Intel on Notes

Miscellaneous Apple stuff

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 12:12:39 +0000

This week we saw some announcements from Apple.

Monday, we got the bad news: the Paris Expo keynote was cancelled, so the probability of seeing new hardware is low. It seems that I’ll have to wait a little longer for my Powerbook upgrade.

Then Wednesday, you got the iPod nano, the iPhone, and a new iTunes.

I’m not going to talk about the iPhone, I couldn’t care less about a iTunes client inside my phone. Besides, I would be raging mad to switch from my SonyEricsson to a Motorola phone.

The iPod nano is a different story. I so want one. My iPod 10Gb is dead for some months now, and I’ve been using the wife 20Gb second generation to listen to podcasts, the only real reason to have a screen. My music is being pumped by my shuffle and it’s quite enough for me. I have no need to see my 16Gb library in my pocket.

The size is amazing, the capacity is enough for my needs, even the 2 Gigs model. And the black one is very very nice, although it seems that the headphones will still be white.

The only drawback of the iPod nano is the USB-only thing: I can’t use a firewire connection. It’s ok if you have a new Mac, with USB 2, but mine is still USB 1.1. I guess I could get a USB2 PCMCIA card, like João Gomes did. I haven’t used the PCMCIA that is always inside my powerbook, to read memory sticks, due to the fact that it doesn’t support the Duo’s.

Other small things about Apple, iTunes and all the speculation flying around: the fact that you can donate to help the Katrina victims via iTunes; and one interesting view about the politics behing wednesday announcement.

Pfig would not be happy if I didn’t mention the Harry Potter audio book release as an iTunes music store. I’m going to buy one of the books for sure. I want to see how it’s read, and if it works. I’ve been listening to audio-books for almost 3 years now, and having a book read to you, if done right, is a totally different experience from reading it. Some books work much better, other just don’t work at all, but I can tell you that I found myself laughing out loud while listening to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, read by Douglas Adams.

Also, Mac OS X intel is now everywhere. I’ve seen it running with a normal Intel desktop, and it’s amazing. The performance is very good, even for a developer edition, and the stability, although not what I’m used to, seems good enough for daily work already. Impressive. You can find a lot of info about running it on your hardware at BoingBoing (linking to the OSX86 site how-to) and Diario de um Vadio (also the follow up article).

I’m very tempted to install it on a Shuffle I have more or less idle.

The fact that the Mac OS X Intel edition is possible to be installed on normal Intel hardware should not come as a surprise to anyone. The basic protections that Apple did where simple to work around. The use of SSE3 instructions was more tricky because it’s not a common feature yet, but the amazing work done by the community, providing a patch to change them to SSE2 was jaw-dropping.

One must wonder how far will Apple go to prevent you from running Mac OS X on any PC. On one side, they need to sell you those nice and somewhat pricey machines; on the other, pirate copies of Mac OS X will increase the usage of Mac OS X. Windows has some 80-90% market share, but how many of those are legal copies?

Some say that by allowing even some piracy, Apple will lose sales. I’m not so sure. I think that people who will pirate Mac OS X are unlikely buyers of Mac hardware, due to price. Yes, they will loose some sales, but not that many. And they will gain a lot of people that will try Mac OS X. And maybe those people, if asked by friends which computer to buy, will advise the Macs.

Or not. This is pure speculation. But given all the scenarios discussed in the last week with friends, I think that a little piracy will help Apple improve the awareness of Mac OS X, and with that probably help their sales.

Who knows. Maybe Apple will have some Mac OS X trial CD’s in the future…

Greetings from planet Earth

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 08:42:44 +0000

Nuno, I’m at Reboot, which I think it’s still on planet Earth (although you could argue that some people here have fallen from some other place), so no time to pretty graphics. But let me show you something:

Microsoft: Market cap 274.75B
Apple: Market cap 29.51B

Now, which one do you think is the company that is innovating the most right now?

Size does not matter, it’s what you do with it.

AMD would be a better choice to Apple if they had a better technology than Intel, and right now, they do in terms of x86-64. After reading the ArsTechnica article, we are told that Intel seems to have a better roadmap than AMD.

It’s not only about cost per cpu. Apple already sells their gear at a higher price point than the rest, so a difference of x amount of dollars, if they had a better technology with it, would not be a problem for them. One could argue that this was the reason to keep PowerPC for so long: better CPU, albeit more expensive. They only changed their CPU when the roadmap of the competition was better. So it seems that Apple prefers technology over price (for reasonable differences between prices, of course).

I would bet that if AMD had a better roadmap than Intel, they would choose AMD.

Now, the point of Ars Technica article is a good one, and for now I find it acceptable to my question (Why Intel?). But I think that the main reason is the roadmap, not the size, nor the market cap (which is meaningless).

And now back to Cory Doctorow, preaching the good word: broadcast flag in Europe.

Greetings from planet Earth

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 08:42:44 +0000

Microsoft: Market cap 274.75B
Apple: Market cap 29.51B

Now, which one do you think is the company that is innovating the most right now?

Size does not matter, it’s what you do with it.

I would bet that if AMD had a better roadmap than Intel, they would choose AMD.

And now back to Cory Doctorow, preaching the good word: broadcast flag in Europe.

Let's try this again

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 17:55:57 +0000

Nuno, let’s try this again: both two posts I wrote about this minor issue (the one you quoted in your initial article and my response to that article) are not against x86. Please re-read them.

It’s about Intel. Not x86, but Intel. That’s what I’m skeptical about (and thanks for the explanation about British and American spellings).

It’s not that I don’t like x86, I use them every day of my life, in all the servers I buy, or the servers I recommend buying.

You quoted the second part of a paragraph. Let me quote the first part of my own article

I’m not skeptical about x86 choice by Apple.

Is there any subjectivity in that statement that eludes you?

I really hope not.

Regarding the volume argument, I’m not so sure yet, although I agree that it is a very big bonus. I’ll re-listen to the webcast in search of that Jobs explanation of the reasons for the change. I do agree with the power angle. It is very useful to Apple to have a chip that runs cooler than the G5s with a equivalent performance.

In the meantime, I’m still waiting for my dual-core G4… :)

Sharing the pain

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:44:23 +0000

The new PowerBook saga continues. What will I do next? Well, I really don’t know. For now, I’m sharing the pain with others.

Questions to be answered:

how long after Mactel shows up will Apple support PowerPC hardware?

Will see.

It's not about x86, Nuno

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 13:53:39 +0000

Nuno didn’t read my posts closely enough, it seems:

Some people (lots of them in fact) seem to be sceptical of this and wonder why the heck would Apple switch from a so far successful hardware architecture.

I’m not skeptical (ant not sceptical, according to Mac OS X spelling check) about x86 choice by Apple. I’m skeptical about the choice of vender of x86 architecture.

My feeling is that Intel is not innovation in the last years and they don’t seem to have a strategy to x84-64 (compare Itanium sales to Opteron). That is my whole point.

Yes, I do understand your point about volume, but I’m not convinced yet. IBM will be increasing its production in huge amounts, now that they are powering Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Revolution. Of course, AMD is not there yet, but in high-end processors, they are cheaper than Intel (which kind’s of makes a dent in your point about volume == cheaper).

Anyway, Nuno, I welcome the change, if that gives me a better laptop than my current TiBook. And that is not clear to me yet.

Another thing, in your comments, you write:

What defines an Apple product isn’t the hardware - it is the design, OS and applications. Users don’t give a damn for what is under the hood.

As an Apple user, I’m sorry, but that is not my opinion. I say that the hardware is a very important part of this, because having to use Apple-sanctioned hardware makes the experience more complete and reliable. Apple “just works” because the hardware is engineered to work together with the software. And that is, to me, the most important part of the Mac: the fact that, on average, it just works. That is the reason I bought a mac, and it’s the reason that I don’t mind to pay the extra, to have a machine that was designed to “just work”.

Questions needing answers

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 12:58:37 +0000

Going forward, I’ll see lot’s of talk about Apple and Intel. As Rui as told you, as long gcc runs, I’m ok. I use my Mac mostly in UNIX-mode, so I’m not in too worried.

Now, the only thing that is still unanswered in my mind, is why Intel. Why not AMD. Also the 32bit question. So I decided to keep a log of my questions (and hopefully answers):

Why did Apple decide to go with Intel and not AMD? The best reason so far is form ArsTechnica - branding. Intel brand is much stronger than AMD, although technically they are inferior. Also, check out the last two paragraphs, where a “Intel needs Apple” topic is explained. Also a nice point of view.
Is the choice of Apple to use Pentium-class chips? I’m not sure about this, but they are 32bit, right? The G5 is 64bit, so using 32bit Intel chip’s is going back in time.
What is the chip choice of chips for x86-64 that Apple will make?
Do they use the classic PC BIOS? Well, according to ArsTecnica, they will not use Open Firmware…

Now, let’s wait a week or so and collect all the answers.

Personally, I would love to see Apple going the Opteron route, but that seems unlikely now.

Mac + Intel = Free Softcore porn

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:32:49 +0000

Well, at least will get softcore porn out of this deal…

I will post pictures of me naked on top of my car in broad daylight if Apple moves to x86 chips. Seriously.

Why Intel?

melo@simplicidade.org (Pedro Melo) — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 12:50:14 +0000

Let’s say that I buy into all this stuff about Apple switching to x86 chips. I don’t, but let’s assume I do.

Why Intel? Why? Why not Opteron? It’s a superior architecture, and the PowerMacs already use HyperTransport…

Well, will soon find out what this is all about. The only sure thing I know, is that Jobs does not announce the switch to x86 chips next week, CNet and other will have a lot of explaining to do to it’s readers :).