WE talked about the 1Ghz/G4 debacle a while back. Recently I've been wondering if it matters, really, in the long term.
It matters in the long term in that even if you restrict yourself to only competing in the "consumer market", the inevitable march of progress means that today's high end technology becomes next year's (or perhaps the year after that) consumer's technology. If your high end technology is MIA, that means your consumer technology will be MIA next year.
If the PowerPC group delivers a 1Ghz chip by end of year, Willamette will be closer to 1.2Ghz, but that's not a tragic
problem.
If Motorola gets a PowerPC G4+ out the door and shipping in an Apple machine by the end of the year, I'll be happy. If they get it shipping at 800MHz, I'll be ecstatic. If they get it shipping at 1GHz, I'll eat my hat.
Seriously, I think that the MHz gap may have become a breach rather than a gap. It's serious enough that I would not be at all suprised if Apple were very heavily pondering its options and alternatives to its current dependence on Motorola/PowerPC/Altivec.
In retrospect, making such a heavy reliance on Altivec was a big mistake - a) it was a year late, and b) Motorola had exclusive control over it after the Somerset breakup. If there hadn't been the (admittably admirable and sensible at the time) desire to push Altivec throughout the line, IBM could have been supplying competitive G3 and descendants without Altivec at 750MHz at this time.
The real bread-and-butter for Apple now is the consumer machines. And the question is, where does Apple move the iMac/iBook over the year?
The problem is that Apple is between a rock and a hard place. If they start shipping consumer machines with faster G3s, they make their professional machines look plain silly. I disagree with you and think, sad as it may be, that they will be forced to sit on their hands and wait for Motorola to shrink the existing G4 to 0.18u and then put that in the iBooks and iMacs. Then hope that the G4+ makes it out without bugs in a reasonable time frame and ship something in the professional line with the G4+ before the end of the year.
The big wildcard in the professional line is the introduction of multiprocessor machines. Apple has been almost silent on the support for MP in OS X. I'd lay some money that Seybold SF will see a big MP hardware/OS X introduction to placate the graphic content and professional crowd who must be wetting their pants seeing $2499 1GHz Athlons on the desks next to them.
Fru> |
