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Apple shunned superstar chip start-up for Intel
- Thread starter shadie
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gauchogolfer
macrumors 603
I guess the moral of the story is that it's all well and good to have a great technology product, but if you can't produce it in the kind of scale that a company like Apple requires, it just doesn't matter. I guess PA might make a quad-core CoreDuo-killer sometime in 2007, but if they can't make 10 million of them, it's moot.
Not surprising in the slightest. I know we as customers like Apple a lot, but they aren't nice to their industry partners. The Macweb was raving about PA Semi in the months leading to the Intel announcement, so of course Apple would have been looking at it for longer than that. It's just a shame PA weren't 6-12 months ahead of their own schedules. This week's 2GHz dual-core MacBook could have had one of these inside of it.
Let me get this right. You're running a multi-billion dollar technology company, trying to design and produce products 2-6 years ahead of time but you'll risk a critical part of your business strategy on an unproven startup?
How can something be called a 'superstar' chip when it's not even available?
There are other considerations why they chose intel:
1. they can produce chips in greater volume.
2. They have a better R&D, and the money to put into it
3. The intel chip can allow running of Windows alongside Mac OS X - that's a big plus for consumers.
4. Apple didn't have the 1+ years it had to wait for these new chips to arrive, if they'll ever arrive. The G4 chip was already dead-slow compared to a 2 years old Intel mobility chip.
Oded S.
1. they can produce chips in greater volume.
2. They have a better R&D, and the money to put into it
3. The intel chip can allow running of Windows alongside Mac OS X - that's a big plus for consumers.
4. Apple didn't have the 1+ years it had to wait for these new chips to arrive, if they'll ever arrive. The G4 chip was already dead-slow compared to a 2 years old Intel mobility chip.
Oded S.
Apple may well soon have a shadow build of OS X running on a computer based on the new chip, assuming it looks to live up to hype. They don't have to start selling them in order to be prepared to start selling them, and even if they do at some pont start selling them, they don't have to cease making Intel-based Macs and releasing Intel-based & PowerPC-based OS X.
Meanwhile, though, Apple's already done their turn at going with a promising new chip only to have economies-of-scale allow Intel to out-develop and get ahead on the performance curve. The PowerPC really is a better chip architecture than x86, but the resources weren't there.
Meanwhile, though, Apple's already done their turn at going with a promising new chip only to have economies-of-scale allow Intel to out-develop and get ahead on the performance curve. The PowerPC really is a better chip architecture than x86, but the resources weren't there.