By Paul Carlin
It seems most people have the “who cares what is inside” attitude, not me. Maybe I need to think different some more.
Personally, I think Apple could have worked things out with IBM but chose not to, Was it egos? Lack of resources at IBM? Wanting something new? Who knows? A dual core PPC with a new bus architecture could have been just as fast or faster, IBM could have done some work on lowering power consumption. Instead, we have Yet Another Transition (YAT) where we have to update all our software, that seems to happen every 5 years on the Mac platform. Eventually PPC machines will stop being developed for so we will not get the latest and greatest.
Despite the Dual Core nature of the new chips the new Intel Macs are not beating the pants off the single core PowerPC. You would think, if they were going through all this effort of switching architectures, they would be seeing much better performance. Apple claims 2 to 3 times better performance but most independent tests show rough equivalence with Intel beating it by a little and in some tests the G5 beats the Intel easily.
I don’t mean to imply moving to Intel will not be successful for Apple, but it could be quite risky, because clone manufacturers can come in and start running OS X on their hardware. Apple is a hardware company, they make most of their money on hardware. Intel’s TPM (digital rights management) does not seem to be very good for preventing Mac OS X from running on a stock PC. It has been hacked many times. Some thought that moving to Intel would bring the price down, economies of scale and all that. The first prices for the MacBook Pro and iMac have not borne that out. They are just as expensive. Did Apple get a bigger margin? Who knows? The fact is, the Intel Mac is not cheaper than the previous model.
Also, now Intel owns the desktop, what is to say that they will do the right thing now that they have no competition? I suppose there is AMD, but they do not really represent a major difference in chip design philosophy. It also seemed that PPC was gaining momentum with Microsoft and Sony moving to the platform for gaming. Apple ran the other way.
Now there are, of course, some advantages, it now becomes possible to have a virtual machine, that runs Windows software at native speeds. Software that never ran very well on a Mac will now run well. This is a double edged sword however, because some companies will just take their existing Windows software and not update it to work well in the Mac environment. Sure you will be able to run it, but it will be clunky and not take advantage of all the features the platform has to offer. Some companies may just decide to not even continue development for the Mac saying the VM is a solution. Another advantage, I suppose, is being able to boot Windows on a Mac. Apple has said they will do nothing to prevent this, but this is not really a huge advantage to a long time Mac user.
The main thing is that would me happier about this is if they announced that Universal binaries must exist indefinitely and that should IBM fix its heat and power problems then we can go back to PPC if they are faster and better. I am all for flexibility, if Intel is better now then lets use it, PPC is better then use that. Apple has proven that it does not matter the chip is underneath, they can still run their OS. They could play one company off the other to get what they wanted. They could use PPC for high end server machines and Intel on others if they offer better power consumption. They could let competition work for them, but this is not what Apple announced, they announced a marriage with Intel and from the looks of it this is what they are going to keep for the foreseeable future. What happens when the Intel honeymoon is over? What happens when they have told all the developers to forget the PPC? Do we do YAT again?
Mostly there are not a lot of technical or business arguments as to why I don’t like the Intel Mac, mostly emotional, I feel like Intel has been the enemy from the early days of my computing experience. This is a very tough pill to swallow, now the Mac is just another Intel box. Some of what was special about the Mac is gone, a differentiator that made the Mac seem better. I will have a hard time rallying behind the hardware aspects of these Intel based Macs. Every other Intel PC box will have the same thing. It is like turning to the dark side. I will have a very hard time forgiving Apple for doing this. I think I will find that I just don’t care that much about the hardware and maybe I care less about Apple than I used to. Perhaps
this is how it should be, maybe I should find other interests. Apple could have changed a lot of things, and has changed, a lot of things over the years, but this one that I am having a hard time with.
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Good article, from someone who has supported Apple through the ups and downs. It is natural to feel apprehension at change, especially when it involves an enemy turned ally. We saw the same backlash of “Apple is doing it so it is perfect” reaction with the switch to OSX, the roll out of the iPod, the death of the Newton, the switch to PPC, and countless connectors for monitors, peripherialsm and other “Mac Specific” things that kept us spending. The one hardware architecture goes against the “Think Different” mantra and says let’s all achieve perfection through mediocrity! Unfortunately Apple could function at 2% of the brain power and invention of the last 20 years and still give M$ plenty of innovation to steal from. It comes down to walking away from computers as a fullfilling part of your life and getting a real life with people who have faces that aren’t on monitors or screens or that are in the print mediums. Flesh and blood interactions! Turn off the cpu and go outside already!
hey nick the intl macs are very slow in all of the benchmarks i have run well only a few are faster ut most of them are slower then my 1.33 ghz powerbook thats the one im using to type everything until my 17 gets fixed
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People tend to confuse intel with MicroSoft. Although they may have been close allies, they are not the enemy, they only supplied the enemy with the guns and clubs. MicroSoft was the one in the 80’s and 90’s out in the streets pulling the trigger and clubbing the baby seals.
Personally I don’t care who makes the engine, as long as it goes like greased lightning and is easy to drive.
Working with OSX at home is fine, at business it is impossible so far because of key business software only running with MS-Software (exept for some segments or with high risk and compromises).
MacIntel will allow to run all critical business software in the future (windowed or native as software companies come on board like IBM with Notes for example).
The point user will be able to consider OSX at work. It is the way MS entered into business some 20 years ago (who remembers the IBM and VAX terminal emulations for the mainframes?).
MS has problem for various reasonsl, 2007 will show if OSX can adress the issues timely.
Its all about user interface (OSX) and software that runs with it and not for the hardware other than compatibility.