Friday, December 23, 2005
Never too early to start the Macworld prognostications
Alright that's it, I'm done working. Between now and Christmas anyway. This is Friday night, and that's Sunday. Some people would call that a weekend. Too often this month, I've viewed it as merely an opportunity to get a jump on the next work week. But not this weekend. Except I can't quite remember what it's like to just sit and do nothing; haven't done it since Thanksgiving. So instead, here I am, (finally) updating this site (after an embarrassing month to the day)...which of course isn't exactly work. It's about time, of course, as you know you've left it go too long when you're getting yelled at by everyone from publishers of other sites to your own relatives. And so we'll start off with a good one, in the name of early Macworld Expo prognostications.
Come to think of it, is it still early enough to refer to it as "early"? Eighteen days to the Keynote, seventeen until I step on a plane, so I guess it's not so early after all. I don't know what happened to the month of December, it just sort of swallowed in on itself. I vaguely remember releasing a book (was it only one? felt like two), but much of the rest was a blur. Anyway, on to Macworld, which should be a good one this time around. I'm going to try to avoid what's swirling and instead focus on what might make sense, which has a funny way of scoring a higher accuracy rate than rumors based on supposed actual information. You'd think one of these days the rumor sites might figure that out. Ah well. I'm going to pass on the iPod half of Macworld for now, largely because I recently took a pretty big swat at that particular topic, and there's no need to repeat myself here. So, on to the reason why they use the word "Mac" in "Macworld Expo": this particular computing platform of ours.
On the Macintosh side of things, Steve's Macworld Keynote is undoubtedly going to be all about Intel, as it should be. What remains to be seen is whether it includes any actual new hardware, or merely the promise of something soon. There's something of a debate as to just how hard Apple should be pushing to get the Intel-based stuff out there, with the theory being that waiting longer might allow for both better hardware designs and more tightly compatible third-party software applications. The other side of the argument is that the longer you wait, the more tired of waiting people become -- both in terms of existing Mac users upgrading and potential Switchers finally pulling the trigger.
With the Mac still enjoying something like thirty-five percent year-over-year unit sales growth, it's apparent that buyers aren't staying away en masse simply because current Macs still employ the PowerPC. But at the same time you have to figure that there's a growing list of people who have simply decided that their next Mac purchase will be an Intel-based Mac no matter what, and that list is only going to continue to grow until such hardware sees the light of day. So with that in mind, I'd like to see Apple start trotting out Intel stuff sooner than later. That having been said, the launch of the first Intel-based Mac will likely only fuel the perception that the PowerPC is to be avoided, so I'd like to see Apple wrap up the entire product line transition within a six month period once it kicks off.
We'll see if that's possible. But in any case, I'd certainly like to see the laptop lineup go Intel first. Part of it is that I'm a laptop user and I'd like to see myself catered to before any of the rest of the millions of Mac users out there, as would each of the rest of you. But the real reason laptops need to roll over first is the simple reason that they've been languishing on the G4 processor for far too long. Desktops I'm not so worried about, as they've got the G5 and they're plenty fast and desktop users are going to be fine for awhile.
But Mac laptops? A whole other story, of course. The PowerBook has been stuck on the G4 for years now, and the fact that the iBook is also on the G4, and just a few Megahertz behind it, only serves to show what a hard ceiling Apple's laptops have come up against, and for how long they've been grinding up against it. Don't get me wrong, this iBook I'm typing on is plenty fast for my needs, but it's not impressively fast. I'll put it this way: if a new Intel-based twelve inch Mac laptop hits the market come January, I'll probably upgrade just for the additional speed.
And that may be right around the corner. You know we've reached the era of the surreal when you can look at what Dell is doing as a hint at what Apple's next announcement might be, but sure enough, Dell just announced new laptops based on Intel's new "Yonah" (the code name, I don't know its commercial name yet) processor, designed specifically for laptops. It's a fairly safe bet that this is the processor Apple will be emlpoying as well, with the one caveat being that Dell's laptops tend to resemble beached whales. In other words, just because a certain processor is small enough and cool enough to function safely within one of Dell's two and a half inch thick "portable only in name" laptops, well that's just not good enough for Apple or its users. Can the Yonah operate successfully in an enclosure barely an inch thick? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.
Which of course leads us to the fact that the current iBook is a good third of an inch thicker than the current PowerBook, and the touchy issue of the possibility of moving the iBook to Intel before the PowerBook. Seems at first like a rather backward way of doing things, with the PowerBook being Apple's premier laptop line, faster, more powerful, more forward-thinking. But also more thin. So what do you do if you're Apple and Intel's handing you a processor that you can get into an iBook right away, but it'll take a few months of engineering magic to come up with a way to cool it inside of a PowerBook? Do you pull the trigger on the iBook right away, or do you wait until both lines are ready?
It turns out that Intel has done something that might make Apple's dilemma easier, and it's sort of a blessing in disguise that is sure to elicit a groan if you're just hearing this for the first time. You see, after all these long years of Intel's processors having a significantly higher Megahertz rating than anything Apple was offering, and after all these years of puzzled looks from Windows users who were simply unable to comprehend how Macs could be as fast as (or faster than) Intel-based PCs despite the huge Megahertz gap, we Mac users were all set to finallly enjoy Megahertz parity with everything happening on the Windows side. But it turns out that Intel has chosen precisely this point in its history to stop publicly attaching a Megahertz rating to its new processors.
I'd have to guess that it has at least something to do with Intel's new processors coming up short in the Megahertz department, so much so that Intel sees no choice but to bury the numbers for fear of the perception that its new chips are actually getting slower. As we all know, Megahertz tells you almost precisely nothing about the speed of a processor, but since most of the public doesn't know that, Intel is now switching to a new public benchmark called Performance Per Watt. Aside from the fact that the new spec needs a significantly more marketable name than "Performance Per Watt," it still means that Macs will be able to boast the same specs as PCs, which is still important because the general public is always going to put a high emphasis on the marketed benchmark of the day, regardless of what the benchmark might actually be measuring (see "Megapixels" as the most comically meaningless statistic ever printed on a package).
But the thing that might really work in Apple's favor here, at least in the short term, is the fact that there will be no single-number way to compare the processor speed of Intel-based Macs to PowerPC-based Macs. Apple would have a real perception problem if it rolled the iBook to Intel first and the result was a 2.5 Ghz iBook selling for half the price of a 1.5 Ghz PowerBook. But offer an Intel-based iBook with a "Performance Per Watt" rating while the PowerBook is instead carrying a Megahertz rating, and you've taken away the public's ability to figure out which of the two machines is faster based on numbers. Keep in mind that while you or I will typically judge a computer's speed by sitting down and using it, the other ninety-nine percent of the population (Mac and PC users alike) will just go by the advertised specs whether they understand what they mean or not.
So in other words, maybe the official death of the Megahertz as a meaningful statistic will be the crack Apple needs to wedge its laptop lineup onto the Intel platform in reverse order. And maybe it lets Apple play the same tune with its desktop line as well. Convenient timing for Apple, eh? Makes you almost wonder if when Steve cut the deal with Intel, this wasn't one of the stipulations.
There's so much more to cover, from possible new laptop designs to what I'd like to see removed (or made external) from current laptop thinking. And I haven't even touched on what Steve might trot out during his "One More Thing" interlude. I'll tell you right now that if he offers up an Apple phone or an Apple Digital Video Recorder, I'll buy one of each before I've left the show floor. But that's a whole other column for another day. And with this whirlwind December finally winding down and normalcy finally beginning to surface on the horizon, maybe I'll actually find the time to write it. Macworld looms large, though, and it's just around the corner. So much to talk about between now and then. I'll see what I can do.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all that good stuff. I'll see you on the other side of it.
Alright that's it, I'm done working. Between now and Christmas anyway. This is Friday night, and that's Sunday. Some people would call that a weekend. Too often this month, I've viewed it as merely an opportunity to get a jump on the next work week. But not this weekend. Except I can't quite remember what it's like to just sit and do nothing; haven't done it since Thanksgiving. So instead, here I am, (finally) updating this site (after an embarrassing month to the day)...which of course isn't exactly work. It's about time, of course, as you know you've left it go too long when you're getting yelled at by everyone from publishers of other sites to your own relatives. And so we'll start off with a good one, in the name of early Macworld Expo prognostications.
Come to think of it, is it still early enough to refer to it as "early"? Eighteen days to the Keynote, seventeen until I step on a plane, so I guess it's not so early after all. I don't know what happened to the month of December, it just sort of swallowed in on itself. I vaguely remember releasing a book (was it only one? felt like two), but much of the rest was a blur. Anyway, on to Macworld, which should be a good one this time around. I'm going to try to avoid what's swirling and instead focus on what might make sense, which has a funny way of scoring a higher accuracy rate than rumors based on supposed actual information. You'd think one of these days the rumor sites might figure that out. Ah well. I'm going to pass on the iPod half of Macworld for now, largely because I recently took a pretty big swat at that particular topic, and there's no need to repeat myself here. So, on to the reason why they use the word "Mac" in "Macworld Expo": this particular computing platform of ours.
On the Macintosh side of things, Steve's Macworld Keynote is undoubtedly going to be all about Intel, as it should be. What remains to be seen is whether it includes any actual new hardware, or merely the promise of something soon. There's something of a debate as to just how hard Apple should be pushing to get the Intel-based stuff out there, with the theory being that waiting longer might allow for both better hardware designs and more tightly compatible third-party software applications. The other side of the argument is that the longer you wait, the more tired of waiting people become -- both in terms of existing Mac users upgrading and potential Switchers finally pulling the trigger.
With the Mac still enjoying something like thirty-five percent year-over-year unit sales growth, it's apparent that buyers aren't staying away en masse simply because current Macs still employ the PowerPC. But at the same time you have to figure that there's a growing list of people who have simply decided that their next Mac purchase will be an Intel-based Mac no matter what, and that list is only going to continue to grow until such hardware sees the light of day. So with that in mind, I'd like to see Apple start trotting out Intel stuff sooner than later. That having been said, the launch of the first Intel-based Mac will likely only fuel the perception that the PowerPC is to be avoided, so I'd like to see Apple wrap up the entire product line transition within a six month period once it kicks off.
We'll see if that's possible. But in any case, I'd certainly like to see the laptop lineup go Intel first. Part of it is that I'm a laptop user and I'd like to see myself catered to before any of the rest of the millions of Mac users out there, as would each of the rest of you. But the real reason laptops need to roll over first is the simple reason that they've been languishing on the G4 processor for far too long. Desktops I'm not so worried about, as they've got the G5 and they're plenty fast and desktop users are going to be fine for awhile.
But Mac laptops? A whole other story, of course. The PowerBook has been stuck on the G4 for years now, and the fact that the iBook is also on the G4, and just a few Megahertz behind it, only serves to show what a hard ceiling Apple's laptops have come up against, and for how long they've been grinding up against it. Don't get me wrong, this iBook I'm typing on is plenty fast for my needs, but it's not impressively fast. I'll put it this way: if a new Intel-based twelve inch Mac laptop hits the market come January, I'll probably upgrade just for the additional speed.
And that may be right around the corner. You know we've reached the era of the surreal when you can look at what Dell is doing as a hint at what Apple's next announcement might be, but sure enough, Dell just announced new laptops based on Intel's new "Yonah" (the code name, I don't know its commercial name yet) processor, designed specifically for laptops. It's a fairly safe bet that this is the processor Apple will be emlpoying as well, with the one caveat being that Dell's laptops tend to resemble beached whales. In other words, just because a certain processor is small enough and cool enough to function safely within one of Dell's two and a half inch thick "portable only in name" laptops, well that's just not good enough for Apple or its users. Can the Yonah operate successfully in an enclosure barely an inch thick? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.
Which of course leads us to the fact that the current iBook is a good third of an inch thicker than the current PowerBook, and the touchy issue of the possibility of moving the iBook to Intel before the PowerBook. Seems at first like a rather backward way of doing things, with the PowerBook being Apple's premier laptop line, faster, more powerful, more forward-thinking. But also more thin. So what do you do if you're Apple and Intel's handing you a processor that you can get into an iBook right away, but it'll take a few months of engineering magic to come up with a way to cool it inside of a PowerBook? Do you pull the trigger on the iBook right away, or do you wait until both lines are ready?
It turns out that Intel has done something that might make Apple's dilemma easier, and it's sort of a blessing in disguise that is sure to elicit a groan if you're just hearing this for the first time. You see, after all these long years of Intel's processors having a significantly higher Megahertz rating than anything Apple was offering, and after all these years of puzzled looks from Windows users who were simply unable to comprehend how Macs could be as fast as (or faster than) Intel-based PCs despite the huge Megahertz gap, we Mac users were all set to finallly enjoy Megahertz parity with everything happening on the Windows side. But it turns out that Intel has chosen precisely this point in its history to stop publicly attaching a Megahertz rating to its new processors.
I'd have to guess that it has at least something to do with Intel's new processors coming up short in the Megahertz department, so much so that Intel sees no choice but to bury the numbers for fear of the perception that its new chips are actually getting slower. As we all know, Megahertz tells you almost precisely nothing about the speed of a processor, but since most of the public doesn't know that, Intel is now switching to a new public benchmark called Performance Per Watt. Aside from the fact that the new spec needs a significantly more marketable name than "Performance Per Watt," it still means that Macs will be able to boast the same specs as PCs, which is still important because the general public is always going to put a high emphasis on the marketed benchmark of the day, regardless of what the benchmark might actually be measuring (see "Megapixels" as the most comically meaningless statistic ever printed on a package).
But the thing that might really work in Apple's favor here, at least in the short term, is the fact that there will be no single-number way to compare the processor speed of Intel-based Macs to PowerPC-based Macs. Apple would have a real perception problem if it rolled the iBook to Intel first and the result was a 2.5 Ghz iBook selling for half the price of a 1.5 Ghz PowerBook. But offer an Intel-based iBook with a "Performance Per Watt" rating while the PowerBook is instead carrying a Megahertz rating, and you've taken away the public's ability to figure out which of the two machines is faster based on numbers. Keep in mind that while you or I will typically judge a computer's speed by sitting down and using it, the other ninety-nine percent of the population (Mac and PC users alike) will just go by the advertised specs whether they understand what they mean or not.
So in other words, maybe the official death of the Megahertz as a meaningful statistic will be the crack Apple needs to wedge its laptop lineup onto the Intel platform in reverse order. And maybe it lets Apple play the same tune with its desktop line as well. Convenient timing for Apple, eh? Makes you almost wonder if when Steve cut the deal with Intel, this wasn't one of the stipulations.
There's so much more to cover, from possible new laptop designs to what I'd like to see removed (or made external) from current laptop thinking. And I haven't even touched on what Steve might trot out during his "One More Thing" interlude. I'll tell you right now that if he offers up an Apple phone or an Apple Digital Video Recorder, I'll buy one of each before I've left the show floor. But that's a whole other column for another day. And with this whirlwind December finally winding down and normalcy finally beginning to surface on the horizon, maybe I'll actually find the time to write it. Macworld looms large, though, and it's just around the corner. So much to talk about between now and then. I'll see what I can do.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all that good stuff. I'll see you on the other side of it.
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