OK, if Apple don't use this new-fangled 8641D whatever before they swith to Intel, who the hell is Freescale going to sell it to? Are there any major compuer makers using PPC chips anymore, I can't think of any????
? wasn't quite talking about home routers. You are quite familiar with the $5,000-$200,000 high port concentration infrastructure routers yes? no? They aren't all $50 POS linksys jobs.
I know that it doesn't just cover the PB's, but that's what makes it so interesting.
Check out the Mini prediction especially.
You're right...interesting stuff. All these noises for the funeral of PowerPC in Apple Computers makes me feel slightly nostalgic...and aren't alot of sources and analysts coming out of the woodwork about it.
Wonder why the G5 isn't going in eMacs if this rumour has substance? Anybody want to start another 'eMac is dead' thread?
OK, if Apple don't use this new-fangled 8641D whatever before they swith to Intel, who the hell is Freescale going to sell it to? Are there any major compuer makers using PPC chips anymore, I can't think of any????
I don't have the figures on hand, but the last presentation the Freescale CEO gave a few months ago at the Freescale dev conference, they were clearly not concerned by the loss of Apple. They have their embedded markets lined up. Routers, phone exchanges, intelligent cars and fridges and stuff \
Seriously though, the CEO really DID NOT SEEM TOO WORRIED about losing the Apple business. Freescale will be alright. The company is actually better off in the long run without Apple business, and vice versa.
I don't have the figures on hand, but the last presentation the Freescale CEO gave a few months ago at the Freescale dev conference, they were clearly not concerned by the loss of Apple. They have their embedded markets lined up. Routers, phone exchanges, intelligent cars and fridges and stuff \
Seriously though, the CEO really DID NOT SEEM TOO WORRIED about losing the Apple business. Freescale will be alright. The company is actually better off in the long run without Apple business, and vice versa.
You know, no matter how many times we say this, someone ALWAYS comes back with the same inane comments. Sometimes I wish it wasn't possible to post until one has read all of the previous ones.
You know, no matter how many times we say this, someone ALWAYS comes back with the same inane comments. Sometimes I wish it wasn't possible to post until one has read all of the previous ones.
Nah, it?s not that bad mate, from a consumer perspective it would not be too much of a stretch to assume that "well, freescale only makes g4 chips for apple, freescale is teh doomed now"
I'm not always on the ball here at the Ai Forums... I thought Freescale would suffer but after watching the CEO presentation video myself I know different --> and this is factoring the Freescale CEO's RDF, which compared to Steve Job's 10.0, I would give Freescale CEO a 1.0 on the RDF... He spent the first 5 minutes of that presentation apologising for a conference snafu
But fair enough, this should go into the Intel-->PPC** FAQ Sticky:
1. Is Freescale going to go out of business when Apple stops using their CPUs?
**heh. Freudian slip, i meant PPC-->Intel of course
But fair enough, this should go into the Intel-->PPC** FAQ Sticky:
1. Is Freescale going to go out of business when Apple stops using their CPUs?
**heh. Freudian slip, i meant PPC-->Intel of course
Too late, all it takes is for someone to now post that slip on Slashdot and then MacOSRumors will be quoting insiders as saying Apple are switching to PowerPC after being let down by Intel.
Then it'll be compounded by analysts saying Apple are switching back and lastly some random bit of hardware made by some other random manufacturer but coming out of the same fabs in Taiwan as Apple uses will be attributed to being the new G6 iPod<>Mac convergence TiVo-esque media laptop by Digitimes.
Too late, all it takes is for someone to now post that slip on Slashdot and then MacOSRumors will be quoting insiders as saying Apple are switching to PowerPC after being let down by Intel.
Then it'll be compounded by analysts saying Apple are switching back and lastly some random bit of hardware made by some other random manufacturer but coming out of the same fabs in Taiwan as Apple uses will be attributed to being the new G6 iPod<>Mac convergence TiVo-esque media laptop by Digitimes.
Trust me. You've set the ball in motion now.
now all i need to do is set up my own financial analyst company and start releasing those bullshit "research notes"
cool. then appleInsider will start reporting on my "research"...
......in a research note secretly obtained by appleInsider, Sunil TheMan, analyst for BuyMyStocks.Com, reported that recent interviews with an undisclosed Apple source has mentioned that the G6 chip will be driving the new iPod-Mac convergence device. Sunil has repeated his 'EverybodyBuyNowAndShareTheLove' rating on AAPL, with a price target of 50000 repubic[sic] credits.....
now all i need to do is set up my own financial analyst company and start releasing those bullshit "research notes"
cool. then appleInsider will start reporting on my "research"...
......in a research note secretly obtained by appleInsider, Sunil TheMan, analyst for BuyMyStocks.Com, reported that recent interviews with an undisclosed Apple source has mentioned that the G6 chip will be driving the new iPod-Mac convergence device. Sunil has repeated his 'EverybodyBuyNowAndShareTheLove' rating on AAPL, with a price target of 50000 repubic[sic] credits.....
We've got lots of that stuff flying around.
Our favorite analyst is at it again (I don't mean Dvorak, he's not an analyst).
Rob Enderle, principal (and only) analyst for his company, the Enderle Group, is predicting and making statements out of his imagination again. By the way, when your company has one person in it, except for assistants and secretaries, call it a "Group". Not does he refuse to give any figures, but he won't even tell us which company industry report he is using. This is unusual. normally, the company who put out the report is cited, even though the information can't be quoted directly. But he won't (can't?) do that. He also attributes "apple executives" as saying things that, no matter how they feel, they would never say to a proposed client.
alright. now i'm pissed. i'm gonna rip enderle a new one if only on this forum. let's start from here...
Apple Against Vista
Recently I had lunch with an old friend who had been a client while I was with Giga (now a part of Forrester). He worked for a large multi-national firm and remains a huge Apple fan. As a senior IT manager and because his firm, like many others, was upset with Microsoft, he was able to set up a meeting with Apple's executives to talk about a migration.
Okay, fair enough, no complaints from me yet.
His firm was skeptical but relatively open-minded. They started off making the same request of Apple they make of companies like Dell. They wanted a two-year hardware/ software roadmap and assurances they could buy a platform that would remain stable for at least 12, and hopefully 18, months.
In addition, they wanted early warning on all patches and changes to any of the platforms they were buying and solid assurances on price. They had issues with the fact they would have to single-source their hardware vendor but felt if Apple could meet their other requests they were willing to continue the discussion. (As is the case with any vendor, Microsoft has its share of very unhappy customers.)
The Apple executives, smiling, said "We're Apple and we don't do that." The meeting ended relatively quickly and my friend has since moved on to another, much smaller company, where he began the same process. Here the issue was compatibility with existing applications -- and the firm just wasn't willing to take the risk of buying a platform that couldn't run what they needed to run native or tying their future to one, single-sourced, hardware company.
Okay. Whoa. I have some major issues with this. Enderle's friend is an idiot, typical of most IT managers. Let's assume Apple executives did not say that, then okay, Enderle's talking out his ass. Now even if we assume Apple executives *did* say such a thing, considering legal issues, who would blame them?
Let's look at the timeline this IT manager is looking at. 12-"hopefully" 18 months.
Hardware
Yes, you are tied in to a single hardware vendor. But all Apple products have a 1 year hardware warranty, extensible to 3 years. Enterprise-level agreements may differ but are oriented around the 1 year core warranty. What roadmap are they looking at for enterprise IT? Yes the Mactel switch may be a concern if they are waiting for that but there are established case studies and proven technologies with Xserve g5, Xserve Raid on the server side, with iMac g5, powerBook g4 and iBook g4 for client desktop/portable workstations.
If the IT manager was looking for Apple to reveal the inner secrets of their Macintel migration strategy 2006-2007, of course these so-called "Apple executives" would tell him to go fuck himself.
His timeline of 12-18 months, lets say from January 2006-June 2007, clearly falls into the core Macintel transition period.
He *DOESN'T* have to worry about Macintel, there are well-established PPC hardware solutions. Even in the 0.01% likelyhood that Apple completely terminates PPC support in June 2007 , given his quoted timeline, he's sitting easy for that 18 months while Apple sorts out the Macintel kinks, however little or much it may take.
"Here the issue was compatibility with existing applications -- and the firm just wasn't willing to take the risk of buying a platform that couldn't run what they needed to run native or tying their future to one, single-sourced, hardware company"
Run native on what? Did he go to Apple with something like "I want to run these legacy apps written in Cobol native on Mac. Can you guarantee that?" WTF? The Mac Os X platform is based on many open source technologies that interact in various ways with other hardware and software - on the software platforms side, *Nix,J2EE, MySql, Apache, PHP, NFS, Samba, IMAP email just to name a few. Virtual PC for emulation if needed, otherwise, some legacy apps will just have to be run on Windows machines, but Virtual PC or porting to open-standards platforms will at least "quarantine" microsoft issues and make things more flexible down the line. If this IT manager wants to go to a smaller company that will port all his stuff to run on Linux on generic-beige-box-x86s, let him go ahead, if I were an Apple shareholder I might be happy that Apple is not wasting its resources on these sort of customers.
Plotting a Roadmap
It doesn't matter what Apple does to the product. Until the company can address the need for a multi-year roadmap that businesses can refer to, get a stable platform that will be deployable over a long period of time, and designate multiple hardware vendors clients can bid against one another to ensure the lowest price (as well as to avoid getting nailed by internal audit), enterprises simply won't buy Apple broadly.
This model that he proposes, has *anyone* in the IT world been able to get this to work successfully? Very unrealistic expectations, and even more unrealistic that these "Apple executives" would take the legal risks of any sort of blanket assurances of:
(a)multi-year roadmap
(b)multiple hardware vendors bidding against one another
(c)low low prices
Again, has this model with Windows and lowest-bid whitebox-providers really delivered value and sustained productivity to companies? Or is it a self-perpetuating loop of putting out fire after fire? Switching vendors only to find even more problems? Or other unforseen problems?
One other thing: Several folks questioned my comment that Apple demand was dropping like a rock and referred to past sales performance to refute this. Demand is measured by surveys of buying intent and I rely on surveys done for the financial firms who follow Apple. Unfortunately I don't have the rights to share the results. But the financial reports you have seen are based on sales before Apple announced the Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel move -- and the impact of that development won't show up in the financial reports until after this quarter ends.
If the studies are to be believed, the fourth quarter, in particular, should be ugly for Apple. Granted, forward-looking studies are often unreliable, but the study I'm now using did accurately predict that last quarter would be very strong.
Okay. "If the [forward-looking, unknown source] studies are to be believed", "Apple is teh doomed" due to the Intel announcement. So by the end of the year, Apple will just be selling off iPods and the rest of its dead PPC line, MacIntel won't take off and Apple will be dead by the end of 2006 I know I'm putting words in Enderle's mouth, he is just making a point that he believes that he has sources which show an 'ugly' quarter for Apple. Fine, only time will tell, in a few months. Back to the IT manager dude though, shure, take into account risks of Apple going out of business, however small it could be. Compare this against the risks of continuing virus and spyware challenges, Vista promised for *end* of 2006, and a potentially tricky navigation of the Linux scene and managing hardware vendors. I believe this IT manager should weigh up this risks accordingly, it seems that Enderle has subtly interjected with a slump in July-Sep 05 quarter to indicate lack of confidence in apple as a company...
On the confidence note, "they wanted early warning on all patches and changes to any of the platforms they were buying..."
Obviously this IT manager has not ever heard of Apple Developer Connection (ADC). Early seeds of patches, updates, operating systems, and OMFG you mean i can try out Mac OS X on Intel, like NOW??? Does he want Apple executives to hold it for him while he pees too? Fair enough if ADC does not meet his needs, or if the cost of memberships and rental of Macintel dev kit is not acceptable to his company's budget. But it sounds like Enderle and this IT manager have not heard anything about Apple Developer Connection or this yearly major developers conference called Apple Worldwide Developer Conference.
[skip Linux bits to closing paragraphs]
.....Apple has to either be responsive to the business buyer or remain a niche player which, though safer, bars them from any potential opportunity that would result from a Microsoft stumble......
Lets look at companies like Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, etc. that have been 'responsive to the business buyer'. Sure, they have kept the day-to-day wheels of industry turning and keeping modern society from collapsing, but have these companies posted consistent improved profits? have they delivered innovations in the fields of human-computer-interaction and secure, stable computing? have they delivered a better experience to the end-user-- those footsoldiers, the cogs of the gears that keeps those wheels of industry turning? Have they made society a safer environment or just encouraged or done nothing while malware, hacking, spyware continues unabated...? I'm not saying Apple has saved the world, or blaming Dell, HP, IBM for hackers and spyware. my point is that Apple would prefer not to be 'responsive to the business buyer' unless they can meet some of those principles which also happen to be its company goals. such principles can be frustrating and arcane sometimes, like waiting 20+ years for a mouse with more than one button... but we are not more 'trapped' by apple than is commonly perceived....
I just want to say I appreciate the ability to post a rebuttal here on AppleInsider. I have identified the source of my frustration -- working for a company a few years ago, I saw them buy a IIRC $200,000-500,000 "email/database/crm solution" that rotted away under a developer's desk for a year. then came layoffs, then the switch from filemaker/mac to oracle/solaris. let's just say that the switch and my feelings about it is not about the hardware, software, or the platforms, but a lot to do with 'human factors' that we are all familiar with.
As Nicholas Negroponte said, "technology is about the body, not the bit". Which finally held true for the own challenges with funding, politics, administration of MIT media lab and their attempts to export media lab to ireland, india, sydney...
I'd like to have seen the response from Microsoft when asked for a roadmap.... ;-)
Surely now Apple have exactly the same roadmap as Dell - ie. Intel's roadmap. ? Not that I'd recommend Dell for corporate use. IME of supporting their PowerEdge servers, they fail twice as often as IBM NetVistas or Compaqs.
There is some grain of truth in Enderle's 'analysis' as Apple really should do more to address enterprise and business users, otherwise OSX server would be doing better and users wouldn't be installing Kerio over the top of Apple's lack lustre default applications which rarely work fully.
On the desktop though, the type of IT manager that places the price of their hardware and the ability to run legacy apps over security, ease of support and staff productivity is very short sighted but I guess 'No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft' is as true today as it was for buying IBM in the 80s. I once worked at a company that just bought the cheapest branded PC's they could find and no two deliveries were ever the same inside the box with spec changes every few months as big as motherboard and drive changes. Impossible to support - It was quicker to give staff a new PC each time than to chase hardware bugs.
In the end, I don't think Microsoft, Apple or Linux will win - the Web will. Rich Internet Applications and AJAX are finally delivering on what the 'intranet' and Java promised 5 years ago. Back to thin clients, and IT Managers have got to love that.
I do have to say in some defense of the roadmap idea that there is truth to it.
Most enterprise organizations can get a guarantee from a vendor that they will be able to continue to get for a period of 18 - 24 months, a PC that is EXACTLY the same as the ones they are getting now. They multi-year contract out for that. It's so they can lower maintenance costs by having the same machines throughout the company. The vendor expects this demand and meets it. It's part of the enterprise sales division that most vendors have. When Jobs came back to Apple, he was asked specifically about Apple returning to the enterprise. His response was that the enterprise was not his customer. Apple is now attempting to return. The question is whether they understand what it means to have them as a customer.
MS gives a roadmap of its OSes for years in advance. They don't always meet the expectations, as can be seen with Vista. But they do give beta's out early. Apple does not. We don't have any idea what will be in Leopard at this time. I'm hoping that we will get a good idea in Jan.
My complaint with Enderley is that is is unwilling to ascribe sources, and makes statements that are unlikely. He has been known as "Mr. Microsoft" as most of his fees come from work done for them.
He's been somewhat nicer to Apple and Linux as of late, but still can't refrain from the usually unsupported dig.
I would worry about what he says except that the other analysts reporting on Apple seem to disagree with him, stating that Apple's sales don't seem to have taken a hit yet.
I know this is not really a proper benchmark test but today I was in my local cafe. I've set up a wireless hotspot for them using an old dual 366Mhz celeron PC running linux, NoCat etc which I was going to take to the tip.
The owner of the cafe had decided that she'd buy a new laptop to use the wifi she now has and I couldn't persuade her to switch, not through any kind of windows religious thing but just because she's not that computer literate and didn't want to relearn stuff.
So she's bought an Acer laptop which seemed quite decent for the money - about the same as an iBook 14" superdrive but with more ports out of it than can possibly be feasible, dual layer DVD writer and a 1280x800 screen. Inside it's a Pentium M 1.6Ghz 533Mhz FSB, 2MB L2. Today I installed iTunes on it and began ripping CDs. This is where I was flumoxed. It would only rip at 5.5 to 6.5 x speed.
I had an iBook 500Mhz G3 with me. iTunes gets 2-3x on that. On my iMac G5 1.8Ghz in automatic setting I get 11x at least up to 16x on the slow Panasonic 825 superdrive drive in it.
Is iTunes on Windows really that embarrassingly bad or is this going to be the way it is without Altivec?
I know this is not really a proper benchmark test but today I was in my local cafe. I've set up a wireless hotspot for them using an old dual 366Mhz celeron PC running linux, NoCat etc which I was going to take to the tip.
The owner of the cafe had decided that she'd buy a new laptop to use the wifi she now has and I couldn't persuade her to switch, not through any kind of windows religious thing but just because she's not that computer literate and didn't want to relearn stuff.
So she's bought an Acer laptop which seemed quite decent for the money - about the same as an iBook 14" superdrive but with more ports out of it than can possibly be feasible, dual layer DVD writer and a 1280x800 screen. Inside it's a Pentium M 1.6Ghz 533Mhz FSB, 2MB L2. Today I installed iTunes on it and began ripping CDs. This is where I was flumoxed. It would only rip at 5.5 to 6.5 x speed.
I had an iBook 500Mhz G3 with me. iTunes gets 2-3x on that. On my iMac G5 1.8Ghz in automatic setting I get 11x at least up to 16x on the slow Panasonic 825 superdrive drive in it.
Is iTunes on Windows really that embarrassingly bad or is this going to be the way it is without Altivec?
No - my guess it is the optical drive you are using or you have EC on... my 3.5 year old P4 2Ghz varies by disc, but I've seen up to 21x... it is usually quite fast. Also, make sure error correction is off to get optimal speed.
No - my guess it is the optical drive you are using or you have EC on... my 3.5 year old P4 2Ghz varies by disc, but I've seen up to 21x... it is usually quite fast. Also, make sure error correction is off to get optimal speed.
Acer don't publish specs for the Dual Layer DVD drive in the Aspire 1692 I was playing with but I get 11 - 16x importing on my iMac WITH error correction on. I doubt the Windows version of iTunes has EC on by default so I guess that was actually off.
DVD writers tend to have slower CD read speeds than pure CD or Combo CD/RW drives but I really don't believe they'd put a drive in that would only read at 6x speed. Thinking about it, I was running off battery on the Acer so maybe the processor had stepped down to a third power, which might explain it but I've never had performance that bad on a Mac. Again, it's only one aspect of computing but ripping and encoding video (in iDVD, popcorn etc) is a weekly occurrence for me and a third speed of a Mac would be highly annoying. In fact it's about the only thing that bothers me speed wise as anything past 1Ghz is fast enough for everything else I do.
Acer don't publish specs for the Dual Layer DVD drive in the Aspire 1692 I was playing with but I get 11 - 16x importing on my iMac WITH error correction on. I doubt the Windows version of iTunes has EC on by default so I guess that was actually off.
DVD writers tend to have slower CD read speeds than pure CD or Combo CD/RW drives but I really don't believe they'd put a drive in that would only read at 6x speed. Thinking about it, I was running off battery on the Acer so maybe the processor had stepped down to a third power, which might explain it but I've never had performance that bad on a Mac. Again, it's only one aspect of computing but ripping and encoding video (in iDVD, popcorn etc) is a weekly occurrence for me and a third speed of a Mac would be highly annoying. In fact it's about the only thing that bothers me speed wise as anything past 1Ghz is fast enough for everything else I do.
I better grab a fast Powerbook while I can.
It could be the disks. There are compatability problems between certain drives and certain disks. A disk that will burn on one drive may not even work on another.
To learn about these problems, as well as finding tests on just about every drive and disk combo out there, go here:
It could be the disks. There are compatability problems between certain drives and certain disks. A disk that will burn on one drive may not even work on another.
Comments
Originally posted by superted
OK, if Apple don't use this new-fangled 8641D whatever before they swith to Intel, who the hell is Freescale going to sell it to? Are there any major compuer makers using PPC chips anymore, I can't think of any????
Again, most of these cpus' go for embedded use.
Originally posted by melgross
Here's an interesting article that just popped up.
http://www.macobserver.com/stockwatc.../08/15.1.shtml
I know that it doesn't just cover the PB's, but that's what makes it so interesting.
Check out the Mini prediction especially.
You're right...interesting stuff. All these noises for the funeral of PowerPC in Apple Computers makes me feel slightly nostalgic...and aren't alot of sources and analysts coming out of the woodwork about it.
Wonder why the G5 isn't going in eMacs if this rumour has substance? Anybody want to start another 'eMac is dead' thread?
Originally posted by superted
OK, if Apple don't use this new-fangled 8641D whatever before they swith to Intel, who the hell is Freescale going to sell it to? Are there any major compuer makers using PPC chips anymore, I can't think of any????
I don't have the figures on hand, but the last presentation the Freescale CEO gave a few months ago at the Freescale dev conference, they were clearly not concerned by the loss of Apple. They have their embedded markets lined up. Routers, phone exchanges, intelligent cars and fridges and stuff
Seriously though, the CEO really DID NOT SEEM TOO WORRIED about losing the Apple business. Freescale will be alright. The company is actually better off in the long run without Apple business, and vice versa.
Originally posted by sunilraman
I don't have the figures on hand, but the last presentation the Freescale CEO gave a few months ago at the Freescale dev conference, they were clearly not concerned by the loss of Apple. They have their embedded markets lined up. Routers, phone exchanges, intelligent cars and fridges and stuff
Seriously though, the CEO really DID NOT SEEM TOO WORRIED about losing the Apple business. Freescale will be alright. The company is actually better off in the long run without Apple business, and vice versa.
You know, no matter how many times we say this, someone ALWAYS comes back with the same inane comments. Sometimes I wish it wasn't possible to post until one has read all of the previous ones.
Originally posted by melgross
You know, no matter how many times we say this, someone ALWAYS comes back with the same inane comments. Sometimes I wish it wasn't possible to post until one has read all of the previous ones.
Nah, it?s not that bad mate, from a consumer perspective it would not be too much of a stretch to assume that "well, freescale only makes g4 chips for apple, freescale is teh doomed now"
I'm not always on the ball here at the Ai Forums... I thought Freescale would suffer but after watching the CEO presentation video myself I know different --> and this is factoring the Freescale CEO's RDF, which compared to Steve Job's 10.0, I would give Freescale CEO a 1.0 on the RDF... He spent the first 5 minutes of that presentation apologising for a conference snafu
But fair enough, this should go into the Intel-->PPC** FAQ Sticky:
1. Is Freescale going to go out of business when Apple stops using their CPUs?
**heh. Freudian slip, i meant PPC-->Intel of course
Originally posted by sunilraman
But fair enough, this should go into the Intel-->PPC** FAQ Sticky:
1. Is Freescale going to go out of business when Apple stops using their CPUs?
**heh. Freudian slip, i meant PPC-->Intel of course
Too late, all it takes is for someone to now post that slip on Slashdot and then MacOSRumors will be quoting insiders as saying Apple are switching to PowerPC after being let down by Intel.
Then it'll be compounded by analysts saying Apple are switching back and lastly some random bit of hardware made by some other random manufacturer but coming out of the same fabs in Taiwan as Apple uses will be attributed to being the new G6 iPod<>Mac convergence TiVo-esque media laptop by Digitimes.
Trust me. You've set the ball in motion now.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Too late, all it takes is for someone to now post that slip on Slashdot and then MacOSRumors will be quoting insiders as saying Apple are switching to PowerPC after being let down by Intel.
Then it'll be compounded by analysts saying Apple are switching back and lastly some random bit of hardware made by some other random manufacturer but coming out of the same fabs in Taiwan as Apple uses will be attributed to being the new G6 iPod<>Mac convergence TiVo-esque media laptop by Digitimes.
Trust me. You've set the ball in motion now.
now all i need to do is set up my own financial analyst company and start releasing those bullshit "research notes"
cool. then appleInsider will start reporting on my "research"...
......in a research note secretly obtained by appleInsider, Sunil TheMan, analyst for BuyMyStocks.Com, reported that recent interviews with an undisclosed Apple source has mentioned that the G6 chip will be driving the new iPod-Mac convergence device. Sunil has repeated his 'EverybodyBuyNowAndShareTheLove' rating on AAPL, with a price target of 50000 repubic[sic] credits.....
Originally posted by sunilraman
now all i need to do is set up my own financial analyst company and start releasing those bullshit "research notes"
cool. then appleInsider will start reporting on my "research"...
......in a research note secretly obtained by appleInsider, Sunil TheMan, analyst for BuyMyStocks.Com, reported that recent interviews with an undisclosed Apple source has mentioned that the G6 chip will be driving the new iPod-Mac convergence device. Sunil has repeated his 'EverybodyBuyNowAndShareTheLove' rating on AAPL, with a price target of 50000 repubic[sic] credits.....
We've got lots of that stuff flying around.
Our favorite analyst is at it again (I don't mean Dvorak, he's not an analyst).
Rob Enderle, principal (and only) analyst for his company, the Enderle Group, is predicting and making statements out of his imagination again. By the way, when your company has one person in it, except for assistants and secretaries, call it a "Group". Not does he refuse to give any figures, but he won't even tell us which company industry report he is using. This is unusual. normally, the company who put out the report is cited, even though the information can't be quoted directly. But he won't (can't?) do that. He also attributes "apple executives" as saying things that, no matter how they feel, they would never say to a proposed client.
It's kind of fun. Read it for yourselves.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/45264.html
Apple Against Vista
Recently I had lunch with an old friend who had been a client while I was with Giga (now a part of Forrester). He worked for a large multi-national firm and remains a huge Apple fan. As a senior IT manager and because his firm, like many others, was upset with Microsoft, he was able to set up a meeting with Apple's executives to talk about a migration.
Okay, fair enough, no complaints from me yet.
His firm was skeptical but relatively open-minded. They started off making the same request of Apple they make of companies like Dell. They wanted a two-year hardware/ software roadmap and assurances they could buy a platform that would remain stable for at least 12, and hopefully 18, months.
In addition, they wanted early warning on all patches and changes to any of the platforms they were buying and solid assurances on price. They had issues with the fact they would have to single-source their hardware vendor but felt if Apple could meet their other requests they were willing to continue the discussion. (As is the case with any vendor, Microsoft has its share of very unhappy customers.)
The Apple executives, smiling, said "We're Apple and we don't do that." The meeting ended relatively quickly and my friend has since moved on to another, much smaller company, where he began the same process. Here the issue was compatibility with existing applications -- and the firm just wasn't willing to take the risk of buying a platform that couldn't run what they needed to run native or tying their future to one, single-sourced, hardware company.
Okay. Whoa. I have some major issues with this. Enderle's friend is an idiot, typical of most IT managers. Let's assume Apple executives did not say that, then okay, Enderle's talking out his ass. Now even if we assume Apple executives *did* say such a thing, considering legal issues, who would blame them?
Let's look at the timeline this IT manager is looking at. 12-"hopefully" 18 months.
Hardware
Yes, you are tied in to a single hardware vendor. But all Apple products have a 1 year hardware warranty, extensible to 3 years. Enterprise-level agreements may differ but are oriented around the 1 year core warranty. What roadmap are they looking at for enterprise IT? Yes the Mactel switch may be a concern if they are waiting for that but there are established case studies and proven technologies with Xserve g5, Xserve Raid on the server side, with iMac g5, powerBook g4 and iBook g4 for client desktop/portable workstations.
If the IT manager was looking for Apple to reveal the inner secrets of their Macintel migration strategy 2006-2007, of course these so-called "Apple executives" would tell him to go fuck himself.
His timeline of 12-18 months, lets say from January 2006-June 2007, clearly falls into the core Macintel transition period.
He *DOESN'T* have to worry about Macintel, there are well-established PPC hardware solutions. Even in the 0.01% likelyhood that Apple completely terminates PPC support in June 2007
"Here the issue was compatibility with existing applications -- and the firm just wasn't willing to take the risk of buying a platform that couldn't run what they needed to run native or tying their future to one, single-sourced, hardware company"
Run native on what? Did he go to Apple with something like "I want to run these legacy apps written in Cobol native on Mac. Can you guarantee that?" WTF? The Mac Os X platform is based on many open source technologies that interact in various ways with other hardware and software - on the software platforms side, *Nix,J2EE, MySql, Apache, PHP, NFS, Samba, IMAP email just to name a few. Virtual PC for emulation if needed, otherwise, some legacy apps will just have to be run on Windows machines, but Virtual PC or porting to open-standards platforms will at least "quarantine" microsoft issues and make things more flexible down the line. If this IT manager wants to go to a smaller company that will port all his stuff to run on Linux on generic-beige-box-x86s, let him go ahead, if I were an Apple shareholder I might be happy that Apple is not wasting its resources on these sort of customers.
Plotting a Roadmap
It doesn't matter what Apple does to the product. Until the company can address the need for a multi-year roadmap that businesses can refer to, get a stable platform that will be deployable over a long period of time, and designate multiple hardware vendors clients can bid against one another to ensure the lowest price (as well as to avoid getting nailed by internal audit), enterprises simply won't buy Apple broadly.
This model that he proposes, has *anyone* in the IT world been able to get this to work successfully? Very unrealistic expectations, and even more unrealistic that these "Apple executives" would take the legal risks of any sort of blanket assurances of:
(a)multi-year roadmap
(b)multiple hardware vendors bidding against one another
(c)low low prices
Again, has this model with Windows and lowest-bid whitebox-providers really delivered value and sustained productivity to companies? Or is it a self-perpetuating loop of putting out fire after fire? Switching vendors only to find even more problems? Or other unforseen problems?
One other thing: Several folks questioned my comment that Apple demand was dropping like a rock and referred to past sales performance to refute this. Demand is measured by surveys of buying intent and I rely on surveys done for the financial firms who follow Apple. Unfortunately I don't have the rights to share the results. But the financial reports you have seen are based on sales before Apple announced the Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel move -- and the impact of that development won't show up in the financial reports until after this quarter ends.
If the studies are to be believed, the fourth quarter, in particular, should be ugly for Apple. Granted, forward-looking studies are often unreliable, but the study I'm now using did accurately predict that last quarter would be very strong.
Okay. "If the [forward-looking, unknown source] studies are to be believed", "Apple is teh doomed" due to the Intel announcement. So by the end of the year, Apple will just be selling off iPods and the rest of its dead PPC line, MacIntel won't take off and Apple will be dead by the end of 2006
On the confidence note, "they wanted early warning on all patches and changes to any of the platforms they were buying..."
Obviously this IT manager has not ever heard of Apple Developer Connection (ADC). Early seeds of patches, updates, operating systems, and OMFG you mean i can try out Mac OS X on Intel, like NOW??? Does he want Apple executives to hold it for him while he pees too? Fair enough if ADC does not meet his needs, or if the cost of memberships and rental of Macintel dev kit is not acceptable to his company's budget. But it sounds like Enderle and this IT manager have not heard anything about Apple Developer Connection or this yearly major developers conference called Apple Worldwide Developer Conference.
[skip Linux bits to closing paragraphs]
.....Apple has to either be responsive to the business buyer or remain a niche player which, though safer, bars them from any potential opportunity that would result from a Microsoft stumble......
Lets look at companies like Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, etc. that have been 'responsive to the business buyer'. Sure, they have kept the day-to-day wheels of industry turning and keeping modern society from collapsing, but have these companies posted consistent improved profits? have they delivered innovations in the fields of human-computer-interaction and secure, stable computing? have they delivered a better experience to the end-user-- those footsoldiers, the cogs of the gears that keeps those wheels of industry turning? Have they made society a safer environment or just encouraged or done nothing while malware, hacking, spyware continues unabated...? I'm not saying Apple has saved the world, or blaming Dell, HP, IBM for hackers and spyware. my point is that Apple would prefer not to be 'responsive to the business buyer' unless they can meet some of those principles which also happen to be its company goals. such principles can be frustrating and arcane sometimes, like waiting 20+ years for a mouse with more than one button... but we are not more 'trapped' by apple than is commonly perceived....
As Nicholas Negroponte said, "technology is about the body, not the bit". Which finally held true for the own challenges with funding, politics, administration of MIT media lab and their attempts to export media lab to ireland, india, sydney...
Surely now Apple have exactly the same roadmap as Dell - ie. Intel's roadmap. ? Not that I'd recommend Dell for corporate use. IME of supporting their PowerEdge servers, they fail twice as often as IBM NetVistas or Compaqs.
There is some grain of truth in Enderle's 'analysis' as Apple really should do more to address enterprise and business users, otherwise OSX server would be doing better and users wouldn't be installing Kerio over the top of Apple's lack lustre default applications which rarely work fully.
On the desktop though, the type of IT manager that places the price of their hardware and the ability to run legacy apps over security, ease of support and staff productivity is very short sighted but I guess 'No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft' is as true today as it was for buying IBM in the 80s. I once worked at a company that just bought the cheapest branded PC's they could find and no two deliveries were ever the same inside the box with spec changes every few months as big as motherboard and drive changes. Impossible to support - It was quicker to give staff a new PC each time than to chase hardware bugs.
In the end, I don't think Microsoft, Apple or Linux will win - the Web will. Rich Internet Applications and AJAX are finally delivering on what the 'intranet' and Java promised 5 years ago. Back to thin clients, and IT Managers have got to love that.
Most enterprise organizations can get a guarantee from a vendor that they will be able to continue to get for a period of 18 - 24 months, a PC that is EXACTLY the same as the ones they are getting now. They multi-year contract out for that. It's so they can lower maintenance costs by having the same machines throughout the company. The vendor expects this demand and meets it. It's part of the enterprise sales division that most vendors have. When Jobs came back to Apple, he was asked specifically about Apple returning to the enterprise. His response was that the enterprise was not his customer. Apple is now attempting to return. The question is whether they understand what it means to have them as a customer.
MS gives a roadmap of its OSes for years in advance. They don't always meet the expectations, as can be seen with Vista. But they do give beta's out early. Apple does not. We don't have any idea what will be in Leopard at this time. I'm hoping that we will get a good idea in Jan.
My complaint with Enderley is that is is unwilling to ascribe sources, and makes statements that are unlikely. He has been known as "Mr. Microsoft" as most of his fees come from work done for them.
He's been somewhat nicer to Apple and Linux as of late, but still can't refrain from the usually unsupported dig.
I would worry about what he says except that the other analysts reporting on Apple seem to disagree with him, stating that Apple's sales don't seem to have taken a hit yet.
I know this is not really a proper benchmark test but today I was in my local cafe. I've set up a wireless hotspot for them using an old dual 366Mhz celeron PC running linux, NoCat etc which I was going to take to the tip.
The owner of the cafe had decided that she'd buy a new laptop to use the wifi she now has and I couldn't persuade her to switch, not through any kind of windows religious thing but just because she's not that computer literate and didn't want to relearn stuff.
So she's bought an Acer laptop which seemed quite decent for the money - about the same as an iBook 14" superdrive but with more ports out of it than can possibly be feasible, dual layer DVD writer and a 1280x800 screen. Inside it's a Pentium M 1.6Ghz 533Mhz FSB, 2MB L2. Today I installed iTunes on it and began ripping CDs. This is where I was flumoxed. It would only rip at 5.5 to 6.5 x speed.
I had an iBook 500Mhz G3 with me. iTunes gets 2-3x on that. On my iMac G5 1.8Ghz in automatic setting I get 11x at least up to 16x on the slow Panasonic 825 superdrive drive in it.
Is iTunes on Windows really that embarrassingly bad or is this going to be the way it is without Altivec?
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Back to the PowerPC Powerbook topic...
I know this is not really a proper benchmark test but today I was in my local cafe. I've set up a wireless hotspot for them using an old dual 366Mhz celeron PC running linux, NoCat etc which I was going to take to the tip.
The owner of the cafe had decided that she'd buy a new laptop to use the wifi she now has and I couldn't persuade her to switch, not through any kind of windows religious thing but just because she's not that computer literate and didn't want to relearn stuff.
So she's bought an Acer laptop which seemed quite decent for the money - about the same as an iBook 14" superdrive but with more ports out of it than can possibly be feasible, dual layer DVD writer and a 1280x800 screen. Inside it's a Pentium M 1.6Ghz 533Mhz FSB, 2MB L2. Today I installed iTunes on it and began ripping CDs. This is where I was flumoxed. It would only rip at 5.5 to 6.5 x speed.
I had an iBook 500Mhz G3 with me. iTunes gets 2-3x on that. On my iMac G5 1.8Ghz in automatic setting I get 11x at least up to 16x on the slow Panasonic 825 superdrive drive in it.
Is iTunes on Windows really that embarrassingly bad or is this going to be the way it is without Altivec?
No - my guess it is the optical drive you are using or you have EC on... my 3.5 year old P4 2Ghz varies by disc, but I've seen up to 21x... it is usually quite fast. Also, make sure error correction is off to get optimal speed.
Originally posted by ShadowX
No - my guess it is the optical drive you are using or you have EC on... my 3.5 year old P4 2Ghz varies by disc, but I've seen up to 21x... it is usually quite fast. Also, make sure error correction is off to get optimal speed.
Acer don't publish specs for the Dual Layer DVD drive in the Aspire 1692 I was playing with but I get 11 - 16x importing on my iMac WITH error correction on. I doubt the Windows version of iTunes has EC on by default so I guess that was actually off.
DVD writers tend to have slower CD read speeds than pure CD or Combo CD/RW drives but I really don't believe they'd put a drive in that would only read at 6x speed. Thinking about it, I was running off battery on the Acer so maybe the processor had stepped down to a third power, which might explain it but I've never had performance that bad on a Mac. Again, it's only one aspect of computing but ripping and encoding video (in iDVD, popcorn etc) is a weekly occurrence for me and a third speed of a Mac would be highly annoying. In fact it's about the only thing that bothers me speed wise as anything past 1Ghz is fast enough for everything else I do.
I better grab a fast Powerbook while I can.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Acer don't publish specs for the Dual Layer DVD drive in the Aspire 1692 I was playing with but I get 11 - 16x importing on my iMac WITH error correction on. I doubt the Windows version of iTunes has EC on by default so I guess that was actually off.
DVD writers tend to have slower CD read speeds than pure CD or Combo CD/RW drives but I really don't believe they'd put a drive in that would only read at 6x speed. Thinking about it, I was running off battery on the Acer so maybe the processor had stepped down to a third power, which might explain it but I've never had performance that bad on a Mac. Again, it's only one aspect of computing but ripping and encoding video (in iDVD, popcorn etc) is a weekly occurrence for me and a third speed of a Mac would be highly annoying. In fact it's about the only thing that bothers me speed wise as anything past 1Ghz is fast enough for everything else I do.
I better grab a fast Powerbook while I can.
It could be the disks. There are compatability problems between certain drives and certain disks. A disk that will burn on one drive may not even work on another.
To learn about these problems, as well as finding tests on just about every drive and disk combo out there, go here:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/
Originally posted by melgross
It could be the disks. There are compatability problems between certain drives and certain disks. A disk that will burn on one drive may not even work on another.
I was ripping standard audio CDs, not burning.