(c) copyright View from Silicon Valley, 2005. All
rights reserved.
I once worked for a small company that was on MACs and
learned to hate them. Everything was "backwards" (including down to how the backspace and delete key
work). I found it unnecessarily complex and time-consuming to install/ uninstall programs. Palm's MAC
contact manager was superior to the Windows version, but everything else fell in favor of Windows.
I eventually spent my own money to buy a Pentium-III
based machine (the one I just replaced after 4+ years) so that I could utilize the programs and processes with which I was familiar. (Including Windows, which
I am much better at manipulating than MAC OS.)
MAC enthusiasts I've run across are quick to
dis-agree and dismiss my Windows preference as a sign of adolescent bed-wetting, thumb-sucking and overall lack of technical
capability, to name just a few of the kinder epithets. The idea that Windows controls 95%+ of the PC market is
just further confirmation everyone but them is an idiot.
Regardless of anyone's opinion, Apple is embracing
Intel. (Even though Jobs ducked away from the hug Otellini tried to give him on-stage after the announcement.)
The initial reviews are decidedly negative:
" it would require a big commitment on the part of its developers and might alarm
some people who have made a significant investment in PowerPC Mac hardware. For the next few years, the company would likely
need to maintain builds of Mac OS X for both architectures, as would application developers."
"...doubts that Apple as a corporation is stupid enough to shoot themselves in the
foot like this... remember the recent PearPC/CherryOS debacle, where the specifics of emulation of grossly different
hardware (in this case, the PowerPC CPU architecture on the Intel x86 platform) can have massively horrible results in performance.
In this case, it's allegedly due to the horribly different CPU designs, including instruction sets and number of registers
between the two architectures."
"...Does Apple expect that the users will shell out hundreds (if not thousands) of
dollars to upgrade their applications to something that will run natively on the new platform? What about the thousands
of dollars in man-hours for third- party software vendors (like Adobe) to port their products to OSX/ Intel platforms?"
"A switch to Intel also would raise cultural issues for Apple, which for
years has maintained thatthe PowerPC architecture
is better suited to the graphics-intensive tasks performed on most Macs. Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller has
done many Macworld demos showing Photoshop and other programs running faster on
a slower-clock-speed PowerPC chip than it does on a top-of-the line Pentium.
"Apple is feeling ignored and feeling that IBM is paying too much attention to the gaming guys."
"The problem with this scenario is not technical. It’d be a piece of cake for
Apple to roll out an update of Xcode that generates such dual-binary apps — the compiler at the heart of Xcode is GCC, and if anything, GCC is better at generating x86 code than it is PowerPC code....
"No, the obvious problem with this idea is marketing: the minute Apple
announces they’re moving to x86 processors, sales of current hardware dry up. Who’s going to spend $3000 for a
deprecated CPU architecture?"
* * * * *
As an aside, Intel stock has lately been going up, apparently based on rumors of
Centrino shortages. Would Apple be touting the advantages of Intel's notebook solution if parts are really
hard to get? Despite all the spin, on a day when the NASDAQ was up, both Apple and Intel went down. (IBM and Freescale
more so...)
As a further aside, this a perfect(!) distraction from the recently-admitted flattening of iPOD sales. To wit, "Tens of thousands of iPod shuffles remain idle in the channels this week alongside a good number of
iPod photos."
One item not clearly addressed in all the hype is the corporate market.
The one potential (and huge) innovation here for Apple using Intel might be as a vehicle to get more MACs into
corporate environments. Developers writing MAC OS interfaces on x86 code are greatly reducing the gap between
MAC-based and Windows-based machines. If Apple gets all the x86 applications working on MAC OS but
preserves their security advantage, this could be a compelling story to CIOs deciding. Apple's upside is even bigger if
WhiteBox /clones start to hit the market. (The risk here is that part of the reason you don't see lot of viruses and
malware on Apple machines is due to the limited bang-for-the-buck dictated by 2% market share.)
* * * *
The
above is strictly for entertainment purposes and is not intended as advice to buy, hold or sell any security of financial product. Always consult a licensed
investment professional before making any investment decision.
