Lighten up, it's a joke.
Posted on 08/11/2002 9:46:45 PM PDT by sourcery
NEW YORK - As with many rumors about Apple Computer, this one started with a single sentence uttered by Steve Jobs.
The setting was an analysts meeting in July, where the Apple chief executive outlined his company's financial condition and discussed future plans. He took a question about the possibility that Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) might one day use chips from Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) instead of the Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) chips now in its computers.
The answer was classic Jobs: careful, noncommittal and just vague enough to keep people guessing. First, he said, Apple would have to complete its transition from using OS 9, its older, "classic" operating system, to OS X, the new operating system that has given the company new life. "Then we'll have options--and we like to have options," he said.
So what does that mean? If you're Andrew Neff, analyst at Bear Stearns, it means there's a better than 80% chance that within four years Apple will think "less different" and stamp its machine with a brand that says "Intel Inside." Neff made his prediction in a research report on the state of the PC industry released this week.
This kind of talk has touched off a lot of speculation about Apple's long-term plans for the platform. Obsessively tight-lipped, Apple routinely does not comment on future products. But, rumors aside, there are three very good reasons why Apple won't switch from the chip architecture it adopted with the first PowerMac computers in 1994. First of all, it would create new friction for software developers when they already have enough of that with the recent switch to OS. But more importantly, it would needlessly put the Mac directly on a collision course with Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ). Finally, Apple doesn't need to change chips, as the PowerPC family of chips may soon give it all the improvement Apple could ask for.
The argument for shifting chips is based at least in part on the Herculean effort Apple is making to push its user base over to its new operating system. Mac OS X is, at its core, based on Unix, which runs in various flavors on Internet servers all over the Internet. It likely wouldn't take much tweaking to adapt OS X to work with chips from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices (nyse: AMD - news - people ).
A shift would give Apple two chip vendors who are primarily focused on the PC industry. Motorola and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) jointly developed the PowerPC, and both have supplied Apple over the years. But both have sold more to other customers than to Apple. Motorola, for example, has sold PowerPC chips to Ericsson (nyse: ERICY - news - people ) and Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ).
And it would certainly give Apple a marketing boost when it comes to chip speed. The current generation of PowerPC chips are topped out at a clock speed of 1 gigahertz, while Intel chips are due to break the 3-GHz barrier before the end of the year. While comparing the clock speeds of both chips is an apples and oranges problem--powerPC chips are faster and better at certain kinds of computing tasks--potential buyers are often turned off by the lower speed rating. Adopting Intel chips might eliminate that problem.
But it would create another one, most notably among Apple's software developers. After years of building software for the older operating system, they're either still in the process of adapting their software to the new OS or have just completed it. Switching to another chip would require a whole new round of rebuilding, or "porting," existing applications to work on the other chip. Plus supporting older or "legacy" applications that have run on the Mac for years would create a whole new set of problems.
The PowerPC has a lot to do with what makes a Mac distinctly different from a Windows-based PC. Most of the other components inside a Mac--the hard drive, the memory chips and often the graphics processors--are no different from what you find in a PC. Once there's a motherboard with an Intel or AMD chip in there, what's to stop a user from installing Linux--or dare we suggest it?--Microsoft's Windows on an Apple computer? Very little, it seems.
And therein lies the biggest reason that Apple will stick with the PowerPC chip for the foreseeable future. It doesn't want to go head-to-head with Microsoft.
Even though its advertising campaign is aimed at convincing frustrated Windows users to switch to the Mac, at best Apple can only hope to erode Microsoft's share of the computing world by a fraction of a percentage point. An insignificant downward shift for Microsoft would mean real progress for Apple. But advertising aside, Apple's platform still exists on the periphery of the computing world, and its sales still account for less than 3% of the world's PC market share, according to market research firm IDC.
"By saying its machines are a separate OS on a separate platform, Apple can say it doesn't compete directly with Microsoft," says Kevin Krewell, analyst with MicroDesign Resources. "Moving to an Intel or AMD platform would put them directly in Microsoft's crosshairs, and that is something Apple should not want to do."
Finally, there's a good reason Apple may want to stick with the PowerPC. In October, IBM will unveil a new 64-bit version of the PowerPC chip, aimed at desktops and low-end servers, at the annual Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif. By moving to 64 bits, the chip can address a great deal more memory than the current generation of 32-bit chips, allowing the chip to make faster work of complex computing tasks.
IBM hasn't been a major supplier to Apple recently, but it just opened a new chip factory or "fab" in upstate New York--a fab it would like to see very busy.
"I think you'll see IBM going after business from Apple much more aggressively that it has in the past," Krewell says.
While Apple has made no public commitment to using IBM's forthcoming chip, it certainly gives it another option to increase the performance of its computers. And as Steve Jobs has said, Apple likes options.
But of course, that is not Apple's only way to play the x86 game, nor is there any chance they would do anything like that in the near future. What Apple should do, and very well may do, is to port OSX to the x86, and sell it as an alternative to Windows/Linux. In other words, in the x86 world, they would be a software vendor only. They would continue to sell PowerPC-based hardware.
With OSX available for x86 hardware, software vendors with OSX-based products would potentially have a far larger market: there are two orders of magnitude more x86 machines than there are Macintoshes. Apple would have an additional source of revenue: those who prefer, for whatever reason, to use x86 hardware. Just 1% of that market would be extremely significant both to Apple, and to software vendors with OSX-based products.
The major risk would be that a significant percentage of those who would have bought Apple's PowerPC-based hardware might decide instead to buy x86 hardware (on which they run OSX). This is a risk because Apple would make less profit per unit on OSX for x86 than per a Macintosh/OSX bundle. This risk only matters if one assumes that Apple's customer count wouldn't change much as the customer base switches from Macintosh hardware to x86 hardware. But it doesn't seem likely that that would be what would happen.
OSX for x86 would not be a very popular product, even among Mac fanatics, unless and until significant software titles became available. And that wouldn't happen unless software vendors had faith in the viability of the market for OSX software on x86 hardware. So the mere fact that you could buy a CD that would install OSX on your x86 machine would not, by itself, have all that much effect on Apple's sales.
However, if there were sufficient x86/OSX software available so that those who would have bought a Mac start deciding to buy x86 hardware instead, then we're in a different world entirely. In that world, it wouldn't just be high-probablility Mac customers who would be buying OSX-x86. Far from it. There would be at least as many former Windows/Linux users also buying OSX-x86--probably more than enough to offset the per-unit profit differential between Mac customers and OSX-x86 customers.
No it isn't. The subject of the thread is Apple's future business strategy. Altough the article itself references certain competitive technical differences between the two platforms, those are simply data points that have import to the analysis of the business case. No one is attempting to assert that Macs are better than PCs, or that PCs are better than Macs, or that Linux is better or worse than either.
Just wait. Mention those two in the same post and the fighting begins.
another Will Apple Put Intel Inside? story,
another: 10 years of PC dominance, with Apple market share at 5%.
Apple had their chance about 20 years ago and Jobs blew it with his proprietary obsession (IBM blew it too, but in a different way). No second chance.
They already have it -- without the fanfare. Apple bought NExT. The NExT technology DOES/DID run on Intel. The hub of Mac OS X is called "Darwin". This is open source and can be installed on Intel, now. (Its Mac OS X without the user interface). The user interface of Mac OS X called "Aqua" right now is ONLY available on Macs. However, the Aqua interface is NExT technology, and it can be ported to Intel with little or no bother.
Everytime Steve Jobs is to make a speech at one of these trade shows, I study at the computer rags for speculation - "Apple's going to announce Aqua for Intel" has been a steady theme- but alas, its just proving to be a rumor. It would sure piss M$ off, as M$ is already objecting to PC manufacturers shipping "naked" PCs (a PC with no OS on it) and are trying to stop this practice. M$ claims that if a person wants a naked PC they're really going to put a bootleg copy of Windows on it. A stupid argument, when there's currently Darwin, Linux, BSD, Solaris ... etc that can be put on the PC...
If Apple were to announce their Mac OS X on Intel, they'd mop up. Let's face it, Apple wrote the book on the human interface with the computer - what ever you think of them as a company, their OS work is right out of the cognitive psychology field when they studied the results of people like Miller et al and devised an OS that really took into account how people react to computer as a system as a whole.
You don't need to port a thing. There is already a distribution for Darwin on x86 architecture available now. Go to Apple's site. Click on the Darwin button. Download instructions are there.
I have to say that Aqua is more than just X-Windows with a theme (I'm familiar with both).
Here is the real danger for Apple, and the reason they won't switch chips.
If you're a software developer, and you're going to develop for an "Apple/Intel" architecture, also developing a "Windows/Intel" version is going to look pretty tempting. After all, you've done most of the work when you did the initial "Apple/Intel" port. That huge windows market is going to look pretty tempting.
If Apple's applications do start showing up in Windows versions, it will hurt Apples sales. Apples not going to do anything to make it easier to develop apps that run on Windows.
Agreed—within a few years, they might even take over more than 50% of the desktop market, which would be a phenomenal blow to Microsoft. But they're not going to, because Apple is run by idiots. They guard their dwindling hardware market so zealously that they're perfectly willing to pass up vastly more profitable software sales—just ask anyone who worked at Power Computing. Even if Apple decides to switch to x86 CPUs for Macs, there will still never be a version of OS X that competes with Windows, because Apple will never, ever release a Mac OS that doesn't require you to buy hardware from Cupertino.
Sigh. I know. Personally, I think its silly. What's the diff if Apple sells computers or just the OS? The Cupertino folks probably didn't realize this, but if they released OS X on x86 - the PC people might actually be inspired to give Apple computers a try -- I reckon OS X on x86 would actually increase their hardware sales.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.