Apple Computer: Software Only in Five Years
If you have a child or if you’re just very averse to pain (like myself) you are probably familiar with the two theories of band-aid removal. The first theory is that you do it all at once, just rip the thing and suffer a brief, but intense, wave of pain. The other theory (popular in my household) maintains that you remove the band-aid slowly. This results in smaller amounts of discomfort but the sting lasts much longer. Apple is obviously an adherent of the slow removal school of thought.
How can we be sure Apple prefers extended unpleasantness to quick shot of pain? The answer lies in their history. While Steve was busy spinning like a Chinese acrobat at the World Wide Developers Conference he was leaving out a few salient facts. Steve talked up two transitions: from 680x0 Motorola chips to PowerPC chips and from Classic to OS X. What he left out was the transition from Apple II to the Mac and the impact each transition had on market share. Each transition brutalized Apple’s market share generally cutting their piece of the computing pie in half. Apple’s market share will be similarly impacted with this move, after all is it a reasonable expectation to think that people will invest in a PowerPC based Mac with the foreknowledge that Intel Macs are on the horizon?
So the Mac piece of the computer market is going to suffer, and suffer horribly. The hope is that once the transition is over Apple may start selling machines once again and pick up just a little bit of the share Apple will undoubtedly lose. That is not impossible, as Mr. Jobs noted the Mac was currently making headway. Yet the time for the Mac’s resurgence (if ever) will be at least a few years down the road. Or, to sum it up in one tidy sentence, there is absolutely no near term upside.
Some people will reflexively argue that Apple had no choice. IBM wasn’t coming through, Freescale left Apple twisting in the wind and the roadmap looked much better on the Intel side of things. At this point every Mac user sincerely needs to send Apple a letter asking them to raise Steve Job’s salary so he can afford to take a course on cartography at the local JuCo. Steve obviously has trouble reading roadmaps, how often has Steve said the roadmap looked great from Motorola or IBM? Too many times for anyone to have any faith left in his abilities at prognosticating the future of chips. Unfortunately that is exactly what one expects from a CEO, particularly a purported visionary like Steve Jobs, the ability to make sound long-term decisions. Changing from classic to X and from PowerPC to Intel in less than a decade is asking a lot of developers and customers and does not belie the “genius” status held by Steve Jobs.
At this point it is simple (as it usually is with hindsight) to say that it would’ve been infinitely better to make the jump to OS X and Intel chips simultaneously. Sure it would’ve have been more painful during the change but it would’ve have been over by now. Apple sales would have started growing and the momentum could have been sustained. Those that argue that that move would have been technically impossible need only look at the arguments made against the move to Intel in the past few weeks.
When all is said and done this move is just another step on the path that leads to the end for Apple as a computer manufacturer. With the change in architecture the difference between Macs and Wintel boxes is, more or less from a consumer’s point of view, purely aesthetic. While people will opt for aesthetics all things being equal they tend not to buy computers purely for the looks (witness the cube debacle). The end of Apple as a manufacturer doesn’t necessarily mean the end of Apple as a company. Many pundits have long encouraged Apple to jettison the computer aspect of their business and concentrate on being the best software company on earth. In five years we’ll find out if that is one more transition Apple can make (oddly that transition will be the easiest one to date). Those who are fond of noting that Apple’s profits (those will be sparse for some time) come primarily from hardware sales should realize that the main reason that the hardware sells is because of the OS, not the other way around. Can a company be profitable solely on the sales of OS software and associated applications? Sure. Can Apple? That remains to be seen.
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Is the Intel chip faster? debatable. cheaper? Nope. Better? Most would say not at this time. Steve Jobs didn’t say that it was rather he implied that it would be at some point in the future. I hope he is right.
On Robert Mcnally’s point that the flexibility is very alluring. If PowerPC were to suddenly become reinvigorated then there is nothing preventing Apple from switching back, the effort would seem to be minimal or non existant. A very interesting point that Mr. McNally brings up.
Amen brother Seibold, can I get a witness? If anybody doubts Chris’ analysis of Apple’s future, carefully read the following sentence, it was spoken by the Steverino himself at the end of yesterday’s WWDC keynote.
“Because, more than even the processor, more than even the hardware innovations that we bring to the market, the soul of a Mac is it’s operating system, and we’re not standing still.”
And can Apple or maybe “Macintosh Software Inc.” become a profitable entity all on it’s own, absofrigginlutely! Spin off the iPod and all of Apple’s hardware divisions and call it...Apple.
Then the software divisions become “Macintosh Software” and produce a superior operating system, and Final Cut Pro for Mac OS X.whatever and Windows, iLife suite for both. Heck, even create direct competitive products to Adobe’s CS suite. Even a competitor to Photoshop and Flash. iTunes that might work with iPod and other players?
To some of the faithful though, this just brings up Brando’s lament from Apocalypse Now..."the horror, the horror”. To me, it finally means that a future Apple and Mac OS can spread it’s wings and fly.
scstraus,
Did your PowerMac suddenly stop working when the switch was announced? No.
Will developers stop compiling for PowerPC in the next 5 years or so? No, not as long as there is a large installed userbase on PPC.
Will your PowerMac be obsolete in 5 years? Probably. Would that be the case even if Apple wasn’t switching to Intel? Probably.
Please, please… just don’t make the new Mactel startup chime that damn “bing bing bing bling!” (no offense to the artist).
I don’t see it your way Chris.
Changing the processor will not doom Apple’s hardware business.
In fact, I think I have a pretty conclusive thought experiment to prove that:
What percent of current Mac users know that their processor in not an intel chip?
It’s tiny. It’s insignificant.
Most people don’t give a hoot what’s under the hood--it’s the joy of computing that matters.
Like that fellow upthread said: the chip could be made by mattel. It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.
Hmm Koreyel, I hope you’re correct. Somehow I doubt it is an insigficant number but I could be wrong. I suspect that if you’ve decided to get a Mac (since you’re going against the heard) you are fairly aware that the Mac isn’t just a PC with a different OS.
Continued…
Hang on…
I meant irrelevant in the sense that the processor does its job…
without complaining…
or overheating…
or preventing the development of handhelds and tablet macs.
You see that’s the rub…
That’s why Jobs went in to Intel…
They can’t cool the G5 to permit future innovations…
The chip is feverish--and as such, it prevents the growth of Apple’s hardware visions.
henrrrik, my powermac stopped working to it’s potential when the switch was announced. I spent 2x what normal people spend on PC’s knowing that I was adopting a next generation dual processor 64 bit beast. I knew it was going to take a couple years before anyone started optimizing for 64 bit, so I knew the platform had some life in it to justify my outlay of cash. Well, apple just finally released their first true 64 bit OS and basically told all the developers to not bother to optimize for it.
This, after I waited 3 years for the apps I wanted to be ported to OS X and had to sit on my OS 9 604 based machine which was crawling- another delayed purchase due to apple’s 5 year major overhaul policy.
I work in digital music and these optimizations are critical for me to get the life I need out of my platform. So what steve jobs has just done is take about 50% of the practical life out of my computer. Would it have been obselete in 5 years? Probably. But now it’ll be obselete in 2. I can’t afford to hang around on 3 year old music software. Maybe that’s okay for some people (although I doubt it), but it’s not okay for me, who spent a premium for what I thought would be premium hardware.
I’ve been screwed and I’m not coming back to apple hardware in the future.
I’m going to do everything in my power to buy a Dell and run OS X on it.
A few thoughts, in no particular order:
One thing Apple will have to contend with is the ability to make more apples to apples comparisons to Windows. It will really look bad if, say, Photoshop runs faster in Windows than on Mac on the exact same processor.
Hopefully, Apple will be able to use this to its advantage. However, since Microsoft’s software has been running on x86 for so long now, I worry that, intially at least, Mac OS X will be slower than Windows.
I am really kind of dumbfounded that otherwise intelligent Mac users like Mr. Seibold here are thinking this announcement means that Jobs is moving out of the hardware business. Come on… Jobs was the guy that pulled the plug on Mac OS licensing. Further, hardware—not software—was his primary tool in establishing Apple’s current brand image. By far, the average joe associates Apple with the iMac and iPod more than they do with Mac OS X.
I don’t forsee a huge hit in Apple’s sales. It would have been a bad move to switch to Intel when Mac OS X was released. Classic would have to have been run on an emulator, and people would have really angry about slow speeds. Also, the last time Apple switched processors, (68k to PPC) they did an absolutely fantastic job. FAT binaries worked like a champ. 95% of the public probably didn’t notice the switch at all. Now, the switch to Intel is a bit more of an attention grabber than the PPC move was, but I think the upcoming switch will be just as smooth.
One thing I do think Jobs is planning to do, is release some software based on Wine to replace VirtualPC. It will be very nice to be able to run Windows software inside Mac OS X on its native processor. Microsoft has got to be kicking themselves for buying Connectix.
Are the Intel chips better? Probably not. Is there going to be some radical improvement? I doubt that too. What there is, however, is a low-power, low-heat mobile chip that has a more viable roadmap than the G4, and is readily available. I can’t speak to pricing on the chips, but I’d be hard pressed to believe that IBM isn’t charging a premium on the G5s - they can’t make enough to keep up with demand currently (ever wonder why there are regular delays on the G5s?). And evidently there’s little to suggest that IBM had much incentive to agressively pursue R+D on a mobile variation, given that Apple is such a small piece of their chip volume...and about to get smaller now that the game consoles are all moving to PPC. And Apple needs to see some movement on their portable line. (Note that this is also at least one reason for no AMD - they don’t have a viable portable chip that compares to the Pentium-M...and overall power consumption and heat on the AMDs is higher, IIRC).
It’s nice to see confirmation from Mr. McNally that the transition to fat binaries looks to be relatively painless (thank god for abstraction layers, eh?), though I expect that the transition will not be without its hiccups. However, unlike the 68k to PPC transition, where the OS continued to run legacy code in emulation, I suspect that the OS will be fully optimized to run on both processors.
As many have pointed out, a G5 (or a G4 laptop) will not suddenly stop working when the Intel-based Macs start rolling out. Nor will the OS (or applications, for that matter) stop working. Heck, I’d be surprised if any G4-based machine, and probably most of the modern G3 machines, weren’t supported to some degree well into the future. (I say this as someone who runs 10.3 on a 5-year-old iMac DV SE at home...).
And I’d be surprised if the Intel line that Apple’s planning on using isn’t 64-bit, so I suspect that the optimizations to take advantage of the 64-bit processor will still occur, since as I understand it, it’d have to happen either way.
I’ve been planning to do a refresh of my creative department’s machines. Did this announcement cause me to rethink my plans? Yes. Am I still going ahead with the refresh? Most likely, yes. Is there a risk involved? Perhaps, though I think it’s negligible; the machines would be replaced in the product line in a year no matter what the hardware, so that’s not a big concern. And I need the machines now. The cost to me to replce these machines with Windows boxes (in terms of increased maintenance costs, user re-training, software investment) is much higher than the cost of replacing the machines in 3 years once the Apple line is fully migrated to Intel.
What I am constantly amazed by is the “wait and see” attitude that so many in the Mac world take when it comes to hardware ("I need a new machine, but I’m going to wait and see what gets announced at Macworld/WWDC.” “Oh, there’s new product in the pipeline? I’m going to wait and see what shakes out..."). If you need a new computer, buy one. If you don’t, then don’t. You can be assured, that Apple will NOT be abandoning support for the current products anytime soon.
Remember folks - This is just a change in processor. That’s it. This is closer in nature to the shift from G3-G4, or G4-G5, than it is from 68K to PPC.
(Omitted here is discussion of the fact that the real loss in market share for Apple during the 68K to PPC transition was with the release of the 2nd generation PPC hardware, a bloated and convoluted product line, shortages and high costs on the products that consumers wanted, hundreds of thousands of underpowered overpriced “consumer” Macs sitting in warehouses - something I saw first hand working for an Apple contractor at the time - and a general lack of focus, direction, and innovation. Oh, and the licensed clones, which cannibalized existing sales and did nothing to generate new interest in the platform. There was a lot more going on at Apple, and in Apple’s product line, than just a processor transition.)
If Apple’s hardware line dies because of this transition (and I don’t think it will) - it’ll be because we Mac users decided to kill it by saying “screw you Apple, I’m not going to buy your hardware any more.”
Just a change in processor. Closer to the G4 to g5 transition? I just don’t see it. G5 did not have to emulate the G4 code, G4 did not have to emulate the G3 code. If you had, for example, a 500 Mhz G3 and replaced it with a 500 Mhz G4 and ran only G3 code there was zero performance hit. There was a performance boost if you ran altivec aware prgrams but no performance downside.
Switching to an Intel proc is quite different. There will be a performance hit, a substantial one, for any programs not Intel savvy. I would say it is even more extreme than the shift from 68k to PowerPC.
I also differ on Apple’s market share woes during the PowerPC shift. While you would blame Apple’s overly complicated line up and the clones I would lay the cause on Microsoft’s door. We see steady erosion in share in every year, a percent or less. In ‘95 when Windows ‘94 was released we see a drop of 4%.
I’m not saying that the product line was well managed (of course when you buy a PC you have a million decisions) but I strongly suspect the biggest conributor to the decline was ‘95.
And let me clear on one thing. I’m not saying I hope Apple ends up as a software only company, I like their boxes. From a business standpoint however it would be better for Apple to not sell computers and focus on software (and music and movies and iPods). Remember it is not as if Apple has Apple owned factories cranking out computers except the xserve.
Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple for a reason. He is a visionary with the presience to make difficult, unpopular decisions for the longterm growth of the company. A software only company in five years. Poppycock!
What’s it matter what chip drives the computer? If Apple had’ve announced the G6 for mid next year, we would have been making the same calls- i.e. who’s going to buy a G5 knowing in 12mths there’ll be a G6? And you know what? That’s what they have done. They are really saying that the G6 chip will be from Intel.
Computers buyers have been wrestling with the obsolescence issue for years.
Apple buyers even more so because we’ve only had one supplier so we’ve been second guessing them for yonks. How many people have put off buying a Powerbook in the last 18mths hoping on a G5? Or put off buying any Mac hoping the next model would be out soon. MacRumors even have a buying guide to help with that gamble.
The thing Apple have to convince users is that the life of the PPC Mac they buy today, will match the life of their software they use now and in the future. Universal binaries is meant to overcome that - so if I buy a PowerMac G5 next May, I should be able to confidently buy Adobe CS3 6 months later.
Will Apple get out of computer hardware? Probably in 10 to 15 years. But for other reasons.
Still, it is a surprise that Apple have given us so much warning that the “G6” will be Intel. Why? Maybe just to put Intel on notice.
If Intel fail to deliver as IBM did, then it will be very public and leave Intel with egg on their face.
And if they do fail to deliver, where will that leave Apple? What’s it matter? Universal binaries are Apple’s parachute.
You have to remember that not all Mac users are computer geeks. Some are like my wife, who is a college student. She did not want the hassle of all of the viruses/addware/spyware/malware etc that you get on Windows machines. It was too much work keeping it working. We decided on a Mac because it did not have the malware baggage that a Windows machine has. Bottom line is that the switch to Intel is a non issue. People are upset that Windows machines have the malware baggage and want OUT. They would want out if it was PPC or 68xxx or Intel or AMD.
If Apple finds a way for currently Windows only software to run on an Intel Mac then you would get true apples to apples comparisons.
Apple will not get out of the hardware business and become a software only company. A reason is the installed base of Macs. Another is that the company would not want to reduce the revenue total that they have. Another is that they sell hardware (macs,ipods) not software. Sort of a Sony wannabe without the movie studios. Yes he has Pixar but it is only cartoons.