Pentium-Based Macs The Future of Apple? 817
seek3r writes "Found this interesting article on BusinessWeek.com regarding Apple's potential switch to Intel chips. I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support. Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel?"
Lack of competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I respect about the PowerPC chips is that the power consumption is drastically lower than for x86 chips. Drastically. It would be a shame to lose that and have everyone using 100 watt processors a couple of years down the road.
[*] Those few people are disproportionately loud.
Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Has Motorolla really fallen behind? Unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, despite my love for the mac platform, and my desire to claim that our hardware is "just as good"... it's not. RISC vs CISC stopped being an issue when Intel chips became RISC chips pretending to be x86's. PowerPC's still do more per clock than Pentiums, but the differences in clock speed, bus speed, and sundry other ephemerals has finally gotten to the point where for 90% of tasks, intel chips are just faster.
Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to switch until they pry my computer from my clenched, arthritic hands... but I can no longer look a computer-newbie in the eye and tell him that "Macs are just as fast". Better experiences, maybe... but as fast? No.
Of course, for most people, we're close to that point where chip-speed stops mattering... (maybe 1-2 more cycles of Moore's Law ought to do it.) How many people think about the speed of their computer while surfing, emailing, word-processing, or any such thing? (I know, I know, it's a cliche, but cliches are cliches because they're _true_.)
I think, business-wise, a switch to intel would be near-suicide for Apple. But Motorolla is dead in the water, desktop-computer-wise. Perhaps this theoretical IBM chip is the future... who knows?
You will NEVER see Mac's with Pentiums (Score:3, Insightful)
That's right folks. If OSX works on PC hardware, it has suddenly just become a competitor to Windows. What happens then? No more Mac IE, no more Mac Office. Suddenly Macs are nothing more than expensive linux boxes with a groovy desktop.
Apple can't "test" the waters by having some PPC boxes and some Intel boxes, they just have to jump head long into competition against essentially Dell for hardware and Microsoft for software. It'll never happen.
Never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
You will never see MacOS X running on a generic x86 "beige box". Apple developed MacOS X for the sole purpose of selling hardware, that's where they make all their money, despite charging for Jaguar. (Sun are the same with Solaris). In addition, the "just works" ability touted as a major Mac selling point would cease to happen once they could not guarantee with any certainty exactly what hardware their OS was running on - this is the real problem faced by Microsoft, most Windows crashes boil down to needing to have drivers for every conceivable piece of hardware supported, and being unable to prove them all.
An x86 based Mac will have sufficient custom hardware on its motherboard that you will still only be able to run MacOS on Apple hardware.
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhm, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
One: Apple's revenue comes from it's hardware sales. If people can go out and buy plain vanilla PCs and install MacOS on them for significantly cheaper than they can buy a Mac, Apple's income will drop a great deal.
Two: As others have said, Apple's been with IBM and Mot. for a Very Long Time (tm). There have been rumors equally as valid as this one about apple developing it's *own* chip for fabbing at IBM (a company, unlike Mot., who can actually get decent yields).
Three: Again, as others have said, it's more probable that Apple will go with IBM's next-gen 64-bit desktop CPU. IBM makes good chips. They're not big in the desktop market, but the Power4 has been a big server chip for a while now, and with good reason. It was one of the first dual-chip-on-die procs that actually made public usage (afik), and did a large amount of ass-whipping.
To conclude: Apple going x86 would be stupid.
Have a nice day.
2003 is going to be rough for apple (Score:5, Insightful)
But on the topic. So Apple has 3 choices:
1. Wait for Motorola to get their act together. All the code optimization in the world won't make OS X as fast as it could be. Jaguar, for example, made my B&W G3 REALLY responsive compared to 10.1.5. But it occured to me, that's probably the last speed boost from software. You can only go so far.
2. Get the new IBM chip working. Hey, fine, it'll probably work. But it'll take a year or more to get it ported, documented, and in production. It won't be cheap, most likely. It will most likely be fast and powerful, but Apple walks a fine line WRT price.
3. Get Intel working. Hey, fine. Port OpenFirmware to an Intel-type mobo, then ship a computer that runs NONE of the software outside of the core OS. Wait for developers to buy one of these new machines to recompile their packages. This is where proprietary software bites you on the ass - you can't just wander between architectures with your source tarball and hope for the best. Oh, and of course, Classic won't work, and you're going to be stuck with whatever devices are already "cross platform". YOu can't just pick up a device from CompUSA and expect it to work.
The only plus I see to OSX/x86 is that the possibility for cheaper hardware might mean more people picking up an OS X box, and maybe some more drivers will be written. I'd buy one in a second, except... the majority of stuff in my Dock probably wouldn't be "ported" in the first year. So if it's under a grand, say, what good does it do me? No MacSQL, no EV Nova, no Remote Desktop... I need that stuff.
Why is this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this so? Having never done dev work on an Apple I am pretty ignorant, but doesn't Apple release a basic API that doesn't change even when the underlying hardware changes (apparently not)? And why not release free tools into open source, so piles of developers are writing software for Apple for free?
still not cheap.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple makes its money on hardware, so no matter which processor is in the box, buying a Mac will be necessary to run OS X, and it will still cost big bucks.
-A
Re:Maybe it's not so bad... (Score:2, Insightful)
The OS is quite different, you are correct - but the thing that gives macs their amazing stability over PCs is that they control the hardware that goes into them....
This means that they can develop their OS to run on a limited hardware set, and they don't have to design their OS to deal with shoddy 3rd party device drivers.
Your assertion that this would lead to decreased costs and increased upgradeability is just wrong too -- most of Apple's revenue stream is based on hardware sales. If they were to switch to a Pentium solution, I guarantee (as the article mentions) that they would likely have some sort of mechanism built into the OS that would make it run on only on Apple branded and approved hardware..... Need I remind you that this is the company that modified its DVD burning software to run only on Apple branded DVD-R drives?
Re:You will NEVER see Mac's with Pentiums (Score:1, Insightful)
The last time I checked, my Mac was a whole lot more than an "expensive linux box" and my Linux box made a much better server than my Mac will ever be. So differences will remain in that aspect.
Re:Let me take a guess? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless this is mandated by law Apple should not touch this stuff with a 10 foot pole. They would gain leverage in the marketplace by offering computers free from this crap.
If they did this rip -> mix -> burn would have to be changed to rip -> ask for permission to play -> ask for permission to play -> burn? (are you of your mind, you can't do that)
If Intel pushes this palladium crap they deserve to be driven out of business, I don't care how damn many GHz these chips would run at, I'd consider any DRM enabled chip to be defective.
Costs (Score:2, Insightful)
this horse must be spinning in its grave (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally can't see it happening for several reasons, the number one being software. Apple has commited to the intel/moto design, which includes a cpu library (altivec). Any 3rd party apps if not rewritten will need to be run in some horrible altivec->intel emulation kludge, which will be nightmareishly slow, and defeat the purpose.
Slower than the cartoon we know as XP? - probably not, but still slow.
The other thing is power consumption/heat dissipation - for mobile applications intel/amd just plain suck up too much juice and run too hot.
Apple is currently suffering because its chip suppliers have not been producing faster ships at the rate they should be, but until next month (chip conference) its all speculation as to what apples' long term plans are.
I've read this guy's writings before, and I find it annoying that his article got slashdotted. Now he is probably an even more highly regarded hack.
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
You will NEVER see another Mac OS running on a third-party box. Somebody might crack the OS to run on a biege box, but they'ed never be able to distribute that crack, or even publish it. After all, Apple's lawyers are second only to Disney's in terms of vicious pursuit of trademark, copyright, and other IP infringement.
Speculation! (Score:3, Insightful)
What interests me is that Apple hasn't said anything about this matter so far. These rumours must have their impact on Apple's sales; if I'd run a Mac-based shop and have plans to upgrade my systems, I would wait until I'm certain about the future; if they're really making the move I may postpone the upgrade. Apple must know this and must know about the rumours. Now there are 3 possibilities:
1. They're thinking about the possibility of making the move but don't know yet. In this case they will probably not say anything about this matter because it increases uncertainty.
2.They're not thinking about a move at all. They would most certainly let their customers know this to take away any uncertainty.
3.They're indeed planning to move. They don't want to make this known too soon since it will most certainly make buyers wait until the new systems are on the market.
So. We haven't heard anything from Apple yet so we're probably dealing with case 1. or case 3. here. :)
Re:Let me take a guess? (Score:0, Insightful)
apple would not have a choice.
and even if they did have a choice, if adobe and Microsoft told them they have to, Apple would. oh no, photoshop and office on a mac
Re:Never happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:2, Insightful)
If Apple made an Intel machine that they 100% assembled, I'd buy it hands down. But Apple entering the custom built pc market? Its a train wreck waiting to happen.
psxndc
Re:Never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
People don't seem to realize that, just like cars, there will always be niche markets for people who want something special. The Linux guys are just like my dad & his friends who liked to rework their run-of-the-mill chevys into something special. Mac people are like the guys who buy jags, mgs and so on. Sure it will always be a small part of the market but that doesn't mean Apple can't make money doing it.
This article smells like a troll (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's go over this one last time. First, Apple will never release OS X to run on a generic Intel PC. If they did, they'd sell about 100,000 copies to geeks who don't want to buy Apple hardware. When those geeks find out that there's no software for OS X/Intel, they'll gradually move back to dual booting Linux and WinXP, leaving OS X as an interesting oddity like the copy of BeOS they installed once too. I mean, you can only watch the genie effect or transparent Terminal windows on top of a screensaver running on the desktop so many times before it gets old.
Let's not even get into the nightmare that it is to support every piece of crap cheapo PC hardware combination like MS has to. Apple does not want that, period.
Why will there be no software? Look at how long it took (and is still taking in many cases) vendors to update their software for OS X. Now imagine Apple pissing them off by telling them to recompile and retest under OS X for Intel. Sure, that part probably won't be as big as moving from OS 9 (unless they've got a lot of endian or other hardware specific code), but recall how long it took vendors to switch to PowerPC native code. Ain't gonna happen. Let's imagine: OS X Intel comes out; Apple tries to convince developers to support it, but they (wisely) wait and see how it goes. Nobody buys it, and software vendors see that it's going nowhere, so they don't bother with it. No software == no point. Good luck!
Furthermore, what's the incentive to port to OS X Intel if (a) it's a relatively small, untested market, and (b) more importantly, they already have a Windows version that works fine? Along these lines, for Apple to provide any sort of VMware-like Windows emulation under OS X Intel would be suicide for the platform. Application vendors would just tell their customers to run it under Windows/VMware. What then is the incentive to develop a version for OS X Intel?
For Apple to move their own hardware to Intel would also piss off a lot of people. They pulled it off once with PowerPC, but that was truly necessary. It went amazingly smoothly, but it was really a couple of years before PowerPC native apps starting showing up in numbers and the newest PowerPCs were fast enough to emulate the old 68ks as fast as the last ones. Does anyone really want to go through all that again? It would be a couple of years before Apple would even hope to be up to par with Windows in performance! Not gonna happen.
Sure, I don't doubt that Marklar exists. It does give them that last desperation option, when there's no hope for anything else. But perhaps more importantly, it serves to improve the OS X codebase simply by making it platform transparent. The one instance where I could possibly see an Intel-based product from Apple would be XServe. Just a thought - but if you're not likely to be running PhotoShop or ProTools or Quark on a server, perhaps an Apple branded unit with Intel would work out with all Apple server software.
The only intelligent thing Haddad says is in the second to last paragraph, where he essentially acknowledges that software would be the biggest roadblock. Developers will likely balk at the prospect of porting to yet another platform, and "without software support, the Mac would truly be dead." Exactly.
Of course, the most likely scenario lies with the rumors of the Apple/IBM collaboration on a next generation PowerPC chip. That's where I'd put my money. Nobody knows if/when G5 will ever come out and Motorola doesn't seem to care about the non-embedded market. Hopefully IBM can bring Apple back to the days when PowerPC really did crush the Pentium. We'll see.
Classic Bait and Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
PPC != Apple. You start by attacking the XServe, which may be deserved, and expand the attack to the rest of the PPC family. It doesn't wash.
G4 does not compete with Xeon. POWER4 (itself a wholely compliant PPC chip) does, and you know what it Smokes Xeon as a server chip. Xeon scales to what 8 way, with a contorted memory bus structure? POWER4 scales to at least 24 way, probably higher if IBM cared to offer something bigger and integrates onto a modern server crossbar switch.
If Xeon is so good, why aren't companies converting their Sun/Oracle installations to it rather than RS/6000 POWER4 machines?
Please spare us the classic bait and switch strategy of arguments.
Re:The G4 myth (Score:3, Insightful)
At work we benchmarked a large variety of systems and for our task (compiling a large software base) the PIII 1.4 was the best choice by far. Better than any P4, of course alot of that had to do with the fact that the PIIIs can be run dual CPU where the P4 cannot.
The PIII 1.4 has 512K of L2 cache on chip, this is the biggest difference. Also the PIII has a superior design; the P4 is a *huge* mistake that only Intel's gigantic momentum in the industry could allow them to get away with.
That being said, the PIII 1.4 is also quite expensive, $300+ per chip. I have no idea how much G4's go for but I'm guessing they are expensive, as are the top-of-the-line P4 chips. The athlons are alot cheaper but in our tests on-chip cache seemed to be supremely important and even the mighty and inexpensive Athlons fell to the PIII 1.4.
I make these points only because you seem to be suggesting that a "mere" PIII-1.4 bested a G4. I just wanted to make it clear that a PIII-1.4 is actually a very fast x86 processor, comparable to a 2.X Ghz P4, where X is > 4, especially on the kinds of benchmarks that c't was running
Uh uh. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not a good idea. All the while you're comparing Apples to Oranges no-one questions the difference. Start painting Apples orange and someone will notice that they're not very good Oranges.
Apple (the company that is) don't really give a stuff about benchmarks. To be honest the only people who care are the pro users and they're only a small part of Apple's sales. Apple would just love for consumers to never hear about benchmarks.
For writing letters to Mom and surfing the web a Mac is as fast as any PC. What Apple needs to - and indeed does - focus on is the user experience.
Apple want people to choose computers based on what would look good in their living room, not on abstract performance numbers.
Re:The G4 myth (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple sells the myth of G4 performance superiority with Photoshop benchmarks, thus convincing the gullible and non-technical people. Photoshop indeed performs better on a Mac because it is optimized for the platform[.]
This raises a question about the importance of benchmarks: if a technical magazine says your computer is slower, but the application you use the most every day (as many Apple users do Photoshop) runs faster on your computer, then who's being fooled? While we technical folks might tend to obsess over benchmarks, the masses of gullible, non-technical people only care about getting their stuff done as easily and as quickly as possible, regardless of the technical merits of the chip powering their computer.
Developers (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, yeah. That's why.
Imagine running an x86 Mac that has no native version of Office or Photoshop and runs PPC-based versions like molasses, but runs Windows versions at native speed. Imagine trying to convince developers to write for OS X instead of Windows at that point. Why should they bother?
Re:Let me take a guess? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not the chip speed, it's the bus speed. (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but not completely the reason. Don't discount the effect of Steve Jobs' killing of the Mac clone market, which shrank Motorola's market for selling its non-embedded PowerPCs to one vendor. This angered the company far more than the press would have you believe, since Steve Jobs single handedly kicked Motorola out of a market and left them with a huge stock of unsold systems.
If Motorola were really worried about the non-embedded PPC market, they would've allocated additional resources to the project long ago. There are plenty of smart people working there.
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's the same way. They really don't care about selling to 90% of the computer market. They care about selling enough machines, at sufficient profit margins, to keep the lights on and keep the talent employed.
The analogy, posted elsewhere, to cars is flawed and wrong. A better analogy is furniture and consumer appliances. Apple is more like Herman Miller or Bang and Olufsen. Herman Miller sells an $800 office chair. An $800 office chair! Do you think market share is their goal? Do you think their business model is based on conquering the office furniture market and hitting a 90% share target? Whatever.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The G4 myth (Score:2, Insightful)
And from pentium pro intel has always had much more of those. And improving it makes NO sence for embedded chip ala motorolas main market for it.
Another issue is that the P3 run software that was by far better optimized for it than mac has.
Now there is ONE thing that is coming along that can save mac...
Specs seem to say 8 instructions/cycle 200 instructions in flight at OOE, >1MEG ondie cache, second core ondie and 6.4GB/s bus.
Thats like double the speed of P4 bus...
Clock speed may lag compared to P4 or may not.
Depends how well IBM engineers get it tweaked.
BTW in floating point 2.8ghz P4 looses on 1.1ghz powerpc CPU. Yeps its the base of the cpu that will be used for the new chip that will be used at next summer at apple.
That will have die shrink too it would get at 2-4Ghz at launch for desktop. Cannot estimate maximum since the clock speed limitation was power consumption AND absolute reliability requirement that resulted much less agressive timings compared to desktop chips.
Motorola is BAD company for apple while IBM does much better.
A) IBM makes HIGH end servers/workstations
B) IBM makes POWERPC chips for those markets.
c) IBM will make desktop version of it for later.
A) Motorola makes embedded chips that must run with low power.->low max clock speed
B) those are powerPC chps too.
C) Makes desktop versions of it to sell Apple.
As you can see there is difference. And what apple gets next summer IS the thing that keeps it in high end for some time. Unfortunately many apple suporters will hold their purchases for apple until this thing comes out, since their current chips are desperately out powered, on unoptimized code.
Re:The G4 myth (Score:1, Insightful)
And anybody who's ever worked in creative production knows that the person in front of the machine is much more important than the machine itself, and a much bigger investment as well. If you're paying an artist $90,000 a year, you're going to get him whatever machine makes him happy. And he's going to ask for a Mac, because Macs are much more pleasant to be around than PC's. Go ahead, try to convince a production manager than he should throw out his Macs and buy an office full of PC's. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Actually, in retrospect, that'd be a pretty boring conversation to watch. You'd line up all your arguments for why Macs are slower than PC's and why PC's should be used instead, and then the production manager would just ask you to leave and go back to his job. Pretty dull stuff, really.
Re:Never happen (Score:1, Insightful)
IF Apple decided to jump ship, it would be in processor only. We wouldn't see Mac OS X running on run-o-the mill motherboards, it would be UNDOUBTABLY something customised by Apple to utilize an Intel processor, but the chipset would remain Apple controlled, meaning NO commodity hardware Macs anytime soon. Apple wouldn't have to support EVERY piece of PC compatible hardware -they wouldn't want to. Apple would continue their current practice of picking cards from Vendors and having them tailored to their OS, not the processor. If this were to ever happen it would undoubtably be in the form of an x86 chip surrounded by a whole mess of PROPRIETARY chips that make a Mac a Mac. There is a WHOLE lot more to a Mac right now than JUST a PPC, all of which is Apple controlled - that's why nobody else is making Mac-Clones right now - they don't have the chipset needed even though they can easily buy PPC chips.
Re:Uhm, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple sells $2k machine, gets 22% margin, or about $440 out of the machine.
Apple sells $130 box, gets 60% margin (wildly generous guess), or about $80.
So instead of selling 2 million Macs, they have to sell 11 million boxes of OS X to make the same amount. That's a significant amount to make it worthwhile.
That's what *your* post seems to suggest should happen.
The parent poster, however, was talking about Apple making a AMD or Intel powered PowerMac; Apple would *still* sell 2 million Macs, and they would *still* cost $2k, but instead of a $440 margin, they get a $480 margin cause the chips are *cheaper*, and they also get *faster* CPUs (by about, 600MHz, and an innumerable amount of IPC).
So, not measuring the transition costs, Apple could get an additional $80 million out of switching.
Your *only* benefit would be a 1.8GHz AMD powered Mac at $2k, instead of a dual 867MHz G4 at $2k.
What I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
While old Mac users would most likely still be able to use and open their old data on x86 Macs, they would be forced to get all new versions of all their software -- a HUGE investment for most people. In my case, I'd have to buy Photoshop, Freehand, Flash, BBEdit, MS Office (if it's still around by then), Acrobat (full version), Eudora, and a zillion smaller shareware applications -- because there is just no way that these companies would just offer an x86 version "for free".
The move to OS X was expensive for me (since I had to upgrade just about everything), but I felt it was worth it to have all that UNIX goodness -- all the shell tools and Web daemons and databases plus all my graphics apps. But a move to x86 would offer me no such compelling reason to upgrade.
On the other hand, you'd have the developers forced to deliver two versions of their OS X apps for a transition period (x86 and PPC) because of all the legacy Macs. The 68K -> PPC transition was made painless because the PPC could natively emulate a 68K machine, and developers were able to deliver "fat" binaries for a while (combined PPC/68K binaries that automatically ran the right code). That would be damn near impossible to do on a PPC->x86 move.
Mac users have managed to go through two major transitions in the last ten years -- 68K to PPC and now Mac OS 9.x to OS X. In each case, Apple tried to make the transition fairly painless. If they hadn't, Mac users would have either simply refused to upgrade for as long as possible, or they would have jumped ship to Wintel.
Then there's the hypocrisy of such a move. Apple has made a great effort to praise the PPC platform, made all kinds of claims about it, and have built their whole reputation on it. To suddenly change to x86 would make them look *very* bad.
Apple is also not in the habit of telegraphing what they do in advance, which makes these kinds of rumors all the more suspicious.
Yes, Apple is in trouble with the PPC (thanks in a large part to Motorola), but the more logical move would be to Power4 or PPC64, both of which would allow for a transition similar to the one we had with 68K->PPC -- far more painless and easier to justify.
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Re:It's funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
First off enable DMA for the disks - there's no way you should be getting any noticable CPU usage from the disks, even if they are IDE. I can run a defragger on my box and it never gets above 1% CPU usage.
Secondly, if you are a CAD user WTF are you doing buying a games card? Hardly any surprise it doesn't perform too well. Will be sweet for Doom 3 though
Like you say, your box is being killed by some dodgy disk settings, the wrong gfx card, and probably a lack of memory. However you use that as a reason to slate the processor - hello? The processor isn't getting a chance to do anything because of all the bottlenecks.
One switch advantage: WINE for OSX (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, while the guy is right that the transition would be a big pain for the developers, in the long run it might make things easier for them, because most of them keep a seperate branch of x86-optimized code because they also sell it for Windows. Post-transition, these two branches would be able to have much more in common. That might make things easier in the long run.
Alright--here is a reason for not making the transition: the upcoming desktop Power4's from IBM. I am almost certain these will be in Macs sometime in 2003, and when they are, most of our beige pc keyboards will be covered with drool.
Re:Niche computers... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know what kind of Macs you're using, but mine uses the same electricity (fuel) as all the PCs out there. Not to mention the same disks, modems, network hardware, CDs, DVDs, keyboards, mice...
On the other hand, good luck trying to repair a BMW using Chevy parts. I guess that means BMW is doomed.
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:1, Insightful)
next WAS a hardware company
next BECAME a software company
next became a SOFTWARE company
apple bought a SOFTWARE company
apple is a HARDWARE company
will apple soon be a FORMER hardware company?
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:1, Insightful)
These are the figures taken from an Apple SEC filing:
Figures are net sales in millions of dollars and appear in the software, services and other net sales category.
1999: 1,052
2000: 1,098
2001: 960
The figures of this category for those three years constantly outperform both the Powerbook and the iBook lines. Let's look at 2001 net income:
Powerbook: 813
iBook: 809
Software and services: 960
The figures are only valid for speculation as Apple doesn't break it's software income down to any great degree and there's too much that we aren't seeing here. But, the figures ARE good enough to get a pretty good idea on some things.
For example. Why not eliminate those software figures from Apple's financials? Your claim is that software revenue is unimportant as its purpose is to help sell Hardware (that according to you is where the big bucks are). Let's scrap that 906 million dollars of net income. What do you think the impact would be? Seeing that of late, Apple has reported relatively low quarterly profits (but hey a 32 million dollar profit is a profit after all!) I would suggest that such a measure could lead to Apple reporting LOSSES for 2001!!!
If that take on the situation was proven to be a correct how do you think its share price would be doing right now? Would Apple even exist as an independent player?
But remember this is pure speculation on my part. You could counter-argue that the software divisions are a (financial) open wound in Apple's finances and getting rid of them would IMPROVE Apple's results.
But it would be better to take a more reasonble approach and look at current reality. Apple is currently expanding its software options (not selling them off) and is completing its lineup of high-priced, high margin software.
This trend will continue. There is nothing to suggest that Apple sees its software operations as financially unimportant but I get the inpression that I'm flogging a dead horse trying to get you to see things any differently with this line so I'll move on.
Your last post doesn't reflect reality. Re-read my posts. I have not made an about face. I have not said that Apple's software division is bigger than its hardware division. This is what I said:
>So much so that Apple probably has more resources being ploughed into software right now than hardware.
You say that I have changed my stance and NOW I limit my opinion to:
>merely saying software is an important part of their business plan
I haven't changed my stance at all. This is EXACTLY what I've been saying all along.
From my first post:
>Yes Apple is a hardware company. However, it would be untrue to say they don't have very important software operations too.
From My second post:
>Apple is a hardware company but it's software operations are one of the most important revenue streams. It is not possible to argue otherwise.
From my third post:
>I'm not questioning the validity of Apple as a hardware vendor, I'm just stating that software is an essential part of its success.
Slow your reading down and digest what I'm saying. When I say that 'software operations are one of the most important revenue streams' that doesn't mean it is THE biggest revenue stream (which it seems is what you understood). I have stated why it is is important ( in my view at least - this is my OPINION) because without it Apple might well be reporting losses.
You have just said:
>Hell its only been VERY recently their software division has gained any clo0ut of its own in the markets it caters to.
VERY recently? That is just not true. As I stated in my original post Claris Corp (Apple's software division) was one of the TOP TEN worldwide in the MID-NINETIES. It's true that there was a brief slump and, of late, Apple is pushing its software again but it's nothing new in the history of Apple.
You have also just said:
>It's not clear why Apple needs to "go beyond the box", you've made no compelling argument for such an action.
What? Are we speaking the same language here? It's not clear?
OK. Take the xServe. It's competitive on price and has unlimited user restrictions in the licence agreement. Where's the trick? Service and support (Apple sells support packs). That is beyond the Box.
Power School. Beyond the box.
AppleCare. Beyond the box.
All software in general. Beyond the box.
Do you require more examples? It is extremely clear that Apple is moving beyond the box. Please note: THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT APPLE WILL STOP MAKING THE BOXES. It means what it says. To go beyond the box. To look for different revenue streams.
In your post (in reply to Razzak) you said:
>Apple makes software to sell their hardware
I tend to agree with you on this but strictly speaking it's not 100% true. If it were, Apple would not be offering Web Objects nor FileMaker Pro (which has millions of customers) for Windows hardware.
However, the reasons for this situation are clear and I support Apple's policy of Mac-only apps for certain market segments.
Sorry if this sounds as if I'm peeved with you. I'm not. I've just got a horrible cold right now and am thinking aloud without too much effort being put into how I express myself.