macosx:

Charles (

charles) wrote in

macosx,
@ 2005-06-07 15:32:00

1984

2005

Edit: Sorry about that. I wasn't aware that the same gag had been used for the Bill Gates WWDC appearance, which would put a totally different spin on things. This isn't the end of the world, or a sellout, or a betrayal. I was trying to make an oblique statement about imagery. The Stevenote was a very well-crafted event designed to make us feel safe and assured about the move to Intel. Apple has always been very conscious and deliberate about the way it presents itself, and scenes like that WWDC screen-cap don't happen by accident.

Maybe a little too oblique.

(Post a new comment)

	jodamiller 2005-06-07 05:39 am UTC (link)
	A nice visual comparison, but nothing really more than that, really. (Reply to this) (Thread)

charles
2005-06-07 05:45 am UTC (link)

It's all about the visuals, though. I'm sure that moment -- Steve standing in the middle of the stage with "Apple is strong" written three feet tall above his head -- was contrived for the very effect it conveys. It's about expressing a moment of confidence and power, to reassure everyone who's sitting in the audience having been hit by the Intel bombshell.

In a way, it's very similar to the allusions in the 1984 advert. Propaganda is marketing is showmanship.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	jodamiller 2005-06-07 05:47 am UTC (link)
	Except in the 1984 commercial, the Big Brother controlled it all whereas Apple controls 5%. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	charles 2005-06-07 06:08 am UTC (link)
	...maybe I should have captioned it: "Intel is our ally. We have never been at war with Intel." (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

jodamiller
2005-06-07 06:17 am UTC (link)

I've never cared what processor was in my Mac. I've had a Quadra in 1993 with an 68LC040 made by Motorola, I've had an iMac G3 and now a iBook G4 and would have bought that mythical PowerBook G5 with an IBM processor one day. But now my next Mac will have an Intel processor. As long as it runs Mac OS well, then that's what matters to me.

I don't think this is a decision that Apple envied. During his keynote Jobs said that they've had every version of Mac OS X compiled for x86 "just in case". Well, when it's a year past when a 3.0 GHz G5 was promised and when PowerBooks only get minor speed bumps and still run on G4s, something has to give. And this was it.

Apple's not saying that they've always agreed with Intel, they're saying this was the best option laid out before us at this point in time.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

it doesn't matter -

jbennett, 2005-06-07 06:30 am UTC

Re: it doesn't matter -

kevinblanchard, 2005-06-07 07:43 am UTC

Re: it doesn't matter -

kurisu, 2005-06-07 09:46 am UTC

Re: it doesn't matter -

kevinblanchard, 2005-06-07 10:08 am UTC

Re: it doesn't matter -

ixzist, 2005-06-07 03:28 pm UTC

(no subject) -

charles, 2005-06-07 06:43 am UTC

(no subject) -

jodamiller, 2005-06-07 01:42 pm UTC

(no subject) -

charles, 2005-06-07 01:53 pm UTC

(no subject) -

jodamiller, 2005-06-07 01:54 pm UTC

(no subject) -

charles, 2005-06-07 02:20 pm UTC

(no subject) -

jodamiller, 2005-06-07 02:23 pm UTC

(no subject) -

charles, 2005-06-07 02:50 pm UTC

(no subject) -

jodamiller, 2005-06-07 02:52 pm UTC

	cyclotron 2005-06-07 07:17 am UTC (link)
	In 1984 the enemy was IBM, not Intel (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) -

feyeleanor, 2005-06-07 12:30 pm UTC

(no subject) -

sneakums, 2005-06-07 03:43 pm UTC

(no subject) -

feyeleanor, 2005-06-07 07:32 pm UTC

(no subject) -

sneakums, 2005-06-08 07:33 am UTC

(no subject) -

feyeleanor, 2005-06-08 10:32 am UTC

	jfboyd 2005-06-07 11:58 am UTC (link)
	Except that this image has already been used before for the same comparison, and it never bore out as being 'teh END OF APPLE!!!!11', either. It was used with the image of Bill Gates on the same monitor behind Steve Jobs in 1998 when Microsoft gave millions of dollars to 'save' Apple. Fanboys said that Apple was done for -- but you see what's happened since 1998? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	charles 2005-06-07 12:26 pm UTC (link)
	I never said it was the end of the world. I was just interested in the symbology. The second picture just struck me as one of those Leni Reifenstahl moments. shrugs (Reply to this) (Parent)

	heysuperman 2005-06-07 05:45 am UTC (link)
	stinkin sell out...i swear! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	amplifiedmouse 2005-06-07 05:50 am UTC (link)
	I'm failing to see how... (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	charles 2005-06-07 05:56 am UTC (link)
	Me neither. It's no more a sell-out than switching to a different brand of video card, or sourcing their LCD monitors from another company. You go with the parts that you feel will make the best computers, and Apple no longer think those parts are available from IBM. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	heysuperman 2005-06-07 06:14 am UTC (link)
	i was half joking. i honestly don't give a rip that they're changing, i'm still going to buy mac. always have always will. it's just going to be a PITA for me since i was planning on buying another one soon but will now wait. to bad for me =p (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

charles
2005-06-07 06:19 am UTC (link)

I'm not sure there's any point waiting. The first Intel-based Macs aren't going to show up for at least another six months, and the Apple won't have even stopped selling PPC Macs themselves until another two years after that.

I suspect the Mac games market will go totally insane in the meantime (fat binaries are unlikely to help with something as close to the metal as a game), but I don't play games much anyway.

I was planning to buy a G5 iMac some time soon, and this announcement hasn't changed my mind.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) -

heysuperman, 2005-06-07 06:40 am UTC

(no subject) -

xmusouka, 2005-06-07 02:56 pm UTC

	heysuperman 2005-06-07 06:09 am UTC (link)
	it's a sacastic comment. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cyclotron 2005-06-07 07:17 am UTC (link)
	How about all those years of "our chip is better than theirs" (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Deleted post)

	heysuperman 2005-06-07 06:11 am UTC (link)
	get over yourself (Reply to this) (Parent)

joscobo
2005-06-07 07:03 am UTC (link)

"Intel is our ally. We have never been at war with Intel."

I get this statement and can't think of a better way to put it. First we are told we are paying a thousand bucks more for a computer because the G5 is the whizz bang best thing since the thong and J-Lo's ass. Echoing 10 years of propaganda. Now a.k.a 1984 we are told Intel is the best thing out there. But continue to by the G5 and the G4 upgrade PowerBook because they are the best too. He should have dropped in a bit about how Eurasia was our new allie too.
Is Apple officially part of the Bush administration or what now? Double speak at its best.
And now we all have to buy all new softare so it will run best on the new best machine. I don't care what he says. Adobe will stop putting altivec in their programs, no point writing it in. And the code will be compiled to run best on intel not powerpc's.
And what about the muliple core PowerPC's. Seems like this was a done deal before they were a reality.
I see this as Jobs once again pissing on the mac faithful. LEOPARD will be renamed Mac OS X-P.
Think Similar the new slogan.
Wait until we have a virus or 20 and it has to happen.
And wait until longhorn and XP run faster. Now where will the excuse to pay that much more be with Jobs.
Will they fire Jobs yet again?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

jfboyd
2005-06-07 12:13 pm UTC (link)

Come on now, let's drop the hype.

As unique and different a business as Apple is, when it comes down to it, it is still a business. It needs to be able to adapt and change to continue to meet its customers' needs.

Apple has perceived a problem with continuing to use PPC, and so it's adapting and throwing out that processor architecture. It's as basic as that. It does not mean anything of what you've suggested. Again, I direct you to 1998 when Microsoft gave Apple a pile of 'seed' money. Everybody went agog thinking that Apple had sold out to Microsoft and that Steve Jobs was, as you put it, "pissing on the Mac faithful". But the truth was, that money gave Apple years of breathing room and allowed them to innovate in ways that brought about, oh, the iMac, the iBook, the iPod, OS X, and the growth in market share that has kept Apple alive and thriving.

Also, think back to the days before Steve Jobs came back in 1997, when Apple did make decisions based on little more than tradition. I'll bet frickin' Gil Amelio would have stayed with Motorola's chips, and it would have been a bad decision.

Come on, change is not always a bad thing.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

joscobo
2005-06-07 04:06 pm UTC (link)

One can stare doe eyed into the light created by Jobs hype machine. But the fact remains. No other company has made us change up and buy newer software as much as Apple computer. He can say it is as simple as changing a few lines of code to the uninformed until he is blue in the face. The fact is, if you buy a mac expect to upgrade every couple of years. Do not buy one if you keep it for any length of time and want it to be able to keep up with the software.
I changed from OS 9 programs to OS X. Just to have things run quickly. Now we will have to change to the pentium machines as all the softare will be optimized for them.
In a nut shell Jobs knows the doey eyed mac freaks (as I once was) will by any spoonful of his hemlock and tell him how wonderful it tastes.
I am not saying I will go to windows. It just isn't a fair choice. And Jobs never said the G5 was stop gap. He clearly stated it was the best. And the future of the macintosh. Well we know he was lying to us. We know he was plotting to go pentium all along.
Apparently the only myth to the megahertz myth was the idea it was a myth itself.
Now that is what I mean't by doublespeak. Is Karl Rove on apples board now?
Hmmmmmm.
Look no wonder develpment of the G5 has slowed. Why would they, knowing the switch to Pentium is coming down the pike? Think about it, how long they have been talking to Pentium. Jobs acts like it is a recent meeting. It was not. At least as long as the G5 has been around. So that is why we have no G5 in the powerbook. It wasn't in IBM's best interest.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

jjjiii
2005-06-07 08:36 pm UTC (link)

Jobs wasn't "plotting to go Pentium all along". He was plotting to have a secret escape plan just in case. If IBM had ramped the G5 like they said they were going to, we wouldn't be hearing any of this. If Apple got stuck on yet another stagnant architecture, it'd be a big problem. Imagine if 2009 rolled around and we were still on sub-3GHz G5s, and Apple marketing was trying hard to keep a straight face as they trotted out the beat-up megahertz myth again.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-08 06:42 am UTC

(no subject) -

burritob, 2005-06-08 04:59 pm UTC

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-09 04:08 am UTC

(no subject) -

charles, 2005-06-09 04:45 am UTC

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-10 03:22 am UTC

(no subject) -

burritob, 2005-06-09 07:59 am UTC

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-10 03:34 am UTC

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-10 03:50 am UTC

(no subject) -

burritob, 2005-06-10 10:48 am UTC

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-10 03:18 pm UTC

(no subject) -

burritob, 2005-06-10 03:22 pm UTC

(no subject) -

joscobo, 2005-06-11 02:44 am UTC

feyeleanor
2005-06-07 12:30 pm UTC (link)

I'd just like to point out that Tiger on my 1.25GHz Powerbook feels much slower than my Windows XP Thinkpad 1.6GHz Pentium-M, right up until the time I ask it to do some actual hard work (like mixing complex tracks in GarageBand) and then it stomps on Windows from a great height.

Many people don't buy Mac's for the OS, they buy them for the clean interface design and the excellent software - and even with stuff that has Windows-native versions like the Adobe apps, it's still often more productive using them on MacOS X.

To anyone with a brain it was always obvious that the move to G5 was a quick fix to a problem that neither Motorola nor IBM have proven capable of solving - how to ramp PowerPC processor speeds whilst keeping their power consumption at low enough levels to be suitable for small form-factor consumer desktops and the laptop market. The Power5 architecture is fundamentally a hack, a cut down variant of a processor designed for use in Big Iron and not the consumer-centric devices that Apple is currently exploring. Intel hardware can do this, and it does it very well: people spend too much time looking at how Windows performs on this hardware, but if you boot up an old copy of BeOS R5 on any modern Intel system it literally screams along and you start to realise just how much raw power the latest Pentium-M chips are delivering whilst still running far cooler than my Powerbook ever seems to.

The loss of Altivec may seem like a huge blow right now, but it's foolish to second-guess the performance of Intel's processors two years from now and until we know what other components will be going into the design of this new generation of Apple hardware (perhaps a separate Altivec-compatible vector coprocessor?) I think it's best to avoid knee-jerk reactions and give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, Jobs has laid out a very credible roadmap for handling the transition, and the technology appears to be coming together very nicely.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

rpkrajewski
2005-06-07 02:17 pm UTC (link)

I'm anxious to see how OS X and Apple's laptop designs going to avoid the same kind of issues you're talking about. I've got an IBM Thinkpad T41 for work, and, like you say, it feels fast when you're just clicking around, but whenever more than one process tries to do something significant, things almost lock up. I don't know if it's the anti-virus software, a slow hard drive or IO interfaces, or what, but my lowly G3 iBook never acts like that.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

feyeleanor
2005-06-07 07:29 pm UTC (link)

Putting my deep-geek hat on, Windows suffers from truly terrible context switching and so running multiple tasks at the same time feels very slow. My other main system apart from the Powerbook is an IBM Thinkpad X31 subnote and under Windows it feels comfortable but not outstandingly powerful.

Debian (Sarge) Linux on the same hardware feels considerably more responsive, and aside from a few issues over the relative performance of threading in Linux and Darwin, is probably indicative of how MacOS X would feel on the same hardware. If either Linux or Darwin adopted pervasive multi-threading the way that BeOS does, the performance would be even more spectacular.

And of course with MacOS X running on equivalent x86 hardware there's not going to be much need for anti-virus bloatware to suck all of the processing power >;)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	fridgemagnet 2005-06-07 07:13 am UTC (link)
	I wonder how many times that bottom photo has already been photoshopped in blogs worldwide. (Reply to this)

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login or password? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…

About

Help

Get Involved

Legal

Store

LJ Labs