Older posters may recall that when the PPC970 was announced, and well before it shipped in any Apple product, I repeatedly cautioned that IBM is not your friend.
In business no one is friends enough with anyone to loose money. Or skip on a potentially more profitable relationship. That goes for all companies including Apple.
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Apple will never be further ahead or behind in terms of basic hardware technology (or access to it).
The problem with this is Apple is not a commodity PC company. Apple is a boutique PC comapnay. Apple has never had to compete directly with commdity PC companies. How do they resolve having the same machine as a commodity PC company selling them for boutique prices.
On the other hand if Apple does become a commodity PC company it could not survive a price war with Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, or Toshiba.
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They have no disadvantages as far as cost, and in fact, have more buying power/leverage than all but Dell or HP.
There are a few other companies who have a larger global marketshare than Apple.
OS X and applications written for it will be Universal Binaries for the next few years. Apple could put PPC chips in their computers a couple years from now and not miss a beat.
Hopefully, all applications will be Universal Binaries from now on, so that OS X is a truly processor independent operating system. This would give Apple the flexibility of still using PPC, as you write above, but also using other chips as well on a case by case basis.
The point was, that there are Dell and HP and then there's everyone else. Apple sells enough machines to be able to do the kinds of deals, and get the same prices, that other major computer manufacturers do.
Comments
Older posters may recall that when the PPC970 was announced, and well before it shipped in any Apple product, I repeatedly cautioned that IBM is not your friend.
In business no one is friends enough with anyone to loose money. Or skip on a potentially more profitable relationship. That goes for all companies including Apple.
Apple will never be further ahead or behind in terms of basic hardware technology (or access to it).
The problem with this is Apple is not a commodity PC company. Apple is a boutique PC comapnay. Apple has never had to compete directly with commdity PC companies. How do they resolve having the same machine as a commodity PC company selling them for boutique prices.
On the other hand if Apple does become a commodity PC company it could not survive a price war with Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, or Toshiba.
They have no disadvantages as far as cost, and in fact, have more buying power/leverage than all but Dell or HP.
There are a few other companies who have a larger global marketshare than Apple.
Originally posted by TenoBell
How do they resolve having the same machine as a commodity PC company selling them for boutique prices.
How does Apple sell so many iPods? It's just a commodity MP3 player.
Originally posted by TenoBell
There are a few other companies who have a larger global marketshare than Apple.
I would be interested in know who they are. Maybe Lenovo?
Originally posted by fahlman
OS X and applications written for it will be Universal Binaries for the next few years. Apple could put PPC chips in their computers a couple years from now and not miss a beat.
Hopefully, all applications will be Universal Binaries from now on, so that OS X is a truly processor independent operating system. This would give Apple the flexibility of still using PPC, as you write above, but also using other chips as well on a case by case basis.
Originally posted by fahlman
I would be interested in know who they are. Maybe Lenovo?
The top five worldwide vendors:
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...hare051114.htm
And 68k chips before that, the 2500s that we use at school acctually use the same 33MHz 68030 as some old Macs
newer ones use PPC chips, but I have yet to lok up the specs to see exactly which chips ours use.
I have oft' wonderred if one can flash or otherwise replace the Apple rom in old Mac 68ks and load IOS...no practicality, just a "because I can" thing