There was some bad news for that band of troublemakers who advocate porting
the Mac over onto a x86 processor. Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO threw cold
water over the idea in a recent interview.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5094798.html

He siad that a 2% market didn't interest him. It was in the noise of
production volumes. But If Steve wants to port OSX to x86, he could probably
do it. Barrett said, however, that Apple appears to be happy with their
situation. He also made an interesting comparison of Apple to Sun, proposing
that Apple was a business model that Sun should be looking at.

james

In article <4FImb.34319$gi2.26187@fed1read01>,
"James" <jarveson@nospam.net> wrote:

The situaiotn is being the number one customer for a major manufacturer
of CPUs. If Apple went to Intel, they'd be just one more of the herd,
and, worse yet, one with needs different from the rest.

And apparently he didn'tthink that Apple moving to Intel would help
Apple sell more CPUs -- at least not enough more to make Intel care.

As for the rest of the article, it sounds like he's talking out of his
ass. "[Scott McNealy of Sun] has to decide whether he is going to be a
closed-source, proprietary-limited player, as Apple has decided to do."
This can't be a contrast with Microsoft, which is not exactly
open-source.

I liked the line, "I'd love to see a government that could effectively
talk about broadband or infrastructure." Despite what he actually did
for the Internet, the last Presidential candidate who could do that was
never forgiven for his claims about it.

--
Woofbert, Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
Woofbert's Law on Learning Linux: When attempting to learn Linux,
study it thoroughly before you begin.

"Woofbert" <woofbert.spam@infernosoft.com> wrote in message
news:woofbert.spam-F6B158.00392026102003@typhoon.sonic.net...
And probably true. But perhaps AMD would see it differently.
I don't believe that he was making a comparison to MS. Sun is presently
vertically integrated, all the way from their own proprietary processors to
their software. I think it is an accurate description of McNealy's problem
that he has to decide whether to continue that strategy and to focus on a
smaller market. Certainly that comment would be no surprise to Mcnealy, or
his investors.
The candidate that made those claims was still under the impression that the
goal still was to build a national computer system, supported by
government-sponsored supercomputers. Read the Wired interview for Gore's
misconceptions as to what had happened. The broadband issue has more to do
with communications regulation than with direct government intervention. The
problem we have is that the Federal government (administration and congress,
republican and Democrat) has been more concerned about devising laws to
satisfy competing interests of powerful lobbies than coming up with a
comprehensive broadband strategy. If you imagine Gore would have done things
differently, then you don't know the guy and his track record with
lobbyists.

It was a strange interview. Yes, he claimed Intel was no longer
interested and getting less so every day. Yet he held out an open door,
pointing out that Vanderpool *would* run OS X if the Stevester was
willing to move over an "app stack" (any ol' app stack? no, i.e. "Son of
Yellow Box"/"Marklar").

Like I said earlier - don't just watch what people say, watch what they
do. Or, at least, say they're going to do.

So he said "Steve-o, you don't love me anymore, so I won't keep
calling... but I'll leave a key under the mat in case you change your
mind."

It comes to mind that maybe this is the kind of secret wooing people
have to do when a jealous partner is around.

[Ballmer barges in. "Craig? Whose black turtleneck is this ?!? I thought
I was the only Steve in your heart!"]

In article <BnMmb.34343$gi2.22548@fed1read01>,
"James" <jarveson@nospam.net> wrote:

Perhaps AMD should get into the business of making PPCs.

--
Woofbert, Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
Woofbert's Law on Learning Linux: When attempting to learn Linux,
study it thoroughly before you begin.

"Woofbert" <woofbert.spam@infernosoft.com> wrote in message
news:woofbert.spam-6313C9.14353826102003@typhoon.sonic.net...
Either approach might make sense. Dependence on IBM has the same risk as
Motorola. Apple is betting the farm on a company that doesn't have a
significant dependence on the success of Apple. They are losing about the
same amount of money in the semiconductor business as AMD, but there is a
critical difference - IBM can choose not to lose that money but AMD has no
choice in the matter. They have to succeed in the IC business to survive.
That is the type of vendor you want.

James

In article <woofbert.spam-F6B158.00392026102003@typhoon.sonic.net>, Woofbert
wrote:
Sure, it would help Sun to look at Apple's business model. Hell, any
business model would be better than Sun's current business model.

Sun has two problems right now.

1. Their primary motivation appears to be opposing Microsoft, even though
for the most part they aren't in competition with Microsoft.

2. They are a hardware company, but seem to be putting a lot of resources
into things that make their hardware irrelevant. E.g., Java. Java
commoditizes hardware, which is not good for Sun. Java makes it easier to
throw Sun hardware out the door and get cheaper and faster Intel or Mac
hardware.

Apple has found a niche. Sun had a niche, but it is getting destroyed by
(1) Linux, (2) Intel, AMD, and IBM, whose CPUs Sun can't keep up with, and
(3) Java (!).

--
Evidence Eliminator is worthless. See evidence-eliminator-sucks.com
--Tim Smith