On 17 Aug 2005 at 15:31, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 17 Aug 2005, at 2:31 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > On 17 Aug 2005 at 13:53, Darcy James Argue wrote: > > > >> The whole point is that after years of being > >> shackled by Motorola's and IBM's disappointing production, Apple > >> had little choice but to go with x86 processors or continue to be > >> left behind (especially w/r/t portables). > > > > I thought that reason for the switch had been shown to be bogus, > > just an excuse to mask their real reasons for the switch, which > > remain obscure? > > Not at all. IBM has denied it, of course, but since both Intel's and > IBM's long-term roadmaps are secret, we have no way of knowing if the > Apple line about long-term power-per-watt with Intel vs. IBM is > correct. Nonetheless, it's certainly true *today* -- Intel has > powerful, low-power notebook processors and IBM doesn't. That's > reason enough for switching.
Except that IBM has made announcements of other chips that could do the job if Apple wanted to use them. It's clearly *not* an IBM technology problem, despite what Apple may be claiming. > It's also true that the G5 line has been *very* disappointing for > Apple. Steve Jobs promised 3.0 GHz G5's within a year of their > unveiling -- IBM didn't deliver. We were supposed to have G5 > PowerBooks by now -- IBM didn't deliver. IBM's defense basically > amounts to -- "Well, we *could* have met Apple's demands. We just > didn't want to, because Steve Jobs is such a prima donna, so we > ignored him and focused on other things." That's not at all what I heard. The excuse given was that IBM's price to produce chips with the performance Apple wanted was too high. > Regardless of whether that's true, there's clearly a lot of bad blood > between the companies, and Apple is such a tiny part of IBM's > business that it was always going to be difficult for Apple to get > IBM to devote resources to developing and manufacturing the G5 they > might otherwise devote to, say, their XBox and Playstation chips. Of > course, Apple will be a tiny part of Intel's business too, but at > least Intel's primary business is making desktop and notebook PC > processors. Have you read Robert Cringely's articles on this subject? See especially: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050714.html -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
