“Given IBM was the beneficiary of the leaks we believe they are the most likely to have leaked the story and over the next several years will apply similar, and often increasing, opinion on this move in the hope that Apple will reverse its decision,” Rob Enderle theorizes for Technology Pundits.
Enderle scribbles, “With financial pressure increasing on Apple to execute and a likely sharp decline in Apple hardware sales prior to the new hardware hitting the shelves coupled with an already noted sharp decline in iPod sales…”
MacDailyNews Note: Truth break: Apple’s iPod sales are not “in sharp decline.” Goldman Sachs recently stated that iPod shipments are currently tracking in-line with its 5.35 million unit estimate this quarter. Apple sold 5.311 million iPod units during its fiscal 2005 second quarter ended March 26, 2005 and 4.58 million iPod units during its fiscal 2005 first quarter ended December 25, 2004. In its fiscal 2004 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2004, Apple sold 2.016 million iPod units.
Enderle continues, “Apple will be under an unprecedented amount of pressure to reverse itself but, given the lack of trust that was likely created by this move, that reversal, if it happens, will probably have an extremely limited result.”
“Regardless of that, over the next two years IBM is likely to place its considerable resources on forcing Apple to reconsider and reverse its decision. This type of approach will probably not have the desired effect if IBM is sourced as the instigator of this pressure. Intel will have to move to block this if they want to retain Apple and, of the x86 vendors, they remain the most powerful and arguably the most capable of doing this,” Enderle writes. “The battle between IBM and Intel for the hearts and minds of the Apple faithful will not only be interesting, it, for once, places Apple on Intel’s side.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As for Enderle’s anticipated “sharp decline” in Mac sales, there may well be a decline, but there is nothing that would stop us from purchasing a new Mac today. For years, software will be shipping as Universal Binary products. Which, simplified, means the CD or DVD contains both PowerPC and Intel versions of the application. For oddball developers (read: not mainstream) that fail to ship Universal Binary applications, Apple’s Rosetta will translate the PowerPC-only code of these applications on-the-fly for Intel-based Macs. There would be a performance hit for intensive apps, but any intensive app would offer a Universal Binary anyway. So PowerPC Mac owners will have native software for years and Intel Mac owners will have native software going forward and Rosetta translation for the odd Power-PC-only apps. Due to what we’ve seen regarding the relative ease of creating Universal Binaries, we’d say that PowerPC-only Mac apps will soon be a thing of the past.
If you need a Mac today or within the next year, hey, you need a Mac, so get it. It’s not going to stop working. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will run on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. Apple’s not going to stop PowerPC support for years. In all probability, by the time owning a PowerPC Mac ever becomes even a remote issue, you’ll long-ago have purchased a new Intel-based Mac.
Headline should read: “Enderle could only be nice to Mac users for a day, then had to come up with some new way to mess with them.”
This is a particularly lame tack, Rob. Get a life. Oh, wait, that would include having a brain. Sorry for the invonvenience.
If you need a Mac today or within the next year, hey, you need a Mac, so get it. It’s not going to stop working. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will run on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. Apple’s not going to stop PowerPC support for years. In all probability, by the time owning a PowerPC Mac ever becomes even a remote issue, you’ll long-ago have purchased a new Intel-based Mac.
Finally a decent, logical repsonse about the “my Mac is now obselete” cry. Bravo.
Finnally some sanity back to the mac universe, just to get back into the normal routine of things. Enderle, is like always, just full of crap coming from a cow with long horns.
At least some things never change.
It’s actually cleared up the decision to buy now. Knowing what the path is for Apple I can make judgements based on clear fact rather than wondering if there will be a G5 Powerbook. The highend fully loaded powerbook will meet my needs. I’m just waiting for Apple to drop the price to entice or add some new features for the same price. Can’t wait!
Someone needs to take Enderle’s microphone from him.
“Someone needs to take Enderle’s microphone from him.”
Don’t worry hammer, during the next earthquake Enderle’s iMac G5 is going fall over and land on him, killing him instantly.
Wont be long now
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Enderle should read up on computers. He does himself a misservice to write about things that he knows nothing about.
reverse its decision? go back to what..mendicant? IBM clealry showed it’s inability to carry through with Apple’s needs whilst juggernauting ahead for MS, Sony, Nintendo.
IBm had no reason to leak the info unless it adopted egg-on-your-face as a new style.
Given that the gentleman is simply expressing his views I hardly think the name calling achieves anything, Many will agree with him, many of you ( obviously) will not – c’est la vie. Given that we label ourselves as “thinking different” ( though not as much come next year) it might behoove us to behave less like religious fundamentalists on a rampage against Darwin and more like sentient beings.
Did anybody catch that part of the article that said, “in the hope that Apple will reverse its decision”? How could Apple reverse their decision NOW? Even if IBM makes a faster, cooler running processor; Apple has basically said INTEL is better right? What am I missing?
Someone please come to my aid.
It’s a done deal.
And it wasn’t IBM that leaked the story to cnet. It was Apple.
Ok, now that Apple is going to use Intel, are these Windows evangelist going to say anything about the transition? Like do they think its a good thing? Seriously, they always have something to bitch about for Apple, and half the argument was always hardware. Now that Apple is switching, what are the bozo’s going to talk about, Mac OS X??? Not really, because they already no it’s the best and their Longhorn is so far away.
MacOS X on Intel will come before 10.5 Leopard since Steve said we would have consumer MacIntels by this time next year (June 2006) yet Leopard will be released at the END of 2006. So, the first MacIntels will come with 10.4.1 or similar which Steve demonstrated on.
My concern is what if developers produce MacIntel-only programs i.e. not uinversal backwards to PowerPC, but this would be a bad commercial decision on their part.
Is Holy Mackerel the first to coin the term “MACINTEL”?
Without Apple, these crap writers like End-the-lie and Turd-rot will not be able to make a living bashing Apple and getting pay checks from MicroS@#t! These are Window whores whose pitiful life would be without purpose if they can not spread hatred through their writing. They should be thankful that Apple is strong and thriving so they can feed their family.
El Chicano,
Apple hasn’t said intel is better. Apple has said intel has the clearest path in the direction we want to go. What most people seem to miss here is that intel is clearly the best when it comes to power/heat issues, and that intel could allow apple to produce even better laptops and other “appliances”, but that if IBM or Freescale came back in 6 months and said, hey, we broke through 3 ghz or hey, we came up with a low-power g5, apple could easily add these to the mix. If each app can run on both ibm and intel machines, what is keeping them from using both in perpetuity?
I like this flexibility.
The big worry I have isn’t “universal binary” or Rosetta translating my ppc apps for the new Intel Macs.
Its will these techs translate the “new” Intel apps backwards for us? I fear as the macintel becomes the standard there will be developers that only ship Intel code. That way Apple “forces” everyone to upgrade by not supporting the older Macs.
Apple is bad about “forced” migration.
I don’t care; I like a new machine every 12-18 months anyway. But, I usually don’t “have” to upgrade my software unless I want to. And there are a lot of people that keep a machine a lot longer than that, like 5 plus years. All this talk is about “don’t worry your apps will work just fine when you get a “new” machine”. What happens to them? I know that after a while everything becomes legacy and unsupported. I know I can’t run Photoshop CS2 on System 6, but 6 is over a decade old. This change could occur “unnaturally” soon.
Enderle isn’t really bashing Apple here. He may not be correct, but he does qualify his opinions by stating “we believe” instead of “this is how it is.” There is no reason to get so upset about this piece.
“Truth break: Apple’s iPod sales are not “in sharp decline.” Goldman Sachs recently stated that iPod shipments are currently tracking in-line with its 5.35 million unit estimate this quarter.”
– And does Goldman Sachs count each unit that sells? No, so their estimate is exactly that, an estimate. Other sources say there are stockpiles of iPods in inventory due to slowing sales. So who’s right? You CAN’T know until actual sales figures are released.
If you guys want to bash Enderle for skewing facts to support his conclusions, well, MDN is doing the exact same thing.
El Chicano: Nope, he’s not. I’ve been using the brand name MacIntel@ for a couple of days now.
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Think of the enviable position Apple is now in…they can buy processors from four different manufacturers across two processor families and choose the best for each individual product at the time their needs arise.
And, if another family comes out with something big, Apple can probably take that on to.
Sweet!!!!!
Hammer said:
“Someone needs to take Enderle’s microphone from him.”
That means someone would have to get close to his hairy butt and extract the mike from from his deformed anus, since this is the part that is doing his talking. Good luck finding such a beast…
Oh wait! we _DO_ have such a PC butt kisser here! Stantheman, come here buddy, we got a job for you! You finally going to have a chance to make yourself useful around here, and earn a ounce… err, ok, a fraction of an ounce, of our respect! Lucky you!
FUD.. what a whiner
Considering that Mr. Jobs was apparently doing his demo on a four processor, ultra high-end P IV system, just to get Rosetta to run acceptably, speaks volumns.
None of this bodes well.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1117
(article has been jerked in the last few minutes! Interesting!)
The whole piece is based on a faulty premise.
“Given IBM was the beneficiary of the leaks …”
IBM was not the beneficiary. Steve Jobs was and (as deep inside intel notes, probably the leaker). Go back and look at the keynote. Clearly Jobs knew that his audience knew all about it. In fact, Jobs even made a visual joke about the transition, using the subscripted Intel “e” in one of his slides.
Jobs wanted the audience to be aware of the possibility of a switch so they would be prepared to listen to the details instead of being stunned about the switch. If no one had known, I bet there would have been some boos when Jobs dropped the bombshell. As it was, the developers were not stunned, they were intensely curious, just like us. The whole session ended in applause, and there were many applause lines during the presentation of the transition. Even the Microsoft Mac BU manager was applauded.
I’ll also bet (another easy bet since we’ll never really know) that IBM is somewhat pleased at the transition. Supposedly IBM was not making much money on the PowerPC for Apple, with the constant need to make the chip faster or cooler or both. IBM would much rather settle upon three designs it could use for years for each of the game manufacturers. Moreover, IBM didn’t have to worry about competing with its own servers by creating faster chips for Apple to use for Xserve.
Enderle is such an idiot.
It was only a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4. Where is this four processor stuff coming from?