Four Weddings and a... nah!
by Hannibal
Why is it that Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts (especially Julia Roberts) always star in some sort of cheesy fantasy, wish-fulfillment flick? Like the one about some regular bloke who winds up romancing his movie star fetish, or some "working girl" who finds true love in the arms of a rich prince charming. And what's more, why do movies with such hokey and obvious plots continue to sell? What's the appeal?
The appeal is that we all like a good yarn. We're suckers for high drama, heroes and villains, the ragtag rebels vs. the Evil Empire... We like these sorts of plots so much that we sometimes write them into stories where they don't quite fit. We seem to be especially fond of plots that involve the Fall of the Establishment. Predicting the End is, and always has been, big business. Just ask Art Bell, Whitney Strieber, or The National Enquirer.
Predicting the End is extremely popular in the tech industry, and in fact Jesse Burst's Anchordesk has made a career out of it. For instance, take the currently fashionable idea that the wedding of home entertainment with PC-like capabilities equals the (oft-predicted) Death of the x86 PC. Or, just as popular, that the Evil Empire (insert your favorite one here: Intel, MS, AOL, etc.) is going down at the hands of the upstart rebellion (insert your insurgent here: AMD, Linux, the Internet, etc.).
In spite of the fact that I like a good yarn as much as anyone else, I think we have to be careful about inscribing the plotlines and characters of our favorite narratives onto tech industry news... especially when it comes to predicting the impending demise of this, that, or the other. Real life, sadly enough, is sometimes quite a bit less dramatic than perhaps we'd like it to be.
Lots of people love to talk about the demise of the PC, and in particular they like to think that Intel is going down with it. Now, don't get me wrong, the PC will surely die at some point, and Intel just might die too one day. But it ain't gonna happen next year.
Size isn't necessarily a liability
One of my favorite plotlines that gets written into tech news is the Fall of the Evil Empire at the hands of the Small and Maneuverable Rebellion. This plotline usually hinges on a misguided bit of reasoning I call the Juggernaut Hypothesis. The Juggernaut Hypothesis involves the assumption that X company "is just too big and bloated" to turn on a dime, and "isn't small and maneuverable" like its scrappy, upstart competitors. You'd think we're talking about bass boat races.
Anyone remember "Internet Day" at Microsoft? It doesn't get much more "big and bloated" than MS, and that entire company did a complete 180§, turning their entire product strategy around and aiming it squarely at the Internet. It was assumed that MS was a big, fat, lumbering target for the thin client, the browser, web-based applications, etc., all of which have been nominated at one point or another as likely Davids against MS's Goliath.
The Juggernaut Hypothesis is especially misguided when applied to Intel. It's precisely Intel's size and inertia that give it an advantage. The CPU market isn't just about CPUs and benchmark numbers. It's about chipsets, motherboards, and memory, all of which have to be there in volume if you're going to make a CPU work. It's also about OEMs.
Intel has such a strong hold on all of the aforementioned areas that Dell's recent dissing of AMD came as no real surprise. (The only surprise was that the assembled audience was able to refrain from laughing in Dell's face.) The fact that an OEM will suck it up and continue to rely mainly (or exclusively) on Intel for chipsets and CPUs, when Intel cost them millions with supply problems and the RAMBUS fiasco, is a testament to just how much power Intel company really has.
It's one thing to have a great CPU like the Athlon that's a performance leader at a great price, but it takes lots of time to build up the kind of vendor support in terms of chipset and motherboard variety, availability, compatibility, and stability, that Intel currently offers. AMD might eventually hurt Intel badly in the x86 marketplace, but it won't happen overnight. Crowing about the death of Intel when it has only recently lost the performance lead is beyond premature.
So Intel can and will change product strategies and roadmaps to suit market conditions and expectation. Furthermore, Intel's very size gives them the ability to foist those changes on the rest of the industry with a reasonably good chance of success. It's the little guy, the one with no weight to throw around, whose hands are tied -- not Intel. In an industry driven by standards committees and consortiums, you've gotta have pull if you want to get your way. All too often, standards rise and fall by the support (or lack thereof) of the biggest players; and let no one fool you: he who controls the standards controls the market.
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Come from behind
Another favorite plot device that seems to work its way into tech industry editorializing is that of the underdog who comes from behind and utterly defeats the reigning champ by gaining and holding the lead for that last stretch of the race. Assertions that Intel is doomed because AMD has recently passed them up and now they're "a year behind" in the CPU race are... well, baloney. Think about it. First off, even if Intel is "a year behind" AMD (and I'm far from convinced of this), remember that AMD has spent almost its entire corporate life lagging Intel and it hasn't killed them, has it? All it took was for them to come out on top once for pundits to start digging Intel's grave. I guess if Willamette outperforms the K7 and its progeny, those same pundits will scratch Intel's epitaph off of that tombstone and replace it with AMD's.
The fact is, a superior product coupled with some strategic relationships can take you everywhere. Unlike in the movies, the come-from-behind victory can happen for both the underdog and the reigning champ because the final, gold-medal showdown never comes -- there's always another track meet next month. Just like AMD came from behind and scored big with K7, Intel could come back with a great product and regain the performance crown. I won't speculate here on either Willamette's or IA-64's chances for success, because unless you've had your hot little hands on either product you're not really qualified to shoot off at the mouth. I prefer to wait until some real numbers are available before I start calling winners and losers.
Just remember that even if both Willamette and IA-64 flop, it ain't over 'till it's over. And when it's over, we'll all know it.
Convergence and the PC
Along with the Empire vs. rebellion theme and the scrappy underdog who comes from behind and surges to victory, the Impending Fall of the Established Order is another perennial favorite. The idea that the death of the Intel and the x86-based PC are imminent at the hands of the home entertainment appliance really cracks me up. The convergence of home entertainment functionality into an Internet-enabled, PC-like device won't kill the PC, nor will it kill Intel.
Why not? Well, how many companies do you know that are planning on doing an enterprise-wide rollout of the PSX2 or MS's X-Box? Reality check: the home PC market isn't the only PC market that matters. Big companies like Dell and Gateway sell the majority of their machines to businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies. Those groups are going to keep buying desktops, servers, and workstations based on the x86 architecture for some time to come. There's a huge existing x86-based infrastructure out there that exists wholly apart from the living room, and the demand for machines to drive it will continue.
"But," I hear you object, "the margins are low in volume sales, and the home market is where the profits really are." Well, so-called convergence devices won't kill the PC in the home either. The rise of the IBM PC is a testament to the simple fact that people buy for their homes the machines they use at work. As long as there's a Wintel box on the desk at the office, there'll be one somewhere in the house too. People take their work home, and they take their homes to work (pictures, email, games, stuff to be printed out, etc.). The Playstation2 won't change that, and neither will the X-Box. Such devices will augment the PC, but they won't replace it.
Parting shots
Though doomsday scenarios and the like are great fun, they often don't work out quite the way the prognosticator had hoped. True disaster usually strikes companies, nations, and individuals completely unaware. Great falls do happen, and sometimes they're even predicted, but real life usually doesn't quite fit into neat, Saturday-morning-cartoon plots. Intel invented the x86 microprocessor market, and they're going to be a serious contender in it for some time to come. Neither AMD nor convergence are at all likely to wipe them out in the near future. Conversely, some real competition will make their products better and less expensive.
If I had to pick a storyline that I'd like to see play out in the PC market, it definitely wouldn't involve any one company, underdog or no, decisively coming out on top. Rather, it would be one where two strong contenders slug it out, neck-and-neck over the course of a few years, while the consumer sits back and watches prices drop and quality go up. Now that's high drama.
Milo |
