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Re: Why still using Apple II?

Sean Fahey wrote:

"bob" <bob@home.net> wrote in message
egbba15mspdjtp62h6sb3fdp4pr0v3c0u8@4ax.com">news:egbba15mspdjtp62h6sb3fdp4pr0v3c0u8@4ax.com...



It was bound to happen.  Do you honestly think IBM is willing to
invest more money in newer PPC designs for a machine that has a
microscopic installed base ?



Certainly - several of IBM's server offerings are PPC based, and they're
ramping up processor production for game consoles. The PPC architecture is
used in far more applications than just Macintosh.


But the PPC designs that are appropriate for servers have quite
different cost and thermal requirements than a processor for a
desktop machine.  That shows up in the liquid cooling required (!)
for the top Macs.

The fact is that the desktop belongs to the volume processor--and
that has been Intel for two decades.


Apple couldn't get enough commitements on units and future development on
PPC because IBM is going to concentrate on the relatively static, high
volume processor production. Less risk, less R&D, good cash flow.


Exactly.  And Apple could have had all the _server_ processors it
wanted, for a price that was too high for the desktop.


It's also the right time for Apple to make the switch to Intel. Zealots
aside, the PPC isn't what makes Apple "special". It's the functionality, the
brand, the design style and philosophy. As long as OS X "just works" on x86
as it did on PPC, then Apple will have a winner. By using Intel, more people
will be inclined to switch, especially if they can dual boot or emulate (ie
wean) themselves off of Windows and all the insecurity that comes with it.
It's clever that Apple's next OS X is codenamed "Leopard" - because it's
truly a leopard that will have changed it's spots.


I agree that the processor inside is invisible to Mac users.  There will
be a small shockwave that goes through the Mac developer community, but
Apple will provide good tools, and many of them are already developing
for both PPC and x86 platforms, so it will be muted.


If anyone should be worried, it's Microsoft. They've got a real competitor
in OS X on the desktop now - Linux didn't cut it. It took Apple to make *nix
on the desktop a widespread viable reality.


On the contrary, that ship has sailed.

Apple had the opportunity to give Microsoft a run for their money in the
early 1990s--by porting the Mac OS to the PC--and they elected not to do
so.  Win95 all but closed the (perceptible) gap in ease of use between
the Mac and the PC, and, from that point forward, there has been no
compelling value proposition for the Mac versus the Wintel PC.

Now Apple has that opportunity again (albeit from a much less
advantageous market position), and could make OSX available for
the PC.

If they were to do that, they would face direct competition on the
hardware front, since a Dell could run OSX as well as an x86 Mac.
Apple has decided in the past that this would be disasterous for
them, since they found that they could not compete in a Mac clone
market--they are simply too addicted to high hardware profit margins.

If they were to make OSX available for PCs, they would become a
software company, and they have always felt that they could not
survive as a company as _just_ a software company (Microsoft's
example to the contrary--of course at this lateentry date, they
are probably right).

The second problem they would face if they were to make OSX
available on the PC is the same one faced, with limited success,
by Microsoft:  supporting almost infinite numbers of machine
configurations with acceptable reliability.  The magnitude of
this "certification" problem is vastly underestimated by almost
everyone, and is the primary source of PC unpredictability.

At this point, "predicatabliity" is perhaps the primary value
proposition of the Mac over the PC, and it is largely achieved
by grossly limiting the number of supported hardware configurations.
If Apple were to attempt to support the full range of PC hardware
variations, either this value would be lost, or the cost to maintain
it would grow exponentially.

So Microsoft has little to fear from this move.

Intel is a winner, clearly, but the Mac base represents only about
one year's worth of growth, so they will not be overly jubilant.
After all, they never really regarded IBM as their competitor,
and Moto has been out of the picture for years.

-michael

8-voice music synthesizer using NadaNet networking!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/