Saturday, June 11, 2005
Intel overclocking and cheaper, simpler Macs
It's nice to see that the tide of reader feedback has continued to shift over the past few months back toward more thoughtful communication. Not that there aren't stilll some whoppers. But for every infantile "nanny nanny boo boo stick your head in doo doo" email, there's a good thought-provoking one like this:
Well, it's an interesting thought. But I don't think the secret to Apple's continued (and accelerated) marketshare growth through Intel chips is all that difficult to figure out. For years there's been internal debate among Mac users about whether Apple could sell significantly cheaper PowerPC-based Macs without having to give up what makes a Mac so great in the first place, and with the Mac mini we finally saw just how much of an awful abomination the results can be when Apple starts lopping off essential components just to artificially drive the price down. But with Intel-based Macs, I think we just might see significantly lower prices on legitimate Mac models, possibly across the board.
Of course, deeper, further-out-there theories abound regarding Apple's move to Intel. There's all this left-field speculation out there right now about Apple licensing MacOS X to Dell, or Apple selling MacOS X as a retail product for use on current Windows PCs, but at this point all of it is mere filler on a slow news day, way too far out there to be worth serious discussion until after we learn a whole lot more about Apple's plans in that direction (if indeed they have any at all, and there's no reason to believe at this point that they do).
To answer your question about over-clocking: from a perception standpoint, I don't think Apple (or anyone other brand name computer manufacturer) could get away with selling computers with significantly overclocked chips. What you've basically got is Intel saying "this is the most you can safely crank up this here processor" by assigning each chip a Mhz/Ghz rating, and then you'd have Apple coming along and saying "nah, we've gonna crank it even higher, 'cause we've got more fans and stuff". Far too many real-world folks would be too afraid to buy such a machine. From the standpoint of a non-geek, it would be not unlike walking into a car dealership and the salesman says "we've attached this here can of nitro, but no really, it's safe...".
What I think is more likely is a new PowerMac minitower enclosure with a radically simplified internal design, since the nine fans and such will no longer be needed. In other words, Apple can now sell a mostly-empty tower just like every other computer maker, which should presumably cost Apple a whole lot less, meaning that the end result should be cheaper prices for us.
Let me bring it down to a consumer level: the G5 iMac would probably sell twice as many units (at least) if it started at $999 instead of $1299. You've got to figure a good deal of the iMac's current cost is due to the massively intricate design required to keep the G5 from cooking the whole two-inch-deep enclosure, which probably includes a whole lot of customized parts that Apple has to have made just for the iMac. Now imagine the iMac with the exact same external look, but with insides that are a whole lot simpler because there's no longer the G5 heat to deal with. Sure, it might take Apple's engineers a year or more to completely redesign the internals of the iMac (thus the one to two year wait for Intel-based models), but you have to figure that, once the redesign costs are out of the way, the machine just might be able to be built cheaply enough that it could sell at $999 or less. Plus, there'd presumably never be a shortage of Macs again, unless you think Intel is suddenly going to stop taking personal computer processors seriously.
And that, I believe, is how the Intel deal brings us even larger marketshare growth than we've been seeing: full availability and significantly cheaper prices. Sometimes there's rocket science involved with high-tech shifts such as these, but I don't believe that this is one of those times.
It's nice to see that the tide of reader feedback has continued to shift over the past few months back toward more thoughtful communication. Not that there aren't stilll some whoppers. But for every infantile "nanny nanny boo boo stick your head in doo doo" email, there's a good thought-provoking one like this:
"I haven't seen anyone mention this but I thought it might be interesting. Since Apple had to use such advanced cooling techniques in the G5 Powermacs, couldn't they overclock the chips they get from Intel without overheating them? In this way, couldn't Apple have the fastest computers around even though they have the same chips as everyone else?"
Well, it's an interesting thought. But I don't think the secret to Apple's continued (and accelerated) marketshare growth through Intel chips is all that difficult to figure out. For years there's been internal debate among Mac users about whether Apple could sell significantly cheaper PowerPC-based Macs without having to give up what makes a Mac so great in the first place, and with the Mac mini we finally saw just how much of an awful abomination the results can be when Apple starts lopping off essential components just to artificially drive the price down. But with Intel-based Macs, I think we just might see significantly lower prices on legitimate Mac models, possibly across the board.
Of course, deeper, further-out-there theories abound regarding Apple's move to Intel. There's all this left-field speculation out there right now about Apple licensing MacOS X to Dell, or Apple selling MacOS X as a retail product for use on current Windows PCs, but at this point all of it is mere filler on a slow news day, way too far out there to be worth serious discussion until after we learn a whole lot more about Apple's plans in that direction (if indeed they have any at all, and there's no reason to believe at this point that they do).
To answer your question about over-clocking: from a perception standpoint, I don't think Apple (or anyone other brand name computer manufacturer) could get away with selling computers with significantly overclocked chips. What you've basically got is Intel saying "this is the most you can safely crank up this here processor" by assigning each chip a Mhz/Ghz rating, and then you'd have Apple coming along and saying "nah, we've gonna crank it even higher, 'cause we've got more fans and stuff". Far too many real-world folks would be too afraid to buy such a machine. From the standpoint of a non-geek, it would be not unlike walking into a car dealership and the salesman says "we've attached this here can of nitro, but no really, it's safe...".
What I think is more likely is a new PowerMac minitower enclosure with a radically simplified internal design, since the nine fans and such will no longer be needed. In other words, Apple can now sell a mostly-empty tower just like every other computer maker, which should presumably cost Apple a whole lot less, meaning that the end result should be cheaper prices for us.
Let me bring it down to a consumer level: the G5 iMac would probably sell twice as many units (at least) if it started at $999 instead of $1299. You've got to figure a good deal of the iMac's current cost is due to the massively intricate design required to keep the G5 from cooking the whole two-inch-deep enclosure, which probably includes a whole lot of customized parts that Apple has to have made just for the iMac. Now imagine the iMac with the exact same external look, but with insides that are a whole lot simpler because there's no longer the G5 heat to deal with. Sure, it might take Apple's engineers a year or more to completely redesign the internals of the iMac (thus the one to two year wait for Intel-based models), but you have to figure that, once the redesign costs are out of the way, the machine just might be able to be built cheaply enough that it could sell at $999 or less. Plus, there'd presumably never be a shortage of Macs again, unless you think Intel is suddenly going to stop taking personal computer processors seriously.
And that, I believe, is how the Intel deal brings us even larger marketshare growth than we've been seeing: full availability and significantly cheaper prices. Sometimes there's rocket science involved with high-tech shifts such as these, but I don't believe that this is one of those times.
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