Re: PowerPC desktop -- asking for trouble?
I have just had access to a brand new iMac, and it just feels
good to have such a snappy machine; with a better OS such as GNU/Linux
-- Mac OS X still freezes for short periods, specially when using
QuickTime for playing streams -- it could be serious competition.
With Apple not supporting a second OS, and with IBM not supporting a
second PC manufacturer, we won't see a healthy critical mass anytime
soon.
Oh for lost opportunities... Mac OS on the Alpha, notebook
Alpha, RISC MS Windows, Mac OS on the MkLinux, the Mac clones, CHRP,
POP...
Well, as always there are always two sides of a story....
Whereas it would be better for the users when there would be a competetive
market with several vendors to make the prices drop, it might not be that
good for the vendors (and in the end for the users, too).
Why not good for the vendors?
I've some serious 3D graphics background and used Alias PowerAnimator on
SGIs and made the transition to Maya. Back then, Alias was a subsidary of
SGI and the sales of PowerAnimator drove the sales of SGI Workstations
because PowerAnimator was only available on Irix. Then a guy (Mr. Beluzzo as
CEO) decided to go for Intel based machines in order to sell more (because
more cheap machines). They ported PowerAnimator and its successor Maya to
Intel and Windows, designed a Intel-based SGI Workstation called
VisualWorkstation and changed their corporate logo from the famous SGI cube
to a dull three letter one.
Of course, there were many problems with the new and unknown to the
developers arch and machine resulting in a real long delay until it was
finished and could be sold. In the mean time Maya was released for Windows.
Of course, there was some increase for sales. But usually Mayas main
distribution channel was being cracked and spreaded illegally.
So, why should a company sell expensive hardware when they can get the
software they need on a cheaper (not necessarily better) hardware or even
get the software for free (illegally)? Of course the sales of SGI mips based
workstations dropped and SGI was forced to sell its golden plates (OpenGL
patents to MicroSoft and Alias to someone else (in the meantime the price
for Alias dropped from 30.000 euro to about 2000 euro)) to survive.
SGI has now ceased that unfortunate, CEO driven expedition into x86 land and
returned to their core business. Luckily Beluzzo left SGI to join MS
somewhen. But the workstation market is now gone. The sales driving need for
Maya has gone for ever.
I wish they would release specs on those i386 like machines.
The suddenly linux would make them great again.
Lesson to all, if you make some obscure piece of hardware and want
to dump it, please release specs so linux and its bsd cousins
can use it for ever more.
So, overall it might be a wise decision of Apple and IBM to protect their
niche market. They have a sort of fanatic userbase that are willing to pay
higher prices which you need to develop a low-number-sales arch.
On the first look this high price politic seem to be bad for the user, on a
second look it's good for the user because it ensures that the vendor stays
in the market and can afford development of new hard- and software.
Mac has dont a perfect job of making their hardware 'cool' and keeping
users on it. I think adobe has alot to do with it. Anyone who makes any
form of graphics (designers, artists all of various different
persuasions) seem to just 'need' apple machines to work. even if
photoshop or whatever runs just fine on a pc.
Having cheap hardware is not always a benefit to the user. Sure, they can
obtain hardware quite cheap, but on the long run PC market showed that the
quality begins to drop. Quality assurance of products is expensive and can't
be done anymore when you compete on a below dollar per component sales
margin.
And because such a high competition market as the PC market is, you need
fast release cycles and always be present with new and shiny products, so
that the users are sometimes (increasingly) punished with buggy and not well
tested devices.
Well there are always new markets. There is always an 'elite' market,
and a dirt cheap market. People who want to pay for brands, people who
know what a good product is and people who are willing to sacrifice
quality for price. You can look at this in just about any market.
Clothing - great example. You can buy armani or duck down to your local
mall or even just go to an op-shop (could be an australian term,
second hand clothing shop usually run by church groups).
You can buy kellogs or some clone brand.
I doubt that all users want cheap and buggy hardware. For myself I can say
that I prefer good quality hardware that might cost some bucks more. And so
do most Apple users, too, I think. They prefer easy to use and good quality
hard- and software and are willing to spent some extra money for it, because
they just want to *use* it and not to deal with all the problems Wintel
users usually have.
Thus the beauty of the free market. You can buy high quality or
lesser quality as your needs and preferences dictate.
But because I don't like all these Apple bubble plastik designs, I'm happy
that there are now other vendors that enable me to migrate from x86 based
computing to PPC based computing. And I don't need that high speed big iron
CPUs of IBM for my machines at home. Even the G3 is idling at over 90%
during the day. Why should I then have a higher speed CPU that idles even
more but consumes much more electricity? :-)
Yes g3's rock for alot of things.
Long posting, short summary: I'm quite happy about the current situation of
the PPC market. Let Apple/IBM do the G5 stuff and Genesi/Freescale the rest.
Dean
--
WWW: http://dean.bong.com.au LAN: http://www.bong.com.au
EMAIL: dean@bong.com.au or djzort@bong.com.au
ICQ: 16867613
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