What is Digg?23 Comments
- Eidola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"Steve Jobs announced Apple was jettisoning the PowerPC chip for new processors supplied by Apple"
I think you meant to say "processors supplied by Intel". ;) - jsg7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13With the exception of the stock options debacle, things couldn't have gone too much better for Apple in 2006.
- jsg7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If you look at their *increase* in market share, it jumped significantly. And it appears to be a trend that will continue. It's just a question of how far and how soon.
I don't expect them to overtake the other PC makers (can't really just compare them to MS since Macs can now run Windows). But I don't see a 10% of US market share (over 6% now) by the end of 2007 as unreasonable at all. Not based on the way things have gone recently. - MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8from Wikipedia:
"When the first PowerPC products reached the market, they were met with enthusiasm. In addition to Apple, both IBM and the Motorola Computer Group offered systems built around the processors. Microsoft released Windows NT 3.51 for the architecture, which was used in Motorola's PowerPC servers, and Sun Microsystems offered a version of its Solaris OS. IBM ported its AIX Unix and planned a release of OS/2. Throughout the mid-1990s, PowerPC processors achieved Benchmark test scores that matched or exceeded those of the fastest x86 CPUs.
Ultimately, demand for the new architecture on the desktop never truly materialized. Windows, OS/2 and Sun customers, faced with the lack of application software for the PowerPC, almost universally ignored the chip. The PowerPC versions of Solaris, OS/2, and Windows were discontinued after only a brief period on the market. Only on the Macintosh, due to Apple's persistence, did the PowerPC gain traction. To Apple, the performance of the PowerPC was a bright spot in the face of increased competition from Windows 95 and Windows NT-based PCs.
However, toward the close of the decade, the same manufacturing issues began plaguing the AIM alliance in much the same way it did Motorola, which consistently pushed back deployments of new processors for Apple and other vendors: first from Motorola in the 1990s with the G3 and G4 processors, and IBM with the 64-bit G5 processor in 2003. In 2004, Motorola exited the chip manufacturing business by spinning off its processor business as an independent company called Freescale Semiconductor. Around the same time, IBM exited the personal computer market completely by selling its line of PC products (which used Intel processors) to Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo and focused their chip designs for PowerPC CPUs towards game machine makers such as Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360. In 2005 Apple announced they would no longer use PowerPC processors in their Apple Macintosh computers, favoring Intel produced processors instead, citing the performance limitations of the chip for future personal computer hardware specifically related to heat generation and energy usage in future products, as well as the inability of IBM to move the 970 (PowerPC G5) processor to the 3 GHz range. This was considered a public relations problem for IBM, since the decision was made in part by their inability to match Intel and other competitors in terms of speed and architecture improvements. This effectively ended the AIM alliance with IBM continuing to use and evolve the PowerPC processor on game consoles and Freescale Semiconductor focusing solely on embedded devices."
end quote
I've heard other people say that it was IBM that dropped Apple, but none have offered any proof. Can you post a link with verification? - inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5> Apple got their asses dumped as a customer by IBM.
Very unlikely. Do you have a source other than IBM's PR dept?
Apple, Motorola and IBM jointly owned and developed the PPC chip so you can't really say any of them "dumped" the others. Apple withdrew from using technology they partly owned.
On a side note, I've always wondered if Apple still co-owns the PPC and if they make a small profit from every game consoles being sold. It would be strangely ironic that Apple profits from every XBox sold when even MS doesn't.
(Edit: I can't believe MacParrot is being dugg down for quoting an actual source.) - badnewsblair, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah. I agree, but it is a direct quote from the article. Hopefully they will edit that to make more sense.
- salinemist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Nothing impressed me more than Apple saying "we're switching to Intel" and then BAM! it happens.
Compare that with MS and the release of Vista. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Linux is multi-architecture.
- arjayl642, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Regardless, it's the best thing Jobs has done all year. Intel is the most popular processor company that I can think of.
- arjayl642, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Jobs has said the best things are coming in 2007. Wait until second quarter next year to do anything like that. I wouldn't take him completely for his word, but I'd like to see what he's got in his pocket.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"On a side note, I've always wondered if Apple still co-owns the PPC and if they make a small profit from every game consoles being sold. It would be strangely ironic that Apple profits from every XBox sold when even MS doesn't."
The answer is yes, they still do own part of PPC, though it's not a very significant portion; Apple owns many, many patents on different logic design elements inside of the PPC processors, but through the AIM alliance IBM and Motorola gained rights to those patents in manufacturing and agreed on very small royalties to help the platform survive.
Apple probably makes more money off the sales off of leather iPod accessories than they do from the sales of PPC chips (as most of the logic Apple owns is in PPC extensions, namely the "Velocity Engine" or Altivec). - leonbev, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Sadly, it seems to have been a better year for Apple rumors than actual Apple products. The widescreen iPod, the "iPhone", iTV, OS X 10.5, and several other Apple products were either announced or projected to be announced this year, but none of them were released or even given a firm date on when they would be released.
The only major product advancements that I saw this year was the switch to Intel processors and the new Nano and Shuffle iPod's. Everything else is still vaporware at this point. - MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"The major damage to Apple from getting dumped by IBM is in the home media area where they are now locked out of Cell based systems. Cell rips through encoding and decoding easily an order of magnitude faster than anything else in existence. And Intel doesn't have anything to compete with Cell for at least 7-10 years down their roadmap. What a fiasco for Apple, Intel has nothing capable of handling the massive demands of 1080p HD content."
Since most pros are either using an Avid solution on WinPCs and Macs or Final Cut Studio on Macs, where is the software and/or hardware solutions for Cell Processor based video editing/content creation? Can you please quote sources or are you just speaking of the Cell processor's potential?
Apple went with Intel because they already had OS X running on X86 hardware. To port it to the cell would have required more time and resources that Apple doesn't have, plus possibly losing more developer support for yet another non-industry standard. At least with the PowerPC's, they had Moto and IBM's name behind it. IBM is making the Cell, but other than imbedded systems and game consoles, no one is making computers that an average joe can operate.
@inkswamp. No big surprise, this is digg. - arjayl642, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is kind of a bad article to recap what Apple's done this year.
There was another Digg article that did better with Wired.com
See it there:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72344-0.html - jsg7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Frankly, I'm not buying anything right now. I think the market could be at a peak and the economy isn't in good enough shape to sustain the current stock market growth.
- macaddct1984, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@arjayl642
I think it's fairly safe to say Vista won't change much.
...but maybe I'm just an Apple fanboy. - leewillm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1even with the stock options issue, apple is still an amazing company and i doubt it will have any influence on a strong showing in 2007
agree or disagree --> i have wanted to buy apple stock, but it was $$ so now with the stock options issue the price has come off $10 down to 70ish? would you all agree that it is time to buy or no? - outpostbabu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1This was an industry first! Imagine, a computer that runs a modern chipset and can run MULTIPLE operating systems! It had never been done before. On top of that, the performance gains were phenomenal... TAKE THAT PC! Ha! Apple wins again!
- Tyr7, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0On top the chips being Intel, wasn't the move announced in January with the switch starting in February?
- arjayl642, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Things could dramatically change with Vista; people could hate it enough to switch to Macs even more, or they could lose potential buyers. But Leopard will definately get people into it.
- isukeyo, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6"things couldn't have gone too much better for Apple in 2006"
Still single digit market share for the desktop OS, no other studios signed onto iTunes for movie downloads - I'm thinking they could have had a MUCH BETTER year!
That being said, yes, they did have a good year.
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