Former Anobit CEO Discusses Acquisition by Apple, Contrasts Cultures of Apple and Intel

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by rbonzer

It must just in hardware where Apple requires the A-Game. Their software UI design is excellent, but the execution is pretty average.

That was an old problem.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by guerro

Apple went Bankrupt in the late 1990s??????????????

To clarify, when us at NeXT entered Apple and Steve was in the beginning of revamping the company he presented to the company the stark reality that they faced: 3 months of working capital left. That's it. He cancelled the Sabbatical Program which held 1/3rd of the staff with 12 weeks of paid vacation time. We went from 26 focused marketing departments to 1. The now infamous 2x2 matrix for products was the result the public saw.

There was even turmoil when the local coffee/latte vendor was cut loose. The internal anonymous web site to express praise or angst was filled with people complaining about the overpriced beverages being taken away.

The next day free coffee, espresso and lattes were the start of changes to the main dining area. Steve then replaced nearly the entire kitchen staffs and brought in a variety of foods that was a dramatic improvement to health and morale. Quality restaurant italian bisto, mexican, vegan, vegetarian, etc., it was there.

It was either fold or focus. The company focused.

To us at NeXT who came over it was just another day at work.

No work I've had since compares in quality or results. Most of the industry has very little pride in doing their best.

[See Flat]

Originally Posted by 12dylan34

Without the leadership of Steve Jobs, yes.

Apple never went bankrupt.

[newagemac]

Originally Posted by samcraig

I wouldn't argue that point. And I wasn't. The issue raised wasn't whether or not it was the same level of commitment. But rather having a commitment to excellence. To imply that Samsung, Microsoft or other top-tier tech companies don't have a commitment to excellence - regardless of execution - is just ridiculous.

I didn't include Microsoft. I included Motorola, Samsung, Dell, and HP as examples of companies without a committment to excellence.

Committment to excellence is exactly what it says it is. For example, Apple could have made some crappy cheap netbooks when all the other manufacturers were pushing that crap onto consumers but they didn't.

Companies like Samsung have no problem at all selling low end "smartphones" that they know are crappy. And I'm not just talking about low cost stuff, I'm talking about the kinds of devices that just should have never been made at all.

Feature phones might be cheap but at least they worked, did what they said they would do, and were relatively bug free. But if you don't have a commitment to excellence, you will throw all kinds of crap at the consumer in the name of marketshare by enticing unsuspecting customers with the label "smartphone".

If you introduce a new device that scrolls like crap and horribly buggy and you release it anyway, that obviously shows a lack of committment to excellence. People who buy low cost phones might expect less features but they don't expect a frustrating and buggy experience and poorly made stuff that makes them regret their decisions later. Companies that do people like that don't care at all. They are just out to make a quick buck on those customers regardless of what they know the experience will be like.

However, probably the best indicator of ANY company's commitment to excellence is the quality of customer service they offer. Good customer support is extremely expensive and an easy way to cut corners if you don't have a commitment to excellence.

And again with most of Apple's competitors, it shows.

[hchung]

Originally Posted by Nunyabinez

I take exception to the slam on Intel. I worked for Intel for 3 years as a marketing manager before I returned to get a Ph.D, and to say that they don't expect excellence out of employees is B.S.

I love the great things that Apple does, but it's not like there is a bunch of crap coming out of Intel. This guy is just taking a shot at a former partner. Intel has always had the reputation of hiring the best and brightest. Maybe Apple is wringing more out of their employees, but Intel is no slouch at innovation and consistent, quality improvement.

I'm sorry. But I can't agree with you.

Every company makes mistakes. Apple, Google, Intel, Yahoo, etc....

But some mistakes are a class of their own, like Netburst.

When a prestigious university professor, who literally wrote the book on computer architecture, had an entire lecture dedicated to how awful Netburst was, and repeated it every year, that's just plain embarrassing.

Intel Research has the brightest people and is very innovative.
Intel Corp... not so much.

[i.mac]

Originally Posted by Squilly

Just another company for Apple to ruin. Or maybe... miraculously.... it'll be a decent partnership/buyout.

What are you talking about?

Any one can talk I suppose, but it does not mean the talk makes any sense.

[hchung]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

Okay, I won't mention

Final Cut Pro X-gate
Crackbook Pros-gate
Lap burning Laptops-gate
Thermal paste-gate 2008
Liquid cooling leak-gate

Just off the top of my head.

lol. Only liquid cooling was a real screwup.
2, 3, and 4? Never heard of them.

FCPX was a PR disaster, mitigated by allowing people to call in and buy FCP7.

If you want actual unsuccessful products, try this starter list:
1) The puck mouse.
2) The Cube.
3) MobileMe
4) Ping

[Renzatic]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

Lap burning Laptops-gate

Hey, don't knock it. I know some people who used their first gen MBAs as a hotplate for cooking beans and coffee in their office.

Apple haters call it a bug. Those of us with a more level headed disposition know it's a feature.

I mean comeon. Who puts a laptop in their lap these days? It's a dead usability standard. It's not Apple's fault they clung to the past and crisped their cods.

[samcraig]

Originally Posted by Renzatic

Hey, don't knock it. I know some people who used their first gen MBAs as a hotplate for cooking beans and coffee in their office.

Apple haters call it a bug. Those of us with a more level headed disposition know it's a feature.

I mean comeon. Who puts a laptop in their lap these days? It's a dead usability standard. It's not Apple's fault they clung to the past and crisped their cods.

In fact, rumor has it that McDonald's used Macs exclusively to heat up their coffee. Sadly, after they were sued, they had to switch to cheap crap other manufacturers made...

[Digital Skunk]

Originally Posted by hchung

If you want actual unsuccessful products, try this starter list:
1) The puck mouse.
2) The Cube.
3) MobileMe
4) Ping

OMG OMG OMG OMG

I DIED when I read the puck mouse. Now THAT was some crap indeed.

I lie I lie.

That is a great list! Ping!

PING!?!?!?!

I am mad for not thinking of Ping. What A+ team created that disaster?

[throAU]

Originally Posted by guerro

Apple went Bankrupt in the late 1990s??????????????

Not quite.

But they went close - due to confusing the market, and building too much garbage to go along with decent hardware and allowing clones.

Originally Posted by wizard

ATOM, their GPUs, their GPU drivers, generally hot chips and other questionable endeavors. The fact is Intel has shipped a lot of crap over the years and has been out of tune with the market for some time. Only in the last few years have they gotten their act together with the Core products and an honest effort to address the needs of their customers.

Having built PCs since 1992 and supported customers with them I have had far less trouble with intel products than others.

Sure, the P4 was a bit of a dog performance wise. However it was generally "good enough". It was also the only CPU that really ran excessively hot compared to others. It was a bet on a technological path that didn't pan out. Back in the days before the P4, CPU speeds were increasing every year (typical mid-range clockspeed went from say 300mhz to 1.6ghz in 4 years between 1997 and 2001), unlike today where we've been stuck around the 3-4ghz barrier for well over half a decade.

Intel was expecting to hit 10ghz with that technology and did not foresee process issues that held it back. Unfortunately, as a result the design trade-offs that were made to target 10ghz were a liability.

A P4 that hit 10ghz would have absolutely smoked anything AMD had in the pipeline.

Be that as it may...

More importantly however is that intel can generally make a reliable, stable chipset. I don't care if intel is 10% slower on benchmarks if it crashes so much LESS often due to not having the chipset issues (the fact that the current core series smoke AMD is just a bonus for me).

I've lost count of the number of bugs, stability issues and general flakiness I have encountered over the years with chipsets made by VIA, SIS, etc.

With intel, the CPU is not necessarily the selling point for me.

The selling point is that I can get an intel chipset, which is the reference for most other hardware vendors to ensure they are compatibile with.

I suspect this is a major reason (in addition to power consumption) that Apple have been intel exclusive since the x86 switch, also. I also suspect this is why Apple didn't bother with a third party non-intel USB 3 controller. Having dealt with third party USB 3 drivers on PCs, the drivers are often garbage.

For far too long AMD did not make a chipset to go with their CPUs and left production of such to a bunch of companies that shipped garbage. Which is unfortunate, as the K6, Athlon and later were really good CPUs.

[the8thark]

Originally Posted by needfx

same taste, different chicken

Some could argue that it's not even chicken anymore.

[needfx]

Originally Posted by needfx

you're growing it wrong...

Originally Posted by the8thark

Some could argue that it's not even chicken anymore.

called it LOL!

[hchung]

Originally Posted by throAU

Having built PCs since 1992 and supported customers with them I have had far less trouble with intel products than others.

Sure, the P4 was a bit of a dog performance wise. However it was generally "good enough". It was also the only CPU that really ran excessively hot compared to others. It was a bet on a technological path that didn't pan out. Back in the days before the P4, CPU speeds were increasing every year (typical mid-range clockspeed went from say 300mhz to 1.6ghz in 4 years between 1997 and 2001), unlike today where we've been stuck around the 3-4ghz barrier for well over half a decade.

Intel was expecting to hit 10ghz with that technology and did not foresee process issues that held it back. Unfortunately, as a result the design trade-offs that were made to target 10ghz were a liability.

A P4 that hit 10ghz would have absolutely smoked anything AMD had in the pipeline.

Be that as it may...

More importantly however is that intel can generally make a reliable, stable chipset. I don't care if intel is 10% slower on benchmarks if it crashes so much LESS often due to not having the chipset issues (the fact that the current core series smoke AMD is just a bonus for me).

I've lost count of the number of bugs, stability issues and general flakiness I have encountered over the years with chipsets made by VIA, SIS, etc.

With intel, the CPU is not necessarily the selling point for me.

The selling point is that I can get an intel chipset, which is the reference for most other hardware vendors to ensure they are compatibile with.

I suspect this is a major reason (in addition to power consumption) that Apple have been intel exclusive since the x86 switch, also. I also suspect this is why Apple didn't bother with a third party non-intel USB 3 controller. Having dealt with third party USB 3 drivers on PCs, the drivers are often garbage.

For far too long AMD did not make a chipset to go with their CPUs and left production of such to a bunch of companies that shipped garbage. Which is unfortunate, as the K6, Athlon and later were really good CPUs.

I'd have to say that it's quite possible that every P4 engineer knew it was garbage before launch and only did it because somebody high up told them to build it anyways.

Interview any of them in private and ask them if they seriously thought they could clock it high enough to actually win on performance, and I'm pretty sure they'll tell you no. Why? Because they inserted stages into the pipeline which did nothing but wait for a signal to cross the chip because the clock was too high already. Clock it higher, just means you need to insert more blank stages while drawing more power. So in order to increase the clock, they have to reduce the amount of work done, making the clock increase pretty useless. The only things that a 10Ghz P4 would be smoking is all from the current draw.

The P3s were discontinued not because it was older, but because at lower clock rates, it beat out the P4s in performance. Yes, Intel killed a superior product in order to make their newer product not look bad. And then brought it back (tweaked) as the Pentium M and banked on the general public not really understanding that it was pretty much backpedaling on years of bad marketing-driven decisions.

You could even tell which enthusiast website writers were knowledgeable or not by whether or not they thought the P4 was a good idea.

As for chipsets, yeah, Intel generally did a much better job there. There's a few bombs here and there, but as you said, much better than VIA and SIS. Performance and latency for some of them around ICH5 were poor, but reliable. One of the 440s couldn't support DIMMs with more than 128MB, and even worse, would corrupt memory if you tried to use memory that was too fast or too large.

[powers74]

Either way. Must be nice. My company doesn't even reward excellence.

[throAU]

Originally Posted by hchung

I'd have to say that it's quite possible that every P4 engineer knew it was garbage before launch and only did it because somebody high up told them to build it anyways.

Possible, but I believe the marketing department, or whoever was in charge really believed they could ramp up a lot higher in mhz than they did - and bet the CPU part of the business on it.

Alas.... even now, we're stuck under 4ghz (on air cooling), whereas back in the late 90s/early 2000s we were seeing clock speeds double every 12 months or so.

RAMBUS RDRAM was also intended to be used with the P4 to keep up with the clockspeed. But issues there, including intel's big chipset SNAFU of the decade (bugs in the 810 chipset) and RDRAM cost killed that, which also hurt the P4.

And yes, the pentium 3 was superior in terms of IPC - but, it ran out of headroom around 1ghz. They had real issues clocking it much higher than that. All the IPC in the world is great, but if you can't scale it you have a problem. The p3 had a problem.... yes it had superior IPC, but intel simply couldn't ramp the speed up. Hence the "paper launch" of the 1.13ghz P3 that no one could get hold of for months due to supply issues. Intel simply couldn't get the yields due to the p3's design at that speed.

The P4 design evolved. The later P4s were nowhere near as bad as the early ones.

And yes, the P6/pentium 3 core returned after being tweaked as the Pentium M and Core series. Some of the tweaks they did were adding stages just like the P4 did, but nowhere near as many as the extreme number of pipeline stages they added to the P4 (which everyone now knows was an error).