It's the reason that PCs have very elegant backward-compatibility which has negigible cost when it's not being used. PCs have moved the industry forward by giving high-end performance and 20 years of legacy support in the same package, allowing users to upgrade software at their own pace.
That's absolutely not elegant to have a huge parallel port on a portable, and Intel is absolutely not happy about it.
Still using BIOS is another example.
I think that they are very happy that they now have one customer that can be used to showcase the latest and greatest.
Quote:
Originally posted by IntlHarvester
Not abandoning legacy users is also probably the most significant reason that the PC-Compatible defeated it's once superior competitors (for example, the Power Macintosh platform).
When Apple chose PPC, PC compatibles already had the largest market share.
Quote:
Originally posted by IntlHarvester
Bottom line is that dropping perfectly functional ports is not progress.
OK, the computer of your dreams in 20 years will have 40+ ports then.
They can, which is the reason why they have little incentive to buy new MacTels. The worse the sales of MacTels, the slower the transition. That's my point. If, say, Rosetta could run Classic apps, the transition would be almost transparent. However, there would be little to no progress. There's always a price to pay for progress.
The point is, why buy a new Mac if you use Classic apps anyway - Intel or not. It will not be faster anyway.
That's absolutely not elegant to have a huge parallel port on a portable, and Intel is absolutely not happy about it.
There's various things that bug me about my ThinkPad, but I'd have to say the big purple port isn't anywhere on the list. Anyone who cares is already a PowerBook buyer. (and I own a couple of those too)
But IBM/Levano is obviously including Parallel because a lot of people use it, and if people want to buy it, Intel is absolutely happy to sell it to them. (If Intel really hated parallel, they could kill it tomorrow -- they control the Centrino chipset.)
The Mac attitude is very much "Hey, your software is ugly and your hardware is like so old. Get lost - we don't need you - you're making us look bad." And suprise, that's exactly what happened over the last decade-n-half of marketshare slide and lagging hardware.
Not following Apple's practice of throwing paying customers overboard is the key to Intel's continuing success. Those "POS" terminals and LaserJet III users are paying the rent for the people who want, and got, outstanding I/O and CPU performance.
Getting back on topic, no matter how quickly or slowly it is done, Apple's CPU transition will cost them some users. It's inevitable, and it certainly happened with 68K->PPC. Sure the gains will out weigh the costs, but this is a situation that Apple has been in twice now (at least), but PC users never have faced it and never would.
PS: new macs will nearly certainly have all the parallel port circuitry in the chipset.
Quote:
Still using BIOS is another example.
That I will agree with. BIOS is nearly OK for a common PC, but absolutely sucks as soon as you add a second drive or other boot device. EFI can't come too soon.
Comments
Originally posted by IntlHarvester
It's the reason that PCs have very elegant backward-compatibility which has negigible cost when it's not being used. PCs have moved the industry forward by giving high-end performance and 20 years of legacy support in the same package, allowing users to upgrade software at their own pace.
That's absolutely not elegant to have a huge parallel port on a portable, and Intel is absolutely not happy about it.
Still using BIOS is another example.
I think that they are very happy that they now have one customer that can be used to showcase the latest and greatest.
Originally posted by IntlHarvester
Not abandoning legacy users is also probably the most significant reason that the PC-Compatible defeated it's once superior competitors (for example, the Power Macintosh platform).
When Apple chose PPC, PC compatibles already had the largest market share.
Originally posted by IntlHarvester
Bottom line is that dropping perfectly functional ports is not progress.
OK, the computer of your dreams in 20 years will have 40+ ports then.
Originally posted by costique
They can, which is the reason why they have little incentive to buy new MacTels. The worse the sales of MacTels, the slower the transition. That's my point. If, say, Rosetta could run Classic apps, the transition would be almost transparent. However, there would be little to no progress. There's always a price to pay for progress.
The point is, why buy a new Mac if you use Classic apps anyway - Intel or not. It will not be faster anyway.
Originally posted by JLL
That's absolutely not elegant to have a huge parallel port on a portable, and Intel is absolutely not happy about it.
There's various things that bug me about my ThinkPad, but I'd have to say the big purple port isn't anywhere on the list. Anyone who cares is already a PowerBook buyer. (and I own a couple of those too)
But IBM/Levano is obviously including Parallel because a lot of people use it, and if people want to buy it, Intel is absolutely happy to sell it to them. (If Intel really hated parallel, they could kill it tomorrow -- they control the Centrino chipset.)
The Mac attitude is very much "Hey, your software is ugly and your hardware is like so old. Get lost - we don't need you - you're making us look bad." And suprise, that's exactly what happened over the last decade-n-half of marketshare slide and lagging hardware.
Not following Apple's practice of throwing paying customers overboard is the key to Intel's continuing success. Those "POS" terminals and LaserJet III users are paying the rent for the people who want, and got, outstanding I/O and CPU performance.
Getting back on topic, no matter how quickly or slowly it is done, Apple's CPU transition will cost them some users. It's inevitable, and it certainly happened with 68K->PPC. Sure the gains will out weigh the costs, but this is a situation that Apple has been in twice now (at least), but PC users never have faced it and never would.
PS: new macs will nearly certainly have all the parallel port circuitry in the chipset.
Still using BIOS is another example.
That I will agree with. BIOS is nearly OK for a common PC, but absolutely sucks as soon as you add a second drive or other boot device. EFI can't come too soon.