<strong>Thanks, I Have Questions (even if your post is currently inscrutable ) and Ed M.. This thread is becoming interesting.
It looks like it'll be a wait for the IBM chip, but it'll be worth it when it arrives.
One thing that might account for the confused rumors: As Programmer intimates, IBM could be taking their embrace of onboard SIMD in two directions at once: As a full-on separate unit in the big, POWER4-derived unit, and as a Book E APU for a next-gen Sahara G3. IBM has said that the Sahara will be sprouting a SIMD unit.</strong><hr></blockquote>
In this way things appear to be more clear.
There will be two lines of chips from IBM worthy of use in an Apple: an embedded one from IBM with sahara 2 chips,and a desktop one derivative from the power4. `
And between these two models, we should see for some more times the G4 or it's latest evolutions during a period of transition during from one to three years (after all, Apple still use the old 750 cxe in the imac).
Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever. You've developed a product, right? So you're cost is there, if you hold on it to keep manufacturing the old product, well then, your manufacturing cost is still there and you aren't taking any advantage of your development expenditures. You spent a lot of money to let the goods spoil on the shelf. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
Don't feel bad, you have a lot of company with that ridiculous opinion, but it's still completely wrong. I'm amazed that people can keep propagating this BS idea.
PS. They cube didn't fail cause it was introduced into a weak market. It failed because any market is unrecptive when something costs about 50-80% more than it should.
Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. <hr></blockquote>
Well, Hollywood would disagree with you. They wait to release products all the time. They know that movies are momentum devices - release it at a bad time, you get no momentum, the movie is likely to flop. You don't really believe that 90% of movies get finished up in June and November, do you?
But instead of waiting to release a product, lots of people do *stall* a product. If your competition is shipping 2GHz machines, and you're only ready to ship 1.5GHz, and the costs of building 1.5GHz boxes aren't likely to be recouped because of the competition, it *might* make more sense to invest your effort to improve your product and get 2.5GHz out before your competition.
There are lots of different reasons for doing lots of different things...
<strong>Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Rumors that Apple would at least upgrade the PowerBook and iBook laptops were met by one Apple employee source with the response, "In a sluggish worldwide PC sales environment like we have right now, it should come as no surprise that there won't be [hardware] product upgrades in Paris or at the Seybold conference upcoming...in San Francisco."</strong><hr></blockquote>
Also, johnsonwax, I think Matsu was refering to
high tech products which get less valuable over time. Obviously, films, real estate and the like are different, because all of your competitors are not getting better and cheaper at the same rate. Timing your product cycles so that you have bigger upgrades less often is not the same as delaying a product you already have. Besides, the limiting factor for Apple seems to be the ability of MOT and IBM to deliver faster chips. If Apple had faster PowerBooks ready to ship, it would be really stupid to hold off hoping that next year the economy will be better. Do you really think that Apple sell more 1 GHz PowerBooks next year than they would now?
[quote]Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever. <hr></blockquote>
Too simplistic: if the market is down, as it is now, it might be economically more feasible to continue shipping an older product where the profit margin is higher, rather than paying for the ramping up for a new product and having to pay the higher price for the more sophisticated parts used in it.
Apple has development going on all the time; they can't cut expenses here except by firing staff. Many of the prototypes developed don't make it into production, or is developed further before being readied for release. The reasons can be many: the target group doesn't respond favourably to the concept, the timing is not right, the parts are not available in sufficient numbers, the demand for the older model is still sufficient to warrant a continued production... now pair these reasons with the present range of Apple computers.
And remember how long the 17" iMac was held back; only when a stop-gap solution was necessary because a new form factor proved too advanced for its initial positioning as a lower-range model was the 17" released as the eMac.
Timing is critical for a product that is of a new concept Newton iPod iMac etc. Here it can make sense to wait for market or technology to catch up.
When Apple did the mistake of suppying us with DVD players instead of CDRW it made sense to rectify that ASAP.
With the G4 soon at 1/3 of the clock speed of the P4 they would not wait a day to boost the CPU speed. If Motorola from today could supply 1.5 GHz G4s the orders of future 1.25 would be replaced by 1.5 and the rest of the line boosted to 1.25 and 1 GHz ASAP. The market is allways ready to get more performance for the same amount of money, there is no time when that is an bad idea.
Imagine that everybodys wet dream come true and Apples powermacs jump across the 2GHz barrier with a IBM monster CPU (doubling the performance in a 4 monrth period....). Apple would still do speed bumps on the current line if they could. In january 1999 the low end B&W G3/300 was a faster and better computer than the top of the line Beige G3/366 that introduced 4 months earlier. Apple need to make an even greater jump soon.
Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever. You've developed a product, right? So you're cost is there, if you hold on it to keep manufacturing the old product, well then, your manufacturing cost is still there and you aren't taking any advantage of your development expenditures. You spent a lot of money to let the goods spoil on the shelf. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
Don't feel bad, you have a lot of company with that ridiculous opinion, but it's still completely wrong. I'm amazed that people can keep propagating this BS idea.</strong><hr></blockquote>
WOW! You are completely WRONG!
There is a huge cost to actually bringing a product from R&D to the market... especially a hardware product. If you've got a product that you don't think will bolster your sales significantly but which will have a significant cost of introduction, then you'd be stupid to go ahead and bring it to market. Instead you continue your product development, refining and improving what you have (or sometimes just moving on to the next generation). When the market is ready, then you can make your move. Moving early can easily tip your hand to the competition with no benefit to you (indeed it can cost you).
It seems like most people don't understand the complexity and expense of bringing a product to market. Just because you've developed your widget doesn't mean its an easy step to start selling it by the thousands (or hundreds of thousands in Apple's case).
But in Apple's case, they are soooooo far behind in general processsing speed, let alone MHz, and sooooo far behind in motherboard design, they wouldn't hesitate to use the absolute best available.
a la the 1.25GHz cpu bump(announced not delivered) and 167 MHz bus bump just witnessed. (Note: they only announced the 1.25GHz., still not shipping.)
I also believe that in the fast past computer/tech industry it would be absolute suicide to hold back selling new tech waiting for favorable economic times.
This may hold true for many industries, but I suspect in computer/high tech industries you're competitor would hand you your head on a basket.
<strong>You've developed a product, right? So you're cost is there, if you hold on it to keep manufacturing the old product, well then, your manufacturing cost is still there and you aren't taking any advantage of your development expenditures. You spent a lot of money to let the goods spoil on the shelf. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Except that your manufacturing cost isn't there. Costs for an existing production line are way lower than the startup costs for a new line because you have to retool your lines -- which is not cheap. Then there are initial ramp up costs which are always higher because you have to retool and jigger the production process to iron out all the kinks. You have to be assured of selling a certain number to recoup these production costs and if there's no market you run the risk of not making enough to pay for production costs which in turn may mean having to close down production lines which is costly since you likely have a contract that says you pay a penalty if you back out of the production contract.
In other words, if you're only selling enough to barely break even in a tough market, you're less likely to risk incurring additional costs in revamping production lines for a new product when you're not sure of it's reception. You might just want to wait and see if sales look likely to dip significantly or pickup significantly at which point the decision to retool becomes easier.
So yeah, market conditions can and do affect product decisions. In fact, in some businesses, there are products developed all the time which never see the light of day because the market changes, or costs exceed expectations, etc.
<strong>I also believe that in the fast past computer/tech industry it would be absolute suicide to hold back selling new tech waiting for favorable economic times.
This may hold true for many industries, but I suspect in computer/high tech industries you're competitor would hand you your head on a basket.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The only thing likely to get you your head handed to you quicker, however, is rolling out a new product that fails to compete with you competitors current offerings.
For example, say that Apple was getting close to a Motorola G5 PowerMac released sometime in the last year. If this was the case, they may have looked at the past three years performance gap, and the intermediate future roadmap for the G5 and decided that it was not going to get them to where they needed to be (even with or ahead of Intel). Given that they are already perceived as being ?behind? Intel, to release a next generation machine that was seen as still inferior to Intel?s current product would have been devastating. So, they scrap it for a Power4 derivative, which they have been quietly working on in parallel with the G5, change direction, and delay the introduction of the next generation PowerMac a year for the better long term prospect that it provides.
As Programmer noted, the expense of tooling up a new product line is too great to risk immediate obsolescence.
You changed the arguement away from a developed product to a roadmap, or a partially developed product. Not fair.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe that the same arguement applies in all three cases. The only question is when in the product cycle the decision is made to delay, modify, or pull a product.
Again, all of the factors discussed influence when this occurs. Product lines have been canceled by companies after production facilities have been completed without selling a single unit. Conversely, products have been sat on for months or years waiting for the market to ripen. Bottom line: It is incredibly complicated and next to impossible to generalize.
Part of the problem is that this discussion is driven, in part, by what each poster feels that Apple needs to do and by what might have happened at Apple with the G5/Power4x. None of us really has a clue. Well, no one that will fess up anyway (Moki???).
I believe that Apple understands that it needs to blow Intel away with its next generation processor. If the G5 was finally ready 6 months ago (after significant delay) and was still slower than the P4, without the capability to leapfrog Intel over its expected lifetime, Apple might have made a very reasonable decision to scrap it and go an alternate route. Short term losses for long term gain. If something like this happened only time would tell if it were a good or bad decision.
I am not saying that anything like the above has actually occured. Based upon exactly what the dynamics around the production of the G5 and Power4x are, Apple could have made any of several product release decisions all of which are logical and defensible.
[quote] I believe that the same arguement applies in all three cases. The only question is when in the product cycle the decision is made to delay, modify, or pull a product.<hr></blockquote>
I disagree. In the case of a cpu completely developed, the increased speed should more than offset the ramp up expense(re: remember the development cost has already been incurred). In Apple'sMotorola's case this is doubly, triply, oh heck let's say quadruply so.
Especially, if development were done correctly(re: one of R&D's objectives is design a product to meet the production capabilities of the plant)
Quote:
Again, all of the factors discussed influence when this occurs. Product lines have been canceled by companies after production facilities have been completed without selling a single unit. Conversely, products have been sat on for months or years waiting for the market to ripen.<hr></blockquote>
Those companies that canceled product lines, AFTER production facilities were completed, had better look for better R&D personnel.
If Motorola/Apple had a G5 @ only 1.5 GHz using RI/O, DDR and was sitting on it for a better economic climate, I personally would sue the pee waddly scot out of them, since I'm a stockholder. That would be completely insane.
Changing or adapting a project in midstream is not jermaine to the arguement here. That's becomes the realm of cost benefit analysis.
Now if Apple were a hard cidar manufacturer and the price of apples dictated the introduction of a revolutionalry new flavor, at a more reasonable economic climate, I'd not really have a problem with that. But we're talking computers in an extremely fast past market.
QUOTE] Bottom line: It is incredibly complicated and next to impossible to generalize.
This is very true.
[quote]Part of the problem is that this discussion is driven, in part, by what each poster feels that Apple needs to do and by what might have happened at Apple with the G5/Power4x. None of us really has a clue. Well, no one that will fess up anyway (Moki???). <hr></blockquote>
Not me. Apple's dismal sales of Powermacs speaks for itself. Look around, on every mac centric board, it's the same. Apple's powermacs are lagging way behind not only in processor speed, but in actual daily computing speed on real aps.
[quote] I believe that Apple understands that it needs to blow Intel away with its next generation processor. If the G5 was finally ready 6 months ago (after significant delay) and was still slower than the P4, without the capability to leapfrog Intel over its expected lifetime, Apple might have made a very reasonable decision to scrap it and go an alternate route. Short term losses for long term gain. If something like this happened only time would tell if it were a good or bad decision. <hr></blockquote>
I really disagree with this. Apple doesn't need to leap frog Intel/AMD by any stretch of the imagination. If Apple could have, and they obviously couldn't, in a heartbeat they would have introduced a G4 @ 1.5GHz using HiP7 on a DDR MPX bus.let alone a G5 @ 1.5GHz w/ Rapid I/O on a DDR bus. Pro users would have bought either of these machines in droves(pure speculation, but my opinion). The simple fact of the matter is Motorola's vested interest is NOT Apple but the embedded market. MPX will never be DDR, Motorola is obviously having extreme problems with the G5 and incorporating HiP7.
[ 09-10-2002: Message edited by: rickag ]
neumac, just thought I'd add that I respect your's, Programmer's and everyone's opinions, but somewhat disagree, especialy relative to Apple. There is absolutely no way that Apple or Motorola has sat on a fully developed G5 or HiP7 G4 waiting for a better economic situation.
I'd even be willing to say that there was/is no better time than in the last year for Apple to indroduce faster cpu's/motherboards. Disatisfication is growing with Windows, Unix users are seriously looking at if not switching to Apple, this is a huge opportunity being dampened by hardware issues.
It would be the best if they do that, but if they "just" showed signs of closing the initial 2X clock speed gap they would look much better then sliding down to 3x clock speed gap.
If they had a low power [email protected] GHz they could use is as a stop gap solution until the Power4 derivative arrive and then let the G5 slide down to the iBook iMac and PB. As I understand the G4 to G4 is a smaller transition than from 604E to G3, so why would they sit on them? The OS side looks really nice with 10.2 and a lot of applications and the current hardware looks really good as well, apart from the CPU.
If the current towers were single CPUs at 1. 7 GHz, 2GHz and a 2.5 GHz coming real soon we would not even have this discussion even if the performance would be quite similar.
If the next top of the line tower is a Quad G4 I will get really really worried <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
"If the current towers were single CPUs at 1. 7 GHz, 2GHz and a 2.5 GHz coming real soon we would not even have this discussion even if the performance would be quite similar."
Comments
<strong>Thanks, I Have Questions (even if your post is currently inscrutable
It looks like it'll be a wait for the IBM chip, but it'll be worth it when it arrives.
One thing that might account for the confused rumors: As Programmer intimates, IBM could be taking their embrace of onboard SIMD in two directions at once: As a full-on separate unit in the big, POWER4-derived unit, and as a Book E APU for a next-gen Sahara G3. IBM has said that the Sahara will be sprouting a SIMD unit.</strong><hr></blockquote>
In this way things appear to be more clear.
There will be two lines of chips from IBM worthy of use in an Apple: an embedded one from IBM with sahara 2 chips,and a desktop one derivative from the power4. `
And between these two models, we should see for some more times the G4 or it's latest evolutions during a period of transition during from one to three years (after all, Apple still use the old 750 cxe in the imac).
[ 09-09-2002: Message edited by: Powerdoc ]
[ 09-10-2002: Message edited by: Powerdoc ]</p>
<strong>
...(after all, Apple still use the old 750 fxe in the imac).
[ 09-09-2002: Message edited by: Powerdoc ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
You mean iBook? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
<strong>
You mean iBook? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
CRT iMac also
Completely WRONG!!!
Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever. You've developed a product, right? So you're cost is there, if you hold on it to keep manufacturing the old product, well then, your manufacturing cost is still there and you aren't taking any advantage of your development expenditures. You spent a lot of money to let the goods spoil on the shelf. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
Don't feel bad, you have a lot of company with that ridiculous opinion, but it's still completely wrong. I'm amazed that people can keep propagating this BS idea.
PS. They cube didn't fail cause it was introduced into a weak market. It failed because any market is unrecptive when something costs about 50-80% more than it should.
PowerPC G3 750cxe "sidewinder"
iBook:
PowerPC G3 750fx "sahara"
Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. <hr></blockquote>
Well, Hollywood would disagree with you. They wait to release products all the time. They know that movies are momentum devices - release it at a bad time, you get no momentum, the movie is likely to flop. You don't really believe that 90% of movies get finished up in June and November, do you?
But instead of waiting to release a product, lots of people do *stall* a product. If your competition is shipping 2GHz machines, and you're only ready to ship 1.5GHz, and the costs of building 1.5GHz boxes aren't likely to be recouped because of the competition, it *might* make more sense to invest your effort to improve your product and get 2.5GHz out before your competition.
There are lots of different reasons for doing lots of different things...
<strong>Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That is pretty much what I though/think. Which made me think the following quote from <a href="http://www.thinksecret.com/news/parishardware.html"; target="_blank">Think Secret</a> was sort of strange:
[quote]<strong>
Rumors that Apple would at least upgrade the PowerBook and iBook laptops were met by one Apple employee source with the response, "In a sluggish worldwide PC sales environment like we have right now, it should come as no surprise that there won't be [hardware] product upgrades in Paris or at the Seybold conference upcoming...in San Francisco."</strong><hr></blockquote>
Also, johnsonwax, I think Matsu was refering to
high tech products which get less valuable over time. Obviously, films, real estate and the like are different, because all of your competitors are not getting better and cheaper at the same rate. Timing your product cycles so that you have bigger upgrades less often is not the same as delaying a product you already have. Besides, the limiting factor for Apple seems to be the ability of MOT and IBM to deliver faster chips. If Apple had faster PowerBooks ready to ship, it would be really stupid to hold off hoping that next year the economy will be better. Do you really think that Apple sell more 1 GHz PowerBooks next year than they would now?
Too simplistic: if the market is down, as it is now, it might be economically more feasible to continue shipping an older product where the profit margin is higher, rather than paying for the ramping up for a new product and having to pay the higher price for the more sophisticated parts used in it.
Apple has development going on all the time; they can't cut expenses here except by firing staff. Many of the prototypes developed don't make it into production, or is developed further before being readied for release. The reasons can be many: the target group doesn't respond favourably to the concept, the timing is not right, the parts are not available in sufficient numbers, the demand for the older model is still sufficient to warrant a continued production... now pair these reasons with the present range of Apple computers.
And remember how long the 17" iMac was held back; only when a stop-gap solution was necessary because a new form factor proved too advanced for its initial positioning as a lower-range model was the 17" released as the eMac.
engpjp
Timing is critical for a product that is of a new concept Newton iPod iMac etc. Here it can make sense to wait for market or technology to catch up.
When Apple did the mistake of suppying us with DVD players instead of CDRW it made sense to rectify that ASAP.
With the G4 soon at 1/3 of the clock speed of the P4 they would not wait a day to boost the CPU speed. If Motorola from today could supply 1.5 GHz G4s the orders of future 1.25 would be replaced by 1.5 and the rest of the line boosted to 1.25 and 1 GHz ASAP. The market is allways ready to get more performance for the same amount of money, there is no time when that is an bad idea.
Imagine that everybodys wet dream come true and Apples powermacs jump across the 2GHz barrier with a IBM monster CPU (doubling the performance in a 4 monrth period....). Apple would still do speed bumps on the current line if they could. In january 1999 the low end B&W G3/300 was a faster and better computer than the top of the line Beige G3/366 that introduced 4 months earlier. Apple need to make an even greater jump soon.
<strong>WOW, Studebaker, that was...
Completely WRONG!!!
Nobody, ever waits to release a product that is ready to go, ever, period, end of story. The nature of the business is that product becomes obsolete to fast to wait for a perfect time for a product release. If it's ready you start selling it, good economy, bad economy, whatever. You've developed a product, right? So you're cost is there, if you hold on it to keep manufacturing the old product, well then, your manufacturing cost is still there and you aren't taking any advantage of your development expenditures. You spent a lot of money to let the goods spoil on the shelf. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
Don't feel bad, you have a lot of company with that ridiculous opinion, but it's still completely wrong. I'm amazed that people can keep propagating this BS idea.</strong><hr></blockquote>
WOW! You are completely WRONG!
There is a huge cost to actually bringing a product from R&D to the market... especially a hardware product. If you've got a product that you don't think will bolster your sales significantly but which will have a significant cost of introduction, then you'd be stupid to go ahead and bring it to market. Instead you continue your product development, refining and improving what you have (or sometimes just moving on to the next generation). When the market is ready, then you can make your move. Moving early can easily tip your hand to the competition with no benefit to you (indeed it can cost you).
It seems like most people don't understand the complexity and expense of bringing a product to market. Just because you've developed your widget doesn't mean its an easy step to start selling it by the thousands (or hundreds of thousands in Apple's case).
You're right in a general sense.
But in Apple's case, they are soooooo far behind in general processsing speed, let alone MHz, and sooooo far behind in motherboard design, they wouldn't hesitate to use the absolute best available.
a la the 1.25GHz cpu bump(announced not delivered) and 167 MHz bus bump just witnessed. (Note: they only announced the 1.25GHz., still not shipping.)
I also believe that in the fast past computer/tech industry it would be absolute suicide to hold back selling new tech waiting for favorable economic times.
This may hold true for many industries, but I suspect in computer/high tech industries you're competitor would hand you your head on a basket.
<strong>You've developed a product, right? So you're cost is there, if you hold on it to keep manufacturing the old product, well then, your manufacturing cost is still there and you aren't taking any advantage of your development expenditures. You spent a lot of money to let the goods spoil on the shelf. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Except that your manufacturing cost isn't there. Costs for an existing production line are way lower than the startup costs for a new line because you have to retool your lines -- which is not cheap. Then there are initial ramp up costs which are always higher because you have to retool and jigger the production process to iron out all the kinks. You have to be assured of selling a certain number to recoup these production costs and if there's no market you run the risk of not making enough to pay for production costs which in turn may mean having to close down production lines which is costly since you likely have a contract that says you pay a penalty if you back out of the production contract.
In other words, if you're only selling enough to barely break even in a tough market, you're less likely to risk incurring additional costs in revamping production lines for a new product when you're not sure of it's reception. You might just want to wait and see if sales look likely to dip significantly or pickup significantly at which point the decision to retool becomes easier.
So yeah, market conditions can and do affect product decisions. In fact, in some businesses, there are products developed all the time which never see the light of day because the market changes, or costs exceed expectations, etc.
<strong>I also believe that in the fast past computer/tech industry it would be absolute suicide to hold back selling new tech waiting for favorable economic times.
This may hold true for many industries, but I suspect in computer/high tech industries you're competitor would hand you your head on a basket.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The only thing likely to get you your head handed to you quicker, however, is rolling out a new product that fails to compete with you competitors current offerings.
For example, say that Apple was getting close to a Motorola G5 PowerMac released sometime in the last year. If this was the case, they may have looked at the past three years performance gap, and the intermediate future roadmap for the G5 and decided that it was not going to get them to where they needed to be (even with or ahead of Intel). Given that they are already perceived as being ?behind? Intel, to release a next generation machine that was seen as still inferior to Intel?s current product would have been devastating. So, they scrap it for a Power4 derivative, which they have been quietly working on in parallel with the G5, change direction, and delay the introduction of the next generation PowerMac a year for the better long term prospect that it provides.
As Programmer noted, the expense of tooling up a new product line is too great to risk immediate obsolescence.
You changed the arguement away from a developed product to a roadmap, or a partially developed product. Not fair.
If a fully developed G5 had been available 6 months ago. It would have been used.
edit: Apple is having its' head handed to it in the PowerMac line. Sales stink.
[ 09-10-2002: Message edited by: rickag ]</p>
<strong>neumac:
You changed the arguement away from a developed product to a roadmap, or a partially developed product. Not fair.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe that the same arguement applies in all three cases. The only question is when in the product cycle the decision is made to delay, modify, or pull a product.
Again, all of the factors discussed influence when this occurs. Product lines have been canceled by companies after production facilities have been completed without selling a single unit. Conversely, products have been sat on for months or years waiting for the market to ripen. Bottom line: It is incredibly complicated and next to impossible to generalize.
Part of the problem is that this discussion is driven, in part, by what each poster feels that Apple needs to do and by what might have happened at Apple with the G5/Power4x. None of us really has a clue. Well, no one that will fess up anyway (Moki???).
I believe that Apple understands that it needs to blow Intel away with its next generation processor. If the G5 was finally ready 6 months ago (after significant delay) and was still slower than the P4, without the capability to leapfrog Intel over its expected lifetime, Apple might have made a very reasonable decision to scrap it and go an alternate route. Short term losses for long term gain. If something like this happened only time would tell if it were a good or bad decision.
I am not saying that anything like the above has actually occured. Based upon exactly what the dynamics around the production of the G5 and Power4x are, Apple could have made any of several product release decisions all of which are logical and defensible.
I disagree. In the case of a cpu completely developed, the increased speed should more than offset the ramp up expense(re: remember the development cost has already been incurred). In Apple'sMotorola's case this is doubly, triply, oh heck let's say quadruply so.
Especially, if development were done correctly(re: one of R&D's objectives is design a product to meet the production capabilities of the plant)
Again, all of the factors discussed influence when this occurs. Product lines have been canceled by companies after production facilities have been completed without selling a single unit. Conversely, products have been sat on for months or years waiting for the market to ripen.<hr></blockquote>
Those companies that canceled product lines, AFTER production facilities were completed, had better look for better R&D personnel.
If Motorola/Apple had a G5 @ only 1.5 GHz using RI/O, DDR and was sitting on it for a better economic climate, I personally would sue the pee waddly scot out of them, since I'm a stockholder. That would be completely insane.
Changing or adapting a project in midstream is not jermaine to the arguement here. That's becomes the realm of cost benefit analysis.
Now if Apple were a hard cidar manufacturer and the price of apples dictated the introduction of a revolutionalry new flavor, at a more reasonable economic climate, I'd not really have a problem with that. But we're talking computers in an extremely fast past market.
QUOTE] Bottom line: It is incredibly complicated and next to impossible to generalize.
This is very true.
[quote]Part of the problem is that this discussion is driven, in part, by what each poster feels that Apple needs to do and by what might have happened at Apple with the G5/Power4x. None of us really has a clue. Well, no one that will fess up anyway (Moki???). <hr></blockquote>
Not me. Apple's dismal sales of Powermacs speaks for itself. Look around, on every mac centric board, it's the same. Apple's powermacs are lagging way behind not only in processor speed, but in actual daily computing speed on real aps.
[quote] I believe that Apple understands that it needs to blow Intel away with its next generation processor. If the G5 was finally ready 6 months ago (after significant delay) and was still slower than the P4, without the capability to leapfrog Intel over its expected lifetime, Apple might have made a very reasonable decision to scrap it and go an alternate route. Short term losses for long term gain. If something like this happened only time would tell if it were a good or bad decision. <hr></blockquote>
I really disagree with this. Apple doesn't need to leap frog Intel/AMD by any stretch of the imagination. If Apple could have, and they obviously couldn't, in a heartbeat they would have introduced a G4 @ 1.5GHz using HiP7 on a DDR MPX bus.let alone a G5 @ 1.5GHz w/ Rapid I/O on a DDR bus. Pro users would have bought either of these machines in droves(pure speculation, but my opinion). The simple fact of the matter is Motorola's vested interest is NOT Apple but the embedded market. MPX will never be DDR, Motorola is obviously having extreme problems with the G5 and incorporating HiP7.
[ 09-10-2002: Message edited by: rickag ]
neumac, just thought I'd add that I respect your's, Programmer's and everyone's opinions, but somewhat disagree, especialy relative to Apple. There is absolutely no way that Apple or Motorola has sat on a fully developed G5 or HiP7 G4 waiting for a better economic situation.
I'd even be willing to say that there was/is no better time than in the last year for Apple to indroduce faster cpu's/motherboards. Disatisfication is growing with Windows, Unix users are seriously looking at if not switching to Apple, this is a huge opportunity being dampened by hardware issues.
[ 09-10-2002: Message edited by: rickag ]</p>
[ 09-10-2002: Message edited by: rickag ]</p>
It would be the best if they do that, but if they "just" showed signs of closing the initial 2X clock speed gap they would look much better then sliding down to 3x clock speed gap.
If they had a low power [email protected] GHz they could use is as a stop gap solution until the Power4 derivative arrive and then let the G5 slide down to the iBook iMac and PB. As I understand the G4 to G4 is a smaller transition than from 604E to G3, so why would they sit on them? The OS side looks really nice with 10.2 and a lot of applications and the current hardware looks really good as well, apart from the CPU.
If the current towers were single CPUs at 1. 7 GHz, 2GHz and a 2.5 GHz coming real soon we would not even have this discussion even if the performance would be quite similar.
If the next top of the line tower is a Quad G4 I will get really really worried <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
Agreed.
Lemon Bon Bon