“Before getting into what Apple can do to turn its Mactel mistake into the pure gold of market opportunity, lets take a moment to think about how it got here,” Paul Murphy writes for ZDNet in a followup to this article. “IBM failed to meet Apple’s needs on both volume and performance while claiming to be making best efforts to meet those needs. At the same time those best efforts were failing, however, it successfully designed and built a three core, 3.2Ghz, Altivec equiped processor for Microsoft and a 4Ghz capable Cell board containing a G5+ master control CPU (again Altivec equiped) for itself and its partners Sony and Toshiba.”
“Apple’s decision to drop IBM as a supplier amounted to chewing off a leg to escape a death trap – sensible in the circumstances and something which would have been a non issue if Plan B had been updated in the last few years and a better alternative architecture selected,” Murphy writes. “Unfortunately, however, Plan B hadn’t been updated for years; they made the Intel decision, have now seen some of the consequences, and therefore face some tough choices.”
“So what can Apple do? Two things: 1) Re-establish the Mac as a premium product by dropping Intel as a CPU supplier and signing a three to five year deal with Freescale to use the e600 and subsequent e700 series processors. 2) Make the MacOS X integration shell and related Apple software available as a software only package for Linux. Taken together these two steps would strengthen the brand while buying developer loyalty, a new revenue stream, time, customer confidence, and market position,” Murphy writes.
Full article, in which Murphy concludes, “Steve Jobs, and Apple, could apply the Midas touch to MacTel simply by killing it -producing a far better outcome for Apple than the best they can hope for in sticking with Intel,” here.
MacDailyNews Take: Murphy’s really, really not happy with Apple’s Intel move.
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This guy is nutso!
Is he for real? Surely he must be joking? Right? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Where oh where do these freaks come from???? IBM screwed Apple, period. They had no choice. His options are a joke.
This guy has absolutely gone off the deep end. Just ignore his idiotic spewage…
Holy crap! First Dvorak, now this guy?
Is it April 1st? Why are the loonies crawling out of the woodwork today?!?
C’mon everyone! You too can be a tech analyst! It goes something like this:
I believe the only way Apple can be successful is to do the complete opposite of what they are doing right now. They should dump Mac OS X and use Windows, but they should switch back to PowerPC first. Of course, they’ll have to get Microsoft to port Windows Vista to PowerPC, and none of the existing Windows apps will run on it until they’re recompiled for PowerPC, but man Apple will sell millions of them!
Microsoft is desperate to dump Intel as is proven by their choice of IBM PowerPC based processors for the XBox 360, and they love Apple’s design talents as if evidenced by the amount of blatent feature rip-offs they have put in Windows for years. So I predict an alliance between Microsoft and Apple where Apple will adopt PlaysForSure WMA/WMV formats for the iTunes music store and iPod, and Microsoft will port Vista to PowerPC exclusively for Apple for a period of 5 years.
Then Microsoft will buy Apple, and Steve Jobs will take over as iCEO temporarily. A few years later, Steve will drop the “i” and oust Bill Gates from the company. Steve Ballmer will remain as Steve’s personal whipping boy. Then Microsoft will announce that they have been secretly developing the next major release of Mac OS X, and they will be replacing Windows with Mac OS X as the official operating system for all computers going forward. The new OS will be called Microsoft OS XI.
MS OS XI will have a compatibility layer called ‘doors’ that will allow you to run Windows apps within MS OS XI for backwards compatibility. The mouse will be replaced with a new erectile pointing device (EPD) that will be controlled by manipulating your penis. There will be an accessory available to women called the iPenisEnvy which will allow them to take advantage of this advanced erectile pointing device interface.
Then once everyone has adopted the EPD interface computing method, we’ll stop caring about every stupid idiot who has a prediction or advice for Apple because we’ll spend all day playing with ourselves.
Jobs knew these processor roadmaps..he chose the one with the best future for Apple. I don’t see Apple crying, do you?
Paul Murphy has probably never started a company or done much more than write. It’s easy to pontificate. Jobs & Apple are doing just fine, thanks very much.
BTW. writing is OK.
Murphy is an idiot. Apple needed a partner who could supply the volume, not only the types of chip it needed. It also needed a company with the depth of design talent for coming up with new generations of chips. Freescale would not give them that.
And the upcoming dynamic of getting Windows users to switch to the Mac depends in significant part on being Intel compatible. Apple made the smart choice.
It is difficult to change believes, wich for so long we thought to be all right.
Two careers, which has the lower requirements?
1) Develop vision for, raise cap. for, build, run, grow, lose, regain, rebuild and succeed with a world class company or two.
2) Four years of college with, hopefully, some Journo school, a tech writing gig with a blog on the side.
Them there hit trollers is shore in season this month! Stupid simple truism: Never take advice from someone more messed up than you.
I CANT BELIEVE THAT SO MANY PEOPLE WHO OWN MACS CAN BE SO WRONG. THE MOVE TO INTEL IS A DISASTER FOR APPLE. INTEL CAN NOT COMPETE WITH IBM. THERE IS NOTHING ON THE INTEL ROAD MAP THAT COMPETES WITH WHAT IBM HAS NOW. APPLE MIGHT CONTINUE TO USE INTEL CHIPS FOR VARIOUS GADGETS–AND PERHAPS CAN CONTINUE TO HAVE LAP TOP WITH INTEL CHIPS–AND MAYBE A MAC MINI–BUT THE APPLE PRO LINE MUST HAVE THE FASTEST AND BEST CHIPS AVAILABLE TO BRING THE DISTINCTION OF INNOVATION BACK TO APPLE. FOR APPLE’S FUTURE JOBS NEEDS TO START USING HIS HEAD.
Andy C.
You are a genius
There is part of this that isn’t nuts.
If Apple can successfully get all of its third-party vendors to build Universal Binary applications, then it’s free to offer computers with either chip type. It’s probably signed an exclusive deal with Intel for the next several years, but if Apple is smart (and has the leverage), then they could simply pick the best chip for the best machine–Intel chips for laptops, PPC chips for desktops, etc.
But simply switching back to Freescale wholesale is just so not happening.
Well, just using the word “MacTel” cheapens the brand IMO.
LISA:
On your keyboard, left hand side. Three keys from the bottom (look with me now, “Control”, “Shift”…) There! The one above that. See it?
CAPS LOCK
Turn it off! The little light should disappear, thus allowing you the full range of lowercase AND CAPITAL letters at your discretion.
Thankyouverymuch.
Apple should have stuck with PowerPC so my PowerBook G5 could be 5 inches thick and frequently overheat and catch fire like the new “fast” chips in the XBox 360. I love it when my computer consumes the entire battery life in an hour and burns my legs so hot in makes Jesus cry.
No, I’d say Apple made the better choice by going with Intel. I want a sweet laptop, faster does not always mean better. It has to be efficient too.
=)
And somehow we’re supposed to believe that a pseudo journalist (term used loosely) that has probably never worked in the high tech industry is supposed to have a better roadmap plan than Mr. Jobs & Co. Hmm, why do I not trust this?…
Jobs didn’t jump from IBM to Intel on a whim. I’m sure he’s been cooking the ideas for years. If, in fact, his plan is to eventually allow non-Macs to run Mac OS X, or to allow Windows to run on the Intel Macs, it would be a foolish choice to move to Freescale, or any other chip – AMD excluded.
We must remember that guys like this write because they can’t do anything else, and because they have to keep pumping out articles (no matter how ridiculous) to keep getting paid. And, as has been mentioned here, it seems that the more foolish the article, the more hits they’ll get.
Oh well!
LISA,
YOU’VE JUST PROVED WHY WOMEN SHOULD NOT HAVE OPINIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND LEAVE MEN TO OUR TOYS. :0
PLEASE CONTINUE.
We’ve had enough of the more than decade long disaster that was Motorola/IBM/Apple.
Please step into reality. Freescale makes chips for cell phones and childrens toys. IBM has grand non-economical ideas.
Intel delivers.
The most disturbing part of Paul Murphy’s article is what he doesn’t discuss, as in how would a dual processor freescale based Mac suddenly have so much more in performance. These numbers appear to come out of the air.
In a perfect world, it would have been great to keep the power PC based lines going with the new chips and minimal motherboard mods to keep the development costs down, but keep new product going to market, and going full bore with the Intel line… and let the market choose.
But in this real world, I’m going to sit tight and see what Apple announces. If it is Insanely Great, I’ll buy it. Paul Murphy, you should do the same.
Windows is planning on licensing OSX from Apple for the underpinnings to their operating sytstem, which up until now, have been based on a remarkaby simiar core that has existed since WindowsNT. Bill Gates said, “The XBox and XBox360 has revealed a new market that is far more lucrative than before.”
“This move won’t change Windows, which since the the move from 98 to 2000 separated the API from the core, can essentially run on anything. We have, for sometime, internally developed WinMin and WinLinux, both micro and macro versions of the API which run on microkernals, and were originally to be used underneath Vista to provide OS transparency to the hardware.”
“Vista has become a blackhole of development, at the same time both evaporating money and all the features we had originally expected for it. The move to using OSX will benefit both Apple and Microsoft. Windows Vista will, at its core be OSX but will be released to hardware providers as Windows Vista, and will include all the features touted, as OSX already has most of these fetures included.”
“It will basically be a tightly integrated OSX core with the Windows API, shell and GUI extensions to provide users with the Windows feel and compatibility for existing Windows applications. For users on older non-Intel based Macs, we will integrate a new version of VirtualPC which will run invisibly to provide x86 to PowerPC conversion.”
“Microsoft will refocus its huge volume of developers into new XBox content, and continue to work on providing universal accesibility to our diverse software library through Microsoft Live.”
In related news, Atlantis was seen rising from the East Atlantic today. Google commented that Google Earth will be updated shortly once their satellite can reposition itself.
Right on target. How many times yet will we be asked to change platforms?
How much time will we wait for Universal apps?
How much time will we still have to deal with Carbon apps and their ridiculous 32 file name limitations?
First they changed from 68k to PPC, then they completely changed the SO, now they changed the processor again and they are Mactels…
Srew that!
The ppc is way ahead of that x86 crap.
The pro Macs WILL have the fastest, most powerful chips available. And, by the end of this year, those will come from Intel. Just look at what Intel has in the pipeline!
That’s not so hard, is it?
Kate
Riiiight . . . you just go on believing that Lisa . . . Oh, and whilst you’re at it, perhaps you’d be so kind as to hit the caps-lock key.
So far, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the new Apple Intel products have received very good reviews. There is no reason to believe that PowerMac G5 replacement will not be just as well received. The Intel processor road map in not *perfect*, but it would seem to have perfect synergy with the products that Apple are looking to develop – industry best performance for the portable product and top of class performance with their high-end products in a few months time.
Do these guys ever check Amazon? It’s a pretty good public buying indicator and for the past 5 months Apple’s performed at these levels or higher.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/pc/all/ref=pc_tn_2/ref=sv_pc/104-7700153-4330341?_encoding=UTF8
It’s funny to watch you guys change your opinions and beliefs so quickly based on nothing more than what SJ says.