Cringely - as usual - has an interesting take on Mactel move

Post #210,670 by tuberculosis 6/9/05 3:58:00 PM 8/21/07 6:27:10 AM Reply	Cringely - as usual - has an interesting take on Mactel move [link\|http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html\|http://www.pbs.org/c...lpit20050609.html] The crowd this week in San Francisco at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference seemed mildly excited by the prospect of its favorite computer company turning to Intel processors. The CEO of Adobe asked why it had taken Apple so long to make the switch? Analysts on Wall Street were generally positive, with a couple exceptions. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE!? Are these people drunk on Flav-r-Ade? Yes. It is the legendary Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work. And this time, what's behind the announcement is so baffling and staggering that it isn't surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now. Apple and Intel are merging. ----- I don't see Apple being bought - I do see them working closely with Intel to ruin billg's next decade. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 06:27:10 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #210,692 by Another Scott 6/9/05 5:52:39 PM Reply	Interesting. But Cringely spins it as an offensive move against MS. If it comes to pass, it might instead, be a defensive one. MS is trying very hard to gain control over the hardware specifications for the PC. It's had defacto control for a while, but it wants to be able to dictate what a PC is. So Intel and AMD would basically become "semiconductor foundries" for MS. They would be at MS's mercy, just as many manufacturers are at Wal-Mart's mercy. Intel certainly doesn't want to go there, and AMD probably doesn't either. By being cozy with Apple (and Linux), Intel has a way out if MS decides to turn the screws too tightly. I think Cringely pushes this too far though. If Intel buys Apple in the next year or two and makes MacOS available to clones, then it's not hard to imagine MS deciding that MacOffice isn't something that they are interested in. Without MacOffice, the Mac is much less complelling for many businesses. "But they can just run WinOffice." Sure, but then why not just stick with a WinPC? Apple has to tread lightly there. He dismisses the technology issues, saying Apple could wait and run MacOS X on a Cell. Apparently Apple decided (for some not terribly clear reason) that it needed faster, lower-power processors in the next year or two and that it couldn't or wouldn't wait for IBM. Waiting for an appropriate, fast, low-power, 64-bit Cell processor from them is probably riskier than waiting on a low-power G5. I too wonder what this means for AMD and that aspect of it makes me feel that he may be onto something as far as Intel's motivation is concerned. In short, I agree with much of what he said, but I think it's more of a defensive move by Apple and Intel at the moment. Cheers, Scott.
Post #210,694 by altmann 6/9/05 6:11:57 PM Reply	The Cell The Cell is not that great a processor for general purpose desktops. The core processor is a stripped down PPC that, from what I've read, would kinda suck at the random branchy code you would expect in a desktop OS. The "cells" are just independent vector processing units, useful in certain situations but you aren't going to be doing things like running OS processes on each one. Even if IBM could combine a full G5 with the cells, they couldn't get the G5 alone into suitable form for a laptop. Adding 8 cells to that would make the job even harder. -- Chris Altmann
Post #210,695 by admin 6/9/05 6:15:35 PM Reply	If they are disenchanted with IBM... ... they wouldn't exactly be jumping at the chance to stay with them by moving to another IBM chip. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #210,701 by tonytib 6/9/05 7:09:44 PM Reply	It appears IBM's direction has changed from PC's (Macs) to game consoles. Between XBox, PS/3, and Nintendo Revolution they'll sell a lot more chips than being one of two Apple suppliers. Overall, PowerPC is doing OK. And remember, the most popular 32-bit CPU is the ARM chip -- just about everyone uses at least one ARM chip (cell phone, router, etc). TI ships more CPU's than Intel (50% of cell phone market vs 85% of PC market). Tony
Post #210,769 by Meerkat 6/10/05 6:05:06 AM Reply	Maybe a cell will be MacIntel's new Altivec? It'd make a good 'Your Dell will never run OS X' dongle too. Sure it's far-fetched... but hey, that's what they said about Intels in Macs... :) Two out of three people wonder where the other one is.

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