[KLUG Advocacy] Apple using Intel chips ...

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> After the interesting discussion about the subject at the last meeting,
> here's some new speculation on the reason why Apple is switching!  :-)
> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

Cringely?  My first reaction is "this guy has only marginally more
credibility than that whack-job Dvorak".

"Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance
advantage over Intel?" .... "Was that so much BS?"  

Yes.  These CPU wars are silly;  the real performance difference between
all families of moderns CPUs in-the-field is negligible, almost no
matter what your doing.    Benchmarks are complete crap and just another
way to let vendors lie to consumers who want to sound tech-savvy  (Just
look at AMD's Opteron benchmarks and marketing stuff - it will leave one
rolling on the floor laughing.  But they've garnered themselves a nice
fanatical following).

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

64-bit is nothing to most people who aren't even close to hitting the
limits of 32-bit machines an OSs.  More marketing crap.  My Dual-PII
500Mhz SMTP/IMAP server supports SASL (Kerberos and MD5), SSL, Virus
Milter, and about 40Gb of mail for ~300 concurrent connections with a
load average of 0.02.   Unless you are grinding immense piles of numbers
you need 64-bits like you need a big smoking hole blown through your
head.  64 bits on the desktop is required by about 5% of workstation
users, and a solid 0% of PC users.  It is CPU manufacturers who need
64-bit the most. 

"Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?"

Hopefully, far far away.

"then why not go with AMD, which equals Intel's power specs, EXCEEDS
Intel's performance specs AND does so at a lower price point across the
board?"

Because their claims to dust Intel's CPUs is total crap.  Ever seen AMD
publish benchmarks for it you ACTUALLY USE a multithreaded application
on their cups vs. Intel?  The performance curve goes down-down-down.
But for the desktop - who cares!  I use a 2GHz Celery for
crying-out-loud, and how much time do I spend waiting for the machine to
finish sorting the 150,000 records I just pulled down the from the
database server?  Beats me, too short to measure.

"This is the biggest question of all, suggesting Steve Jobs has
completely forgotten about Adam Osborne."

Cool, I'm not the only person to related this back to Mr. Osborne.

"Apple's stated reason for pre-announcing the shift by a year is to
allow third-party developers that amount of time to port their apps to
Intel"

Agree, this stated reason is crap.   I think the real issue is simple -
it takes time to ramp up a manufacturing process.

"I'm fairly sure that the PowerPC, too, has an individual CPU ID."

Yes, it does.

"Then what is the driving force? Microsoft."

Okay.  But their the driving force behind everything in IT.  Duh.

"Microsoft comes into this because Intel hates Microsoft."

Everybody hates Microsoft.

"Enter Apple. This isn't a story about Intel gaining another three
percent market share at the expense of IBM, it is about Intel taking
back control of the desktop from Microsoft."

Whatever.

a.) Apple needs to sell more computers (business 101)
b.) IBM doesn't do desktops,  they have their own plans for PowerPC -
just go look - http://www.ibm.com
c.) To sell more computers you must..... make them cheaper!
d.) Intel is the *KING* of fast and cheap - witness the number of Celery
processors in the world.
e.) Fast and cheap is what consumers want.
.... this just makes basic economic sense.  There is no need to ascribe
complex emotional paradigms to corporate entities.  It is a CPU - who
flippin' cares who stamps it?

"By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a
compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one)."

And this would be the dumbest thing Apple, Intel, or Apptel, could ever
do.  M$-Office is a potent trojan.  They need to get people OFF
Microsoft, and who makes all those crappy applications?  The OS is
peanuts,  Office is the killer.

"If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the
OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft"

Yeah, Ok.  How?  If Windows moved to the PowerPC everyone would be
buying PowerPC boxes in droves.  It is about the applications.

"they would put AMD back in the box, too"

Was I not looking?  Did AMD get out of the box?  I thought they were
still a bit player, with good marketing but still really crappy
financials.

"How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple?"

How much would it cost Intel to by AMD?  Or their own PowerPC fab
rights?  Or every Pizza Hut on the west side of Mississippi?   Intel
could buy just about anybody.

"Remember, you read it here first."

Yeah, whatever.