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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Monday, July 29, 2002
18:15 - Gee-Ffffffff-f-f-ffizzle
http://macbuyersguide.com/hardware/system/2002_pro_g4.html

(top) link
Here's a technical rundown of what's likely to be the case design in the new Pro towers that are supposed to be released later in August.

The meat of the article, though, is the following bit about the CPU:

There will be single and dual processor CPU options, most likely based on the 7470 Power PC chip, as opposed to the legendary G5, which some sources suggest may never be released. Indeed, in an attempt to get to the bottom of the story behind these persistent rumors, Mac Buyer's Guide spoke to Motorola Canada president Frank Maw in on July 25, 2002. The way he explained things, G5 processors aren't even on the company's radar screen any more. In fact, he doesn't even mention the company's desktop processor business in his corporate presentations and told us there is "no timeline" for future non-embedded PowerPC family processor releases. He maintains that he's not aware of any timeline and says it's "not a big focus" for the company at this point. And so it goes.... 

Well, there we have it. Unless there's some hellacious disinformation campaign going on, from a company that really stands to gain nothing from such a tactic, Motorola's pretty much shut the book on the PPC development story. Sure, they'll keep selling what CPUs they have, as long as Apple can make use of them. But this isn't the speech of a company that has world-crushing surprises lying in wait; this isn't what you say when you're biding your time and licking your lips before you whip the cover off something that's supposed to knock the collective socks off everybody in the area. This is the tired, broken leave-me-alone growl of an executive who knows it's the end of the line.

I think we can pretty much rest assured that however much information we have on Motorola's chip-making future, Steve Jobs has a whole lot more. And I think we can take it as read that he has at least one good contingency plan in the wings, and he's only waiting for the right moment to spring it into action, careful not to make of it too big a deal or to time it in a way that would deflate confidence in Apple rather than bolster it. Jobs isn't a stupid man, nor is he unrealistic. His blue-sky envisionings might not owe much to earthbound limitations, but he knows the realities of selling Macs in the market in which he now finds himself.

From the analysis to which the above quote links:

The final clue that Apple is switching its emphasis from PPC hardware is the decidedly software-oriented thrust of the announcements at the keynote speech by Steve Jobs at Macworld New York in July 2002. No speed bumps at all --but the company clearly showed its intent to turn software into a profit center, with the announcement of "no upgrades" pricing of US$129 for a point upgrade to Mac OS X (10.1 to 10.2); a new version of QuickTime costing $29.95 to enable full-screen viewing (the upgrade disables previous $30 "Pro" product keys); it costs $40 more to add MPEG 2 support to OS 9 and OS X. And then there's its US$99 per year ".Mac" subscription service. All of these items suggest that the company's focus is not on the hardware, but on the software. Although Steve Jobs has a reputation as a hardware guy, I think he's taking the company's new "Switch" mantra to heart....

It's not that Apple will soon splinter into hardware and software divisions, or that Apple will cease to make its own boxes and instead market OS X for generic Intel boxes, as an alternative OS like Be or OS/2. I don't think that will happen. Too much of Apple's fundamental strategy is based on the "whole-widget" engineering approach for that to be an option.

But some big change is coming soon. Whether it's Apple buying the PPC from Moto and setting up its own fabs, or switching to Intel or Sparc or POWER4, we're going to see a change, probably within a year. This current story has played out its final act, and there's nothing more to say.

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© Brian Tiemann