Sculley on Apple and Intel [Archive]

roy_dan

Oct 9, 2003, 12:51 AM

I hate to see guilt by association and that is what's happening to Intel nowadays. Yes, they have a strong partnership with Microsoft but that is only smart business. Trust me, they don't share the same philosophies as MS.

I worked at Intel for almost 5 years (blue collar) and can tell you first hand it’s a great company that takes care of the employees and customers. Much like another company we all appreciate, Apple. Intel and Apple have more in common than we may think.

Who says an Intel enabled Mac would be on IA32? I'm sure if Steve Jobs gave Intel the go-ahead they would have a PPC compliant product to manufacture in parallel to the P4's on their awesome manufacturing process. I have seen Itanium, PIII, P4, Celeron, Chipsets, and Strong ARMS all in the same factory in Chandler, AZ.

Whether by buying a license or inventing an ingenious workaround, making PPC's would give them one more edge on AMD and Sun and that's what Intel really cares about.

With Motorola soon to be out of the picture and IBM concentrating on G5's I can't think of a better company to fill in Apple's 32bit gap. Heck, I wouldn't mind Intel making both 32bit and 64bit CPU's for Apple.

Comparing a Mactel to a Wintel is still inconclusive. One of Apple's biggest strengths, IMO, is the fact it's one company engineering the whole system. Sun has it too and look at whom they are starting to buy CPU's from! I would even argue that a Mactel system would be cheaper than a Wintel system. Who’s around to over-charge for the operating system license? The smart buyers look past GHz vs. GHz and choose productivity. Ever wonder why Mac users seem smarter than Windows users? LOL That’s not always true.

Never fear, Wintel will forever be inferior because of all the corporate boundaries between making just one system. It's worse than government red tape.

Reevaluate Intel and think about what will carry Apple into the next 20 years. It’s not going to be a foundry fab at IBM.

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 12:52 AM

Originally posted by Dippo
I still think RISC is much better than CISC. CISC is reaching it's limitations while RISC still has some ground to go.

That's just my opinion, no real scientific data to back it up with.

Well, generally the only popular architectures that didn't inherit from an initial RISC based design are all from Intel (the only other major CISC that I know if is the 68K line, but it's purely an embedded processor now). The biggest problem with the x86 is all of the baggage that it's accumulated over the years and the huge compatibility culture that Intel themselves created (thus dooming Itanic/Itanium from the beginning).

Not much is pure RISC as it was initially designed (nearly 20 years ago iirc) but most newer architectures followed most of it's principles. Even x86 has borrowed many of it's principles, but for compatibility's sake doesn't expose them to the programmer.

kevib

Oct 9, 2003, 01:20 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
I hate to see guilt by association and that is what's happening to Intel nowadays. Yes, they have a strong partnership with Microsoft but that is only smart business. Trust me, they don't share the same philosophies as MS.

uh, yeah actually they do. they both want complete market share. also, as we speak they are working hard to more closely tie the os with the hardware. soon the only os you'll be able to run on intel hardware will be windows.

Who says an Intel enabled Mac would be on IA32? I'm sure if Steve Jobs gave Intel the go-ahead they would have a PPC compliant product to manufacture in parallel to the P4's on their awesome manufacturing process. I have seen Itanium, PIII, P4, Celeron, Chipsets, and Strong ARMS all in the same factory in Chandler, AZ.

that's find and dandy, but why would intel put in all the r&d to produce a ppc compliant product when they already have the pc market cornered?

Whether by buying a license or inventing an ingenious workaround, making PPC's would give them one more edge on AMD and Sun and that's what Intel really cares about.

it wouldn't give them an edge because amd is only producing x86 chips and for the server market they need to fix itanium and quick, not jump ship to ppc?!

With Motorola soon to be out of the picture and IBM concentrating on G5's I can't think of a better company to fill in Apple's 32bit gap. Heck, I wouldn't mind Intel making both 32bit and 64bit CPU's for Apple.

they don't need anyone to fill the 32-bit gap because there is no gap. the g5 is completely and natively backwards compatible with 32-bit code. on top of that ibm is manufacturing a new g3 750gx or some such thing that will be 32-bit with altivec, but for low power applications, read ibooks.

Never fear, Wintel will forever be inferior because of all the corporate boundaries between making just one system. It's worse than government red tape.

ever wonder why they call it the wintel hegemony? because there aren't very many corporate boundaries. both companies work very closely. they are currently redesigning the pc bios to suit their needs.

Reevaluate Intel and think about what will carry Apple into the next 20 years. It’s not going to be a foundry fab at IBM.

if you've watched the g5 promo video you would know that they already have prototypes for the 980 successor to the 970 (read g5). supposedly the 980 is going to have 4 processor cores, thus making it four times as fast as a 970 at the same clock speed. also 980 clock sppeds are supposed to go from 3GHz to about 5GHz. and ibm is developing the 990 and 9900 which should top out at about 20GHz in 2010. but it's not just speed, it's the parallelism that makes ibm's chips better. i do realize that intel has it's own hyperthreading, but ibm's implementation has less overhead and is therefore superior.

Gyroscope

Oct 9, 2003, 01:30 AM

Maybe one of reasons why I always prefered Mac over Win/Dos based PC's is that they were not based on Intel CPU's. Don't know what has been going inside Sculley's cranium lately but it seems that guy is full of his past regrets or is he just plain full of ****. It has to be remembered that when Apple introduced original Mac in 84 Motorola MC68000 was running circles around best Intel offering at the time(80286 aka i286). Five years down the track (late 80's) Motorola MC 68030 was still runing circles around i386. So he is saying that Apple should have gone through whole process of rewriting its OS and ask developers to port their apps to x86(around this time Adobe just came out with PhotoShop, took them years later to port it to Intel and it was major Mac selling point for some years) just for sake of moving onto more or less inferior architecture?? I think that would have been pure suicide. Intel's first semi-decent CPU was PentiumPro and it came around 1996(years later)
Speaking of regrets, my personal regret is that Sculley and his prodige Spindler ever came to Apple.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 01:33 AM

solvs

Oct 9, 2003, 01:34 AM

:cough: palladium :cough:

roy_dan

Oct 9, 2003, 01:37 AM

Kevib, I appreciate your critical dissection of my post, but I will stand by the errors of my ways.

If I understand it correctly, IBM is making G5’s out of one of its foundry fabs. Just like TSMC, they are leasing out manufacturing resources time to companies who can’t make their own chips. IBM is only a design partner so it’s not like they can’t drop the whole product line at a heartbeat. There are other companies who will fill in the business for IBM. It’s scary to think it, but what if there were catastrophic failures in IBM’s leadership, business model (again), or earnings and they had to start shedding overhead. If for what ever reason IBM sold that fab like Digital did in Hudson who would Apple turn to? That’s really where I’m coming from by advocating for Intel.

Why would Intel make an IA alternative when P4’s are such a cash cow? I don’t have all of the answers but Intel takes risks all the time (one of their core values) and they are obviously actively pursuing Apple. Maybe not AMD so much but 64bit Mac-Unix servers to take on Sun, now you have some important peoples attention.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 01:42 AM

Originally posted by kevib
uh, yeah actually they do. they both want complete market share. also, as we speak they are working hard to more closely tie the os with the hardware. soon the only os you'll be able to run on intel hardware will be windows.

LOL if you seriously think for one minute that Apple doesn't want "complete market share" you're very naive. Apple is a business, and the job of any business is always to make more money, and the way you do that is to grow your market share. Apple isn't some hippy-dippy commune, it's a tough, competitive capitalist enterprise that's as ruthless as any other.

What's more, you're also factually inaccurate. Far from "the only OS you'll be able to run on Intel" being Windows, Intel has been a major investor in Linux companies, notably both Red Hat and SuSE. In fact, Intel has a pattern of investing in any alternative to Windows that runs on its processors - including Be.

macphoria

Oct 9, 2003, 01:44 AM

Had Apple gone over to Intel processors, could people have used Macs installed with Windows? Or PC's installed with Mac OS? That's story for the alternate universe.

"Think Different" really has been what Apple stands for. I'm glad they didn't go to Intel.

MacFan26

Oct 9, 2003, 01:45 AM

What is John Sculley's purpose in saying this? "'Apple took another path and ended up a different kind of company', Sculley said." What's his point? I don't understand why he would make this comment after not even working there for so many years.

roy_dan

Oct 9, 2003, 01:54 AM

Um, just my last food for thought.

An Intel chip designed to Apple architecture wouldn't run Windows.

Apple's only source of chips will be coming from one fab at IBM. Is it smart to put all of your eggs in one basket?

That's really what this is about, with Moto punching out of the semi business and IBM redesigning the company every few years doesn't make me feel comfortable with Apples future.

Intel has a worldwide virtual factory model with at least a dozen fabs with tens of thousands of employees within their TMG dedicated to one thing, making chips. I like the odds better.

Gyroscope

Oct 9, 2003, 02:12 AM

Originally posted by macphoria
Had Apple gone over to Intel processors, could people have used Macs installed with Windows? Or PC's installed with Mac OS? That's story for the alternate universe.

"Think Different" really has been what Apple stands for. I'm glad they didn't go to Intel.

Had Apple done so they would have seen their market share erosion even back then. People would have been able to use any x86 based OS on Apple box instead of MacOS(with little or no tricks)Heck OS/2 was years ahead of MacOS and DOS based Win 2.0+ but lost battle on x86. With Apple making Motorola CPU/MacOS combo once you bought Mac you had to stick with the OS :). Remember kids everything that arrived on x86 eventually just got killed by Microsoft :). BeOS,OS/2,NextStep,GEM.....and many many others.

Sculley can eat my shorts.

Snowy_River

Oct 9, 2003, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
... Is it smart to put all of your eggs in one basket?...

See this post (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=522568#post522568) for further comments on the 'Apple shouldn't rely on one chip maker' issue.

macphoria

Oct 9, 2003, 02:29 AM

An Intel chip designed to Apple architecture wouldn't run Windows.
No, Mac OS would have been revised to run on Intel processor if Apple wanted to go to X86. That would have opened can of worms.

Analog Kid

Oct 9, 2003, 02:52 AM

Originally posted by ChoMomma
That's a huge heatsink not a emulator.. i know it's deceptive.. but it's just a heat sink. :D :D

kaneda

Oct 9, 2003, 03:28 AM

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2003/renew-energy-batt/betterlithium.html

AhmedFaisal

Oct 9, 2003, 03:40 AM

You and that other Monkey that drove Apple down the drain until Steve-O came back, that was the worst for Apple.
Cheers,

Ahmed

Doraemon

Oct 9, 2003, 03:42 AM

Originally posted by Macrumors
Sculley claims,"That's probably one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made, not going to the Intel platform".

No way! His biggest mistake was to allow Microsoft to use MacOS GUI technologies for Windows!

some history (http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&page=history&subpage=1980) (in 1985)

pigwin32

Oct 9, 2003, 03:47 AM

I have a vague recollection that Apple was rumoured to already have a version of macosx running on an Intel chip, and realistically it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve. But there are sound economic reasons involved in not going down that path, a number of which I think have been mentioned here previously. Like, if windows and macos ran on the same hardware, Apple would have to ditch the hardware business and compete with Microsoft for software sales. I guess we would then all be buying our hardware from Sony, or some backstreet solder monkey.

Also, the cisc v. risc debate is getting kind of stale these days, they have a lot more in common than they used to. I think the single biggest handicap Intel has had to cope with is backward compatibility with the x86 chips. How big an albatross is that to have strung round your neck?

Analog Kid

Oct 9, 2003, 04:26 AM

Originally posted by Dippo
I still think RISC is much better than CISC. CISC is reaching it's limitations while RISC still has some ground to go.

That's just my opinion, no real scientific data to back it up with.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if CISC made a comeback... x86 is a dog because of all the cruft, but the design goals of CISC may have benefits for different reasons.

CISC was designed in an era when memory was really expensive, so instructions were encoded to be dense. Compile a program for RISC and CISC and the CISC binary will be smaller.

RISC came around because the memory cost was starting to fade, but it was hard to speed up the CPU core. The simpler instructions meant a much simpler and more predictable execution core that could be optimized and clocked up.

Now silicon is cheap, and CISC architectures put a layer in front to break up CISC instructions to run on simpler, more optimized RISC hardware so it can be clocked up (and RISC architectures break up RISC instructions to run on even simpler RISC hardware).

As silicon gets faster, and more and more parallel execution units are placed on chip, execution through the core is no longer the limiting factor. In most cases, memory bandwidth is becoming a bottleneck.

With the limitation becoming how many bytes you can push through the external bus, denser instruction sets have an advantage again. You can get more done with less memory fetches on a CISC architecture.

One way around bandwidth limitations is cache-- but cache is expensive like system RAM used to be so denser instructions have an advantage here as well (smaller programs fit better in cache).

The one major disadvantage that most CISC architectures have is variable length instructions-- they just don't align well with fixed length bursts out of modern memories, or fixed line sized caches.

None of this is meant to imply that Intel would be a good option (I'll address that separately), I'm just pointing out that the old "RISC is better" argument isn't as simple anymore...

claytonbench

Oct 9, 2003, 04:26 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
I hate to see guilt by association and that is what's happening to Intel nowadays. Yes, they have a strong partnership with Microsoft but that is only smart business. Trust me, they don't share the same philosophies as MS.

I worked at Intel for almost 5 years (blue collar) and can tell you first hand it’s a great company that takes care of the employees and customers. Much like another company we all appreciate, Apple. Intel and Apple have more in common than we may think.

Who says an Intel enabled Mac would be on IA32? I'm sure if Steve Jobs gave Intel the go-ahead they would have a PPC compliant product to manufacture in parallel to the P4's on their awesome manufacturing process. I have seen Itanium, PIII, P4, Celeron, Chipsets, and Strong ARMS all in the same factory in Chandler, AZ.

Whether by buying a license or inventing an ingenious workaround, making PPC's would give them one more edge on AMD and Sun and that's what Intel really cares about.

With Motorola soon to be out of the picture and IBM concentrating on G5's I can't think of a better company to fill in Apple's 32bit gap. Heck, I wouldn't mind Intel making both 32bit and 64bit CPU's for Apple.

Comparing a Mactel to a Wintel is still inconclusive. One of Apple's biggest strengths, IMO, is the fact it's one company engineering the whole system. Sun has it too and look at whom they are starting to buy CPU's from! I would even argue that a Mactel system would be cheaper than a Wintel system. Who’s around to over-charge for the operating system license? The smart buyers look past GHz vs. GHz and choose productivity. Ever wonder why Mac users seem smarter than Windows users? LOL That’s not always true.

Never fear, Wintel will forever be inferior because of all the corporate boundaries between making just one system. It's worse than government red tape.

Reevaluate Intel and think about what will carry Apple into the next 20 years. It’s not going to be a foundry fab at IBM.

He is exactly right. Let me add something to this, when your computer breaks 99% of the time it is not the processor heck most of the time its not hardware its winblowz but my point here is intel could make the g5 just the same as IBM or intel could redesign a chip specifically for Apple. If Apple switches to intel they are not neccesaraly going to switch to a P4. Thanks for reading this post and please correct me if i am wrong.

Swift

Oct 9, 2003, 04:28 AM

Sculley means this: if I had only chosen Intel, our colored water would have taken over the market from their colored water because we're "hipper." Only we wouldn't have been. Everybody in the corporate world thought that Jobs' sealed box was the wrong idea in the '80s. Commodify, went the mantra. Only, were are all the computer makers now? Dead, all dead. Just Dell and a few struggling dinos, and Apple. Having a sealed box and a price high enough to pay for developing a new OS means we don't have the infections that Windows has. Our closed box allows us to communicate using open standards. They have had to resort to monopoly tactics to keep their OS and tied apps running on commodified PCs. We would have gone the way of HP and Compaq and IBM and Gateway if we had gone to Intel.

Booga

Oct 9, 2003, 04:29 AM

Originally posted by Gyroscope
It has to be remembered that when Apple introduced original Mac in 84 Motorola MC68000 was running circles around best Intel offering at the time(80286 aka i286). Five years down the track (late 80's) Motorola MC 68030 was still runing circles around i386.

This is true, and is an excellent reason for Apple to have chosen the 68000-68030. However, the 68040 was extremely late and did not compete well against the 486. The Mac has never been the definitive speed king since. The PowerPC might have pulled ahead if it weren't for the fact that 50% of the OS was emulated at the time, but it too gradually fell significantly behind Intel in almost every measureable performance comparison until a few weeks ago.

An x86 Mac would have been exactly like a PowerPC Mac, only it would have run significantly faster the last five years, while being cheaper. Who can argue with that? Yes, it would also use more electricity, but I honestly don't care much about that.

Remember, x86 is NOT the same thing as PC platform... it's just a CPU, not a whole chipset/BIOS combo. It is unlikely you would ever have been able to run Windows on an x86 Macintosh.

The G5 is nice because, while being a little more expensive, is at least competitive again with what Intel and AMD have to offer-- but we'd have it already if we'd started with them in the first place.

I think Sculley is right on the money with his latest analysis.

tbdavis

Oct 9, 2003, 04:35 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
If I understand it correctly, IBM is making G5’s out of one of its foundry fabs. Just like TSMC, they are leasing out manufacturing resources time to companies who can’t make their own chips. IBM is only a design partner so it’s not like they can’t drop the whole product line at a heartbeat. There are other companies who will fill in the business for IBM. It’s scary to think it, but what if there were catastrophic failures in IBM’s leadership, business model (again), or earnings and they had to start shedding overhead. If for what ever reason IBM sold that fab like Digital did in Hudson who would Apple turn to? That’s really where I’m coming from by advocating for Intel.

Not quite. The PowerPC instruction set is a subset of the POWER-4 instruction set. IBM uses POWER-4 chips in their mainframes. And IBM uses the 970 (G5) in one series of its blade servers. So no, they can't drop the whole product line "at a heartbeat."

And because IBM has structured its microprocessor business on an internal foundry model, they must not only keep up with the latest fabrication techniques, they must be a leader in the field. And Apple benefits. And because IBM is producing whatever its chip customers buy, that puts Apple in the driver's seat.

Intel processors generally use at least twice the power to achieve the same performance as a PowerPC chip. That means that a laptop would need a battery twice as large to achieve the same performance. The Al Powerbooks could not exist on Intel CPUs. And given that Apple's market share of laptops jumped almost 2% with the introduction of the Al Powerbooks, it looks like Mac OS on Intel would have been Apple's death knell.

Analog Kid

Oct 9, 2003, 04:42 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
Who says an Intel enabled Mac would be on IA32? I'm sure if Steve Jobs gave Intel the go-ahead they would have a PPC compliant product to manufacture in parallel to the P4's on their awesome manufacturing process. I have seen Itanium, PIII, P4, Celeron, Chipsets, and Strong ARMS all in the same factory in Chandler, AZ.

Whether by buying a license or inventing an ingenious workaround, making PPC's would give them one more edge on AMD and Sun and that's what Intel really cares about.

I'm glad to hear that Intel treats their blue collar workers well, at least in Arizona. They don't tend to treat their engineers well in Santa Clara. The greatest thing Intel has done for Sillicon Valley is bringing a bunch of top-notch engineers from all over the world and then treat them so badly that they leave to lend their talents to other companies...

As an engineer, Intel is a good place to start or end a career, but mid-career it's a wasteland. Intel looks good on a resume for a young engineer, and they treat their senior architects well, but everyone else is treated as cogs in the machine.

I'm sure Intel would be more than happy to fab PPCs for anyone, until no one else did. As someone who has worked with, rather than for, Intel, I can say that they are hardly an altruistic partner.

I've been duped into designing around their flash components only to have my allocation disappear because I wasn't using their processors... Wouldn't even sweep the factory floor to give me the 20 parts I needed to populate my prototypes....

Sure, they'd build PPCs to bring in a customer and then phase out the product line to move everyone to x86-- their bread and butter. More volume on x86 is good for Intel, customers be damned.

Yeah, they fab StongARMs/XScales but that's only because they can't figure out how to get x86 into a low power embedded product like a cell phone. They tried for years...

Intel means x86. They want Apple as a customer so badly because Apple is constant proof that there are other viable architectures.

Analog Kid

Oct 9, 2003, 04:45 AM

Personally I think Scully is disappointed about not moving Apple to Intel because it's the only way he had left to do more damage to the company and missed it...

dstorey

Oct 9, 2003, 04:50 AM

Could Apple move in Intel now, but not in the way people think, Ie x86/Itanium. Moto is trying to split up or sell it's semi-conductor business right? What happens id shock horror, Intel comes along and buys it. It would be quite interesting IBM and Intel both compeating producing PPC chips, both for desktop and servers. Probably never happen though.

hvfsl

Oct 9, 2003, 04:52 AM

The reason a few people have been talking about Intel making PPC chips for Apple, is that moto will soon stop making PPC chips for Apple and Apple needs to get its lowend chips from someone else. IBM only makes G3 low end chips, which are not good enough to be put in the PowerBook/iMac (at least at the moment).

So the options are:
- Apple moves all its product line over to G5, which would mean a low power G5 would be needed.
- Apple goes to Intel to make a G4 to be used in its low end or low power computers like powerbook etc.
- IBM takes over the G4 production from moto and combines it with its G3 tec.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 04:59 AM

Originally posted by Gyroscope
Had Apple done so they would have seen their market share erosion even back then. People would have been able to use any x86 based OS on Apple box instead of MacOS(with little or no tricks)

False. Take out the PC BIOS, and it couldn't run Windows. It's perfectly possible to create a machine using an x86 series processor that doesn't and can't run Windows.

Wyrm

Oct 9, 2003, 05:10 AM

Well, if Sculley had been so effective he'd probably still be the chief exec of Apple - so we can take his words with a large grain of sodium chloride.

Quite possibly if Sculley had gone down the x86 path (cripes, they are talking 386-486 generation cpus - ug) - Apple might have gone to another different architecture. Quite frankly I'm glad he made that mistake - because the PPC just oozes elegance over the x86 (I've programmed/debugged both at a machine level, and I think I'm still learning x86).

-Wyrm

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 05:12 AM

Originally posted by AhmedFaisal
You and that other Monkey that drove Apple down the drain until Steve-O came back, that was the worst for Apple.

Actually, that's not true. During the the Sculley era, Apple was consistently very profitable, and sold far more Macs than "Steve-O" has managed. He took Apple from a $1 billion corporation, and made it into a $10 billion corporation. He created the entire "lifestyle" marketing of Apple, without which it woud still be just another computer company, in the process turning it into one of the best-known brands on Earth. Jobs learned everything he knows about brand marketing from Sculley - it's one that that Sculley was actually terrific at.

Sculley made three mistakes: Not embracing licensing Mac OS at the right time, failing to get a handle on R&D costs, and allowing the company to drift into very poor management structures. The company wasted enormous amounts of cash on projects that were simply unfeasable. His other big mistake was trusting Mike Spindler, who was a poor operations guy and a very poor friend.

If you're going to talk about someone, you should at least know the facts. Sculley wasn't the best CEO in the world, but without him, there would be no Apple.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 05:17 AM

Originally posted by Wyrm
Well, if Sculley had been so effective he'd probably still be the chief exec of Apple - so we can take his words with a large grain of sodium chloride.

Sculley was CEO for 10 years, which is the longest period of any Apple CEO. I very much doubt that anyone with any sanity would want to be CEO of Apple for longer than that.

AhmedFaisal

Oct 9, 2003, 05:29 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
Actually, that's not true. During the the Sculley era, Apple was consistently very profitable, and sold far more Macs than "Steve-O" has managed. He took Apple from a $1 billion corporation, and made it into a $10 billion corporation. He created the entire "lifestyle" marketing of Apple, without which it woud still be just another computer company, in the process turning it into one of the best-known brands on Earth. Jobs learned everything he knows about brand marketing from Sculley - it's one that that Sculley was actually terrific at.

Sculley made three mistakes: Not embracing licensing Mac OS at the right time, failing to get a handle on R&D costs, and allowing the company to drift into very poor management structures. The company wasted enormous amounts of cash on projects that were simply unfeasable. His other big mistake was trusting Mike Spindler, who was a poor operations guy and a very poor friend.

If you're going to talk about someone, you should at least know the facts. Sculley wasn't the best CEO in the world, but without him, there would be no Apple.

Yet another person that just goes by the numbers. I can name you a whole bunch of companies that became extremely profitable for a while when the CEO came in (cuz he leveraged it to death) and then died a slow death because the CEO didn't realize that profit is not everything.
Cheers,

Ahmed

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 06:15 AM

Originally posted by AhmedFaisal
Yet another person that just goes by the numbers. I can name you a whole bunch of companies that became extremely profitable for a while when the CEO came in (cuz he leveraged it to death) and then died a slow death because the CEO didn't realize that profit is not everything.

From $1 billion in sales, to $10 billion in sales. By contrast, Apple is now hitting about $6 billion in sales per year.

Or let's look at Job's performance over the past few years. In Q3 2000, Apple shipped just over a million Macs. In Q3 2003, that had slipped to just 771,000 units - and that's not just a blip, the figures inbetween have shown a steady slide.

Or perhaps you'd like market share figures. In 1994 (the year after Sculley left), Dataquest put the Mac market share at 8.9%. In January 1997, while Amelio was CEO, the total for all Macs (including clones) had risen to 11%, with Apple accounting for about 9% (yes, folks, contrary to the Jobs-inspired myth, cloners didn't cost Apple market share - in fact, they increased it overall for the Mac). By 2002, this was down to 3.8%. So, in other words, despite the "success" of the iMac, Jobs has overseen a significant slide in the Mac's market share, and, since the first wave of iMac euphoria died down, a slide in unit sales as well.

So if sales are slipping, how is Apple actually making money? Ironically, part of it is accounting tricks (none of them illegal - Fred Anderson is a very good CFO in this regard), partly by eating the dealers up with Apple Store (thus increasing its own margin), and partly be small but significant diversification - iPod, yearly updates, .Mac. Plus, of course, sales of ARM shares, which in more than a couple of quarters have been the difference between Apple making a loss and Apple making a profit.

3-22

Oct 9, 2003, 07:13 AM

I think Apple's biggest mistake was just keeping with Motorola so long, when they were clearly not interested in the desktop CPU but the embedded market. I think the RISC vs CISC argument is a wash now with Apple's partnership with IBM. IBM processors are proven, fast and reliable, with years of experience in the mainframe and midrange markets. As long as IBM keeps up the momentum and the GHz rising, Apple will only get better. I don't think Apple will ever be the $399 special at Walmart. It's just not there market, they are the BMW of computers. But it would be nice if there processors weren't second class, and now with IBM I don't think this is the case.

They will never be the dominate workstation in the market with there pricing, but there is room to definitly take more market share. Hopefully more in the corporate market. It would be nice instead of the niche Mac or two at a company, it would be used by a whole department. Everywhere I worked (in IT) we had a couple Macs but no great number. IT just liked them because they never had to do anything with them, they just worked. Apple needs to get its foot in the door...

stockscalper

Oct 9, 2003, 07:38 AM

The biggest mistake Apple made didn't involve who to buy their chips from (yes they did stay with Moto too long, but there are plenty of other chip sources) but involved their decision to stop clones. Mac clones increased their marketshare markedly. Look in the DOS world, IBM didn't account for the DOS/Windows growth, the clones did. Apple needs more vehicles out there to run its operating system and they can't make enough to meet the need. T

sushi

Oct 9, 2003, 07:42 AM

Originally posted by ChoMomma
That's a huge heatsink not a emulator.. i know it's deceptive.. but it's just a heat sink. :D
Ouch, my insides are hurting from laughing so hard! :-)

synergy

Oct 9, 2003, 07:47 AM

Originally posted by MacFan26
What is John Sculley's purpose in saying this? "'Apple took another path and ended up a different kind of company', Sculley said." What's his point? I don't understand why he would make this comment after not even working there for so many years.

Sculley is such a long term failure with regards to everything he has touched. He is probably hoping Intel will hire him.
Intel recently mouthed off the same thing that Apple should have come their way. Sculley is just reiterating in hopes they call him up to work for them.

roy_dan

Oct 9, 2003, 07:48 AM

Analog Kid,

I'm sorry Intel did this to you, or at least a few individuals at Intel. Maybe it's just their blue-collar force that gets the good treatment.

In five years I worked in four different manufacturing sites in AZ for 10 different managers. Three of which were very BAD people including my last one. He wasn't the reason I quite though. But if he had been my first, I would have quit for that reason.

The engineers I knew mainly complained about working 60 hours per week. What else is new for engineers, anywhere?

themacolyte

Oct 9, 2003, 07:56 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
Who says an Intel enabled Mac would be on IA32? I'm sure if Steve Jobs gave Intel the go-ahead they would have a PPC compliant product to manufacture in parallel to the P4's on their awesome manufacturing process.

Whether by buying a license or inventing an ingenious workaround, making PPC's would give them one more edge on AMD and Sun and that's what Intel really cares about.

I don't believe Intel making PPC's is plausible. Apple is moving toward less reliance on Microsoft. Do you think Apple would willing rely on Intel to provide them with a relatively small market chip when Intel is so closely tied to Microsoft? If Apple went to Pentium family CPU's it would be different, I don't think Intel would simply refuse to sell them to Apple. But if Bill woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and decided he'd had enough of Steve, one phone call would be all it would take for Intel's PPC efforts to languish and die.

synergy

Oct 9, 2003, 08:05 AM

tgrundke

Oct 9, 2003, 08:13 AM

Apple on Intel debate rages again, and within the first page of comments I have yet to read one *intelligent* comment about Sculley's remarks - I see only knee jerk reactions.

Sculley dropped the ball while at Apple because he didn't understand Apple. Keep in mind, however, that he was also around so long because he made shareholders happy with excellent ROI and consistent improvement in performance throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Of course, shareholders during that time really didn't "get" how the consumer IT business works - grab marketshare and then gouge later. Apple took a different approach: keep margins high and marketshare low.

But this is beyond the point. Those of your criticizing Sculley's comments just don't get it. Had Apple moved to Intel, the 'disaster' that everyone says would have happened simply would not have. Just because Apple could have used Intel chips does not mean that software would work on Apple computers. It does not mean that there would have been Apple clones. It does not mean that people would like at the price of a Mactel machine and a Compaq machine and said, "Well, the Compaq is cheaper!"

Think about it - that situation still exists today and Apple survives and thrives. Why? Market segmentation. Market differentiation. Elasticities of demand. Marketing. Different user experience. User Interface. Etc. etc. etc.

Sculley is dabbing into a bit of revisionist history - but before we nail his coffin shut, remember that it was Steve Jobs' meddling that delayed the Macintosh introduction, that it was Steve's obsession of silence that led to no fan and consequently a much higher cost to manufacture the Mac. It was Steve Jobs who overspent budgets by millions of dollars, who went on wild tangents building billion-dollar factories that went virtually unused. And most of all, remember that it was Steve Jobs who brought John Sculley onboard, oblivious to the fact that Apple didn't need a marketer. It needed a stern manager.

tgrundke

Oct 9, 2003, 08:18 AM

Good points, EvilMole. Keep in mind that throughout the mid-1980s Apple also had a significant revenue stream from imaging products such as scanners and printers, as well as a far more robust line of monitors.

Also keep in mind that it has only been in the last five years or so that the PC market has become 'commoditized' - prior to that, margins were significantly higher for everyone involved.

EvilMole also makes a very good argument from a management/financial perspective. If you look at Apple's quarterly profits derived from operations, that figure has eroded significantly since Q4 2000. That means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Apple to turn a profit based on Macintosh and Macintosh related sales alone. As Evil points out, the difference is made up by good accounting moves and from ancillary services.

Apple the company may be on a decent playing field at the moment, but Macintosh is by no means out of the woods.

Originally posted by EvilMole
From $1 billion in sales, to $10 billion in sales. By contrast, Apple is now hitting about $6 billion in sales per year.

Or let's look at Job's performance over the past few years. In Q3 2000, Apple shipped just over a million Macs. In Q3 2003, that had slipped to just 771,000 units - and that's not just a blip, the figures inbetween have shown a steady slide.

Or perhaps you'd like market share figures. In 1994 (the year after Sculley left), Dataquest put the Mac market share at 8.9%. In January 1997, while Amelio was CEO, the total for all Macs (including clones) had risen to 11%, with Apple accounting for about 9% (yes, folks, contrary to the Jobs-inspired myth, cloners didn't cost Apple market share - in fact, they increased it overall for the Mac). By 2002, this was down to 3.8%. So, in other words, despite the "success" of the iMac, Jobs has overseen a significant slide in the Mac's market share, and, since the first wave of iMac euphoria died down, a slide in unit sales as well.

So if sales are slipping, how is Apple actually making money? Ironically, part of it is accounting tricks (none of them illegal - Fred Anderson is a very good CFO in this regard), partly by eating the dealers up with Apple Store (thus increasing its own margin), and partly be small but significant diversification - iPod, yearly updates, .Mac. Plus, of course, sales of ARM shares, which in more than a couple of quarters have been the difference between Apple making a loss and Apple making a profit.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 08:37 AM

Originally posted by synergy
Sculley did do good by concentrating on the business market at that time. But the 1 billion to 10 billion was inevitable because of the expansion of computer use at that time period. Any CEO with similar focus on the business market could have done that and more.

And if sales are slipping explain their laptop sales numbers as of recent. G5 sales will tell another tale when the quarter rounds out.
You compared the year 2000 sales to today sales without accounting for recessionary conditions in the economy today.
A lot of companies will show drop offs in revenue and sales over that same time period.

It was by no means inevitable that Apple would grow from $1 billion to $10 billion - there were plenty of computer companies around in 1983 that fell by the wayside. Sculley also managed Apple during the only time I can remember a computer company making the leap from one architecture to another succesfully - from Apple II as the main breadwinner, to the Mac. No other compute company managed that kind of jump.

Apple's laptop sales are, indeed, on the rise - but because they are selling a higher proportion of their product mix as laptops, not desktops. In other words, the company is cannabalizing its own desktop sales to feed higher-margin laptop sales. That's what Jobs means when he says that he wants to surpass 50% of Apple's sales as portables. That will mean that, overall, its share of the portable market will rise - but at the cost of a lower share of the desktop market. It's not a bad strategy, as it allows them to make more money per machine and boosts Apple's profile in an important market.

As for overall sales, there's no good news for Apple there. Between the 4th quarter of 2000 and the same quarter in 2002, overall PC sales fell by about 6% - significantly less than the 20+% slide that Jobs has presided over.

There's no doubt that when you look at the figures, Jobs has failed to convert Apple's immense brand strength into unit sales of Macs. of course, to be fair, he must know this as well: and products like the iPod and iTunes Music Store are an indication that for Apple, the future isn't just about Mac. And that, to me, makes it a far more interesting company.

macmax

Oct 9, 2003, 08:50 AM

The lack of management from CEO was the problem. Acceptance of the in-house kingdoms was the problem. Hiring and promoting wrong people was the biggest problem.

MY thesis was on Apple

At least where i live , Apple's problem is the price and lack of knowledge of use (incompatible comes to mind?) because people doesn't know Apple is quite compatible these days.

Not everyone is a mac geek like us.

Apple should have a better campaign, more airplay of their tv adds.

Also, this is the strange part of my conclusions:

The share of mind(remember i am trying to translate to english) of Apple and what people thought about quality and the whole Apple system was one of the highest.

Everyone wanted a Mac, they just couldn't afford it>

So the problem with Apple to those people that don't know the difference between a computer and the next one is only the:

PRICE.

sedarby

Oct 9, 2003, 08:50 AM

Originally posted by hvfsl
The reason a few people have been talking about Intel making PPC chips for Apple, is that moto will soon stop making PPC chips for Apple and Apple needs to get its lowend chips from someone else. IBM only makes G3 low end chips, which are not good enough to be put in the PowerBook/iMac (at least at the moment).

So the options are:
- Apple moves all its product line over to G5, which would mean a low power G5 would be needed.
- Apple goes to Intel to make a G4 to be used in its low end or low power computers like powerbook etc.
- IBM takes over the G4 production from moto and combines it with its G3 tec.

I can see it now, iMacs with an "Intel Inside" sticker on the front. Blashphemy, I tell you, Blasphemy!

Lanbrown

Oct 9, 2003, 08:50 AM

Originally posted by Dippo
I still think RISC is much better than CISC. CISC is reaching it's limitations while RISC still has some ground to go.

That's just my opinion, no real scientific data to back it up with.

I agree that RISC is superior. CISC does well holding its own, but with Intel CISC processors, it takes considerably more clock speed. AMD can do more with less clock speed. If the consumer wasn't so fixated on the MHz myth, chips that would perform the same amount of work in the same time but have considerably less clock speed thus reducing power required and heat generated would be in use. Here are some benchmarks for the various processors available. By no means are the CISC processors a slouch, but when they are equivalent in work accomplished but in some cases have nearly twice the clock speed or more, it shows how inefficient they are becoming.

Power4 1.7GHz
CINT2000: 1113
CFP2000: 1699

Fujitsu SPARC 1.35GHz
CINT2000: 905
CFP2000: 1340

Pentium 4 3.2GHz
CINT2000: 1330
CFP2000: 1494

Itanium 2 1.5GHz
CINT2000: 1322
CFP2000: 2106

Sun USIII 1.2GHz
CINT2000: 722
CFP2000: 1344

AMD Athlon 3200+
CINT2000: 1335
CFP2000: 1250

AMD Opteron 2GHz
CINT2000: 1335
CFP2000: 1339

synergy

Oct 9, 2003, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole

Apple's laptop sales are, indeed, on the rise - but because they are selling a higher proportion of their product mix as laptops, not desktops. In other words, the company is cannabalizing its own desktop sales to feed higher-margin laptop sales. That's what Jobs means when he says that he wants to surpass 50% of Apple's sales as portables. That will mean that, overall, its share of the portable market will rise - but at the cost of a lower share of the desktop market. It's not a bad strategy, as it allows them to make more money per machine and boosts Apple's profile in an important market.

If they had let the desktop line wither more than it has I would agree with your line of reasoning. But they haven't willingly let the desktop line wither. Part of the circumstances is with the lack of a good PPC chip to push the desktops. The G4 just aged very very poorly. Yes Apple could have shoveled money into it to help aleviate that, but that would not have helped the bottom line.

So I don't see Apple allowing laptop sales to cannabalize the desktop line. Apple is growing the laptop sales. It just so happens that curcumstances allowed for the desktops to flounder. What could Apple have done differently to puch desktop sales? Not much until IBM got the G5 out of the door. You can argue up and down that other chips were available or Apple could use their cash horde to push the G4. But the chip was not entirely theirs to begin with.

I don't think it was their strategy to let the desktops flounder. They just got stuck at a time where it did flounder. The G5s will push their desktop sales even further. Once they start to migrate the other desktops to the G5s I think they can show some serious reason for people holding onto old G4 machines to upgrade.

Damek

Oct 9, 2003, 09:02 AM

Originally posted by ipiloot
You had no vision and no clue what's happening inside and outside. You would have been very good operations manager. But not CEO. At least in Apple. Admit it.

You know what this means? Steve Jobs is Apple. Everyone knows it. He makes the company. You know what else that means? When Steve Jobs dies (and he will eventually), Apple will have no choice but to be run by somebody else. Let's hope ol' Stevie can get someone good groomed for the job, or else Apple will quickly become just another company like Pepsi or Nike or whatever.

The day Jobs passes on is likely the day Apple stops being Apple.

davy the bunny

Oct 9, 2003, 09:05 AM

Didn't we fire that guy? ;)

merges

Oct 9, 2003, 09:05 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
<snip>

Hear, hear!

I can't believe the purely negative, apparently uneducated, instant reactions to Sculley. It takes a very, very bright guy to make two household names. And it takes some pretty solid business knowledge to increase a company's revenue tenfold. And while we're at it, it takes a lot of guts to risk the kind of innovation that Apple was doing in the 80s and early 90s, which has in many ways led them to where they are today.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 09:14 AM

Originally posted by synergy
What could Apple have done differently to puch desktop sales?

Simple: continued with the clone program. This would have given customers greater confidence, particularly businesses that always require more than a single supplier, as well as giving Motorola (as a clone maker) a bigger incentive to push PowerPC production. Clones *were* growing the market, as the market share figures at the time showed. The reason that Jobs cancelled the clone program had nothing to do with the simple business of selling market share for everyone, and everything to do with Jobs' desire to see Apple own *all* of the Mac market.

The decision to cancel cloning directly cost Motorola over $100 million, simply in built Mac clones that it had to junk. Is it any wonder that Motorola wasn't exactly rooting for Apple after that?

CaptainScarlet

Oct 9, 2003, 09:27 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
As for overall sales, there's no good news for Apple there. Between the 4th quarter of 2000 and the same quarter in 2002, overall PC sales fell by about 6% - significantly less than the 20+% slide that Jobs has presided over.

Haven't you noticed, it's not just "Computer" companies, but 90% of ALL company profits/trading incomes are down since 2000. Have you forgotten about 9-11??? That caused a major drop in the markets, world-wide....

Companies are now starting to show market growth. And so is Apple. It's only a matter of time before the markets start growing again like they were....

CS....

synergy

Oct 9, 2003, 09:34 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
Simple: continued with the clone program. This would have given customers greater confidence, particularly businesses that always require more than a single supplier, as well as giving Motorola (as a clone maker) a bigger incentive to push PowerPC production. Clones *were* growing the market, as the market share figures at the time showed. The reason that Jobs cancelled the clone program had nothing to do with the simple business of selling market share for everyone, and everything to do with Jobs' desire to see Apple own *all* of the Mac market.

The decision to cancel cloning directly cost Motorola over $100 million, simply in built Mac clones that it had to junk. Is it any wonder that Motorola wasn't exactly rooting for Apple after that?

Industry analysts have already been over this.
Mac clones did not expand market share and only cannibalized Apples sales. When they decided to do clones it was too late. Apple had hoped to expand the market share. But when it only ate their own market share and did not expand the market share Apple had to pull the plug.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/web.whatnext/hit.miss/miss08.html

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 09:40 AM

Originally posted by CaptainScarlet

Companies are now starting to show market growth. And so is Apple. It's only a matter of time before the markets start growing again like they were....
.

Unfortunately, that's not true. Between Q3 2001 and Q3 2002, computer sales overall rose by 3.6%, according to IDC (Dell, the market leader, upped its year-on-year growth in sales by a staggering 23% in the same period). In other words, other computer makers have seen their unit sales grow since at least the end of 2001, while Apple's have fallen.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 09:48 AM

Originally posted by synergy
Industry analysts have already been over this.
Mac clones did not expand market share and only cannibalized Apples sales. When they decided to do clones it was too late. Apple had hoped to expand the market share. But when it only ate their own market share and did not expand the market share Apple had to pull the plug.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/web.whatnext/hit.miss/miss08.html

Despite what CNN says (and what Apple said at the time), this simply isn't true. As the figures I quoted earlier showed, Mac OS sales reached a high of 11% market share penetration in January 1997, when cloning was at its peak. It began its long decline after that. Apple's own share had stabilized at around 9%, and is now down to a mere 3%-ish.

The truth is more complex. In the short term, Apple needed to buy time to reposition itself as what an analyst friend of mine calls "a boutique computer company": that is, a company that makes high-price, high-design value machines, leaving the cloners to make the "grey box that you hide under your desk" machines. To buy this time, Jobs decided to cull the cloners, without thinking of the long-term effects on Apple's business relationships (a classic Jobs error, and one that he's made several times in the past).

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 09:59 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
Unfortunately, that's not true. Between Q3 2001 and Q3 2002, computer sales overall rose by 3.6%, according to IDC (Dell, the market leader, upped its year-on-year growth in sales by a staggering 23% in the same period). In other words, other computer makers have seen their unit sales grow since at least the end of 2001, while Apple's have fallen.

However, most of Apple's losses were in the desktop sector. They had gains in the laptop sector, but not enough to offset the loss in desktops, mostly the PowerMac. So it can be argued that Apple's numbers fell strictly because they didn't have an appealing desktop line. This has changed since then. I would expect the next numbers we see out of Apple to be VERY impressive. Just from what I've heard from friends and associates it seems that everyone is getting a G5.

CaptainScarlet

Oct 9, 2003, 10:02 AM

Originally posted by Rincewind42
However, most of Apple's losses were in the desktop sector. They had gains in the laptop sector, but not enough to offset the loss in desktops, mostly the PowerMac. So it can be argued that Apple's numbers fell strictly because they didn't have an appealing desktop line. This has changed since then. I would expect the next numbers we see out of Apple to be VERY impressive. Just from what I've heard from friends and associates it seems that everyone is getting a G5.

And that's exactly what I was saying.

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 10:07 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
Despite what CNN says (and what Apple said at the time), this simply isn't true. As the figures I quoted earlier showed, Mac OS sales reached a high of 11% market share penetration in January 1997, when cloning was at its peak. It began its long decline after that. Apple's own share had stabilized at around 9%, and is now down to a mere 3%-ish.

It doesn't matter if the market share goes up if the platform goes under. That's a classic Sculley error. Mac market share may have gone from 9% to 11%, but if Apple's marketshare in particular gets cut in half (which given the success of Power Computing by itself can be the gauge of) then it doesn't seem like a good idea to Apple now does it? Who will evolve the platform if Apple was driven out of the market? Regardless of all the speculation that analysts have put out, I seriously doubt that Apple could become a software-only company (especially then, maybe it would be easier now, but I don't think so). Ultimately the only solution was to kill the clone market before it could kill them. In the end, all you have to do is look at what the Clone market did to IBM. They did all the research, secured all the initial contracts (including the one with the Devil himself) and then got promptly thrown out of the PC industry they started when Compaq beat them to the 386. Power Computing was poised to beat Apple to the G3 before the axe came down.

synergy

Oct 9, 2003, 10:11 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
Despite what CNN says (and what Apple said at the time), this simply isn't true. As the figures I quoted earlier showed, Mac OS sales reached a high of 11% market share penetration in January 1997, when cloning was at its peak. It began its long decline after that. Apple's own share had stabilized at around 9%, and is now down to a mere 3%-ish.

The truth is more complex. In the short term, Apple needed to buy time to reposition itself as what an analyst friend of mine calls "a boutique computer company": that is, a company that makes high-price, high-design value machines, leaving the cloners to make the "grey box that you hide under your desk" machines. To buy this time, Jobs decided to cull the cloners, without thinking of the long-term effects on Apple's business relationships (a classic Jobs error, and one that he's made several times in the past).

You are comparing market share when Apple had a higher percentage at a time of lower overall home computer sales. Unit sales remained similar for apple through the 97 to 00 period.
The overall home computer market expanded greatly at that time thus reducing Apple's overall percentage of the market.
Commoditization really expanded the market through cheap PCs and everyone wanting to be on the "net".
At the same time Apple had red ink on its financial statements for some time leading upto 1997. If their net sales were increasing their bottom line should have been better. Apple makes money on the hardware. By killing the clone makers they stopped their own market share from further eroding. There are plenty of news reports of how the run up to the 97 time period the whole clone computer deal was starting to fall apart.
Is it any wonder that less than one year after the clones are stopped that Apple returns to profitability?

ipiloot

Oct 9, 2003, 10:12 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
From $1 billion in sales, to $10 billion in sales. By contrast, Apple is now hitting about $6 billion in sales per year.

Or let's look at Job's performance over the past few years. In Q3 2000, Apple shipped just over a million Macs. In Q3 2003, that had slipped to just 771,000 units - and that's not just a blip, the figures inbetween have shown a steady slide.

Or perhaps you'd like market share figures. In 1994 (the year after Sculley left), Dataquest put the Mac market share at 8.9%. In January 1997, while Amelio was CEO, the total for all Macs (including clones) had risen to 11%, with Apple accounting for about 9% (yes, folks, contrary to the Jobs-inspired myth, cloners didn't cost Apple market share - in fact, they increased it overall for the Mac). By 2002, this was down to 3.8%. So, in other words, despite the "success" of the iMac, Jobs has overseen a significant slide in the Mac's market share, and, since the first wave of iMac euphoria died down, a slide in unit sales as well.

So if sales are slipping, how is Apple actually making money? Ironically, part of it is accounting tricks (none of them illegal - Fred Anderson is a very good CFO in this regard), partly by eating the dealers up with Apple Store (thus increasing its own margin), and partly be small but significant diversification - iPod, yearly updates, .Mac. Plus, of course, sales of ARM shares, which in more than a couple of quarters have been the difference between Apple making a loss and Apple making a profit.

Don't look at the revenue side only. Apple made a loss at that time. Huge loss. When Jobs took over the company in 1997 it was very near to the banckruptcy. Would the company continue the clone program (supporting clones alone costed more than license revenues from them), it'd be gone already.

Steve made a huge job turning the company around. Before it was a swamp of lazy engineers and loose management. Overcrowded and objectiveless. Making loss every day more-and-more. Now it's a properly working creative company. Losing market share was the result of what was made long itme before Steve took over. Keep in mind that since 1995 Apple did not have competitive edge in OS anymore. At least if we speak in pure technical basis. Win got comparably good. Apple did'nt have modern OS up until OSX got usable and that happened with Jaguar. Last year.

I have to admit that Sculley did many good things. He's first 4-5 years in the company were fabulous. The way he pushed the company forward was magnificent.
But after the period, when good operations management only made the difference passed by, the lack of vision started to bring the company down. Lots of management rules were overriden. That's why he lost the job eventually.

The major mistake that Apple did under the management of Sculley, Spindler and Amelio was using proprietary parts in all-over the system. To be honest - Amelio started the switch to commodity hardware (PCI/AGP slots, USB ports and anything else familiar from PC world besides processor and OS), but Jobs made it a strategy. That allowed the company to cut cost so much that it's now able to build machines as cheap or cheaper than others in the industry. Far more. Apple gets the OS cheaper than usual PC-maker - believe it or not. Approximately half as cheap. Keep in mind that bringing Steve back to company was Gil's idea. A brillinat one from the company's perspective and total disaster from he's own's. Instead Steve we would maybe have Gasseé. And there wouldn't be the Apple Co. we know and love anymore.

OS and processor make the identity of Apple. You can't rip off half the identity and hope that the customers are still happy. This is why I say that Sculley STILL HAS NO CLUE! And You, EvilMole also.

themadchemist

Oct 9, 2003, 10:32 AM

perhaps this was the only thing he did RIGHT.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 10:43 AM

Originally posted by Rincewind42
However, most of Apple's losses were in the desktop sector. They had gains in the laptop sector, but not enough to offset the loss in desktops, mostly the PowerMac.

Certainly, Apple was hurt by having a poor pro desktop line. I don't have the figures to hand at the moment, but pre-Jobs it was selling around three times as many pro desktop machines as it is now. Coming from a base that low, the Power Mac G5 has to recover a huge number of sales in order for it to make up all the ground that Jobs has lost. I'm not convinced that a machine that only really matches the fastest Windows machines around is going to make up that ground.

EvilMole

Oct 9, 2003, 10:52 AM

Originally posted by ipiloot
Don't look at the revenue side only. Apple made a loss at that time. Huge loss. When Jobs took over the company in 1997 it was very near to the banckruptcy. Would the company continue the clone program (supporting clones alone costed more than license revenues from them), it'd be gone already.

...which is, of course, why they needed to up the price of the cloner's licenses.

Steve made a huge job turning the company around. Before it was a swamp of lazy engineers and loose management. Overcrowded and objectiveless

Couldn't agree more. But the credit for that goes to Amelio, who curtailed huge numbers of projects and laid off a lot of engineers who were adding nothing to the core products.

OS and processor make the identity of Apple. You can't rip off half the identity and hope that the customers are still happy. This is why I say that Sculley STILL HAS NO CLUE! And You, EvilMole also.

Well, that's your opinion. I only care about what I see on screen - Mac OS X is what makes my Mac a Mac, not the chip that I never see and really don't give a damn about.

BrandonRP0123

Oct 9, 2003, 11:06 AM

I think we're forgetting a few important things here:

1. Mac OS X's core already DOES run on x86. See www.opendarwin.org.

While the elegant GUI that makes up a good portion of what we think is Mac OS X isn't available - the underpinnings (including X11) are.

2. Apple tried this x86 thing before. Remember the DOS/PC cards you could get for the NuBus slots in the older Power Macs? Yes. They had a 486DX2/66Mhz chip on them, etc. Check your apple history. They were a flop, IIRC.

3. Intel is a chip maker. They make the P4 for the PC market just as IBM used to produce x86 chips for the PC market. Don't even mention the new Centrino stuff - because that's just an added chip on their mobile processor motherboard. They could very well make a mobile processor board with a PPC G5 and add an airport extreme chip onto it.

They're not married to it - it's just a source of income for them. IBM produces x86 servers, Linux applications and things of the sort - yet they're also accomplishing this task for Apple.

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 11:32 AM

Originally posted by EvilMole
Certainly, Apple was hurt by having a poor pro desktop line. I don't have the figures to hand at the moment, but pre-Jobs it was selling around three times as many pro desktop machines as it is now. Coming from a base that low, the Power Mac G5 has to recover a huge number of sales in order for it to make up all the ground that Jobs has lost. I'm not convinced that a machine that only really matches the fastest Windows machines around is going to make up that ground.

If you don't think that Windows 95 had a lot to do with that, then you need to brush up. With the introduction of Windows 95, Apple lost a LOT of market differentiation, and thus people that had previously bought Macs for what Macs did and that no one else did, suddenly saw the economics of going the PC route. After all, why pay 50% more for the same thing they would ask (regardless of your feelings on the interchangeability of Mac OS & Windows)?

Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio's answer to that is to be like everyone else. Jobs' answer is to make yourself different again. You can see the former in all of the PC makers that folded or nearly folded during and before the downturn (many a company has fallen to Dell). The latter can be seen today in Apple.

An x86 Mac that couldn't run Windows would have been seen as just another Mac and blown off in the same way. An x86 Mac that could run Windows wouldn't be considered unless it was preloaded with Windows.

Finally, the Benchmarks say that the G5 only matches a high end PC workstation (yes, we are talking about $4000 dual Xeon systems, not $2000 commodity single P4 PCs). But in actual use, applications not benchmarks, by and large the G5 trounces the competition. All it takes is one thing that you can't do, or can't do as fast on a PC to show the value of the G5. Because the things you can't do or can't do as fast are far fewer.

bousozoku

Oct 9, 2003, 11:36 AM

Originally posted by merges
Hear, hear!

I can't believe the purely negative, apparently uneducated, instant reactions to Sculley. It takes a very, very bright guy to make two household names. And it takes some pretty solid business knowledge to increase a company's revenue tenfold. And while we're at it, it takes a lot of guts to risk the kind of innovation that Apple was doing in the 80s and early 90s, which has in many ways led them to where they are today.

The innovation, other than the idea for Newton, had nothing to do with Sculley. One of his first actions was to have Apple legal sue Digital Research and Atari over GEM. Was it a surprise that Mac OS languished after Steve Jobs was gone? Sculley presided over an automatic upgrade cycle.

agengler

Oct 9, 2003, 12:52 PM

I'm certainly glad he "screwed up" and didn't go with intel.

"Intel Inside" is a warning more than a declaration.

Cappy

Oct 9, 2003, 01:01 PM

It's always amazing how in topics like this so many facts are inaccurate or missing.

1. PCI and commodity parts in Macs were already in development and even for sale before Amelio took over. I should know since I bought my 7500 just before Amelio was put on the stage.

2. The imac "success" that everyone credits Jobs for was already something in motion by Amelio. Apple continually had stated about year before its intro that they would be hitting the consumer market hard with something they had currently in development and Amelio backed that up after his release in an interview.

3. An x86 Mac does not translate into an apples to apples comparison of different timelines that people are comparing in what would have happened to Apple in going x86 or not. A different business model and marketing plan would have been needed and there is no easy way to predict if that would or would not have been successful.

4. People have conveniently forgotten that IBM really didn't follow through well on a number of fronts years ago with the PPC. What happened to OS/2 on PPC? What happened to OS/2 period? If they're so dedicated to their cpu line, why does Moto catch all of the blame for lack of speed when during the same timeframe, IBM was not really producing anything significantly better?

5. Be very careful how you use those revenue numbers during Amelio's years as he repeatedly talked about bringing those numbers down so that Apple could be profitable. They were around the 10-12 billion/year and he talked about 6-8 billion/yr being where they needed to be to become efficient and profitable again. That was part of a strategy and not truly a direct result from Apple sales being taken away.

I agree with the person who stated Scully is responsible for the Apple we love. He's not truly responsible for what Apple came to be but his regrets he mentions actually point to many of the very issues plaguing Apple now. He was no idiot. His problem is probably more that he just got burned out and should have picked someone with better vision to take over earlier. Spindler was a joke. Of course we can't let the board escape any blame. They played a large role in things and didn't get near the negative publicity that the CEO's did.

The thing to remember in situations like this is that there is an apple in every crowd. Someone who pushes for quality and might have the cool things that people respect. Typically those people never come in first and I think people here don't realize that. Apple has done some amazing things to get where they are but while it's sad they can't increase market penetration, it's not really in the cards. It's all about business people. Apple's only real saving grace is that they have tons of assets and patents that they can tap to enter new markets so that when the current desktop market truly dwindles and dies(and it will), they should be pretty well prepared to move Mac technology into those other markets regardless of the cpu used.

tYNS

Oct 9, 2003, 03:05 PM

Seems to me that Scully has a very large case of Sour Grapes.

Scully was a Business Boy running a creative company. they do not match. I cannot say he was an idiot, the newton was a interesting idea, just not approached properly. Scully really did not do much for Macintosh other than fill a roll and "continue" a created success. He never created success.

It reminds me of the old Atari 2600 story. The company that made such a sought after machine but never took it anywhere after that. Eventually people outgrew the technology and found even better things.

In a way we have to be grateful that scully was at apple all these years.. The true creative ideas that we are now seeing from Apple were matured over the years from steve jobs as he developed NeXT ... This is GREAT.

It is baffling to think what would apple really be like if Steve Jobs hadn't gone out on his own. If he were allowed to have had his hand in over the late 80's and early nineties.

things happen for a reason And it all seems to be looking really good for apple now.

Kai

Oct 9, 2003, 03:09 PM

I worked at Intel for almost 5 years (blue collar) and can tell you first hand it’s a great company that takes care of the employees and customers. Much like another company we all appreciate, Apple. Intel and Apple have more in common than we may think.

Oh, then i guess this (http://www.faceintel.com/) must be an evil ploy from AMD's Jerry Sanders himself, right? ;-) Or maybe I'm just hallucinating...

Sun has it too and look at whom they are starting to buy CPU's from!

Urrmm - AMD (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/32569.html)?? ;-)

I subscribe to your point though that Intel *could* make some excellent PPC-CPUs though.. Just like AMD for that matter! ;-) Everybody's better than Moto!
The only problem i see is Intels "king of the hill" attitude. They couldn't be just part of a PPC-Consortium, no: They have to OWN the whole shebang before they're happy!
They're much like M$ in this respect...

It’s scary to think it, but what if there were catastrophic failures in IBM’s leadership, business model (again), or earnings and they had to start shedding overhead.

Say, have you heard of a thing called "contractual obligations"? ;-)
And exactly why should IBM be less trustworthy and "shaky" than Intel, when they're the _only_ constant that has been around since Day Zero of the Computing Age?
Hell, IBM is over 3 times as old as Intel!!..

I don’t have all of the answers but Intel takes risks all the time (one of their core values)

Name one single risk they ever took except for EPIC/the Itanic!

kevib: 4 Cores in a P980? Gimme a break!
a) what you're talking about is the Power5, not the P980!
b) The Power5 has 2 cores (hence "Dualcore") like the Power4 did. It will have SMT and some other goodies extra though..
c) IBM integrates 4 Power4-Dualcores in one MCM (Multi-Chip-Module) and will continue to do so with the Power5. Maybe that's what you meant..
d) The P970 is a stripped-down Power4 with a single core and Altivec. Guess how many cores the P980 will have if the Power5 has 2? ;-)

pigwin32: I really like the term "backstreet solder monkey"! ;-)

And as for RISC vs CISC: The battle is OVER for many years! Like many here said: RISC has won, just like predicted! *All* Chips produced today are RISC-Chips, some just have extra x86/CISC-Translation logic on top that does nothing but slow them down! ;-)

1macker1

Oct 9, 2003, 03:26 PM

there is nothing wrong with intell chips, in fact there are among the fastest out there, along with AMD. I dont see how the changing of chips (esp. moving away from motorola) could have hurt apple. Think where apple could be if it wasn't trying to push it's MHz myth, and staying with Moto so long

bousozoku

Oct 9, 2003, 03:48 PM

Originally posted by tYNS
Seems to me that Scully has a very large case of Sour Grapes.

...

It reminds me of the old Atari 2600 story. The company that made such a sought after machine but never took it anywhere after that. Eventually people outgrew the technology and found even better things.

...

Atari's 680x0 computers were quite popular, especially in the music industry, where they were number one. Many of those applications started out on the Atari ST line. This line was very popular in Europe and took the number one spot in several countries.

Sculley has so many sour grapes, he should be able to make a lot of whine.

kherdin

Oct 9, 2003, 03:52 PM

Originally posted by 1macker1
there is nothing wrong with intell chips, in fact there are among the fastest out there, along with AMD.

Nothing wrong with them? How about the new Prescott revision to the Pentium line dissipating abouyt 110W of heat per CPU? I think that can be considered as something wrong with them - considering a TWO PROCESSOR G5 2GHZ system doesn't even consume that much (although it comes close, but remember its TWO processors, not one!).

-Myrd

1macker1

Oct 9, 2003, 04:25 PM

Heat is a issue, but it goes along with making the chip faster. Dealing with the heat is part of the engineer's task. The G5 has the biggest heat sinks known to man on their processors. I dont mean big heat sinks i mean HUGE heat sinks.
Originally posted by kherdin
Nothing wrong with them? How about the new Prescott revision to the Pentium line dissipating abouyt 110W of heat per CPU? I think that can be considered as something wrong with them - considering a TWO PROCESSOR G5 2GHZ system doesn't even consume that much (although it comes close, but remember its TWO processors, not one!).

-Myrd

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by 1macker1
Think where apple could be if it wasn't trying to push it's MHz myth, and staying with Moto so long

The Mhz Myth isn't a myth - all it has EVER stated is that Mhz isn't everything to speed. It's alive and well in that a 2Ghz G5 meets or beats a 3.2 Ghz P4. If Mhz alone mattered, you would expect the G5 to be about 62% the speed of the P4.

Where Apple went wrong was in not getting something faster than a 1.42 Ghz G4 by the time Intel managed to get to 3Ghz P4s. And the Mhz Myth still plays there because a 1.42 Ghz G4 is faster than Mhz alone would predict when faced with a 3Ghz P4 (it just doesn't beat it).

And for the record, Intel has to face the Mhz Myth too - it's Itaniums and Pentium-M processors are both faster than the P4 Mhz for Mhz. They created the Mhz Myth, it's about time they reaped what they sowed.

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 04:33 PM

Originally posted by 1macker1
Heat is a issue, but it goes along with making the chip faster. Dealing with the heat is part of the engineer's task. The G5 has the biggest heat sinks known to man on their processors. I dont mean big heat sinks i mean HUGE heat sinks.

They still put out less power than a 3.2Ghz P4. The heat sinks are so honking big so that you can get more airflow through them, thus making for a more efficient (and quieter) cooling system. If they put on a heat sink half the size you can bet those fans would be kicking up at full speed all the time.

1macker1

Oct 9, 2003, 04:42 PM

I just don understand why all of a sudden, Apple is trying to push the clock speed up (up to 3Ghz by next year). I belive that a system with a slower chip and a better design, can be as fast as a bad design with a fast chip.

but i guess a faster chip and a good design is even better.

daveL

Oct 9, 2003, 05:33 PM

Rincewind42

Oct 9, 2003, 06:45 PM

Originally posted by 1macker1
I just don understand why all of a sudden, Apple is trying to push the clock speed up (up to 3Ghz by next year). I belive that a system with a slower chip and a better design, can be as fast as a bad design with a fast chip.

but i guess a faster chip and a good design is even better.

Why wouldn't they want to push up the clock frequency? If they never did, they wouldn't have bothered to have gone past the G3 (or earlier).

And IBM has won awards in processor design for their Power4 processor - from which the 970 is derived. I'd say that peer recognition makes for a decent measure of good design.

Mac til death

Oct 9, 2003, 06:56 PM

it doesn't bother me that Sculley said this because he never knew how to run the company anyway....

He needs to stick to Pepsi.... maybe they could start shipping intel processors in their 7up.

VIREBEL661

Oct 9, 2003, 06:57 PM

Gyroscope

Oct 9, 2003, 09:12 PM

Major reason Apple market share eroded back in mid-late 90's was that after release of Windows95/NT it pretty much lost OS war to Microsoft. It also had little to do with the hardware. Under Sculley Apple just hasn't realized importance of having modern pre-emptive multitasking, memory protected OS. They had good hardware base to do so any time they wanted. IBM/Microsoft had to wait for i386 to do anything with OS/2, and Microsoft couldn't do anything with Windows for years to come:). Apple had at least 2-3 years head start here. I used to tease my dad that my Amiga500 ($350) could format floppy disk while I was typing stuff into it while my dad's MacSE would just halt until it finished formating(on $2000-3000 machine). Then Windows95/NT came out. Businesses jumped on bandwagon cuz in windows NT they saw an modern server OS that was supposedly :) cheaper and easier to administer than unix boxes of those days. Consequently it was very logical to deploy WinOS on client side (Win95) to go along with it. Win95 also became very popular in consumer space helped by falling hardware prices and dawn of internet era. Apple
got really caught up in this. They didn't have an modern OS ready to go(Copland was an failure) and they couldn't respond well to falling PC hardware prices, because burdened with prop. standards ala ADB,NuBus etc they just couldn't build cheap and good box. Result was disastrous Performa/LC line of Macs that suffered from quality/price-performance issues and in turn further helped to Apple's downfall.

Scottgfx

Oct 10, 2003, 01:14 AM

Originally posted by bousozoku
Atari's 680x0 computers were quite popular, especially in the music industry, where they were number one. Many of those applications started out on the Atari ST line. This line was very popular in Europe and took the number one spot in several countries.

Ahhh Yes, The ST line. When I was 15, I really wanted one. One thing to keep in mind is that Atari at that time had little to do with the division of Warner Communications that built the 2600 (or VCS) The original author was alluding to the bottom dropping out of the home video game industry in 1982. (83?)

The Atari ST computer was a system that was quickly built from off-the-shelf parts, and used an operating system and GUI from Digital Research. (CP/M 68K & GEM) There was nothing really special about the ST except the MIDI ports that made them popular with the music industry. Atari actually was involved in quite a bit of FUD slinging against the Amiga. I have an article from a magazine that debunks quite a few myths of the era. The whole reason the ST was designed and built is a whole other story.

(And why exactly did the TT have to look like a cash register?) :)

CreepCollector

Oct 10, 2003, 02:27 AM

What a jerk. Starved for attention, the only way he can get any ink is by maligning the company that is rid of him (how original) Scully. You're gone. Get over yourself.

And if he thinks it was a mistake not to go with the Intel line of CISC junk, it's no wonder we're all sitting on the brink of a 64 bit revolution, and he's somewhere in northern california, waving a metal detector on a beach. Intel is trying to shape the processor market by restricting their 'consumer' processor line (no multiprocessing, no 64 bit processor), and more power to them, because that is just more business they'll lose to IBM, Apple and AMD. Scully, You're an idiot. We're glad you are no longer driving our magic bus.

Genie

Oct 10, 2003, 02:34 AM

I really enjoyed the Atari but now I wish it had been a Mac now.

1macker1

Oct 10, 2003, 08:40 AM

my tag comes from a song
Originally posted by daveL
Looking at your sig, I'd wager you're the person banned from MR yesterday based on your exchange with Rower_CPU.

nalfein

Oct 10, 2003, 09:19 AM

Originally posted by CreepCollector
What a jerk. Starved for attention, the only way he can get any ink is by maligning the company that is rid of him (how original) Scully. You're gone. Get over yourself.

And if he thinks it was a mistake not to go with the Intel line of CISC junk, it's no wonder we're all sitting on the brink of a 64 bit revolution, and he's somewhere in northern california, waving a metal detector on a beach. Intel is trying to shape the processor market by restricting their 'consumer' processor line (no multiprocessing, no 64 bit processor), and more power to them, because that is just more business they'll lose to IBM, Apple and AMD. Scully, You're an idiot. We're glad you are no longer driving our magic
bus.

Thank you, driver, for getting me here (too much, magic bus)

I'm so happy my powerbook is not one of the crappy wintel computer i see around me. Making thing different is what apple do and this is what apple should continu to do for years. If apple has changed to intel, they would probably now just another common windoze capable laptop. This sculley fault was i think pretty good fault!!

Kai

Oct 10, 2003, 11:23 AM

definately an interesting read (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/33336.html): "Sculley explains how he missed the chance to trash Apple"

iPC

Oct 10, 2003, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by kevib
ever wonder why they call it the wintel hegemony? because there aren't very many corporate boundaries. both companies work very closely. they are currently redesigning the pc bios to suit their needs.
Oh no! They want to completely redo the 20 year cruft that is PC BIOS! We should string 'em up for such an idea! ;)

And how is Windows only on x86 hardware any worse than what Apple tries to do with Mac OS only on PPC hardware? It's the same thing ya know. Block out anyone else from doing anyhting constructive on "my" hardware. I guess it is only wrong when you have a majority of the market??? :rolleyes:

iPC

Oct 10, 2003, 02:17 PM

Originally posted by solvs
:cough: palladium :cough:

A "Palladium"-enhanced computer must continue to run any existing applications and device drivers.

"Palladium" is not a separate operating system. It is based on architectural enhancements to the Windows kernel and to computer hardware, including the CPU, peripherals and chipsets, to create a new trusted execution subsystem (see Figure 1).

"Palladium" will not eliminate any features of Windows that users have come to rely on; everything that runs today will continue to run with "Palladium."

In addition, "Palladium" does not change what can be programmed or run on the computing platform; it simply changes what can be believed about programs, and the durability of those beliefs. Moreover, "Palladium" will operate with any program the user specifies while maintaining security.

It is important to note that while today's applications and devices will continue to work in "Palladium," they will gain little to no benefit from "Palladium" services. To take advantage of "Palladium," existing applications must be adapted to utilize the "Palladium" environment or new applications must be written. This software - whether a component of a Microsoft Win32®-based application or a new application - is called a "Trusted Agent."

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jul02/0724palladiumwp.asp

jefhatfield

Oct 11, 2003, 06:37 AM

Originally posted by roy_dan
I hate to see guilt by association and that is what's happening to Intel nowadays. Yes, they have a strong partnership with Microsoft but that is only smart business. Trust me, they don't share the same philosophies as MS.

I worked at Intel for almost 5 years (blue collar) and can tell you first hand it’s a great company that takes care of the employees and customers. Much like another company we all appreciate, Apple. Intel and Apple have more in common than we may think.

Who says an Intel enabled Mac would be on IA32? I'm sure if Steve Jobs gave Intel the go-ahead they would have a PPC compliant product to manufacture in parallel to the P4's on their awesome manufacturing process. I have seen Itanium, PIII, P4, Celeron, Chipsets, and Strong ARMS all in the same factory in Chandler, AZ.

Whether by buying a license or inventing an ingenious workaround, making PPC's would give them one more edge on AMD and Sun and that's what Intel really cares about.

With Motorola soon to be out of the picture and IBM concentrating on G5's I can't think of a better company to fill in Apple's 32bit gap. Heck, I wouldn't mind Intel making both 32bit and 64bit CPU's for Apple.

Comparing a Mactel to a Wintel is still inconclusive. One of Apple's biggest strengths, IMO, is the fact it's one company engineering the whole system. Sun has it too and look at whom they are starting to buy CPU's from! I would even argue that a Mactel system would be cheaper than a Wintel system. Who’s around to over-charge for the operating system license? The smart buyers look past GHz vs. GHz and choose productivity. Ever wonder why Mac users seem smarter than Windows users? LOL That’s not always true.

Never fear, Wintel will forever be inferior because of all the corporate boundaries between making just one system. It's worse than government red tape.

Reevaluate Intel and think about what will carry Apple into the next 20 years. It’s not going to be a foundry fab at IBM.

being a user of apple products since the seventies, and a pc tech, i run into mac people all the time who get ms and intel mixed up...they really do equate the two as the same...those people are either ingnorant or zealots

many of them see steve jobs' legendary bad sense of business and management as creativity and genius...while steve jobs is the most amzing sideman to the true visionary steve wozniak, people who are mac biggots put all the emphasis on jobs because he can talk and motivate better than almost anybody in high tech

us engineers and techies cringe when jobs tries to get technical and when non techies make statement like sj invented the mac or sj invented the mac os, or sj invented...

i am afraid that many mac people will not ever give intel, the company, a chance and they will never admit that it may be a great place to work...many now can accept microsoft office for mac but that was such an uphill battle

...and i find it amazing that mac followers are hip with ibm due to the G5...i wonder what would have happened if intel did the ppc G5?:p

Rincewind42

Oct 11, 2003, 08:38 AM

Originally posted by jefhatfield
many of them see steve jobs' legendary bad sense of business and management as creativity and genius...while steve jobs is the most amzing sideman to the true visionary steve wozniak, people who are mac biggots put all the emphasis on jobs because he can talk and motivate better than almost anybody in high tech

Jobs has always been the public man, and thus his name is known. Anyone who knows anything respects Wozniak as the brainchild behind many of Apple earlier projects. However, if I remember my history correctly, Wozniak was not on the Macintosh project initially, Jobs was.

us engineers and techies cringe when jobs tries to get technical and when non techies make statement like sj invented the mac or sj invented the mac os, or sj invented...

From the few times I've seen him talk tech, it's been almost as an aside or a joke to him. I would consider it self parody when he talks tech - he seems to realize that he doesn't know the tech but then, he doesn't have to. It's always been one of the strong points of the Macintosh, you don't have to know crap about computers to make it work.

i am afraid that many mac people will not ever give intel, the company, a chance and they will never admit that it may be a great place to work...many now can accept microsoft office for mac but that was such an uphill battle

...and i find it amazing that mac followers are hip with ibm due to the G5...i wonder what would have happened if intel did the ppc G5?:p

Hmm. Intel doing PPC would mean that they would have to license all the technology behind it and admit that Mhz isn't everything (the primary marketing behind their flagship desktop CPUs). It's either that or they cripple it's design so much that it might as well be a P4 running a different instruction set.

Ok, maybe that was unfair to Intel, but what possible business reason could they have to want to invest money in a platform they don't own only to make their flagship product look bad? And you couldn't expect Apple to accept terms that would keep them from comparing their new cpu to Intel's other offerings. And finally, you can't expect that after Apple has finally completed the transition to Mac OS X that they now ask developers to rework their apps to run on a new platform, it would simply be too soon.

Even without considering any policies Intel may or may not have (as posted by another poster) it makes little business sense for Intel to take up the PPC mantle. And at this time, it makes little sense for Apple to leave the PPC platform, even before the 970 was announced, when there was a strong PPC partner/supplier in IBM.

Now if for some reason IBM went under (suuuuuuure) then there at that time may be reason for Apple to leave PPC, or maybe for Apple to buy their remaining PPC assets and do it themselves. But as long as their is reason to stay with PowerPC, I can't see Apple leaving it.

jefhatfield

Oct 11, 2003, 11:52 AM

Originally posted by Rincewind42
Jobs has always been the public man, and thus his name is known. Anyone who knows anything respects Wozniak as the brainchild behind many of Apple earlier projects. However, if I remember my history correctly, Wozniak was not on the Macintosh project initially, Jobs was.

From the few times I've seen him talk tech, it's been almost as an aside or a joke to him. I would consider it self parody when he talks tech - he seems to realize that he doesn't know the tech but then, he doesn't have to. It's always been one of the strong points of the Macintosh, you don't have to know crap about computers to make it work.

Hmm. Intel doing PPC would mean that they would have to license all the technology behind it and admit that Mhz isn't everything (the primary marketing behind their flagship desktop CPUs). It's either that or they cripple it's design so much that it might as well be a P4 running a different instruction set.

Ok, maybe that was unfair to Intel, but what possible business reason could they have to want to invest money in a platform they don't own only to make their flagship product look bad? And you couldn't expect Apple to accept terms that would keep them from comparing their new cpu to Intel's other offerings. And finally, you can't expect that after Apple has finally completed the transition to Mac OS X that they now ask developers to rework their apps to run on a new platform, it would simply be too soon.

Even without considering any policies Intel may or may not have (as posted by another poster) it makes little business sense for Intel to take up the PPC mantle. And at this time, it makes little sense for Apple to leave the PPC platform, even before the 970 was announced, when there was a strong PPC partner/supplier in IBM.

Now if for some reason IBM went under (suuuuuuure) then there at that time may be reason for Apple to leave PPC, or maybe for Apple to buy their remaining PPC assets and do it themselves. But as long as their is reason to stay with PowerPC, I can't see Apple leaving it.

great points

but i think amd did well with x86 technology licensed from intel

intel is such a big and powerful company and if they wanted to, they can buy the rights to ppc and make it themselves but right now, apple is doing ok with ibm

as for woz, there's a lot of great and interesting information at www.woz.org and i wish a lot of the newer users of apple gear could go there and realize that there is more to apple than steve jobs...steve jobs worked on everything but he was not a techie, but the business leader (but history shows he didn't do that very well, but as a motivator at macworld, there is nobody better to be the "face" of apple inc

i could not imagine different people showcasing different mac hardware and software every time something came out...steve jobs pulls it all together so brilliantly and explains the products and really makes you want to buy it as soon as you hear him speak

in the field of politics, his similar counterpart is mayor jerry brown of oakland , who used to be california's governor...not a good budget and organization management man, but an amazing speaker and motivator...when brown ran for president, he was able to generate tremendous funds through his motivational speeches, but was unable to manage those funds and the increasing amount of staff, day to day, to take it to the next level

steve jobs can maintain apple and perhaps increase its market share some, but he can never make apple inc a giant nor do i think he would want to...johnny come lately high tech gurus like yahoo, mike dell, and others may not have the charisma, but they have the business smarts to come in, even late, and make serious money

on all accounts, apple had such a head start in the personal computer revolution that it was inconceivable that they let their command lead slip...i grew up here watching them start, expand, and then get outmanuevered by everybody else...jobs knew that he is not a CEO type so that's why he got scully...but we now know that he may have not been any better than jobs

yamabushi

Oct 13, 2003, 02:32 AM

Who would have been a better choice than Sculley?

jefhatfield

Oct 13, 2003, 03:07 AM

Originally posted by yamabushi
Who would have been a better choice than Sculley?

that's a good question, but maybe someone in the computer business with more experience

but a lot of us are not happy he fired steve jobs who founded apple inc, but that was, in hindsight, necessary for apple at the time and steve jobs' time outside the company made him grow...if steve jobs had stayed we would not have had the same apple inc we have today

overall, it has all worked out for the best since apple is still around and we have great computers to choose from (imac, emac, powerbook, ibook, x-serve, and the G5) and a very nice operating system as well as some great apps

anyone can speculate what could have been if sj had stayed or if apple inc didn't bring sj back in the late 90s...i think if things were done differently than it had in those two cases, we would not have an apple inc

iPC

Oct 14, 2003, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by Rincewind42
Hmm. Intel doing PPC would mean that they would have to license all the technology behind it and admit that Mhz isn't everything (the primary marketing behind their flagship desktop CPUs). It's either that or they cripple it's design so much that it might as well be a P4 running a different instruction set.
You mean like the Centrino labeled P4 mobile procs? :rolleyes:

RBR2

Oct 15, 2003, 12:22 AM

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
I'm not a CEO but moving to Intel would have been disasterous.

Imagine it folks.

Mactel- P4 3.2Ghz Computer $2999

Wintel P4 3.2Ghz Computer $2499

How would Apple differentiate it's product from wintel. Same processor. I know they don't think people would actually pay more for design knowing they innards where the same.

Sculley. You may rest knowing NOT moving to Intel was a good thing!

it always has been. Apple's costs would have been much, much less had they gone this way. There has been much more R&D money spent on the X86 chips over time. (Now that IBM is involved this is probably less true, but still the case in raw numbers.) Intel is wedded to MS because MS's OS runs their chips. Had Apple made the move this would not have been quite so true. Even now Intel is rumored to be considering creating an OS of their own to change this situation.

Apple has missed several opportunities to become the dominant OS in PCs. This was one of them.

jefhatfield

Oct 15, 2003, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by RBR2
it always has been. Apple's costs would have been much, much less had they gone this way. There has been much more R&D money spent on the X86 chips over time. (Now that IBM is involved this is probably less true, but still the case in raw numbers.) Intel is wedded to MS because MS's OS runs their chips. Had Apple made the move this would not have been quite so true. Even now Intel is rumored to be considering creating an OS of their own to change this situation.

Apple has missed several opportunities to become the dominant OS in PCs. This was one of them.

apple is like charlie brown when he tries to kick the football:p

it took apple a long time to realize the real name of the game in the valley of the chips is to have the dominant operating system

in an interview, steve jobs confessed that he realized too late that apple was a software company, not a hardware company

in the book "macintosh, the naked truth", the author states what makes the mac experience is the os, not the hardware...now all hardware is about the same with the macs having a slight edge...but os x and os9 rock all over xp:p