If you’ve been following the Apple-to-Intel transition, you’re going to want to read this whole article. Why? Because I’m going to do something that I almost never do: spill insider information from unnamed sources that I can confirm are in a position to know the score.
We smelled it from day one.
The Mac Faithful (quote from the article) refuse to accept that fact, of course, but ignorance doesnt change reality though…
iPod, now rumors of an Apple Phone…
i think that they’re going to emphasize their digital lifestyles (“cashcows”) more… and just sell the mac computer as a backbone so they can all work together (digital hub).
but i think that they will break with past tradition and put theyre marketing emphasis on the devices first and foremost rather than mac computers.
Well written article and hannibal goes beyond the vaunted Steve Jobs RDF. One thing that I don’t quite get is the claim that Apple acts as a prima donna. If the quotes in the article are true, that Apple has been pretty arrogant in it’s dealings with IBM, and Motorola, how is teh switch to Intel going to help them?
Apple is going to be a marginal customer of Intel. Dell alone ships way more chips than Apple ever will, and that’s not taking into account the rest of the PC industry. Now if Jobs continues his act, demanding preferential treatment everywhere he goes, the Mac might see another ‘switch’ soon.
Apple is going to be a marginal customer of Intel. Dell alone ships way more chips than Apple ever will, and that’s not taking into account the rest of the PC industry.
Yeah, but Apple is a notable customer of Intel. Imagine someone-not-so-smart thinking like this: “Hm, Apple dumped IBM for Intel. Therefore, Intel must be better.” That might make a difference.
The general consensus is that Intel sees Apple as a prestige customer. Intel aligned themselves pretty closely with Windows PC vendors (even forcing them to put that stupid jingle in every add), and they’re worried about the negative associations from that alignment, given the focus on spyware and viruses lately.
By supplying Apple, Intel can say “look, it’s not our fault, see how well Apple are doing!”. In fact, in the run-up to the announcement the Intel CEO, when asked what he would recommend to mom & pop customers sick of spyware and the like, suggested that they by a Mac.
Taking the more long-term view, there has been a continuous level of dissatisfaction with Microsoft Windows, which started with the Netscape anti-trust suits. There is a growing threat, as the Internet erodes standard electronic boundaries (like file-formats), that users could switch en masse. Intel wants to make sure that whatever platform users ultimately chose (Apple/MacOS, PC/Linux, PC/Windows), they’ll still be using Intel chips.
Please, by the time the transition is complete, Apple will require 6.5million Xscale processors and 1.2million Pentium processors per quarter – thats hardly something to be sneezed at.
They will be requesting 7.7million processors per quarter; that is *FAR* higher than Dell is shipping right now.
A relative of mine is working at IBM and was involved with the G4, G5 and future designs. He said to me in an e-mail that Apple was not willing to invest in the powerpc architecture and that’s why they switched to Intel. Very logical of course because Intel supplies so much that they will never ask Apple to invest, just buy our stock, that’s enough. IBM however wanted Apple to invest, if they wanted the G5 to be faster, or more mobile. But Apple refused and that’s why they did not hit 3 Ghz, that’s why there was not a mobile G5 (what would be in it for IBM anyway if only Apple buys the parts? too much investment cost!)
really easy answer, and a logical and good decision to switch to Intel, i refuse to pay extra so that the powerpc desings for the mac are being further developed. It’s like paying extra tax to keep it alive. Id rather just use the pentiums, since everyone uses them they are pretty cheap. And they arent that bad really.
True, I’m sure IBM said to Steve, ‘If you want zyx, this is the price you have to pay <cost>, Steve probably walked away and asked himself these questions; 1) are we a CPU designing company? no 2) Is it the best use of share holders funds, to support an architecture, to subsidise an architecture that should be able to stand on its own two feet – why should we pay the costs, we’re not the CPU company, IBM is – they should pay!”.
Makes perfect sense; coupled with the fact that IBM is unwilling to drive up volume in the PowerPC production, in relation to allowing smaller companies to develope and sell products based on the PowerPC 970 – IBM is going to suffer from the same fait that Itanium is facing; an expensive architecture, no third party hardware or software support, and an elitist complex of not allowing anyone else to purchase their CPUs in low volume (less than 10,000 units per month).
– “unnamed sources” that are never cited in the article
– “Have been told” that the source is reliable (???)
– “worked with Apple”, not “worked at Apple” – how reliable can this be? Could possibly mean, the source sold Apple as a retailer.
That´s not good journalism, that´s a fake as i see it.
Arstechnica doesn’t post fakes.
Maybe not a fake, but I posted the shortcomings of the article and if you look at this it is clearly not a good article regarding journalistic techniques. If you rely on such vague sources and statements as I pointed out it is possible to produce a fake without knowing it.
Hm, the author isn’t relying on vague sources, he is relying on sources he doesn’t and probably can’t name.
This is quite common in journalism and in and off itself doesn’t invalidate the article.
This is quite common in journalism and in and off itself doesn’t invalidate the article.
Exactly. It then depends on the track record of the site or newspaper it’s posted in if it’s worth believing the journalist’s words.
I don´t want to say that the article isn´t valid. But apart from the ciatation of the Groklaw-Poster and an a five year old article there is no statement from another source. Nothing in this text is marked as information of this mysterious source. Maybe the source doesn´t want to be named, but one can mark a statement without a name. If you read this article it seems that the source is introduced in the foreword, but never says anything.
And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Antarctica to sell you.
The New York Times doesn’t post fakes… er… uh… I mean, well mostly. It can happen to any news organization – we shouldn’t get to be so trusting of their diligence that we stop to question the authenticity of the information they present.
It’s no big surprise that IBM got fed up with Apple. The “holier-than-thou” attitude about Apple’s (non-existant) “specialness” starts right at the top, and rains down from there.
“When Apple compiles OS X on the 970, they use -Os. That’s right: they optimize for size, not for performance. So even though Apple talked a lot of smack about having a first-class 64-bit RISC workstation chip under the hood of their towers, in the end they were more concerned about OS X’s bulging memory”
or just maby they dont want their apps to have a realy long startime from disk. start times does decrease relly well with -Os ant the binaries wont be that much slower
Well, I talked to an Apple developer on webkit, even he said that the performance gain one gets through nutty optimisations like -03 aren’t that great; better performance, without odd behaviour, can be done by good old fashioned cleaning up of code, and IIRC, the -mtune they use is for G4, even with -mtune G5, the performance boost can’t even be noticed – I tried it via recompiling the webkit, there was no performance boost – anything improvement I did see was more to do with the optimism of being able to compile something from scratch rather than anything substantially trackable.
Being a Gentoo Linux user, the difference between -03 and -0s depends on what is being compiled and where the performance bottleneck is. I doubt you will see the much of an improvement compiling the webkit, but you might see a 10% improvement in glibc, gcc, or X. Also if your bottleneck is not your processor and is your HD or bus than -0s can be faster than -03.
On my moms Mac, I noticed that I hardly ever max out the processor and the performance boost of adding additional memmory is uncanny.
It’s hard to say, with little to no backing of reliable sources, whether any of this is true.
I can’t really see Steve being this arrogant and not realising the reality of his market position. It would indicate a serious lack of strategic forethought. Apple’s own work on OS X, making it run on Intel from edition one, bespeaks a company that looks towards the future and deals with realities. I have no idea of how the really high-level talks are conducted, but I’m sure IBM would mention production costs versus volumes at some stage in the game. 30 Years ago I see Steve telling someone to ‘just cater to my needs’, but one would hope that he has grown a little and generated some insight in how the game is played.
The article seems to indicate IBM has acted honorably all the way. That’s just asking too much of my gullibility. IBM is not the corporate equivalent of Santa Clause. They may very well have made demands that Apple could not accept, and make those demands in the full knowledge that Apple could/would not accept them.
Because that’s also a strategy: to get rid of a pesky customer by making offers you know they won’t accept.
If the platform survives [and I am sceptical] I don’t really care whether it runs on Intel, IBM, AMD or a modified horseshoe. I want to keep using Mac OS. Anything that’s not Windows and that isn’t so complex that I can only make it work by swinging a dead chicken over my head.
Seems that many will not believe anything in the direction that the Ars article presents. I believe that this is a *plausible* explanation
Apple is probably not big enough for IBM to devote all their resources into the needs of Apple, because of a lack of commitment to *buy* their chips (as also stated in the article) for an extended period of time, which is whhy we always see a shortage of supply when Apple introduces new Mac products.
Seeing as the iPod and is driving sales and that the market for iPods/media hubs/devices will very likely continue to increase, Apple needs to have the best possible platform and best possible prices/roadmap for *that* future. This is what Intel can give them with the XScale processer-family. Moving Macs to the Intel platform will further give Apple better conditions for their iPod/media devices line of products better conditions. That coupled with a relatively easy switch for both the operating system and the majority of the (update-to-date) programs for the OS X, has probably made the decision wise.
Of course, this is all speculation, but as I stated in the beginning, the Ars article presents a plausible explanation.
More speculation (read: dreaming) of course makes me see a brighter future. If the iPod (and whatever Apple has in store for new products and services) DRIVES revenue and sales, we might see WAY more competitive priced Macs in the (hastily approaching) future
Well, time goes by and IBM has other customers who actually pay up front for custom designs and who don’t insist on having IBM tailor their product roadmap around a few million units a year. Apple again demands that IBM dedicate their CPU design teams to making an Apple special that will never generate much revenue. If IBM won’t play, Apple will go to Intel.
IBM does a Rhett Butler, and the rest is history. Note that you aren’t hearing one way or the other from IBM on this story.
“IBM does a Rhett Butler…” Mod author up +5 funny.
Apple is switching from a predominantly computer company to a balanced computer – consumer electronics company – consumer electronics that work both with their computers and other’s computers but complement their computers: see iPod and rumored iPod Video, iPhone, etc
This coincides with the switch to intel because PDAs, smartphones, their iPods are all strongARM which intel makes, and macs will have intel processors = volume discounts from intel
Plausible theory
My Dad used to say that all you needed to do to sell an old used car was give it a good wash and a nice coat of paint.
Even though Steve Jobs haven’t stated in public that Apple’s future renevue will have a large focus on mobile devices, I think the average mac user will know this anyway. It isn’t a well hidden secret that our computers are getting smaller, and our regular phones are more and more looking like your generic pda from a couple of years back.
We’re all thinking an iPhone right about now – an iPod with a phone attached and a bit more sophisticated Address book and Calendar. The ultimate PDA with important *buzz* lifestyle functionality. Can’t wait.
We know Steve Jobs have been infantile, hippie, selfish, irrational, arrogant and a drug-user. We know IBM has had a professional environment based on the most buttoned-down of graduates, engineers. Just read the biographies and histories of the people involved. And Jobs can certainly know his market position and still be an a–hole to make as much money as possible.
No, IBM is not Santa Claus and that isn’t what the article said. IBM wins, because they kept the PowerPC architecture going despite Apple’s market losses jUUuust long enough to make a Cell chip and monopolize the real growth market here: chips for consoles. They weren’t Santa Claus, they just kept a low-margin business going for their own long-term reasons. Actually, I’m not sure they were that smart, but they are professional (on average, over time, IBM is more professional than Steve Jobs at his most business-like).
btw, I love the rant at the end of this article. So true.
Your dad was right. Some polishing compound and wax, clean the interior, and getting Kelly Blue Book values is trivial. I had an old crappy Ford Topaz that we inherited (god those cars suck, worst cars since early 80s Chevys), and got a good trade-in, cause the car _looked_ like a good one to some idiot who quickly bought it (saw it on their used lot only a week or two).
However, I sincerely hope Macs don’t have distributors that are obviously poorly oiled (bad design), have torsional dampers that go bad early (bad design), have flaky ignitions (bad design), etc. I’d hope they have a little bit behind the spit and polish that is worth it.
“I can’t really see Steve being this arrogant…”
Then you know nothing about the man.
Does IBM want the desktop market, a multi-billion dollar market?
Apple puts a LOT of money into the development of the OS.
Apple should also bear ALL the cost of the Desktop PowerPC development? Maybe IBM didn’t understand their position in the relationship.
IBM just sold it’s desktop PC division. They’re not exactly breaking down the doors to get at the desktop market.
And the amount of money Apple puts into OS X is meaningless to IBM. As it said in the article, Apple asking IBM to spend billions on what is basically a custom CPU design. Any other company in the world would expect to have to pay for the development of their custom CPU. Apple didn’t want to so IBM didn’t work as hard as Apple wanted them to. It sounds like Apple didn’t understand it’s role in the relationship.
As a long standing total Mac addict I think the article makes a lot of sense and actually helps me feel somewhat better about the transition. If Apple eventually does evolve to the point that it’s not worth it for them to sell Apple branded PCs because they are making so much from their other electronics devices then the switch means that Mac OS will already be established on Intel iron. Apple can then leave the hardware side to those who do it best for less (aka Dell) and then hopefully Apple will still have enough interest in Mac OS X to continue developing and selling it as just another OS choice for your hardware of choice.
-MacMike
It’s all speculation and a complete waste of time.
Interesting take.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155465&cid=13033575
I think Welch’s philosophy has merit here.
to paraphrase: “If you can’t be number 1 or 2 in the market, then get out.”
IBM didn’t want to be number 1 in this market.
You can blame Apple all you want but if IBM build competitive chips on time, this wouldn’t have occurred.
IBM chose to drag it’s feet and attempt to re-negotiate / extort more money out of the relationship caused the problem.
On the other hand, Apple has the money and they should have spent more on chip R&D, but to expect Apple to fund the whole thing is rediculous.
The Market Potential should have been the first thing on IBM’s mind. What is the PC business 100’s of Billions of dollars in yearly sales?
Apple is finally re-positioning themselves for an agile attack-from-the-flank on Microsoft. Especially if Jobs opens up OS X to other hardware platforms. Macs are finally taken seriously again, and OS X is just better technology than Windows. Change the pricing structure, compete on quality/accessibility, offer an answer to PocketPC, and toss in a Media Center-style wrapper to Darwin, and you have better answers to every one of Microsoft’s main thrusts. Well, except the XBox, but that comes next.
The way I see it, in this race, Apple took a side path until the competition forgot they were even there. Barrelling on with this momentum, it’s time for them to swing back into the race and pull ahead. It wouldn’t be the first time a Goliath was blind-sided.
Holy crap, there are a lot of metaphors in this post. I should quit while I’m ahead.
Answer to PocketPC – this was answered even before the PocketPC – it’s called the newton :p – it did not fly. Apple has said that they won’t go into the PDA business
Answer to the Xbox – again this was answered a decade before the xbox – it’s called the pinpin – ran on System 7.5 – it was a flop
Media Center mac – well this does have chances – the software already exists. There is a DVD player, a picture viewer/slideshow (iPhoto), CD/MP3/AAC playe (iTunes) and quicktime can handle quite a lot of different video types. All they need is to purchase, or develop, a TV-guide like application for DVR
Tablet Mac – Again they already have all the technology already – it’s just a matter of time
Portable Media Center – this is a flop – but I’ll bite – again with new strong arms – video iPods could happen
Smartphones to replace PDAs – Newton won’t be revived, but hey – OS X lite sounds good
You can blame Apple all you want but if IBM build competitive chips on time, this wouldn’t have occurred.
Yea right … just like it was Motorola’s fault before it’s now IBM’s … next it will be Intel – and the beat goes on.
Apple is pretentious & overpriced – and it’s always somebody else’s fault.
Or more likely the Apple faithful can’t really afford to have their foundations shaken by an article like this so it’s easier to ridicule the article.