WWDC 2005 Keynote up on the Apple Site

[Ron Lindeboom]

Hey Walter,

Even our Windows-or-Death coder here at Cow Headquarters was laughing his buns off yesterday and cheering on Steve as we watched Steve’s keynote. I had never seen anything like it. He even high-fived me a few times as we watched Steve’s keynote on my Cinema display (that had just been switched to 640×480 mode so that Steve was bigger than a postage stamp on it). ;o)

Eric has known Kathlyn and me for years and he remembers some of the things that I have said over the years and some of the arguments that I have had online from time to time.

Years back when Gil Amelio was at the helm of Apple and things looked very bleak, I remember arguing on the forums with people who were saying that Apple was dead, that before he’d let Apple disappear from the market, Bill Gates would spend his own money to help keep it alive. He did. This, as long as there’s an Apple, Bill Gates does not have a monopoly. Now, with Apple using Intel chips and having the dual-boot capacity to run both the Mac OS and the full Windows OS on a single machine, Apple not only perpetuates the Mac OS (and will no doubt increase market share because of the dual-boot ability) but now transforms itself into another customer of Microsoft and steps out of Microsoft’s political cross-hairs. Freakin’ brilliant marketing, Steve.

A side benefit and a small but important one at that, is that the “megahertz myth” has been a tough sell over the years, even when Apple’s machines were clearly superior. You’d always have one guy such as the clown over at a certain competitor of our’s who never has a kind word about Macs but propagates any statistic he can that shows a PC in a better light than a Mac — even if the Mac scores higher in 10 other areas. ;o) But where would we be without clowns, at least they make us smile.

At NAB 2002 I told one of the Intel product managers that I know that Apple would one day be their newest customer. Later at NAB 2002, Apple announced their deal with IBM to ship the new G5s with IBM’s PowerPC chips instead of Motorola’s PowerPC chips that had powered the G3s and G4s. After the announcement, I told him that the IBM/Apple marriage would end in divorce and Apple would still end up with Intel. Why? It was, to quote the irrepressible Mr. Spock, “simply logical.”

In one move, Apple has made itself into a company — the only one that I can think of — that will be making machines which can run both the Mac OS and Windows (not to forget even Linux, if you wish) in a single box. Not emulation, full OS system software. Instead of competing against the Wintel hegemony, Apple has just become one of Bill Gates’ biggest customers — this, as many Mac users who would have never bought a Windows machine will buy a box of Windows now to run in dual-boot mode to run their PC programs on their same box they can boot their Mac OS from to run all their Mac apps.

This guarantees that MacOffice will get full steam ahead (along with other areas where Microsoft had been lax with Mac development as they felt Apple more a necessary irritation than a partner) and also means that Adobe’s apps won’t have to be recoded for the Mac PowerPC as the calls necessary to run them on the Intel chipset will translate quite nicely to an Intel-based Mac, thank you.

Me, I think that companies like Dell have to be going “Oh, cow pies! We just stepped in a big one now!” This, as what are thet going to do when families look at a computer purchase and (as in the case of my son who is a building contractor and needs a PC to run his contractor’s software but his wife and kids love Macs) find that they no longer need to buy two computers. Apple’s power grows far stronger with just this one move and Dell and Gateway and others have to be in shock right about now…

With this move, Apple once again proves that they still have the foresight and pioneering spirit which has marked the company from Day One.

One machine, booting up any of three major OSes — Mac, Windows or Linux. It’s a thing of damned beauty, I tell you. ;o)

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Dom Silverio]

[Ron Lindeboom] “(and will no doubt increase market share because of the dual-boot ability)”

Not quite Ron. First, there are no signs that Apple will be changing business model, so the prices of the new ‘G6’ will relatively be the same I suspect.
That means to dual boot, you need to buy an Apple box.
The same hardware limitation you had with G5 will still exist – proprietary hardware with drivers support based on what Apple dictates. Plus not to mention, you will still need another copy of your software.

I think the market share will increase because of Apple shedding some of its ‘niche market’ image by using the ubiqitious Intel brand. More curious users will try them out. Beyond that, who knows.

But there is a downside of supporting x86 – malware. Codes are now easier to cross platform. Hopefully, Apple will be careful.

I don’t think Microsoft sees Apple as a customer either. Any threat to their Windows OS, is not a customer. Apple’s move if anything, will be perceived by some as a backdoor maneuver to penetrate Windows market share.

Maybe someday, Apple will have the balls to compete with Microsoft and become a software company – which they truly are.

[Ron Lindeboom]

I tend to see that Bill Gates is intelligent enough to know that he *needs* an Apple in the market to keep the FTC and SEC off his back. That’s a given.

So, what would you rather have if you were Bill Gates: An Apple that competes with you and doesn’t sell any Windows software for you? Or an Apple that while keeping the FTC/SEC/Justice Department off your back, also sells boxes of Windows that run on the same boxes that keep the Justice Department away from your doorstep??? I know which one *I’d* like better if I were Billie. ;o)

Personally I never suspected nor do I think that Apple should change its pricing model one bit. After all, a machine that can run both of the major OSes available — and likely will run Linux as well — is a Rolls Royce, not a Hyandai or a Kia.

Prcing appeals to a certain buyer, performance and options appeal to others.

Me, I’d prefer a machine that runs all my various OSes that I use and can be rebooted to handle the job at hand. Now *that* is a far bigger change than a drop in price.

Your mileage may vary,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Christopher Tay]

Hey Ron, when the dust settles and the new machines finally emerges, it will have a small stick at the front of the Macs that says…”Intel Inside”.

And perhaps we can get finally into the BIOS and mess things up real good 😛

-chrispy

[Walter Biscardi]

Well, Boomer I just listened to the whole thing while I’m working here and I have to say I’m pretty excited about the change. I was actually impressed that Steve brought up the non-existant 3Ghz G5 and the non-existant G5 Powerbook. I love a company that stands up and says “We didn’t deliver so we’re making a change to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Overall, I thought the entire thing was a great presentation and it makes me feel pretty good about where Apple is going.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Ron Lindeboom]

[chrispy] “And perhaps we can get finally into the BIOS and mess things up real good 😛 “

Hi Chrispy,

As I am sure you already know, there have always been issues like these even on the Mac. But for most of our tenure on the platform, these things were hidden from most all the users. Under OSX this changed a lot and it’s pretty easy to get in under the hood and really screw things up. ;o)

But that said, I still like the idea of moving away from the PowerPC architecture in favor of Intel’s architecture.

Ron Lindeboom

[Paul Dickin]

Quote:
“I still like the idea of moving away from the PowerPC architecture in favor of Intel’s architecture.”

Hi
What Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, actual said was “We’re all about computer architectures, scale and scope…” ie more than one arcitecture.

Is there anywhere any info about dual-boot capability?

It would seem to me that Apple has bought a new CPU to bring to its own Apple-ROM architecture, rather than buying into the IBM-compatibility BIOS syndrome.

[Mitchji]

Hi,

https://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/

The PowerPC G5 out-shoots the Pentium 4 in a battery of tests. But it

[Paul Dickin]

https://www.amyd.ro/Diverse/StevieBoyR.htm

[Marco Solorio]

I agree, Wally. I also have to say that I really don’t care which way Apple goes with their new CPU change. In fact, when the G5 chip was first coming out, I was hoping that they’d go with AMD, since at the time AMD was making some serious ground with CPU speed. They went with IBM and I was fine with that. So the switch to Intel is fine with me. To me, it’s the OS that makes me enjoy working on a computer, so whichever CPU is powering OSX makes no difference to me.

Bring on the new chips.

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media