With the left over 10.7 Billion they should buy Sun bring in Sparc talent as well (PPC, Sparc, ARM, Alpha, X86 mixed up hmmm...)along with major opensource projects. Or focus on the video/storage side and gobble up Telestream, Sedna Presenter, Active Storage Inc, and EditShare to name a few. Yahoo looks tempting as well to shore up talent for MobileMe and compete with M$ Exchange with Zimbra.
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Apple Recruits IBM Chip Designer, IBM Files Lawsuit
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With the left over 10.7 Billion they should buy Sun bring in Sparc talent as well (PPC, Sparc, ARM, Alpha, X86 mixed up hmmm...)along with major opensource projects. Or focus on the video/storage side and gobble up Telestream, Sedna Presenter, Active Storage Inc, and EditShare to name a few. Yahoo looks tempting as well to shore up talent for MobileMe and compete with M$ Exchange with Zimbra.
don't underestimate ego
Especially the ego of SJobs. I am sure it rankled him to move to Intel. The only reason for the move was because IBM stopped the development of the G5 in that form and turned to the form used by the gaming machines. How about: Apple begins producing just the Power Mac again, a pro level machine that uses PPC.. along with MacPros that use Intel. Doesn't anyone else realize how many MUG folks there are would buy both machines? Haven't any of you ever been to those Apple booths at the conventions in NY/SF and seen the nuts who sit there in that theater area and watch Apple's TV ads? I mean, they are ads, for chrissake...I mean for stevesake. You feel like you are in a chapel or something. And the way some of these people talk, my God. Or rather, my Jobs. It really is like this. If Jobs asked for donations, he would get them. Some of these folks aren't just aficionados, they are supplicants.
Anyway..I would probably buy a PPC machine over an Intel. But I gotta admit I would probably get a desktop PPC and laptop Intel. Probably the software engineers have been working on an operating system that will run on both. Or..OS11 debuts as the PPC OS..then thereafter it's odd numbers for PPC, even numbers for x86.
Would anyone doubt the will of Jobs?
Especially the ego of SJobs. I am sure it rankled him to move to Intel. The only reason for the move was because IBM stopped the development of the G5 in that form and turned to the form used by the gaming machines. How about: Apple begins producing just the Power Mac again, a pro level machine that uses PPC.. along with MacPros that use Intel. Doesn't anyone else realize how many MUG folks there are would buy both machines? Haven't any of you ever been to those Apple booths at the conventions in NY/SF and seen the nuts who sit there in that theater area and watch Apple's TV ads? I mean, they are ads, for chrissake...I mean for stevesake. You feel like you are in a chapel or something. And the way some of these people talk, my God. Or rather, my Jobs. It really is like this. If Jobs asked for donations, he would get them. Some of these folks aren't just aficionados, they are supplicants.
Anyway..I would probably buy a PPC machine over an Intel. But I gotta admit I would probably get a desktop PPC and laptop Intel. Probably the software engineers have been working on an operating system that will run on both. Or..OS11 debuts as the PPC OS..then thereafter it's odd numbers for PPC, even numbers for x86.
Would anyone doubt the will of Jobs?
Apple, PPC, Intel, Etc...
I am not so sure that Steve was rankled, as you say, to go Intel. In fact, his previous company had gone Intel. Next ported NextStep to Intel many years before Steve came back to Apple. Even after Steve was back, the word was that he used an IBM ThinkPad as his computer at work. That may have had more to do with the debacle of the current MacOS at the time (7.5-6 or 8 IIRC).
When the 680X0 line of chips petered out Apple may well have considered Intel's offerings at the time, but that was before Intel started incorporating RISC design principles into it's x86 architecture to speed them up. Instead Apple choose to keep alliance with Motorola and get some help from IBM with their powerful POWER workstation/server architecture and formed the AIM alliance and make PPC chips. Then the PPC seemed to peter out and Apple reevaluated.
If I understand the stuff I've read on ArsTechnica then the x86 architecture has absorbed many of the benefits of RISC into it's architecture. Specifically, those x86 instructions are broken down into a simpler, faster, reduced set of instructions, and have all sorts of out-of-order, superscaler, branch-predictive, processor magic mojo applied in what can be oversimplified as a RISC chip with a CISC-to-RISC instruction converter bolted on.
So, is it likely that Apple wants to reintroduce PPC chips to Macs? Doubtful, as long as Intel continues to provide computing, power consumption, and heat generation advantages over the PPC chips. I seriously doubt that they would switch entirely back to PPC without some sort of Windows compatibility.
Now, if they made a low-power media processing chip, that would be cool. If they came out with a cell-like image and video processing, web accellerating, 3D game enhancing, homework doing add-on chip to speed up pro apps of theirs and others (especially video encoding) that would be awesome!
If you could get OS X to run on a PS3 or Xbox 360, then you might have an idea of what a current PPC mac is capable of. I suppose in the mean time, you could just compare Linux benchmarks.
I for one, hope this employee acquisition bodes great things for Apple. I miss the days when Apple announced super-cool game changing Macs. Don't get me wrong. I think highly of all their current products, but I remember how radically game-changing my first Mac was (MacPlus.) I was lucky enough to be able to use a Mac IIfx during a job I had in high school and agreeing with Steve when he said they were "wicked fast". The first Quadras we had were literally jaw dropping. Remember all the bondi blue accessories, alarm clocks, TVs and toasters, not to mention the explosion of USB devices after the original iMac came out? Remember Phil Schiller demoing AirPort by jumping into a trampoline with an iBook at MacWorld?
I guess I just want to be wowed again. Maybe the accuracy of recent rumors has something to do with it, but I want Apple to be an industry leader and changer. When they come out with a new Mac, I want the other PC makers scrambling to catchup and Windows users saying, "Why does this have to be so hard?" and "Why can't I do that on my computer?". How about a laptop that charges itself my capturing energy from keyboard presses, mouse-clicks, trackpad friction, and hard disk spin-down "regenerative breaking". ("Your battery is low. Press the spacebar 1000 times to accrue another 5 minutes of operating time."
) Oooh, what if they put solar cells on the wrist rest, under the backlit keys and under the glass trackpad? It would work sorta like the solar-powered flashlight, but it would capture excess light from the LCD panel at night, and use the sunlight that glares off the glossy screen in the daytime to provide a brightness boost to actually see through the glare.
Well, I've digressed and ranted long enough! Time to try and sleep some more.
I am not so sure that Steve was rankled, as you say, to go Intel. In fact, his previous company had gone Intel. Next ported NextStep to Intel many years before Steve came back to Apple. Even after Steve was back, the word was that he used an IBM ThinkPad as his computer at work. That may have had more to do with the debacle of the current MacOS at the time (7.5-6 or 8 IIRC).
When the 680X0 line of chips petered out Apple may well have considered Intel's offerings at the time, but that was before Intel started incorporating RISC design principles into it's x86 architecture to speed them up. Instead Apple choose to keep alliance with Motorola and get some help from IBM with their powerful POWER workstation/server architecture and formed the AIM alliance and make PPC chips. Then the PPC seemed to peter out and Apple reevaluated.
If I understand the stuff I've read on ArsTechnica then the x86 architecture has absorbed many of the benefits of RISC into it's architecture. Specifically, those x86 instructions are broken down into a simpler, faster, reduced set of instructions, and have all sorts of out-of-order, superscaler, branch-predictive, processor magic mojo applied in what can be oversimplified as a RISC chip with a CISC-to-RISC instruction converter bolted on.
So, is it likely that Apple wants to reintroduce PPC chips to Macs? Doubtful, as long as Intel continues to provide computing, power consumption, and heat generation advantages over the PPC chips. I seriously doubt that they would switch entirely back to PPC without some sort of Windows compatibility.
Now, if they made a low-power media processing chip, that would be cool. If they came out with a cell-like image and video processing, web accellerating, 3D game enhancing, homework doing add-on chip to speed up pro apps of theirs and others (especially video encoding) that would be awesome!
If you could get OS X to run on a PS3 or Xbox 360, then you might have an idea of what a current PPC mac is capable of. I suppose in the mean time, you could just compare Linux benchmarks.
I for one, hope this employee acquisition bodes great things for Apple. I miss the days when Apple announced super-cool game changing Macs. Don't get me wrong. I think highly of all their current products, but I remember how radically game-changing my first Mac was (MacPlus.) I was lucky enough to be able to use a Mac IIfx during a job I had in high school and agreeing with Steve when he said they were "wicked fast". The first Quadras we had were literally jaw dropping. Remember all the bondi blue accessories, alarm clocks, TVs and toasters, not to mention the explosion of USB devices after the original iMac came out? Remember Phil Schiller demoing AirPort by jumping into a trampoline with an iBook at MacWorld?
I guess I just want to be wowed again. Maybe the accuracy of recent rumors has something to do with it, but I want Apple to be an industry leader and changer. When they come out with a new Mac, I want the other PC makers scrambling to catchup and Windows users saying, "Why does this have to be so hard?" and "Why can't I do that on my computer?". How about a laptop that charges itself my capturing energy from keyboard presses, mouse-clicks, trackpad friction, and hard disk spin-down "regenerative breaking". ("Your battery is low. Press the spacebar 1000 times to accrue another 5 minutes of operating time."
) Oooh, what if they put solar cells on the wrist rest, under the backlit keys and under the glass trackpad? It would work sorta like the solar-powered flashlight, but it would capture excess light from the LCD panel at night, and use the sunlight that glares off the glossy screen in the daytime to provide a brightness boost to actually see through the glare.Well, I've digressed and ranted long enough! Time to try and sleep some more.
Yeah, but that was a $42B merger with Microsoft
. Who knows, maybe they'd merge with Apple for $1! Then Apple would have plenty left over for those other companies. If only we could somehow enlarge and strengthen the RDF to encompass the rest of Silicon Valley.
How long is this lawsuit going to take to resolve? That might just take care of the year of the NCA anyway.
I did not realize IBM and Apple were competitors. As far as I know, IBM makes neither personal computers, MP3 players or cell phones. It's possible they compete in some incidental product area, but if there were such an area it would probably represent a very small portion of at least one company's revenues. Is a non-compete enforceable if the areas of competition are trivial?
IBM execs
I hope this guy is worth it. Most IBM executives are boneheaded morons totally lacking anything remotely resembling "vision" and anything that could remotely be called a "human soul". There are a few notable exceptions, but they tend not to go very far within IBM.
IBM is one of those companies with a mountain of talent in the ranks squashed by an enormous elite management class sitting on top of them trying to suppress anything innovative as they think real innovation smacks of being too "expensive" (even when the whole point of a particular innovation may be to save money). And then simultaneously talking up mediocrity as if that is what "innovation" is really about. Change is bad, except if is mandated from above; then it is blindly follow the leader so I get a bigger bonus.
The average IBM exec's bag of tricks could be automated by a simple Eliza program from the 1970s: Cut everyone you can with a higher salary, hire only new college graduates and people from low cost countries, shift costs to other departments and make your crap other people's problems, and introduce paralysis analysis by having your teams waste time trying to figure out what the rest of the industry is doing to achieve the same abysmal level of mediocrity, safety lies in the wisdom of the crowds (also called "Best Practices").
I hope this IBM exec is worth fighting for, not just overpaid blue shirt. But the fact he is leaving IBM speaks well of him.
I hope this guy is worth it. Most IBM executives are boneheaded morons totally lacking anything remotely resembling "vision" and anything that could remotely be called a "human soul". There are a few notable exceptions, but they tend not to go very far within IBM.
IBM is one of those companies with a mountain of talent in the ranks squashed by an enormous elite management class sitting on top of them trying to suppress anything innovative as they think real innovation smacks of being too "expensive" (even when the whole point of a particular innovation may be to save money). And then simultaneously talking up mediocrity as if that is what "innovation" is really about. Change is bad, except if is mandated from above; then it is blindly follow the leader so I get a bigger bonus.
The average IBM exec's bag of tricks could be automated by a simple Eliza program from the 1970s: Cut everyone you can with a higher salary, hire only new college graduates and people from low cost countries, shift costs to other departments and make your crap other people's problems, and introduce paralysis analysis by having your teams waste time trying to figure out what the rest of the industry is doing to achieve the same abysmal level of mediocrity, safety lies in the wisdom of the crowds (also called "Best Practices").
I hope this IBM exec is worth fighting for, not just overpaid blue shirt. But the fact he is leaving IBM speaks well of him.