Updates to Apple's professional PowerBook line are nearly three months past due. Retail outlets have long since exhausted their inventory of the current PowerBook models and Apple's two major distributors are fairing no better. According to continually reliable sources, the computer maker is still scrounging for ample supplies of faster G4 processors and have already been forced to rewrite the enabler code for the forthcoming units in favor of an alternative mobile G4 breed. "It's increasingly becoming a retail and revenue disaster," one source told AppleInsider.
From Macboudille:
Motorola is still failing to produce PPC7457 in large volumes. the rate of processors succeeding to the quality control and validation tests are dramatically low. Moreover, it seems that Apple does not want to use the 7455B in its portable computers. Over 1GHz, battery-life is really low, and a terrible amount of heat is generated. without a miracle, we will not see new Apple portable computers before mid October.
Ouch, is the only word suitable for public consumption that I can come up with. I hope that Motorola at least bought Apple dinner first.
WHAT THE $@#%^#@%^@%^& IS THE DEAL WITH #%#@!#$% MOTOROLA? WHY IN THE $#%&^@ CAN'T THEY EVER $#@%$%@@% COME THROUGH AND DELIVER? HOW MANY $#@^& TIMES HAVE THEY TRIPPED US UP, HELD US BACK, CAUSED DELAYS AND OTHERWISE GUMMED UP THE $@#@%^# WORKS?"
Nicely put :-)
Quote:
You guys are aware that we'd be knocking on the 2GHz door (possibly higher?) right about now on most every Mac had things gone the way they should've?
Part of the problem is economics of scale (or lack thereof). Apple sells too few computers to make developing a kick-ass CPU worthwile - intel and AMD are locked into a all-out destined-to-kill competition pushing the limits of processor development further and further. They can only do so because both are selling the things by the million - and lately it seems that AMD is having problems maintaining the tempo.
The Mac market is too small to warrant the same huge investment into CPU development - IBM clearly wants to use the 970 in server blades, else it would not exist. If, on the other hand, AMD outsells IBM in this market, there is not going to be a 980, 990 or anything like that - they will scale the 970 as slowly as Moto scaled the G4.
So Apple needs to act. They need to sell more CPUs even if it means bringing back clones, slashing prices, licensing MacOS X.
On a semi-related note, you know what this kinda means? A week or so ago, when several sites were saying "new PowerBooks are in the channel and are set to be announced at any minute", it means they are all COMPLETELY full of shit, aren't they?
How in the name of crap did we go from idiotic claims of "970 PowerBooks at WWDC!" to "7457 PowerBooks now in the channels!" to "most likely, we're looking at mid-October...and possibly 7455-based"?
Here's a suggestion: if you own a rumor site, work the phrase "random musings and unreliable horseshit" somewhere into the masthead or logo, just so everyone is clear.
The only thing that keeps me from getting TOO bummed out at this latest "news" is the fact that these people haven't been right YET about any PowerBook-related stuff, so...
Keeping in mind that I don't know how any of this really affects things, just what I hear, I think it comes down to two things. The design and manufacturing. HAHA, but seriously. Moto has had well publicized manufacturing problems, OK, Crolles might help them out of that, but that's only just begun. On the IBM side, Fishkill didn't just materialize overnight either.
Then there's the design. IBM hasn't exactly done cracking things with the 32bit PPC either. IBM too promised altivec G3's in the 2Ghx range and has not been able to get them made, in fact they never had a G3 with better performance or a higher clock rate than motos G4 for the entire life of the G3/4 lines. Yeah, they helped fab G4's once, proving they had better fabrication know-how, but that's gotta tell you something about the short pipeline design, altivec or not. Now Moto has pushed the .18u process to 1.42, IBM hasn't gotten 32bit PPC past 1Ghz, even witht he smaller process, and efficiency isn't that great either when my 12" powerbook (with a suposedly hot G4) manages to return the same battery life as a 12" iBook.
Now at least IBM has an alternative, the G5, and it seems people are talking about scaling that down to .09u and some battery saving features rather than cooler/faster 32 bit PPC. Obviously there has been a design problem witht he 32bit PPC that forced this migration to 64. Cool, but remember that even IBM hasn't been much of a friend when it comes to 32 bit, worse in fact, than even moto.
Get me .09u G5's for everything, and I don't really care, but...
Well glad I ordered my TiBook at such a nice price and didnt wait for a stinky update. With the edu discount it was just too hard to pass up. And atleast ill get it in september and not mid october or probably november. I think the ti enclose looks cooler than the aluminum anyway.
I'm about *this close* to pulling the trigger on a nice, affordable 12" PowerBook (murbot loves his, he says) and be done with it. I can sell the iMac at my leisure and continue saving and perhaps jump on a G5 PowerBook when/if they materialize in 2004.
On a semi-related note, you know what this kinda means? A week or so ago, when several sites were saying "new PowerBooks are in the channel and are set to be announced at any minute", it means they are all COMPLETELY full of shit, aren't they?
Not by any means disagreeing with you about the accuracy of rumors, but Think Secret and others stated that the PowerBook revision was finished, but that they did not know when it would be released. Although they did think that it was sooner rather than later.
It seems likely that the revision has been "finished" from a pre-production standpoint for as long as 3 months. The problem appears to be that there are no production parts to actually build 'books to sell.
Oh, and flowers, dinner and flowers would have been nice. Moto should have given Apple cab fare home, too.
Well, let's not pick any nits TOO closely. We'll all irked. And it looks to be, again, Motorola. All I know is that there was a real "any minute now!" tone just a week or so ago...
Keeping in mind that I don't know how any of this really affects things, just what I hear, I think it comes down to two things. The design and manufacturing.
No, it comes down to more than two things:
1) Motorola management takes bad to baditudinous new levels of badness - "Dilbert" was inspired by Motorola (which, appropriately, held #1 on the Dilbert Index for years), and Motorola employees have given Scott Adams years worth of strip ideas. Things have reportedly been improving since the shareholder revolt, but turning a corporation that large with a culture that compromised is not easy or quick. Really, this is the root cause: all other problems stem from the utter, baffling incompetence of Motorola's management, from the executive suite on down.
2) Mot didn't pay their senior CPU engineers well, or give them raises, or even treat them like senior CPU engineers. They left for Intel some two years ago, and who can blame them?
3) Iridium. This white whale distracted the company from its core competency, drained away billions upon billions of dollars, and finally ended up getting sold for something like $250 million under the auspices of a bankruptcy court. Forget the $100M charge Motorola took from the clone cancellation (which was also a consistent money loser). This was a years-long sucking chest wound for the company.
4) Process technology. What was left of Motorola CPU engineering has taken a few gambles on process tech that haven't paid off, and they're still having very little luck transferring tech that works just fine in their labs to full-scale manufacturing.
5) Fabrication. Mot had a bunch of old fabs lying around losing money, either because they were running, but couldn't compete with the likes of TSMC, or because they were literally standing empty and bleeding money, like Mot's one fab in China.
6) Fabrication. Mot had so little money that they had to stop the fans in their fabs to save on electricity bills. The resulting filth made them almost unusable, except for things like flash memory.
The claim that Apple doesn't have the market share to have any say in CPU design is manifestly false: Since 1994 at the very latest, Apple has had a hand in the design of every single CPU they've used, including the 970 - and the 970 itself is proof that Apple can ask for and get a high-end CPU (because they're not going to be the only customer). In fact, IBM had come through for them one time before with the 604/604e/604ev series - a monster of a CPU in its day. Motorola couldn't produce a high-end CPU for reasons specific to Motorola, not to Apple. Apple's market share relative to overall PowerPC market share is actually an advantage: They'd be a bit player for Intel, and so Intel would essentially ignore their needs.
As for Motorola, they've done a lot of necessary things to turn themselves around in the last year. Crolles is an important step in the return to profitability. Once they're profitable again, they can hire talent. Once they have talent, they can respond more quickly and competently to Apple's design needs, and to their own process needs. But this is a matter of years. In the mean time, they'll be limping along. Wild card: Apple has CPU designers, and Mot has made noises about a "high end PPC" to debut sometime next year. But this just means they're trying hard to turn around, not that they're back to their old Six Sigma form.
What I visualize is say, 10,000 (could be more, right? But more than is a number that will just make me ill) aluminum shells of 15" powerbooks, sans motherboards, stacked up somewhere in Taiwan waiting for Mot G4s. And waiting.
So if they wait long enough, they are just a pile of what-might-have-been scrap, because G5s would require much different engineering, and probably different case design and asthetetics (right?).
Don't know if it's a true picture, but that is the image dancing through my head these days as I drift off to sleepy-land.
What I visualize is say, 10,000 (could be more, right? But more than is a number that will just make me ill) aluminum shells of 15" powerbooks, sans motherboards, stacked up somewhere in Taiwan waiting for Mot G4s.
Okay, here's the conundrum for us, the rumor-mongers that we are.
First of all, I think it's possible that some of the rumors of the last 48 hours back to 6 months ago, could have some basis in truth. They may be far from close, or they may reflect only a small portion of the reality that is the new, updated PowerBooks.
It could be that Apple indeed, while working on new Power Macs, was also playing around with the design of new PowerBooks sporting the cooler, low-end G5s, gameplanning that they may just work until the next revision would be due using the .09 process. Regardless, Apple has had to have some warning that the 7547's were not yielding, or ramping into production levels sufficient to hedge new product releases on.
It also could be that Motorola is knifing Apple because they read the writing on the wall. I mean, yes, Apple has said that Motorola is very important to them, but to what end? Could that have been pretty PR talk to cover for some backroom wrangling with Motorola upon the realization that IBM was the direction that Apple was moving? Motorola had to figure that since they weren't doing much with their future processors anyway that Apple had to be working on alternate plans. But when they learned that Apple was in essence switching to IBM did this provide the catalyst for Motorola to completely drop the ball on all remaining business interests?
Therefore, it think the soap opera is quietly leaking out subtly so that we have to put the pieces together. We may yet see G5 PowerBooks in a couple of weeks, if the plan of milking G4's until 0.09 G5's isn't going to work as Apple originally intended.
On a semi-related note, you know what this kinda means? A week or so ago, when several sites were saying "new PowerBooks are in the channel and are set to be announced at any minute", it means they are all COMPLETELY full of shit, aren't they?
Does anyone else see the irony in relying on a rumor to prove that all previous rumors were false? If we now know the previous rumors were untrue, why is everyone so eager to believe the latest one?
The 7457 was slated to ship in the FOURTH QUARTER of 2003. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the FOURTH QUARTER starts NEXT MONTH. As I've said before, the 7457 is about two years late in the general scheme of things, but there is NO proof that Moto ever intended to ship chips before this quarter.
It does indeed prove something: the "they're here" stuff from a few weeks ago WAS false, so...
Unless they come tonight by some miracle, then what I say holds together a bit. They were wrong about being right, but no more wrong than the wrongness they tried to pass off as being right. Right?
Comments
Updates to Apple's professional PowerBook line are nearly three months past due. Retail outlets have long since exhausted their inventory of the current PowerBook models and Apple's two major distributors are fairing no better. According to continually reliable sources, the computer maker is still scrounging for ample supplies of faster G4 processors and have already been forced to rewrite the enabler code for the forthcoming units in favor of an alternative mobile G4 breed. "It's increasingly becoming a retail and revenue disaster," one source told AppleInsider.
From Macboudille:
Motorola is still failing to produce PPC7457 in large volumes. the rate of processors succeeding to the quality control and validation tests are dramatically low. Moreover, it seems that Apple does not want to use the 7455B in its portable computers. Over 1GHz, battery-life is really low, and a terrible amount of heat is generated. without a miracle, we will not see new Apple portable computers before mid October.
Ouch, is the only word suitable for public consumption that I can come up with. I hope that Motorola at least bought Apple dinner first.
Originally posted by pscates
WHAT THE $@#%^#@%^@%^& IS THE DEAL WITH #%#@!#$% MOTOROLA? WHY IN THE $#%&^@ CAN'T THEY EVER $#@%$%@@% COME THROUGH AND DELIVER? HOW MANY $#@^& TIMES HAVE THEY TRIPPED US UP, HELD US BACK, CAUSED DELAYS AND OTHERWISE GUMMED UP THE $@#@%^# WORKS?"
Nicely put :-)
You guys are aware that we'd be knocking on the 2GHz door (possibly higher?) right about now on most every Mac had things gone the way they should've?
Part of the problem is economics of scale (or lack thereof). Apple sells too few computers to make developing a kick-ass CPU worthwile - intel and AMD are locked into a all-out destined-to-kill competition pushing the limits of processor development further and further. They can only do so because both are selling the things by the million - and lately it seems that AMD is having problems maintaining the tempo.
The Mac market is too small to warrant the same huge investment into CPU development - IBM clearly wants to use the 970 in server blades, else it would not exist. If, on the other hand, AMD outsells IBM in this market, there is not going to be a 980, 990 or anything like that - they will scale the 970 as slowly as Moto scaled the G4.
So Apple needs to act. They need to sell more CPUs even if it means bringing back clones, slashing prices, licensing MacOS X.
Why can't WE get some of this 3GHz-level goodness?
How in the name of crap did we go from idiotic claims of "970 PowerBooks at WWDC!" to "7457 PowerBooks now in the channels!" to "most likely, we're looking at mid-October...and possibly 7455-based"?
Here's a suggestion: if you own a rumor site, work the phrase "random musings and unreliable horseshit" somewhere into the masthead or logo, just so everyone is clear.
The only thing that keeps me from getting TOO bummed out at this latest "news" is the fact that these people haven't been right YET about any PowerBook-related stuff, so...
Then there's the design. IBM hasn't exactly done cracking things with the 32bit PPC either. IBM too promised altivec G3's in the 2Ghx range and has not been able to get them made, in fact they never had a G3 with better performance or a higher clock rate than motos G4 for the entire life of the G3/4 lines. Yeah, they helped fab G4's once, proving they had better fabrication know-how, but that's gotta tell you something about the short pipeline design, altivec or not. Now Moto has pushed the .18u process to 1.42, IBM hasn't gotten 32bit PPC past 1Ghz, even witht he smaller process, and efficiency isn't that great either when my 12" powerbook (with a suposedly hot G4) manages to return the same battery life as a 12" iBook.
Now at least IBM has an alternative, the G5, and it seems people are talking about scaling that down to .09u and some battery saving features rather than cooler/faster 32 bit PPC. Obviously there has been a design problem witht he 32bit PPC that forced this migration to 64. Cool, but remember that even IBM hasn't been much of a friend when it comes to 32 bit, worse in fact, than even moto.
Get me .09u G5's for everything, and I don't really care, but...
Think they should completely pull off their legs from the semi-conductor industry. they are the real shame
I give these goons until Paris, then that's IT.
If Apple is going to release G5 PB in the Jan-March 2004 timeframe iMac should be using the lower clock G5 and iBook will be using 1GHz + G3
By doing this Apple will be completely out of the Moto nightmere.
In order to make the PowerMac line more attractive Apple will have to make them all dual processors.
If that happens, I definitely WILL get the rev B G5
Originally posted by pscates
On a semi-related note, you know what this kinda means? A week or so ago, when several sites were saying "new PowerBooks are in the channel and are set to be announced at any minute", it means they are all COMPLETELY full of shit, aren't they?
Not by any means disagreeing with you about the accuracy of rumors, but Think Secret and others stated that the PowerBook revision was finished, but that they did not know when it would be released. Although they did think that it was sooner rather than later.
It seems likely that the revision has been "finished" from a pre-production standpoint for as long as 3 months. The problem appears to be that there are no production parts to actually build 'books to sell.
Oh, and flowers, dinner and flowers would have been nice. Moto should have given Apple cab fare home, too.
Don't bother me with details, son...I'm mad!
Originally posted by Matsu
Keeping in mind that I don't know how any of this really affects things, just what I hear, I think it comes down to two things. The design and manufacturing.
No, it comes down to more than two things:
1) Motorola management takes bad to baditudinous new levels of badness - "Dilbert" was inspired by Motorola (which, appropriately, held #1 on the Dilbert Index for years), and Motorola employees have given Scott Adams years worth of strip ideas. Things have reportedly been improving since the shareholder revolt, but turning a corporation that large with a culture that compromised is not easy or quick. Really, this is the root cause: all other problems stem from the utter, baffling incompetence of Motorola's management, from the executive suite on down.
2) Mot didn't pay their senior CPU engineers well, or give them raises, or even treat them like senior CPU engineers. They left for Intel some two years ago, and who can blame them?
3) Iridium. This white whale distracted the company from its core competency, drained away billions upon billions of dollars, and finally ended up getting sold for something like $250 million under the auspices of a bankruptcy court. Forget the $100M charge Motorola took from the clone cancellation (which was also a consistent money loser). This was a years-long sucking chest wound for the company.
4) Process technology. What was left of Motorola CPU engineering has taken a few gambles on process tech that haven't paid off, and they're still having very little luck transferring tech that works just fine in their labs to full-scale manufacturing.
5) Fabrication. Mot had a bunch of old fabs lying around losing money, either because they were running, but couldn't compete with the likes of TSMC, or because they were literally standing empty and bleeding money, like Mot's one fab in China.
6) Fabrication. Mot had so little money that they had to stop the fans in their fabs to save on electricity bills. The resulting filth made them almost unusable, except for things like flash memory.
The claim that Apple doesn't have the market share to have any say in CPU design is manifestly false: Since 1994 at the very latest, Apple has had a hand in the design of every single CPU they've used, including the 970 - and the 970 itself is proof that Apple can ask for and get a high-end CPU (because they're not going to be the only customer). In fact, IBM had come through for them one time before with the 604/604e/604ev series - a monster of a CPU in its day. Motorola couldn't produce a high-end CPU for reasons specific to Motorola, not to Apple. Apple's market share relative to overall PowerPC market share is actually an advantage: They'd be a bit player for Intel, and so Intel would essentially ignore their needs.
As for Motorola, they've done a lot of necessary things to turn themselves around in the last year. Crolles is an important step in the return to profitability. Once they're profitable again, they can hire talent. Once they have talent, they can respond more quickly and competently to Apple's design needs, and to their own process needs. But this is a matter of years. In the mean time, they'll be limping along. Wild card: Apple has CPU designers, and Mot has made noises about a "high end PPC" to debut sometime next year. But this just means they're trying hard to turn around, not that they're back to their old Six Sigma form.
So if they wait long enough, they are just a pile of what-might-have-been scrap, because G5s would require much different engineering, and probably different case design and asthetetics (right?).
Don't know if it's a true picture, but that is the image dancing through my head these days as I drift off to sleepy-land.
Originally posted by machem
What I visualize is say, 10,000 (could be more, right? But more than is a number that will just make me ill) aluminum shells of 15" powerbooks, sans motherboards, stacked up somewhere in Taiwan waiting for Mot G4s.
I hear those shells make dandy bento boxes.
Screed ...and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...
First of all, I think it's possible that some of the rumors of the last 48 hours back to 6 months ago, could have some basis in truth. They may be far from close, or they may reflect only a small portion of the reality that is the new, updated PowerBooks.
It could be that Apple indeed, while working on new Power Macs, was also playing around with the design of new PowerBooks sporting the cooler, low-end G5s, gameplanning that they may just work until the next revision would be due using the .09 process. Regardless, Apple has had to have some warning that the 7547's were not yielding, or ramping into production levels sufficient to hedge new product releases on.
It also could be that Motorola is knifing Apple because they read the writing on the wall. I mean, yes, Apple has said that Motorola is very important to them, but to what end? Could that have been pretty PR talk to cover for some backroom wrangling with Motorola upon the realization that IBM was the direction that Apple was moving? Motorola had to figure that since they weren't doing much with their future processors anyway that Apple had to be working on alternate plans. But when they learned that Apple was in essence switching to IBM did this provide the catalyst for Motorola to completely drop the ball on all remaining business interests?
Therefore, it think the soap opera is quietly leaking out subtly so that we have to put the pieces together. We may yet see G5 PowerBooks in a couple of weeks, if the plan of milking G4's until 0.09 G5's isn't going to work as Apple originally intended.
Originally posted by pscates
On a semi-related note, you know what this kinda means? A week or so ago, when several sites were saying "new PowerBooks are in the channel and are set to be announced at any minute", it means they are all COMPLETELY full of shit, aren't they?
Does anyone else see the irony in relying on a rumor to prove that all previous rumors were false? If we now know the previous rumors were untrue, why is everyone so eager to believe the latest one?
The 7457 was slated to ship in the FOURTH QUARTER of 2003. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the FOURTH QUARTER starts NEXT MONTH. As I've said before, the 7457 is about two years late in the general scheme of things, but there is NO proof that Moto ever intended to ship chips before this quarter.
Lighten up.
It does indeed prove something: the "they're here" stuff from a few weeks ago WAS false, so...
Unless they come tonight by some miracle, then what I say holds together a bit. They were wrong about being right, but no more wrong than the wrongness they tried to pass off as being right. Right?
Originally posted by pscates
They were wrong about being right, but no more wrong than the wrongness they tried to pass off as being right. Right?
Hey Paul, Who's on First?!