhhh!
maybe i am going crazy!!! pls, give your honest opinion.
thank you.
-2501
I just think you are all wrong.
Apple had to choose some other processor, since IBM does not desire to sell hardware with small margins.
IBM is good in selling mainframe hardware for million dollars, and adding to that millions in services.
PC market is difficult for them, they failed there many times. IBM has no PCs anymore, they sold to Lenovo.
“Small margins” is not IBM business.
They prefer to sell Power/Risc in their AIX Servers for a lot bigger margin than Apple sells the G5.
No, IBM will not sell the “good” chips to Apple, no business there.
Apple servers = undesired competition in the server market.
Game consoles do not compete in the server market, so you can get the cell for it, this makes busines sense.
So, Steve had to look for some other CPU supplier, or start selling used cars.
Adam, darling; the Mhz myth still exists, hence the reason Intel will be basing its future chips on the Intel P4 Mobile/Centrino; they’ll dual core it, pump it full of cache, throw it on a massive FSB, and concentrate on the performance of the chip, not the clock speed.
Intel would never like to admit this, but their P4 product was technical stuff up, coupled with the grappy branch prediction and other limitations, little wonder it was beaten by Opteron being clocked at a lower speed.
They’re finally realised that having a pipe line that can reach to the moon and back may sound great, and may be able to enable them to scale the clock rate higher, but it doesn’t mean that the the performance will increase at the same rate as the Mhz does. They found this out the hard way, both in the lack luster performance and the heat/power consumption issues which forced them to work on a mobile chip which is nothing more than enhanced PIII with some tweaks around the edges.
My mum always said “People in glass houses… shouldn’t walk around naked”, and this is indeed true for Apple.
No, the correct saying is:
‘Confucious say; man who live in glass better get changed in basement’
“If Apples gem is really OS X – why don’t sell it for “usual” PC-s??? ”
Oh that’s an easy one. Why sell it for the “usual” PC when you can con people into giving you more money for hardware. Their gem trully is OS X, and they are using it to make people more for their slower hardware.
My point in this editiorial was to point out the MHz myth that Apple needs to address, NOT anything to do with future chips. Granted, my personal opinion is that they are going to do a Pentium-M *based* on EM64T. Everyone that saw the WWDC keynote watched the performance per watt (was that it), either way something in the terms of performance per power. A customized Penitum-M with EM64T really does fit the bill on that.
The MHz myth factor is a huge consideration. Look at the benchmarks listed in the editorial. Basically, they are starting that Intel can’t make chips that can COMPARE to the G5; Intel Pentium 4 or Xeon. What does that mean? That means Steve is now going to PAWN off hardware from Intel, that Apple for the past few years has been doing nothing BUT discrediting it. At this point there is TWO options:
1)We made the benchmarks and they stand. Intel based CPUs we get from now on will be of LOW QUALITY still compared to the G5 and will not equal out performance. Yes, it is true. Your Intel based G6 will not be as good as the G5.
2)We made up the benchmarks. Intel has always made good hardware and we SOLD hardware based off inacurate benchmarks. Our PR rocks!
I suppose there could be two more options. Down playing everything or not even responding to the questions. If I was considering buying an Apple, I’d have to seriously think about all of this in depth.
My point was that in past Apple didn’t compete with wall-mart-comps. In future it woul’d. And thus they cannot sell hardware with SUCH hight premium. And hardly will exceed
their 2 percent marketshare.
So – lower, maybe far lower margins than now, and still little marketshare. And 10 000 employees. Huh. And shareholders/investors.
And “real gem” in hand, which can be sold, in theory, for remaining 98% PC users.
Looks like having something for nothing.
Only reason why they don’t and wouldn’t do it – Microsoft.
To avoid suicide assisted from Redmond.
And that’s sad
This isn’t about the current PowerPC vs. Intel. In that case, much of what Apple has been saying is valid. PowerPC does beat current Intel processors at various things. This is about future roadmaps, and growth down the road. Perhaps Apple looked out 5 years, and saw that Intel had a better direction and more investment in the kind of products they wanted to produce than IBM. Perhaps IBM wasn’t willing to make a G5 that would work in a powerbook, ever. Maybe, although the G5 is fast at things now, it won’t compare in the future. Steve announced this now, for the developers, so they can test their Apps on “a” intel chip. Thats no indication that the G5s are any slower than they were last week, or that the current Intel chips are what they made their decision on or even anticipate shipping.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152340&cid=12784181
Bottom line is that Id did quite a bit of optimizations for the Mac and the performance was never there.
You still fail to address the criticisms people have of your opinion piece; the fact is, Intels processors were not as good as G5, however, looking at the future road map, which is what the *WHOLE* WWDC conference is all about, Intel will be *SIGNIFICANTLY* changing their P4/EMT64 direction.
The third option for Apple is simply this;
3) Intel processor sucked; Intel finally got their shit together, they showed us where they’re going in the future, compared it to the undelivered road map that IBM kept hyping to us, and we found a compelling case to shift.
There was a megahertz myth; Intel has acknowledges that megahertz isn’t everything, and thus, adjusting their product line up to reflect that change direction.
” the fact is, Intels processors were not as good as G5, however, looking at the future road map, which is what the *WHOLE* WWDC conference is all about, Intel will be *SIGNIFICANTLY* changing their P4/EMT64 direction.” – Kaiwai
May be true, personally I’m a big fan of software. However, they is a huge problem with having bad software and good hardware and vise versa. I certainly hope that the future road for Intel in terms of Apple would be more Apple like. For the mean time, however, general non tech people will still wonder why Apple is going to a company that benchmarks very badly compared to PowerPC. “Apple going to slow, ineffecient Intel chips? What!?!?” seens to be the general opinion I’ve read everything. Since, Apple hasen’t released much about the chip it is nothing but pure speculation at this time if it will infact be based off the Penitum 4. My point is that after years of downgrading Intel’s best, they have to pull out a great PR stunt regarding using Intel. Regardless of Intel someday finally pulling CPU’s the spec for Apple, the general uninformed public will still regard Intel on Apple as blasphemy. Bottom line: Apple needs to get into gear and start defending Intel or People will just think Apple just jumped to a cheap, less effiecent CPU company that is known as Intel. Perhaps some specs on future chips would help?
The only point of the article seemed to be that you feel that Apple should have to eat crow for switching to Intel. That is their ‘major problem’.
Where was this article when the Pentium-M was released, and Intel had a ‘major problem’ in releasing a new chip with a lower clock speed than their previous processors? You act like tech is locked in stone, and what was once true will always be true.
The one disappointment about the PowerPC line was that it never left Intel behind. Whenever some new advance came that gave PowerPC an advantage, Intel quickly responded. When the RISC vs. CISC comparison first started, Intel responded to PowerPC’s greater instruction set efficiency by simply cranking up the clock speed to double that available in the PowerPC line. When the power consumption advantage for PowerPC became a large enough issue, Intel responded with the Pentium-M.
Apple was never in control of PowerPC development, so had to just sit there and accept the seeming lackluster efforts of Motorola and IBM.
I think the PowerPC line still shows a lot of promise, and has momentum with the gaming consoles promising > 3GHz before the end of the year, and of course the interesting Cell processor. But I do believe Apple is much more in the know about this than you or I are, and has probably wisely decided that come next year Intel is still going to be competive or better what IBM will have available. Not to mention the fact that IBM hasn’t even seemed to deliver really optimized compilers for the G5 yet, whereas Apple is going to be able to take advantage of the excellent Intel software right away.
So where is the ‘major problem’? The truth is that processor architecture won’t be a problem at all because it will no longer be a point of differentiation. Even if PowerPC development really took off and future processors left x86 behind, no PC manufacturer would have an advantage over Apple. CPU has now standardized, like IO ports, storage, and bus architecture. Advantage no one.
I wouldn’t consider any benchmarks Apple has provided today as being lies. The interesting thing will be to compare Intel powered machines available next year compared to the machines of today. A G4 powered mini compared to a Pentium-M mini of next year. A dual 2.5 GHz G5 compared to some type of dual core Intel processor next year.
Year over year we always expect improvement; but will there be massive speed increases or merely incremental improvement? Will power consumption go up dramatically, stay the same, or decrease? Those are the types of comparisons that will show if Apple chose wisely; but as I said, even if it turns out the PowerPC path was competitive or better than what x86 could deliver, Apple will be no worse off than other PC manufacturers.
I am not the biggest fan of the x86 architecture, but if I have to use it, I want the Apple interface. I use a pentium-m laptop at work and Intel has made some nice advances in the last few years. The idea of dual booting Mac OS and Windows without Virtual PC seems like an odd thought to me, but it may come true soon enough.
the real problem for Apple will be ‘why does a mac with the same specs cost 30% more than a Dell?’
Apple has to suppost an entire OS on sales of 2-3 million machines a year. Probably $100 per unit. Macs can never be price competitive.
Apple has to suppost an entire OS on sales of 2-3 million machines a year. Probably $100 per unit. Macs can never be price competitive.
Quite honestly, they don’t have to be. They only have to appeal to those people willing to spend money.
Test results are just true.
P4s can be faster in raw speed but their problem with tested applications is bandwidth – ever wondered why intels have such a huge need for cache and good branch predictors?
Why trading 2CPUs with 1.25 Ghz each against 2 (faster) CPUs with 400MHz to share? It makes no sense by now imho.
Let’s see what Apple HW dept will come up with.
Anyway, I was considering a switch to Mac (great architecture, great OS – and not just for shiny gfx), now i wouldn’t mind that much…
Apple was never in control of PowerPC development, so had to just sit there and accept the seeming lackluster efforts of Motorola and IBM.
This would also irritate me to say the least.How can you make plans and innovate when your “partner” doesn’t cooperate or thinks only in server+Linux+$.
Apple has to suppost an entire OS on sales of 2-3 million machines a year. Probably $100 per unit. Macs can never be price competitive.
Those Dells,HP’s and compaqs have windows preinstalled.I personally think Intel is pretty fet up with MS not challenging the hardware enough with staggering innovation and development.Postpone and decrease included features.
One might argue over the prize,why would one prefer an Alfa 159 over a vauxal nova if both have 4 wheels and a steering wheel.It’s the whole deal,from the moment you see the stylish box,fire up MacOSX, it makes a far better impression and gives you a far better experience.
Agreed a lot depends on how everything will work together when the transition is fact.And of course the road map Intel most likely shared with Steve.At least something happens, coming period will be interesting.
However there’s:http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/09/news_6127219.html
Interesting times indeed.
Software emulation is no good for customers who invested lot of money in PPC software. Apple should offer optional PCI-Express card with PPC processor on it and it’s own RAM to allow customers to run Altivec software on Intel Mac.
Speed would be good even with something like dual core G4 because PPC wouldn’t do anything more than running the applications, all OS tasks – like graphics, IO, networking would be done in parallel by main Intel CPU.
What was Apple suppose to do? I will miss the PowerPC as much as the next Mac fan, but I can understand. IBM either didn’t, or wouldn’t update the 970 fast enough. The PowerMac was stuck at 2.5 Ghz for about a year. The improvements never came.
Apple’s hand was forced. They had to do what they had to do. I’m sure if IBM had updated the 970, we had a low heat version (able to put in a laptop), and possible a multicore version Apple would have kept the PowerPC
I’m still convinced this is bigger than CPU-A vs CPU-B, and development roadmaps.
Something smells, something’s not right about all this, and we’ve all seen Jobs twist the truth before, more than any of us could a rubber band on a pencil!
Conspiracy theories? Well, I dunno. I was reading one of the more “creative” articles yesterday which talked about a possible Intel/Apple merger, and another related to DRM and aggressive rights protection. Both of these seemingly extreme analysis got me thinking, and I agreed with their sentiment that Apple’s timing really sucks.
For instance, if apps are so easy to port (their example was “in hours”), then why do devs need a year? Oh wait, that’s because we’re waiting for the roadmap, right? Then why announce this now? WHY would you announce something like this which HAS to damage your sales figures, when you could have waited? Also, why announce it publically, not under the more usual wraps of Non Disclosure Agreements?
Hmmm….
Even folks who are non-technical are worried about buying Apple right now, three people in the last week have mentioned waiting another year before upgrading to me personally, and I’ve read many more on OSNews etc. Nobody wants to buy something which has no “life span”, even if logically the old machines will be supported for another two-three years, people don’t see it like that.
Is it that Apple currently has no stock of machines? They needed to slow down buying? What’s going on?
So…sooooo odd.
…”Apple’s hand was forced” …well, the hand is quicker than the eye!
😉
Papa, you really need to lay off the caffeine.
Why a year? Because it is WWDC. Why would you leave the developers waiting a year for the news when you are going to start transitioning in the next 6-8 months? Remember the first machines will be released BEFORE next year’s WWDC.
Also, remember what happened with the PPC transition. There were machines being sold to the public with absolutley NO software available because developers had not gotten test machines.
This will also give those devs on Codewarrior time to move to XCode.
There are just as many people who are still going to buy new Macs as there are people who say they will wait. In fact I would venture a guess that most of the computer buying public has no clue what this really means to them,, nor do they care. OSNews readers accepted… we are to geeky for our own good.
As much as I am loathe to admit it this move was necessary. IBM has basically told Apple, “No more development for you, you are to small for us.”
I am really confussed are these guys saying it is the OS and the chip doesn’t matter a new bred of Apple users or did the faithfull turn over that quickly. The faithfull that stuck with Apple didn’t know what chip they were using? is that a joke.
Intel is ignored as much as possible because of the DRMs, the call home, the chip ID that only Intel was suppose to have known, the new log on from anywhere.
But then again if Apple gets the faithful to argue over all these stupid things… they can slip the DRMs in that the Movie Studios want, and what the HELL, no one will even notice.
It is the DRMs and the ability to make down loading movie rentals that Apple wants, the new Ipod.
Apple turn over for the Movie Studios…end of story.
I actually agree with you, but for the timing and the lack of Apple’s usual keep-it-secret mentality. It strikes me as odd, that’s all. They could have announced it quietly.
The “theories” aren’t mine, just journalists trying to predict the future – no doubt so they can say “I told you so” and really irritate us all, again
Caffeine? Never touch the stuff, can’t stand coffee or Red Bull
Now, the really scary part is that there is quite a lot of awareness out there in “userland” and people are talking about this, I’ve heard various things from “Apple are now building PCs” to “Apple are leaving PC hardware” from people who don’t even usually talk about these things!
Suddenly everyones a geek! …I’m just waiting for my window cleaner to stop me in the street and ask me about the comparitive merits of RISC processors
I was just wondering, I like my AMD a lot, & they have a 64bit chip.
It’s “Pentium M” NOT “P4 M”.
OS X does NOT have a *BSD kernel. It’s Mach 3.0 based with a bsd subsystem.. read up
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_xnu.html
“The only point of the article seemed to be that you feel that Apple should have to eat crow for switching to Intel. That is their ‘major problem’. ”
I suppose when I write this or the responces, I didn’t clearly write out everything. Personally that is the major problem. General non tech savy public will see this as a “What the F#@$!?”. I respect what the G5 can do, not to mention I respect what Intel can do. However, Apple still needs to clarify their stance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/
The switch was made because IBM can’t deliver cpu’s. After being promised a 3ghz chip 18 months ago, no appreciable gains for the PB line ( and none in the foreseeable future ) what choice did Apple have. Everybody in the Apple world wanted a future with the G5 and beyond but it ain’t there.
“The switch was made because IBM can’t deliver cpu’s. After being promised a 3ghz chip 18 months ago, no appreciable gains for the PB line ( and none in the foreseeable future ) what choice did Apple have. Everybody in the Apple world wanted a future with the G5 and beyond but it ain’t there.”
Usually, I would disregard statements like this. However, it is, actually, you that can’t read. If you READ the editorial, you would CLEARLY see it really isn’t about what you wrote about at all. I’m not debating Apple’s current or future hardware whatsoever about specs, production or otherwise. It is about how Apple NEEDs to do some fancy PR to make the switch to Intel work, considering Apple has had benchmarks for years that discredit Intel. Speaking of which, Apple could make a G5 notebook. It would be big, bulky, and the opposite of Apple’s design.
“The average consumer will not care nor notice, hopefully Apple can maybe drop the prices a little bit if they go with mainstream CPUs.”
WTF is a mainstream CPU?
Anyway, Apple customers don’t mind paying for a quality computing experience. There is no other company today that can compare. I’m still surprised at all the numbnuts here that can’t get this notion through their thick little skulls.
“Uh, duh, now maybe they’ll drop their prices.” Why the f**k should they? They’ve got tightest OS/hardware integration available and an awesome set of bundled apps. The switch is going to do wonders for the company.
“WTF is a mainstream CPU? ”
One used by the mainstream, of course. The G5 is not this.
“There is no other company today that can compare. I’m still surprised at all the numbnuts here that can’t get this notion through their thick little skulls.”
Probably because you’re presenting your personal opinion as a fact.
“The switch is going to do wonders for the company.”
It’ll certainly make it harder for the company to mislead the customer on the performance of their products….
Google “Conroe”, “Westbrook”, and “Merom”. These chips are supposed to begin showing up next year, with the heavy hitters showing up in 2007. Which matches Apple’s Intel Timeline. This is when I’ll buy my next Mac.
Have a good one…zen
DP-867 / OS X 10.3.9
1.75 GB RAM
360 GB HDD
RADEON 9800 PRO
Intel IS VHS….
This whole discussion is a debate about how many angels fit on the head of a needle.
The point is this: Apple wants to sell Powerbooks [yes, that name again]. To do that it needs a top notch processor. IBM can’t/doesn’t want to make/sell them. There are no two ways to slice it. Either Apple sees its business going down the drain because they just can’t deliver which is simply going to kill their business. Their only alternative is to obtain a part that will do the business. If that part happens to be an Intel processor, so be it.
Am I happy with that? Not particularly. Would I have preferred a G6 at 4 Gigs? Hell yes! Do I worry about the MHz myth though? Not one iota.
Apple has the choice of pumping life blood into its business or to shut it down completely.
This is not a decision you make one morning after a dodgy vindaloo. Count on it that a lot of hard, fast talking with a lot of people over many moons looking at EVERY alternative went into this. As said before: Apple must have been in a bind to be forced to this move or they wouldn’t have done it at all.
The PR hit over whether the MHz myth is true or not and how the public perceives that is the lesser evil as compared to not having the parts that will drive the sales to make the business survive. It’s a no-brainer.
How that is sold to the public I don’t know but the boys and girls of the marketing department aren’t shy of a few inventive strokes, they’ll come up with something. Count on it.
If my user experience does not change because of the processor make-over and I get to buy a cheaper new machine that performs well [and has a better graphics card!], I will swallow my pride and take the plunge.
The real culprit IMNSHO is IBM for failing to make a profitable business. They’ve sold their own PC business because they couldn’t make it profitable. Had they succeeded in producing a newer chip with better specs, people would have bought it. I would have bought it.
But if they’re not making what Apple needs, short of building their own processors, Apple needs to shop elsewhere. You can bitch and whine about that, but it is what it is.
No use crying over spilt milk, boys and girls. The ship has sailed. You might as well enjoy the voyage.
Owen Linkmayer’s Apple 2.0 Confidential details project Star Trek where Apple sent employees to a site near one of Intel’s plants to put the Mac OS onto Intel chips. This project was killed when a new CEO was put in charge of Apple.
These articles are childish. There is no understanding about business in them. They seem to think that most people harbor grudges when they buy computers.
This may be true for a small minority, but most people are smarter than that.
All of the explanations have already been given for the switch. If they aren’t understood, it’s too bad.
This is small mindedness.