Tuesday, June 7

ApTel? MacTel? or just plain Osbourned?  

Apple has announced that they are making the switch to Intel chips. I find this extremely funny.

I've never been an Apple fan. I've never owned one, from a // to a Mac. I've been one those who have always preached software before hardware, and in my case it's either been Zilog Z80 (Intel 8080 compatible) or Intel. Because that's where I've seen my software take me. The whole evangelism of the Mac (and to a degree the Lisa) has really turned me off the company. Then there's the whole elitism, with their software, with their supposedly incredibly better hardware (sorry, SCSI was also out there for PCs, I was running it, and besides, Apple finally went with IDE, just like the rest of the PC market), their superior LocalTalk (yeah, which is why their Ethernet now sucks black eggs), and their just holy than thou whoever runs PCs attitude.

But I di/regress.

The first thing that catches my eye about this announcment is that Mac OSX won't run on ordinary PCs, only Intel Macs. It's obvious that Apple is not going to give up its lucrative hardware margins. If they are making them with off the shelf parts, which I say they have no choice but to do so, that means either a special boot ROM, or DRM. My current computer already has a 512K boot ROM, of which only half (probably truly only a quarter) is in actual use. If that still isn't big, then it won't take PC makers too long to put in ROMs big enough to handle both Mac and PC BIOSes in one. Getting the actual code may or may not be a problem. But certainly not overwhelming.

That leaves us with DRM, which Intel has supposedly already starting shipping in their 945 support chips for the Pentium-D. Which would also give Hollywood their foothold into the computer business, something that I'm sure Apple would allow. It's the continuation of the iTune-ization of America.

The problem for Apple now is, are new computer sales going to drop to the point where they can't sustain themselves long enough to get the new computers out? Does anybody really want to buy an anemic Mac Mini now, only to find out how badly it's been superceded by the Mac Mini Intel box?

I understand that Apple has been having issues with IBM about the kind of processor expectations that haven't happened, the ones that were supposed to take a year to happen, and two years later still aren't available. That has to be quite galling for them.

But I find it extremely hard to believe that Apple is going to be competitive in the end run with the hardware. Dell, IBM, HP/Compaq, beige box makers, I think Apple's going to be in for a real hard time. As somebody else said, who I can't remember unfortunately, Apple's liable to be shooting itself in the foot via their own head.

And this is after hearing about how much harder is was going to be for Intel to get much more speed out of their chips. Putting multiple cores on a chip can help, but that's going to require a paradigm change in programming to get the full use out of doubling that every two years. I like my HT processor, because I've got multiple processes programs going at one time. So two processors is good for me. I might even use four. More than that? I need processes, not programs to be multithreaded.

So that's my view from my fractured crystal ball.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 6/07/2005 10:20:00 AM    0 comments Links to this post

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