What the Apple Plan To Switch to Intel Chips Means for Consumers

The Wall Street Journal ^ | June 9, 2005 | Walter S. Mossberg

[quidnunc]

The war in Iraq rages on, the European Union is fraying and North Korea may have nuclear weapons. But if you read the business and technology news this past week, all of that seemed to pale before an event variously described as seismic, epic and stunning: Apple Computer has decided to adopt processors made by Intel for its future Macintosh computers.

There's a reason this was big news in the computer world. For decades, Intel's chips have been tightly linked to the software of Apple's archrival, Microsoft, and Apple has touted as superior the IBM PowerPC chips that powered the Mac. Plus, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, probably the most charismatic business leader in America, attracts attention for anything he does, even though his Macintosh has a tiny share of the PC market.

But what does Apple's move mean for the average consumer, who just wants the best computer for the job?

In the long term, the change will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it. That's because Intel's processors and other chips will give Apple more options than IBM's products could for building Macs that run faster and cooler, and have longer battery life. The first Intel-based Mac is due in spring 2006. Even consumers who use Microsoft Windows, which runs on the vast majority of computers, will benefit, because the Mac's impact on the industry is vastly greater than its market share. Apple is the most innovative major computer maker, and the only one largely dedicated to serving consumers instead of large corporate customers. Almost everything it does is later copied by the Windows PC makers, so keeping Apple strong and innovating is good for Windows users, too.

-snip-

[StockAyatollah]

Yes what the hell have Jobs and Apple actually innovated? Its all marketing hype

[theFIRMbss]

>And with the sale of Apple to Intel, Steve accepts the position of CEO of the Pixar/Disney/Sony Media Company

Well, heck-- If Intel
buys Apple, they should buy Sun,
too! That would give them

everything that's not
Microsoft . . . But I don't think
the rumor's for real.

[theFIRMbss]

>Yes what the hell have Jobs and Apple actually innovated?

[MarkL]

As far as I can tell, Jobs only REAL talent is for capitalizing on other folks work.

Some of the most important talents for executives in any field are:

a) The ability to recognize and obtain the services of exceptional people.

b) The ability to see current resources and imagine using them in new and unexpected ways, in order to create new opportunities.

c) The ability to market your products.

I think that (c) may be the most important, especially in a technology field! Let's face it, if the quality of the technology were all that mattered, XEROX would be the leader in computers today, and Novell wouldn't have lost all of their market share. Compare Active Directory to Novell's eDirectory, and you begin scratching your head, wondering why anyone bothers with AD. But even the people in Provo (Novell HQ) realize that they've lost the marketing battle, which prompted their purchase of SUSE. Novell's got a server OS that in many cases doesn't even have to be restarted once every few years, but as a Novell insider told me not long ago, "We could come out with a server that prints $100 bills 24x7, and we still wouldn't be able to give it away, let alone sell it!" For years, Novell's marketing department was so inept that it couldn't sell space heaters to eskimos! By the time they took the problem seriously, it was too late.

Mark

[Golden Eagle]

I agree, Intel is top dog in the PC/CPU business and buying Apple could possibly shakeup a market that is serving them very well. They don't need to buy Apple to sell chips for Apple, now obviously.

[Wonder Warthog]

"a) The ability to recognize and obtain the services of exceptional people."

"b) The ability to see current resources and imagine using them in new and unexpected ways, in order to create new opportunities."

"c) The ability to market your products."

By those criteria, Bill Gates is far and away more "charismatic" than Steve Jobs.

[Golden Eagle]

I disagree that Novell was superior to the Microsoft products, or we would have never switched ourselves. When Windows NT Server was released it was the first server O/S that was completely manageable from a GUI, a huge step into the future, performance hit notwithstanding. They also helped pioneer binding mulitple protocols to a single adapter (NDIS) and shared memory by the operating system and drivers (VXD's). If I'm not mistaken, we were also running symetrical multiple processor (SMP) Windows servers well in advance, while Novell had an issue where their second CPU wouldn't kick in but until the first one was almost completely saturated. To top it all off, the Microsoft software was cheaper too. Novell was blown out of the water in 1 version flat.

[gitmo]

What is the Osborne effect?

[Swordmaker]

...jobs paid to copy but it is still copying... see what i mean???

But you used the very loaded word "Theft" which is NOT what happened. See what I mean???

[Peelod]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

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

This is the biggest question of all, suggesting Steve Jobs has completely forgotten about Adam Osborne. For those who don't remember him, Osborne was the charismatic founder of Osborne Computer, makers of the world's first luggable computer, the Osborne 1. The company failed in spectacular fashion when Adam pre-announced his next model, the Osborne Executive, several months before it would actually ship. People who would have bought Osborne 1s decided to wait for the Executive, which cost only $200 more and was twice the computer. Osborne sales crashed and the company folded. So why would Steve Jobs -- who knew Adam Osborne and even shared a hot tub with him (Steve's longtime girlfriend back in the day worked as an engineer for Osborne) -- pre-announce this chip change that undercuts not only his present product line but most of the machines he'll be introducing in the next 12 to 18 months?

[antiRepublicrat]

Stevie needs to have intro'd shippable hardware when he announced Apple's capitulation to Intel.

Except then there'd be new hardware, but no applications to run on it. Apple has always taken the slow, well-planned approach to its conversions (680x0 to PPC, OS 9 to OS X) to minimize impact on consumers, and it hasn't died of the Osborne effect yet. Jobs thinks ahead, not for just right now, so most applications will have fat binaries out by the time the first Mactel ships. Besides, he's promised even more powerful PPC products before the switch to Intel.

[antiRepublicrat]

Say what you want about Jobs, it seems he saw what the Segue(sp?) was destined for. I love how they seem to always forget to mention the original brains behind the computer itself, Wozniac.

Very true, but Woz does have a large following of admirers. BTW, he was at the keynote.

[antiRepublicrat]

Final Cut Pro HD.


Wait, that's a Mac-only app.

There is also a HUGE amount of UNIX-only scientific tools, and they run on the Mac.

[antiRepublicrat]

if jobs hadn't stolen the mouse and GUI ideas from Xerox and then integrated it into UNIX that statement might of been amusing instead of ironic...

There is a difference. Xerox let Apple tour their place in exchange for some Apple stock, and then Apple took the basic idea and improved upon it significantly, making it actually usable.

Gates then tried to copy Apple and failed miserably, only getting the UI even close on the fourth version of Windows. Of course, by the time they got it somewhat down with XP (Crayola inspiration excepted), Apple was already at the next level -- OS X.

[antiRepublicrat]

Got it in one. Woz was "da man" (and I'm not even an Apple user). As far as I can tell, Jobs only REAL talent is for capitalizing on other folks work.

I think Jobs and Woz complemented each other well. Woz knew how to make things, and Jobs knew how to sell them. But between the two, I'd much rather personally know Woz. I still read his blog.

[Proud_texan]

Interesting article but perhaps the battle field is somewhere else. I hadn't considered that until I read this:

http://www.sharewatch.com/story.php?storynumber=72442

Here's the section I found most interesting:

"The first move in the complex industry realignment now taking place was made more than a year ago when Microsoft broke with Intel and said that it would use an I.B.M. processor chip, similar to the one used by Apple for its Macintoshes, in the second version of its Xbox video game machine.

What Microsoft has made clear recently is that the new Xbox, to be called the 360, will be much more than a video game player when it reaches store shelves this fall. It will perform a range of home entertainment functions, like connecting to the Internet, playing DVD movies and displaying high-definition television shows as well as serving as a wireless data hub for the home.

Microsoft's decision to build its own computer hardware, with help from I.B.M., was a direct assault on a market that Intel was counting on for future growth. It is likely that Intel forged the alliance with Apple in an effort to counter the powerful home entertainment and game systems coming from Microsoft and Sony."

[antiRepublicrat]

Just out of curiousity (I really don't know) - how did Microsoft adopt the mouse? Same was as Apple? Or just taking it? Or through licensing from Xerox?

There's a long history for this stuff. The mouse and basic idea for the GUI was invented in the 60s, and eventually some of those people went to work at Xerox, where they refined the idea and got a rudimentary mouse-based GUI working. Later, some Xerox engineers went to work at Apple, who took the idea to the next step, actually making it usable and commercially viable.

[antiRepublicrat]

Fat chance. Not because it's technically difficult, as you infer, but because the vendors aren't convinced many in the Linux crowd are willing to pay anything for their software.

Oracle and DB2, some of the most expensive software in the world, run on Linux.

[antiRepublicrat]

It might also help bring some of those titles to Linux.

I'm not so sure. Writing a graphical-based app for OS X is way different than writing for Linux. For Mac you use Cocoa with the Mac windowing APIs, and for Linux you usually use X or one of the other GUIs. Going the other way is easier, since the Mac can run X. But even that isn't the greatest solution, as OpenOffice.org found out.

[Golden Eagle]

Oracle and DB2, some of the most expensive software in the world, run on Linux.

Those are enterprise server applications sold in small quantity at high cost. Beyond those two and a couple more, there's a huge dearth of commercial software for Linux, especially in the desktop space. Apple's move to Intel in no way helps provide commercial developers for Linux, either, more likely ensures they stay away.