On 17 Aug 2005 at 21:28, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 17 Aug 2005, at 9:19 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > >> 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. > > I believe those announcements all happened after Steve had already > decided to cut his losses and the switch to Intel was a done deal.
You think those chips were not in development long before Apple made its announcement? You think IBM said "Oh no! We've got to come up with a chip! To the labs, boys!" and two weeks later announced a finished dual-core processer? No, it was there all along, and could conceivably have done what Apple needed, but Apple had already decided, for other reasons, to abandon IBM. > If low-power, low-heat, mobile-ready G5 processors were available in > volume and at reasonable prices, say, a year ago, then why didn't > those chips ever make it into PowerBooks? The Intel chips that Apple is going to use don't yet exist, either. > Intel has low-power, low-cost notebook-ready chips *now* -- in fact, > they've been shipping them for some time now. That alone would be > reason enough to switch. Taking the time to re-architect your flagship OS (however much you've worked all along to try to ensure cross-compatibility), as opposed to waiting a few months for the new IBM chips? It doesn't make any sense to me on technical grounds. To me, it looks like a purely political move on Apple's part. What their agenda is, I can't say, but I don't think it had anything to do with the stated technical reasons, at least not regarding the chips available to them in the next 12-18 months. -- 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
