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.

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… :)

Nuno on Notes

Greetings from planet Earth

Let's try this again