HD For Indies

PBS | I, Cringely . June 9, 2005 - Going for Broke

OK, first off, go read the above link or this won't make sense. Cringely asks five questions and then drops the whopper that he thinks it's all about Intel hating Microsoft and wanting to eventually buy Apple and Rule The (Computer) World.

Here's his five questions, and below is the letter I just sent:

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

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

Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?

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

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

...and then the Intel bit. Here's what I wrote in response:

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Hey Bob!

Some feedback on today's column:

Question 1: What about Altivec, and how it was supposed to make things Better Than Pentiums?

Altivec is great for sound and video, but does nothing for office type apps. For the content creation crowd, it was possible to create carefully staged, optimized demos that showed Macs doing better. Remember, there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks.

All that Altivec hype? Apple meant it, as best they could, that G4/G5 was better than Pentiums. But this isn't so much about G5 vs Pentium as it is G5+/G6 vs. Intel's New Stuff. It isn't about this year's competing chips, but next year's, and three years from now in my opinion.

Q2: 64 bit OS:

OS X isn't QUITE 64 bit - you can't have a GUI app that is 64 bit. You can have a 32 bit GUI app talking to a 64 bit behind-the-scenes app. I don't know that anyone has done this yet, I'm not enough of a programmer geek to say or know. But it's all about the future stuff on Intel. So OS X is sort of a 64 bit OS right now. It can take advantage of some aspects of 64 bitness, but not all. So not such a big deal.

Future chips are the focus. Not current ones from Intel.

Q3: Why not AMD?

I read somewhere else in a couple of places about what Intel plans with their "platform" approach, where it isn't just the chips, it's the chips and motherboard sets. Intel could offer volume and pricing advantages that AMD can't compete with. My first instinct was along with yours - that AMD has better tech. Perhaps Intel convinced Apple that their roadmap was preferable, especially with the platform approach, especially with the pricing they could do, and maybe Apple just wanted to, for once, have access to the big supplier and not fear supply constraints as they did last year with G5's. See the Ars Technica article about Apple's possible choices for chipsets and when they might come out.

But I wouldn't underestimate Apple's (read: Steve's) desire to just say "Bag it - if we're going to the dark side, just Go For It and get all the advantages we can. No more of this 'we can't do that for you.' crap anymore."

Q4: pre-announcing a year in advance:

Why announce so far in advance when it's cake to port? Because it's only cake if you're developing with Xcode. If you're still on CodeWarrior, you have to port to Xcode first, then recompile. And that's a HUGE undertaking, requiring lots of grunt programming effort, as well as tedious QA work. Man years, man decades, perhaps man centuries for larger projects. Apple put a happy spin on it, claiming that of their top 100 developers (top 100 by what, unit sales, dollar sales, what?), about 3/4 were using or switching to Xcode. But put another way: about half are NOT on Xcode right now, and will need to switch/continue to switch if they are going to continue to support OS X. A successful transition will REQUIRE that there be lots of software, as well as consumer confidence that there will be lots of software.

I think this was the smart play - let everybody know, way in advance, with plenty of time, to port their software. The OS 9/OS X switch felt painfully slow for me as a high end application power user, as did the 68k/PPC switch. By giving developers plenty of time, there will be apps at launch to take advantage of the new faster stuff. Hooray!

What about stalling sales? In reality, Apple's gonna take a hit as people wait, whether rational or not. Rationally, if you need a machine now, go ahead and buy one. There won't be a new Mac to buy for nearly a year. Do you need a machine in the next year? You still gotta buy somethin'. If you can wait, you may or may not want to. It's ALWAYS been a fact of life that something faster, perhaps substantially faster, might be a year away. It seems every 3 or 4 years there's a BIG jump - as we moved from 68K to 601 to 604 to G3 to G4 to G5, those were big jumps in performance. In general, waiting a year would get you a speed bump, and sometimes a Big Jump, but not always. This is STILL the case.

I think the biggest sales stalls will come during the first quarter of next year when the first new MacIntels are just around the corner. Will Apple tell us what's being updated when? Of course not. Early 2007 I'd also expect PowerMac sales to stall as folks await their update.

But unlike Osbourne (which died because of pre-announcing their Next Best Thing), Apple has the cash, and other sources of income, to weather this. It'll suck, the stock'll take a hit, but they'll survive. This is a LONG term gamble on Steve's part - we won't know for years whether this was provably wise or not.

Why did Apple feel it had to go public? Because it's better to say at a time when it doesn't make a direct, rational affect on sales. I fully expect PCI Express based, dual core G5's to ship in 2006. And if you need another, or an updated desktop Mac, it'll be great. This slow migration also helps because it means that different sectors of the buying public will be upgrading at different times - first consumers, then portable users, then finally pros and IT guys (I'm betting Xserves are last to upgrade). So consumer Mac sales will stall and then surge, replacing the lost sales; then the same will happen for laptops, desktops, and servers. Stall, regain, stall, regain, but each time in a different market sector. Your PowerMac users aren't going to consider an Intel Mini a valid replacement, nor even an Intel based iMac. While some/many will delay purchases until the Intel replacement comes along, and that'll hurt for 2006/2007, eventually they'll all buy the machines they needed. Just as many claimed they weren't going to buy a G5 until they could get a dual 3.0 GHz, I've seen most of these claimaints quietly buy a dual 2.5 or dual 2.7...because they needed/wanted a new box. And what is the alternative? If IBM had been unable to give us 3.0 GHz until next spring anyway (likely given the recent dual 2.7 launch), and maybe 3.3 or 3.5 a year later, is this any worse than the Intel switch?

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

I'm betting it's not - there are plenty of other reasons to switch, and I think the simple fact that Apple couldn't make viable laptops was on top of the list. Just this month it was announced that laptops outsold desktops for the first time ever. If in fact Hollywood wants Apple to use Intel DRM in order to have an online movie store or distribute digital films, that's gravy, not meat, for Apple.



Cringely then goes on to say this is all about Intel wanting control of the computer industry over Microsoft, and will eventually buy Apple to control the desktop and license it out. Hmm. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't think (at this point) that's what's driving it. If it is, it's a gradual thing. And if that's Intel's secret desire, Apple doesn't even have to be in on it at this point for it to still be a good idea for Apple to do this.

Of course, as Dennis used to say, this is all just my opinion and I could be wrong.

-mike

And I mean all this as a respectful exchange of ideas - Bob's a smart interesting guy.