“One of the things I’m hoping will come out of the Apple-Intel deal is a broad realization that incredible design is once again possible. Over the years the hardware OEMs have consistently used Intel and Microsoft as reasons they can’t build really cool products. Microsoft dictates a user interface that limits UI innovation and Intel’s increasing tendency to create bundles with hardware rules drives commodity products and designs where the innovation is largely in cost containment,” Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld.
“Apple, historically, has been the one company that starts with a great design and tasks the engineers to build it. This is in sharp contrast to the typical Wintel PC approach, which is based on a standard configuration and is then cosmetically altered. Of the standard OEMs, only Sony and IBM, now Lenovo, occasionally embraced the Apple methodology,” Enderle writes. “If Apple regularly demonstrates an ability to build exciting designs using Intel parts, it will go a long way towards moving the industry into more an era of exciting products overall. This might not be great for Apple but it would be wonderful for those of us that love design and use Windows.”
Full article, in which Enderle also doesn’t see Intel and Apple partnering very well, here.
MacDailyNews Take: While still laughing over the line, “those of us that love design and use Windows,” we must point out that Windows OEMs’ lack of design capability has nothing to do with Intel and everything to do with having to compete mainly on price and not caring at all about design, since the OS they’ve all locked themselves to provides zero differentiation. The Intel parts are not radically different physical shapes than the IBM and Freescale parts inside Macs today. Apple simply cares about design and gives it import in their design process. Apple can afford to do this because they are different and have Mac OS X. Of course, Apple will regularly demonstrate their unique ability to build exciting designs using Intel parts, because it’s not the parts that dictate exciting designs, it’s Apple and Steve Jobs who’ve been leading personal computer design for decades.
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“those of us that love design…”
…okaaay…
“…and use Windows…”
BWAAAAAH… HAHAHAHA! AAAH…HAHAHHAHAHA!! oh, stop! i cant take it!! thats rich!! AAAAAAHHHH….
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA! YAAH-HAHAHAHAHA!
first.
…and dont hate the playa.
Apple’s integration of Intel will be nothing like the current and prospective state of PC’s, Intel, and Microsoft.
Comparing the result of Apple and Intel cooperation with Windows is like saying that riding in a Bentley and a Yugo are both similar forms of vehicular transportation.
What a maroon this Enderle guy.
Most people don’t appreciate good design, especially a lot of Americans. It’s unfortunate, but it’s inarguable.
So many people want the bathroom fixtures that “look so good in the magazine” but they give no notice to how badly they perform . . . or fit their bodies. “Honey, I barely fit on this standard toilet!” . . . “Honey, this faucet doesn’t come out far enough from the edge of the sink, I can’t get my hands under the water!”
Same with kitchen design — why bend over to load a dishwasher? Why keep heavy pots and pans down near your shins? Why not have kickplates and toekicks that flip down so you can sweep your kitchen floor clean, sending the dirt right downstairs to a receptacle?
It’s sad that all of this absolutely horrible design began spilling over into computers and their opertaing systems 25 years ago.
Thank you Windows and Microsoft.
Enderle writes. “If Apple regularly demonstrates an ability to build exciting designs using Intel parts…”
Why would Apple NOT be able to produce impressive, drool-worthy and marketable designs using Intel parts? They’ve been able to do it with parts from a whole host of other companies up to now, with spectacular results – what at Apple will have changed between then and now? Not much, I’m pretty sure.
What a silly comment. Oh, wait, it’s Enderle.
well…from those of us who love great coffee and drink instant I’d have to say that those of you who love great design and use windows are out of your mind!
now you’ll have to excuse me…i have tickets to the kevin federline concert tonight and i LOVE great music.
Oh, so he wants a really cool machine that locks up with spyware and adware after ten minutes!
let them suffer
You know, ‘them’ will soon be ‘us’. It’ll be interesting to see if we still get it when they all arrive and are the majority. ‘We’ might not, you know. Wouldn’t that be something .. if we didn’t get it anymore .. brrrrrrrr. heh
Well dual core flash based, cd less, nano notebooks are coming real soon.
There are plenty of people that love design and use windows…
I was one of them 2 years ago, back when i thought i hated apple (all my experiences with macs had been full of crashes)
MW: how, as in HOW can you guys be so ignorant?
Clyde said: “Oh, so he wants a really cool machine that locks up with spyware and adware after ten minutes!”
This is not a joke…my sister got an eMachines Wintel box a while back. The thing is on dial-up and has so much spyware and viruses that it won’t even allow her to do ANYTHING. The whole thing is locked and rebooting it does nothing to help.
Besides…you can dress up a pig however you want, but it’s still a pig. Good design or no, Windows will always suck.
Apple should get an injunction to prevent this arsehole from writing anything at all about Apple…
Whatever he writes, it always makes me puke.
The only design bucketloads of people care about is….price.
Design is an attitude I’d say. You either want to build products which have great design (and one hopes they are functional as well), or you want to build products which have dozens of features, probably sell well and make you lots of cash but don’t win any awards in the style and/or usability stakes.
I think Sony’s fiasco with walkman music players of recent time falls into the latter. Microsoft definitely falls into the latter as well. Companies which choose the former as a main goal are quite rare (certainly in electronics anyway), and even then over time, they’ll often switch between the two broad choices I suggested above depending upon who’s running the business (H.P. is a good example of this.)
I think Sony’s range of VAIO notebooks are quite sexy though (compared to other wintel notebooks), so I guess it just depends upon which department you work in at Sony (I have a TiPB btw.)
As for Enderle’s comment “Microsoft dictates a user interface that limits UI innovation and Intel’s increasing tendency to create bundles with hardware rules drives commodity products and designs where the innovation is largely in cost containment.”
I don’t necessarily agree with the first part. Apple’s interface is probably less changeable than Microsoft’s (at least from a user’s point of view.) The cost issue is definitely what stops vendors from doing great designs on the case/presentation side of the hardware (PC users typically want cheap which rules out all but the most basic of cases.) But overall, there’s nothing really stopping the manufacturers from thinking about design from the beginning… except that I don’t believe it’s part of their agenda.
Fookin hell, check out his computer, it’s on his predictions page, I have never seen anything sooooo ugly, before and after it was ‘decorated’. I must go and stroke my mini now!!
I wish Apple would bring back some great designs:
1) handles on iBooks (ie toilet seat/clamshell iBook)
2) put back the on/off button on extended keyboard (at least to sleep, wake or shutdown, even if it cannot start it up)
3) return the on/off button to the front (i.e. mini & eMac) rather than the side
4) bring back a height-adjustable flat screen monitor (like the luxo iMac, but screen-only is enough for use with mini) as it’s great ergonomically for secretaries who share desks & computers
5) make all Macs as easy to open as the Mac LC (the iMac and mini have started a really BAD trend) to help Apple store and corporate support staff
I wish Apple would fix some designs:
1) replace the stupid symbols on the keyboard (home, end, pgup, pgdn) with something understandable or more standard (maybe use the symbols in menus only)
2) make the ‘speak highlighted text’ a standard button (I have it set and use it constantly)
3) make the iPod much more integral to the Mac rather than an attachment e.g. let it plug into the chassis somehow and choose to log in as the iPod’s account as a shared directory
4) provide an Apple laptop-stand/docking station for the thousands of us who use the laptop as a portable 20% and desktop 80% of the time (ergonomically the screen is much too low on a desk). Maybe a height-adjustable 17″ monitor with built-in docking station with space to plug in an iPod (power, USB & speakers) and bays for additional hard drives. Well I can dream, can’t I?!!
5) a tiny keyboard plug in for the iPod to add simple notes, calendar items and address book details
6) a iPod to iPod connector so you can pass on contact details, presentations, files, podcasts, but not paid songs etc.
“those of us that love design and use Windows,”
Kind of like saying, “those of us who love high quality products and shop at Wal-Mart”.
All I can say about “those of us that love design and use Windows” is “EWWWWWWWWW…..”
Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but maybe he is implying coveting the Mac experience.
Translation:
“Those of us who love design but HAVE to use Windows…”
Just a guess…
is Enderle actually suggesting that he’ll get a Mac? what’s the point..? Different chipsets.. the dual boot thing?
So Enderle will be a complete TOOL and get an Intel Mac to exclusively run WINDOWS?!
Huh?
You ought to call the take the “MDN Testimonial.”
Oh, and wipe your chin off…
Rob’s off his meds again! His writings should be collected and called “Diary Of A Madman.”
As long as it run’s Apple OS, it the same crapola. An average computer user doesn’t care what’s inside, as long as it’s has the Apple logo on it and it’s sold at the nearest Apple Store.
Who cares about the design when you build it yourself.
http://www.newegg.com
What’s inside is the most important thing.
It not Windows, it’s the user and his crap computer. Bank of America runs on Windows, log into your account now. Did it crash? No
“It not Windows, it’s the user and his crap computer. Bank of America runs on Windows, log into your account now. Did it crash? No.”
It may have not crashed, but I’d bet someone has your account and PIN number.
I was one of them 2 years ago, back when i thought i hated apple (all my experiences with macs had been full of crashes)
Let me guess, you used Norton Utilities, right? Worse thing that ever happened to naive Mac users.
MDN, why do you keep giving Enderle hits? Is he paying you?
Rob
You need to take a look at Apple OS X….you will never want to go back to Windows.
Rob…get a life.
” Enderle writes. “If Apple regularly demonstrates an ability to build exciting designs using Intel parts”
Excuse me Mr. Enderle, but Apple is the only one that demonstrates the ability to build exciting designs period. It doesn’t matter what kind of processor or part manufacturer is inside and never was limited in that way ever. The biggest factor is that they control the hardware and the software and combine them to work together seemlessly. This is something that neither Dell or Microsoft can ever do because they only have part of the whole widget.
MDN, why oh why do you keep carrying this jellly fish’s rabblings. Why MDN? Why?!?
PC Builder said: “Who cares about the design when you build it yourself. What’s inside is the most important thing.”
I checked newegg like you suggested and found no way to build a decent OS which, I think everyone recognizes, is the most important thing inside a computer.
If it runs windows, it makes no difference if the hardware is made out of pure platinum and the CPU runs at 20Ghz. And PC Builder, would you spend even a minute building your own toy computer when you can get a real one from Apple for $399?
My time is worth something, is not yours as well?
Those of us who welcome widespread corruption and hate democracy voted for Bush and Cheney. Welcome to OUR world!
Once again proving that Rob Enderle is the biggest “tech analyst” buffoon out there. How does this guy get work? He is always wrong!
too bad rob doesn’t realize design is found inside and outside macs.
pc makers left out the design inside the machine when they signed contracts with microsoft.
come on sony, hp, and dell-there are even linux desktops with guis better thought out than windows. there are alternatives to the sh!t microsoft peddles.
Hey folks, I’ve got a 15″ TiBook with half the paint peeled off that says even Apple can fuck up a design element from time to time.
Why don’t we all just wait and see what’s to come, analysts and MDN fanbois alike, before we render final judgement?
Switching gear a little bit, to me what was most interesting was the following statement,
“On both sides of this partnership you have companies that are bad at partnering, according to feedback from their partners.”
We all know Apple’s track record. Anyone know much about Intel’s approach to working with it’s partners? Sooner or later, the Cinderella period with Apple will end.
If Intel is indeed a pain to work with, Enderle may be correct this time. My prediction is if and when the clash becomes severe, Apple will announce it will be using chips from AMD also (which is who they should have partnered with in the first place – but that’s another story) due to “supply” problems. However the partnership with Intel will continue.
Peace. (And a Happy New Year.)
MDN take: “The Intel parts are not radically different physical shapes than the IBM and Freescale parts inside Macs today.”
If all we’re talking about are CPUs, then, um yeah. But IBM and Freescale don’t design motherboards or chipsets. Apple has done that for themselves, and a damn good job of it too. However, one of the big ‘selling points’ of going to Intel is how much Apple’s going to save on using their chipsets (Centrino, Viiv, Napa, …). Which makes sense economically, since Intel’s CPU prices – even the preferred version – are still higher than IBM’s or Freescale’s. Yet, how much of an impact I wonder will this have on Apple’s vaunted creativity of design. Apple get’s to do everything their way now – buying ‘off the shelf’ from Intel means they’ll inevitably have to compromise to the same extent every other commodity PC maker does.
“Apple simply cares about design and gives it import in their design process. Apple can afford to do this because they are different and have Mac OS X.”
Except soon they will really only have OSX to claim. To the extent they are different in other ways will depend on how well they can dress up the ‘standard manequins’ Intel provides to everybody. Now, don’t get me wrong – some people make a lucrative career dressing up manequins in store windows (especiallly in NYC). But still, no one confuses what they do with, say, the ‘needle & thread to runway’ designers at Ralph Lauren. It take a different level of creativity to do things from scratch and make it look and work great.
“Of course, Apple will regularly demonstrate their unique ability to build exciting designs using Intel parts, because it’s not the parts that dictate exciting designs, it’s Apple and Steve Jobs who’ve been leading personal computer design for decades.”
Except that it is “the parts” too. Sculptors do different things in marble as opposed to brass – the mediums dictate it. Painters who work with water color or oils have a much different product at the end of their effort, because both substances allow/dictate your doing different things. and of course sculptors and painters themselves create works which are entirely different.
Where I’m going with this is that the parts, no matter how you slcie it, ARE important in the creative processs. And while Apple and Jobs have done some great things, we must accept that up to now they’ve had the luxury of using just about any part they wanted. Using Intel parts – even if they’re really good – will put restraints on what Apple’s done thus far. It’s inevitable.
As for whether that turns out to be a manageable inevitablity, or one that trips Apple up more than we currently suspect is possible, neither MDN or anyone else is doing any good by taking a big swig of koolaid and singing “the sun’ll come out tomorrow …” It is purely a function of time – only it will tell what the tendancy will be – and our being objective enough to call a pig a pig if Apple happens to start making them.
@Beeblebrox. Well, too bad. I build a great PC for less than $1500. Way better than DELL and it hasn’t gone down in 7 months. No crashes nor lock-ups. Runs Windows XP and Windows 2000 just fine.
Sorry if you can’t configure.
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macnut222, then take your money out of your bank and put in under your bed. Most banks and Corporations run on Windows. And by the way, Macs have security issues too
DELL and most PC manufacures do spend time making the hardware work together. It’s the drivers that crash the OS. Apple’s OS uses custom drivers for their MacOS and their hardware DOES FAIL. A Toshiba burner is the same as a Toshiba burner on a PC. It’s just flashed for the Mac. Stop living in a Mac or PC dreamworld. Only the motherboard is designed and customized for Apple though a 3rd party supplier, which also manufactures PC motherboards too. They use ASUS as on as their suppliers.
What a boob. It’s amazing to me thta tos many think that the only reason Mac users are mac users is because the boxes are pretty. For someone like Enderle to say this as a self described expert makes it even more amazing.
Actually, considering this guy’s track record, I guess not.
Can’t take OSX out of the Mac and have the same experience.
Gosh, I was thinking how great it would be if one could drop OS X into a plain-Jane dual Opteron box…
I love Apple’s industrial design, but it is the OS that makes it for me.
I don’t mind his statement.
If he and others want to buy Apple hardware and put winblows on it, great!
Apple will sell more hardware which is good for its bottom line and good for its stockholders.