Saturday, January 14, 2006

 

Intel based Macs II

Reading Paul Graham's essay: How to Make Wealth (actually I read it before but just now made a connection to my previous post), I think Apple will introduce wealth(and not just all about money) if they re-open their Mac architecture so that customers can buy Apple based systems like PC based systems. With Apple using Intel CPUs, now it seems PCs and Apple will run hand in hand. Apple already uses the same ATI and Nvidia graphics accelerators that PCs have been using for years. Count that also to IDE and now SATA based hard drives including optical drives, so hardware wise there is really no difference.
But back to the wealth issue, does Apple really want to create more wealth and also make more money? I think they won't. The answer boils down to individuality. First of all Apple took a lot of time and effort to create wealth by introducing their own brand of computers. It's their cash cow. Yeah the computers are based on off the shelf parts but imagine if you created wealth introducing a new product that wazzled and dazzled the crowd on a new and different way of doing things, wouldn't you want to keep it to yourself and reap all the profits?
Ah anyway, I'm getting tired and sleepy. Half blogging and half watching Hong Kong movies: "Dragon Forever" and "Yes Madam!".

 

Intel based Macs officially out

It's going to be interesting seeing Intel based Macs for years to come. Obviously I can't predict when/if Apple will shift processors again(I don't remember the early days, but I remember Motorola to PowerPC and now to Intel), but in a way it's kind of like history repeating itself. I remember when PowerPC based Macs came out not only was there a huge awe about it: I remember IBM taking out a huge one page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal congratulating Apple on the start of a new PowerPC relationship; but there's also the usual transition phase for customers. Emulators and cross platform versions of applications so customers can run them on old and new Macs. With Intel though, the interesting thing is Intel chips are also used by PCs whereas the previous chips, PCs never used them. If history really will repeat itself, I'd say in about 10+ years, Apple will shift to another CPU. And having already gone through the big companies: Motorola, IBM and now Intel; the remaining ones are AMD, Texas Intruments, National Semiconductor, Sun, maybe even Transmeta(if they're still around) or some smaller company. But seeing that Apple having worked with CPU companies with a long record, I don't think it will be with a small company. But who knows, maybe Apple will shift back to Motorola or IBM.
So back to the interesting thing with Intel, it now opens possible doors for Apple to move into the operating system software business like Microsoft. But with Steve Jobs in control of Apple, that won't happen anytime soon. Still, I think it would be nice. If Apple still wants some control(ie quality), then they can at least institute a program to hardware vendors to say this hardware is Apple compatible. Apple already has support for ATI and Nvidia graphics hardware, so I don't see any difficulties. Yeah this will take some market share from Apple produced computers but in the end business will always happen. Some folks will buy Apple, some will buy others, but in the end Apple still makes money and is able to convince customers the power of Mac software and hardware!
Ok, good luck Apple!

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