Re: [NTLK] [OT] deja vu, ipod gets its own division

From: Jim Witte (jswitte_at_bloomington.in.us)
Date: Mon May 24 2004 - 12:58:40 PDT


> Why 'analysts' and 'industry experts' ever think that it would be a
> good
> idea for Apple either switch the Macs to x86

   Maybe cost. But seeing as how IBM has apparently put an awful lot of
work into the G5 in close partnership with Apple (see my post), perhaps
not. And (if MacOSX and software is indeed ported to Intel) it might
have been easier to just go with Intel than develop the G5, considering
the contentions between Moto and IBM over the future of the PowerPC.

> or drop the Mac hardware line and only sell MacOS for generic x86 I'll
> never know - the only
> reason I can come up with for them to say that is that they're either
> not very good at analysis or that they aren't really experts in the
> industry.

   Or they're spreading dis-information for whatever reason.

> I think Cringley is over estimating the importance of the Cell chip,
> especially in the near to mid term. It seems to be a radical departure
> from more established chip designs and it's especially designed for
> gameing.

   Probably. And he seems to be writing of the 'G5 transition' as being
a frop. They only introduced the G5 a year ago? Is it really time to
call it a flop yet?

> I think it's a bit premature for Apple to pull the plug on all
> non Apple retail channels. Every PC World I've been in has a decent

   I don't think they'd drop the mail-order channels. At least the ones
I've seen are in decent Mac magazines, and don't have sales-droids who
know more about the PCs than the Macs (especially when the Macs
invariably cost more than the medium-end PCs (yeah - when you outfit
them they cost more, but that takes staff that know their stuff..)
Somehow I don't think I'll be seeing a G5 in Sears anytime soon.
Though I'd love too - it would look very cool if nothing else.
Especially if they had 5 of them lined up, all running real-time
fractal zooming programs (Xaos) that was xGrid enabled.. (Although I'm
not sure xGrid is too suited for that - too much data sharing - I hope
Apple upgrades xGrid to include some *higher-end* grid computing
features.)

Jim

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