joannejacobs.net

Interesting speculation from RobX ... and he forgot to mention that the XBox360 is being powered by IBM ... which adds more weight to the theory! Intel could swallow Apple with one bite, Intel could bundle an O/S with the new CPU and chip-set, then the only trick is for OS X and it's siblings to maintain Windows Emulation without performance penalty (or patent infringement). Hmmm.

He also forgets to mention how reliant Apple have been on Microsoft producing applications for the Apple platforms. In August 1977 Apple paid Microsoft US$21k to license Microsoft's 6502 BASIC which after a few little graphic routine changes was released as Applesoft BASIC and shipped with every sinlge Apple II (and siblings). Microsoft Excel was developed specifically for the Mac to give it a Lotus 123 beater ... and Microsoft Office is the biggest selling Macintosh application of all time. On more than one occasion Bill has used that leverage to steer opportunities in his own direction - perhaps he's decided he only wants to maintain one code-set for Office ... and Intel make compilers & cross-compilers!

Next. I think they're getting Geeks and Nerds confused! None of the guys in the article were into IT or PC's etc .... knowing advanced chess closes and having a nasal drawl are not Geek prerequisites ... they sounds like Nerds to me. Geeks are into computers and everything to do with technology ... the microcosm and the telecosm ... the science and the art ... binary, hex, RISC, CISC, Java, SOAP, the elegance of the bubblesort ... and the joy of Wiki! Gates & Allen are Geeks, Ballmer & Ellison are not, McNealy and Wozinak are Geeks, yet Jobs isn't ... it's a fine line ... and it takes one to know one! Nerds may be better lovers but Geeks have bandwidth!

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*LOL!*

Ah magnificent H! It's nice to know there are some genuine True Believers in the beauty of Geekism! :-)

jj

i'm going to have to disagree vehemently with you here. bob cringely may have some good ideas, but most of his articles have nothing to do with what he is talking about.

Point by point:

Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?

Altivec is great. it's excellent. it's a clean extension for multimedia/vector stuff. it's the bee's knees. the problems is that the rest of the chip (the non altivec parts of the G5) aren't being sped up enough (the megahurtz myth, somewhat), along with the fact that pc motherboards revise every 6 to 12 months whereas apple's motherboards don't, along with pc cpus revising every 2 months or so, while the apple's generally update every 6 months or a year.

pc motherboards are now fully into hypertransport/pcie, whereas that technology is nowhere to be found in apple pcs, and ibm doesn't have any real motivation to continually update the G5 (apple are something like 1 to 2% of their total "powerpc family" production as i understand it, and it's the *costly* end - the high speed end, where they have to constantly have to push the envelope).

As well, intel are soon coming out with SSE3 (their own vector stuff) which should (from what i've heard) be an acceptable (not as good, more complex) substitute for alivec.

Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?

Cringely goes on and on about Itanium and Xeon, which are SERVER chips, totally and completely ignoring x86-64 (intel low end 64 bit addressing and registers) and A64 (AMD low end 64 bit addressing and registers). Noone would use Itanium for a low end computer anyways - except for some specialised niches, it's a dead chip walking. Linux/BSD/even windows run 64 bit on A64 and x86-64, so apple wouldn't have a problem using these. It's a troll which goes nowhere

finally, So is 64-bit really nothing to Apple? And why did they make such a big deal about it in their earlier marketing?

Apple are going 64 bit as much as they can, and the intel chip they will be using will be 64 bit - 32 bit x86 chips are on their way out in x86 server space, and there are plenty of x86 consumer level chips that are affordable for the average user (i'm talking word and solitare users here, too)

Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?

Good question. The answer: AMD can't meet the demand they have now for their high end chips - they wouldn't even begin to be able to handle Apple now (and once you're in x86 64bit land, most chips are the same).

As well, if IBM can't meet apple's demands for high speed chips, then AMD doesn't have a snowball's chance. The only company out there with oodles of chip knowledge and production space is intel, and noone can touch them on that.

Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?

Another good question. He mentions the osborne effect, and that's a real problem for apple, and also mentions that it's real easy to port applications.

Portage first - normal applications are easy to port (just some endian issues). The problem is that if you use alitvec at *all*, you know have to redo each and every bit, because the emulator doesn't do altivec (it's a G3 equivalent). You'd be using altivec in critical sections, which, strangely enough, are often the hardest to port - so you need to give all your developers plenty of time to get it right (thus the year's preannouncement). The medium to small developers would go up in arms if they found out their programs wouldn't be able to run on apple's new beaut os + hardware, that all the big people knew well in advance, and they'd be bound to find out because that sort of thing leaks. To stop all the problems with leaks (officially having to deny or confirm them), better to just rip it out into the open and take the hit up front.

Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?

Cringely says it isn't, i don't think it isn't. All this question leads into is .. 1.it's apple hating microsoft (no duh!), and 2.intel going to buy apple and 3.hp eventually becoming a reseller of apple stuff.

1. Gee, who wouldn't want to gain marketshare at the expense of the leader? (no brainer here)

2. nope. no need to. they're making enough money selling to everyone, and while it's better for them for apple to get more marketshare at the expense of microsoft (means microsoft has less influence on them, and probably one reason why the 360 xbox is ppc), there's little to gain here (an intel linux distrib is more likely)

3. hp are flailing about for something to save them, now that their hopes surviving reselling Itanium are well and truly down the crapper. they'd resell apple running on toasters if they thought it would save them.

Finally, "Remember, you read it here first." - that's because noone else is trolling with this particular piece of crap.