Apple shifts to Intel: what is all the fuss about? | The Register — Here is an excellent analysis of the Apple Mac-Intel platform shift. I’ve noticed that the many PPC advocates seem to be in denial right up until the Jobs announcement. One fellow (a Mac online columnsit) even says that the announcment MUST be about Intel second sourcing the PowerPC chip! That one had me rolling in the aisle.

First, understand the key fact: a Mac built out of an Intel CPU and Intel system logic will be no more a PC than a Mac is today. Two things make a Mac: the operating system and the hardware design. It is not, for the vast majority of users, what kind of processor it contains.

Most of the components that go into that hardware are already coming straight out of the wider Wintel world, and have been since Apple began ditching proprietary specifications like NuBus and ADB, and expensive standards like SCSI, in favour of USB, Firewire, UItra ATA, Serial ATA, PCI and AGP.

Mac hardware today differs from PCs solely in the CPU, system logic and the motherboard they sit on. You can argue that PowerPC is a ‘better’ chip than x86 equivalents, but it’s difficult to demonstrate a clear, real-world advantage between the two platforms. Some benchmarks show the Mac’s superiority, others don’t. The G5-class PowerPC 970 certainly hasn’t retained the low-power benefit of the old G4 and looks no closer to notebook-suitability now than it did when it was launched.



  1. In the early 80’s, Apple owned the PC market, but couldn’t hold on to it. I’m now supposed to believe this “brilliant” marketing team can somehow fight back from a 3% market share?

    It’s not that Apple couldn’t hold it… they were and still are TOO focused on locking customers in to their OS with their hardware. This is ultimately why M$ will fail with FogHorn if they continue to try and lock in customers, to the server or with their document archives.

    iPods aside this same strategy will absolutely fail for Apple when they switch to INTEL. And they will become their own victim of their own PR… years of the PowerPC is a supercomputer inside… meh! Consumers will say hey wait a minute… everything but the BIOS and OS are the same so why does this Apple thing cost 40% more… yup that’ll bring ‘m in – in droves SteveO!

    Even with the “roaring” success of iTunes and the iPod only 4% of US households with Internet access used a legal music store. AND users tended to be over 30 years old and in a higher income bracket.

    Younger people are still more likely to use P2P services, with older people more likely to be deterred by the possibility of legal action by the record industry. – According to the NPD Group’s Music and Movies Division. – Maybe because most “younger” people can only afford a $80 MP3 player. hmmmm

    What’s important to remember is Apple for ALL is PR and all of Steven Jobs jaw flapping only has a pitiful 3% share of the market. Supercomputer sized BS maybe. PC killer… not a chance!

    Jobs is just too afraid of competing with the big boys head to head. He loves to rub Windows users noses in their own shit but seems to be just too damn afraid to let the real free market decide of Apple is really the best damn 3% market share OS ever! LOL!

    He “could” do the same thing with iTunes… let other MP3 players work completely with iTunes (value-add the service for iPod users) and let the free market decide. Crippling other players simply drives people who might want to purchase and will eventually purchase music legally (if iTunes worked properly with the “regular” MP3 players), back to other less legal sources. You see more kinds will use iTunes to rip and share their CDs and other music… NOT to buy music… cause we all know every 15 year old has a credit card for online purchases… riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightt? meh!

    Apple’s crippling of iTunes to drive their iPOD sales is no less legal then the music companies controlling the distribution and prices of CDs. They’ve just agreed to split the booty of their monopolies… Apple gets the iPOD cash and the RIAA gets the music cash.

    And the consumer still does not have free choice… and P2P sharing continues virtually unabeited and continues to innovate beyond locking consumers in!

  2. Walter Kerschbaum says:

    The BeOS example: In all the comments on Apple’s moving to Intel processors, not one from the big professional commenters has pointed out the example of BeOS’ move to an Intel-based version of its operating system.

    BeOS was the brain-child of Jean Louis Gassé formerly of Apple who went out on his own and produced an excellent new operating system in the mid 90’s. Fast, stable it had everyting going for it except users. It ran first on an Apple compatible machine; new users. Then Be made a version for Intel machines, and the number of users took off. Being able to use less expensive hardware was the key.
    Steve Jobs who certainly followed the BeOS experience with interest now looks to be following in its footsteps; only this time the number of users will go from a few hundred thousand in BeOS case to multiple tens of millions who will sign on to an Intel-powered Mac OS X system and breathe a collective sigh of relief at having left the wonderful world of Windows behind. Most former BeOS users made the switch to Mac OS X a long time ago.

    Bravo! Jobs

  3. Mike Voice says:

    I completely disagree. Would you prefer a super fast box with BSD Unix or a moderately fast machine with OS X?

    Are we talking personal-use, where asthetics are of prime importance – or professional-use where time is money?

    Since I use my Mac at Home, “moderately fast” is acceptable to me.

    If I was trying to make a deadline, I believe the fastest performance would be of interest to me.

    Not because the hardware was particularly special, but because it had their spiffy logo on it.

    Yeah.

    I remember reading about Shake customers, when Apple bought the program and made all future-releases Mac-only.

    I’m sure the PC-version users were all happy to be required to either find another program to use, or buy Macs.

    I’m sure that people who already have PCs are thrilled that they have to buy a Mac if they want to run Final Cut Studio or Logic Pro.

    My question is: How many people would be buying Macs [for the spiffy logo] if Final Cut sucked? If iLife sucked? If Logic Pro sucked?

    I’d add “if MacOS X sucked?” – but a lot of OS-9 users think it does! 🙂

    The interesting point will be if the Intel-CPU Macs can boot Windows. I’m curious to see how many people jump at the chance to run XP on a Mac – just for it’s perceived [rightly or wrongly] hardware quality.

  4. Thomas says:

    > Are we talking personal-use, where asthetics are of prime
    > importance – or professional-use where time is money?

    Perhaps I should have posed this differently. Would you rather have a user-hostile OS on a really fast box or a user-friendly OS on a moderately fast box? Especially in the professional world, user-friendly interfaces improve productivity and reduce costs.

    If the original Mac OS had been shipped in standard PC-style box, it still creates a revolution. If Windows 1.0 had shipped in a Mac Classic style box it still languishes until Windows 3.0.

    > My question is: How many people would be buying Macs [for
    > the spiffy logo] if Final Cut sucked? If iLife sucked? If
    > Logic Pro sucked?

    Firstly, when the Mac was released the only software you could get was MacWrite (which wasn’t bad for its day) and a few other mostly useless programs. It still sold thousands of copies. Secondly, we are still talking about software. Apple is a software company. Their hardware is secondary to the core of what makes them Apple. AFAIK, they do not design any of the circuitry for any of their hardware. They simply layout the form factor and have someone else “make it so.” Apple’s marketing schmos conned people into thinking they were a hardware company because of the past high margins Apple got on integrated solutions. However, to be a hardware company, you need be designing more than the shiny box.

    Without the software Apple does not exist. With only standard hardware but their OS, Apple still exists but isn’t quite a profitable.

    Regarding the running of XP on a Mac/Intel box, from what I understand, Apple is going to play the same sorts of games with the BIOS that Microsoft did with Xbox in terms of limiting what people can do with the equipment. Yes, that also means that there will be people out there that hack up a Mac and most likely put Linux and perhaps XP on it. There are a lot of people out there that have a lot of time on their hands. ;->

  5. Mike Voice says:

    “Secondly, we are still talking about software. Apple is a software company.”

    How can I have an argument with you, if you keep agreeing with me!

    ;P


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