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[Shogmaster]

Stranger things have happened...like Toshiba working closely with Sony to create Cell, only to watch Sony announce they'll be putting Cell AND Blu-Ray in the PS3, directly competing with Toshiba's HD-DVD format. Meanwhile, Toshiba is planning to use Cell chips in HDTV's aren't they? A market that Sony is struggling to stay competitive in.

IBM is moving farther and farther away from Microsoft. They've sold off their PC business, they have a multipronged server business that de-empahisizes Windows in leiu of Linux, AIX, and MidFrame and Mainframe solutions. For most of their vertical markets (Point-Of-Sale, Healthcare),etc and embedded market products, they are going almost exclusively with Linux.

It's a question of what would get them more money? IBM pushes Linux, a lot. It's cheaper for them, cheaper for their customers. There's probably more interest in them getting Cell into as many devices as possible than keeping Windows servers as part of their business. How dedicated they are to Windows-based solutions now is pretty questionable.

You guys have good points, but I think you guys missed the part when Space Rummy and I declaired the thread over a few posts back.

 

[kaching]

So - how does CELL help Apple?

Cell, the architecture, or Cell, the chip unveiled last week that is the only implementation of the architecture that we're aware of at this time?

 

[Phoenix]

I had a feeling it was going to happen. If this pans out, it's going to be really interesting. Not that MS and Intel will flinch, they might pause for a second. But Toshiba, IBM, Sony, and Apple together? That's a force that could push OS X big time.

Actually not. Unless yo get Dell and HP in the equation, the market really doesn't open up for you much. Dell is the wild card - if you can sway Dell - you can make OSX a mass market entity. Apple has shown that they want to go mass market, but they've made some very retarded moves along the way in terms of cutting out their 3rd party vendors. There is a reason why Apple hardware comes and goes from Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. if you think GAMES are price protected, wait till you see the price protection strategies on Apple hardware. If Apple wants to seriously play with the big boys of the market, they have to change some of their policies to be more friendly to volume sells. The iPod has shown them that they can still make money in volume if they do it right, but Apple needs to learn to play well with others if its going to continue to grow.

Is it me or is MS really under and all out assault. Open Office slowly catching up to MS Office, Firefox taking a big hunk out of IE, now this. Who did MS piss off to deserve this??

MS pissed off everyone in the industry, so anything they get they definitely deserve - but come on folks lets be realistic. Open Office is actually not taking any share from Office. Microsoft isn't sweating that. Governments and corporations are just using that as leverage to get Office cheaper. Same thing is happening with Linux and Windows. Firefox grabing a few percentage points (I believe its 2% max) is hardly taking a hunk out of IE. While people can make a concerted effort to switch, the OSX platform has not yet reached a critical mass where it is 'safe' for most people to do so.

Lets not jump the gun folks. While I've pretty much abandoned the PC platform and don't look back anymore (Linux you still suck so OSX is where I'll be), Apple still has a ways to go before it is a competitive platform player. I'd love it to be one, but at the moment it still isn't and likely won't be for years to come.

 

[sonycowboy]

Interesting facts:

1) Apple's stock price has increased almost 400% in the last 52 weeks (52wk Range: 21.89 - 81.99)

2) Apple's market capitalization (as of today) has just passed Sony's (36.21B vs 35.29B)

 

[Phoenix]

Cell, the architecture, or Cell, the chip unveiled last week that is the only implementation of the architecture that we're aware of at this time?

CELL the implementation around which these rumors (though more appropriately dubbed rampant ass speculation) are based.

 

[mashoutposse]

The reason for the stock increase wasn't because of Cell speculation.

???

"Analysts from the firm this morning raised their 12-month estimates on Apple to $102 per share (from $85). They did so because the analysts think Apple may announce a partnership with Sony, and may begin shipping products based on the Sony, IBM, Toshiba-developed Cell processor."

It's a combination of many things. Mostly continued iPod success, with the Shuffle expected to take 70% of the flash MP3 market and doubling that overall market, the Mac Mini being an unqualified success and the belief that they will be winning Wintel converts, the sucess of the Apple stores now bringing in over 1 million unique visitors a week, and the belief that Apple's software sales are about ready to quadruple with the impending release of OS 10.4 Tiger, the new ILife 05 Suite, their new iWork Suite, and then their pro AV tools.

All of those factors were likely incorporated into their previous estimate as none of that is new news.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I read that Cell's ALTIVEC performance is pretty shitty. Apple is too invested in ALTIVEC to care about Cell.

You heard wrong... there is no real official figure on the VMX performance of the PPE. It might even be a bit more advanced than the single VMX unit found in the G5 if they are using the same VMX unit the Xbox 2 CPU is using (IBM stated that the PPE and the Xbox 2' CPU cores are part of the same family... they might very well be the same chip as far as industry-wide rumors go). Still, the G5 is peaking at frequencies decisively less than 3.0 GHz while the presented CELL CPU can hit 4+ GHz so it makes some performance back right there.

 

[sonycowboy]

???

"Analysts from the firm this morning raised their 12-month estimates on Apple to $102 per share (from $85). They did so because the analysts think Apple may announce a partnership with Sony, and may begin shipping products based on the Sony, IBM, Toshiba-developed Cell processor."

I'm downloading the Merrill report now to see how he breaks out the upgrade, but the stock (as I stated above) has been on an absolute freaking tear for the past several weeks, even months. I'd agree that the analyst change has probably had a big effect today, but it was flying up today regardless.

 

[Phoenix]

It's a question of what would get them more money? IBM pushes Linux, a lot. It's cheaper for them, cheaper for their customers. There's probably more interest in them getting Cell into as many devices as possible than keeping Windows servers as part of their business. How dedicated they are to Windows-based solutions now is pretty questionable.

IBM is dedicated to Windows-based solutions to the extent that Global Services (their consulting arm) needs to support a considerably large number of their customers who run Windows. While IBM proper is certainly dedicated to building out product for Linux and levelling the playing field by supporting open source products (which tend to run on IBM hardware platforms and Linux/AIX), IBM has in no way shunned Windows - they can't. They make too much money selling solutions to people who run Windows.

 

[B'z-chan]

Ride it to the moon.... Apple. This sounds like a good move on apples part in some way. Now if only they would get cracking on a mobile phone thats stylish and ipodish would the gods of apple own me. But still good move on either using the cell or teaming up with sony on a project.

I can see it now. Apple HDTV's the cost coming down for the internal receiver cause of using the cell. They'd be unstopable when it comes to selling those to normal consumers if they droped the price. But this is apple.....

Make my stock worth it baby.... (kisses Apple stock)

 

[sonycowboy]

Ride it to the moon.... Apple. This sounds like a good move on apples part in some way. Now if only they would get cracking on a mobile phone thats stylish and ipodish would the gods of apple own me.

Phase 1: Motorola unveils RAZR successors, iTunes phone

 

[Shogmaster]

You heard wrong... there is no real official figure on the VMX performance of the PPE. It might even be a bit more advanced than the single VMX unit found in the G5 if they are using the same VMX unit the Xbox 2 CPU is using (IBM stated that the PPE and the Xbox 2' CPU cores are part of the same family... they might very well be the same chip as far as industry-wide rumors go). Still, the G5 is peaking at frequencies decisively less than 3.0 GHz while the presented CELL CPU can hit 4+ GHz so it makes some performance back right there.

The fact that Sony isn't pimping the ALTIVEC performace of PPE gives clues to the fact that it can't be too hot. Otherwise, they would have hype that shit up along with rest of Cell's performance.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Because all of your apps are written for ALTIVEC? And SPEs excel at single precision FPO but not anything higher like ALTIVEC.

Without using the VMX unit in the PPE, a 4 GHz CELL CPU with 8 SPE's still pushes more than 20 GFLOPS in Double Precision.

 

[Shogmaster]

Without using the VMX unit in the PPE, a 4 GHz CELL CPU with 8 SPE's still pushes more than 20 GFLOPS in Double Precision.

But what good is that when Apple would have to rewrite all their apps to take advantage of them? That would be a nightmare.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Finally a voice of reason! While we normally disagree, Shog hits nail on head. Cell is not the general purpose chip that Apple has in the G5 nor some of IBMs other chips so I doubt if its going into their mainline machines anytime soon. CELL is to big, hot, and power hungry so there is a 0% chance of it ending up in a portable. Apple and Sony would sooner bathe in gasoline where Bill Gates or Ballmer is smoking than ceede the online digital player space to one another.

So - how does CELL help Apple?

Who talks about a Notebook based on the 256 GFLOPS CELL chip... they are still in G4 land anyway over there.

I do not find so impossible that Apple could find a use of CELL in their Desktop/WorkStation computers.

CELL's PPE is quite competitive on its own (for web browsing, Word processing, etc...) and for lots of applications you would want to run on a Machintosh (2D/3D content creation packages, video encoding/decoding, 3D games, etc...) SPE's could be used to speed up application's performance over what the VMX unit in the PPE can do.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The fact that Sony isn't pimping the ALTIVEC performace of PPE gives clues to the fact that it can't be too hot. Otherwise, they would have hype that shit up along with rest of Cell's performance.

You refer to the lack of push of the PPE core at ISSCC 2005 ? Have you ever thought thatg maybe "another customer" using that core might not want it to be disclosed yet ?

 

[Panajev2001a]

But what good is that when Apple would have to rewrite all their apps to take advantage of them? That would be a nightmare.

I see you already have your CELL SDK... how much did you pay for it ?

I think that IBM would give Apple the support they need and if the performance is there as well as the buzz around CELL and good supply of CELL chips (from IBM, SCE and Toshiba... all can produce CELL chips like the one presented at ISSCC 2005) Apple's developers (who are not idiots, all the contrary IMHO) would work on it and make it happen.

 

[Shogmaster]

I see you already have your CELL SDK... how much did you pay for it ?

I offered them a buck, but they just gave it to me for free.

I think that IBM would give Apple the support they need and if the performance is there as well as the buzz around CELL and good supply of CELL chips (from IBM, SCE and Toshiba... all can produce CELL chips like the one presented at ISSCC 2005) Apple's developers (who are not idiots, all the contrary IMHO) would work on it and make it happen.

Come on, Pana. You should have learned with all that EE workstation talk back in 2000 that all this won't amount to shit.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I offered them a buck, but they just gave it to me for free.




Come on, Pana. You should have learned with all that EE workstation talk back in 2000 that all this won't amount to shit.

Sure, sure... only PlayStation 3 SDK's... IBM spent all thsi time and money just to deliver CELL for PlayStation 3. The CELL architecture looks in fact only geared for a console... uhm.... NOT!

 

[Phoenix]

Who talks about a Notebook based on the 256 GFLOPS CELL chip... they are still in G4 land anyway over there.

And there is a reason for that, and it is not solved in the CELL. It is still too hot and power hungry in its current stepping to be used in a powerbook. Unless there is some unseen variant out there, the problems they are having getting the G5 into a powerbook are the same as those for CELL. Portable CELL == no right now.

I do not find so impossible that Apple could find a use of CELL in their Desktop/WorkStation computers.

Impossible - of course not. Its a CPU, it can be used. Its not impossible for them to use an AMD64 in there either and the level of kernel work necessary to make either happen is probably the same. It is largely improbable for a variety of reasons at the kernel level.

CELL's PPE is quite competitive on its own (for web browsing, Word processing, etc...) and for lots of applications you would want to run on a Machintosh (2D/3D content creation packages, video encoding/decoding, 3D games, etc...) SPE's could be used to speed up application's performance over what the VMX unit in the PPE can do.

Sony, IBM, and Toshiba all have plans for the chip which are likely to dry the line through 2006 according to the estimated capacity of those lines. So lets say that Apple wanted them for presumably a new line of Powermacs or xServes (because it wouldn't go into an iMac, an eMac, a Powerbook, or any of their other consumer level machines) we're looking at 2007-2008 for the introduction of those machines right? An estimate raise based on CELL for 2005 or 2006 seems more wishful thinking than anything else.

 

[Phoenix]

I offered them a buck, but they just gave it to me for free.




Come on, Pana. You should have learned with all that EE workstation talk back in 2000 that all this won't amount to shit.

Nah Shog, now you're stretching. A CELL based server/workstation is going to come and come from IBM. That you can take to the bank for certain. Having it come from Apple is a highly dubious proposition, however.

 

[thorns]

I'm downloading the Merrill report now to see how he breaks out the upgrade, but the stock (as I stated above) has been on an absolute freaking tear for the past several weeks, even months. I'd agree that the analyst change has probably had a big effect today, but it was flying up today regardless.

their P/E is in the 70s, which is extremely high. That means there is a lot of speculation for huge growth on the company. Google for example has a P/E of 130s, another company with a lot of speculation.. By comparison Electronic Arts has a P/E in the 30s, whom I think has a lot of growth potential. Either the Apple stock is very overrated right now or EA stock is very undervalued.

 

[Shogmaster]

Sure, sure... only PlayStation 3 SDK's... IBM spent all thsi time and money just to deliver CELL for PlayStation 3. The CELL architecture looks in fact only geared for a console... uhm.... NOT!

Look man. If you take your Sony hat off for a second, wouldn't the Xenon CPU be a better candidate for use by Apple than Cell? That ain't a great likeihood either in my book, but if you are entertaining such speculations, at least go with something a little more probable....

Nah Shog, now you're stretching. A CELL based server/workstation is going to come and come from IBM. That you can take to the bank for certain. Having it come from Apple is a highly dubious proposition, however.

I don't doubt that for a bit, but the context at hand is fanboy speculations about Cell with Apple, so......

 

[kaching]

The fact that Sony isn't pimping the ALTIVEC performace of PPE gives clues to the fact that it can't be too hot. Otherwise, they would have hype that shit up along with rest of Cell's performance.

What exactly are they hyping about it?

 

[Shogmaster]

What exactly are they hyping about it?

Nothing so far is my point.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

LOL apple will STILL find a way to fuck this up. The only shot they've got is if vaio's and satellites start coming with OSX and it just aint happening with apples prices/leadership. They are moronic for having everything proprietary, and they KEEP pricing themselves out of the market.

If you think Intel and MS are gonna let these guys come into the x86 dominated market you can forget it, atleast for the time being, in a few years i can see the CELL taking a foothold though esp with its linux compatibility. The problem is this means either MS making windows run on the cell or people converting from their beloved windows to linux...both seem like longshots no? This isnt an alliance its "we dont have a chip IBM help us! the PPC 970 runs way too fucking hot!" Where IBM goes Mac goes, if CELL takes off and IBM deems fabbing other PPC cores a waste of resources then apple is usin Cell. Thats that, especially since motorolla stopped making PPC chips.

I just dont see too many users giving up their windows environment and freedom of the PC platform for the proprietary MAC platform ...which is what keeps it from the masses, its so stupid. They could've been a much more significant player in the desktop market now they are a joke they dont mean shit what are they 1% of the market? All they had to do was let other companies build macs, and let people build their own from components geezus give the consumer CHOICE. But no they fucked that up again. Sony cant save apple from themselves the morons.

The cell will solve apples sorry ass hardware situation, but whats stoping people from using the cell on linux? or freebsd? wheres the advantage then? Paying an extra 1200 dollars for all those cool apple color cases? The market is getting smaller all of a sudden, IBM will have all servers covered, computer graphics people will use ibm workstations , people who want web performance could use linux. If the cell is as flexible as we are led to believe, by the time Apple has support for it, so will Linux, and if the performance is anywhere NEAR what is promised why the fuck would anyone willing to make the jump bother fucking with an apple? When Linux is free? When freebsd still holds records for webserver performance and bandwidth? when its not the familiar MS windows? The Cell could turn out to be a superior product in the general computing world but allying with the morons at apple is a deathwish, instead of opening the flood gates they are going to be inviting people to jump into a small pond.

 

[kaching]

Nothing so far is my point.

So you're saying Sony thinks there's nothing noteworthy about Cell, it's all just been an interesting 4 yr R&D exercise with IBM and Toshiba, that happened to cost them a couple of billion dollars?

 

[Shogmaster]

So you're saying Sony thinks there's nothing noteworthy about Cell, it's all just been an interesting 4 yr R&D exercise with IBM and Toshiba, that happened to cost them a couple of billion dollars?

Err... I think we are talking about two different things? I have no idea where you are going with that. :lol

 

[Panajev2001a]

Look man. If you take your Sony hat off for a second, wouldn't the Xenon CPU be a better candidate for use by Apple than Cell? That ain't a great likeihood either in my book, but if you are entertaining such speculations, at least go with something a little more probable....

Of course the Xbox 2 CPU would be easier to fit in Apple's machines and substitute the G5, it would certainly be less work for Apple and for IBM.

Would it be better on all accounts ? IMHO, it would not. I would think that a lot of applications that are used on Machintosh computers would benefit from parallel processing and from an architecture such as CELL.

I was not speculating that it is more probable that CELL will go in Apple's computers, I was merely talking about how CELL could work and work well in Apple's systems.

Stop with this fricking Sony hat crap ok. You come in and flame CELL's architecture without even having given a good look at it, make assertions about the probability of CELL's outside the console world (this EE WorkStation thing was meant to say what else ?!?)... I come and show my disagreement with your statements.

Take that Sony hat and throw it out of the window... I am getting f*cking sick of discussing problems on the technical side and have people get my answer in the ear and out of the other and reply "yeah, stop being a Sony whore for a second".

 

[Timbuktu]

LOL apple will STILL find a way to fuck this up. The only shot they've got is if vaio's and satellites start coming with OSX and it just aint happening with apples prices/leadership. They are moronic for having everything proprietary, and they KEEP pricing themselves out of the market. If you think Intel and MS are gonna let these guys come into the x86 dominated market you can forget it, atleast for the time being, in a few years i can see the CELL taking a foothold though esp with its linux compatibility. The problem is this means either MS making windows run on the cell or people converting from their beloved windows to linux...both seem like longshots no? This isnt an alliance its "we dont have a chip IBM help us! the PPC 970 runs way too fucking hot!" Where IBM goes Mac goes, if CELL takes off and IBM deems fabbing other PPC cores a waste of resources then apple is usin Cell. Thats that, especially since motorolla stopped making PPC chips. I just dont see too many users giving up their windows environment and freedom of the PC platform for the proprietary MAC platform ...which is what keeps it from the masses, its so stupid. They could've been a much more significant player in the desktop market now they are a joke they dont mean shit what are they 1% of the market? All they had to do was let other companies build macs, and let people build their own from components geezus give the consumer CHOICE. But no they fucked that up again. Sony cant save apple from themselves the morons. The cell will solve apples sorry ass hardware situation, but whats stoping people from using the cell on linux? or freebsd? wheres the advantage then? Paying an extra 1200 dollars for all those cool apple color cases? The market is getting smaller all of a sudden, IBM will have all servers covered, computer graphics people will use ibm workstations , people who want web performance could use linux. If the cell is as flexible as we are led to believe, by the time Apple has support for it, so will Linux, and if the performance is anywhere NEAR what is promised why the fuck would anyone willing to make the jump bother fucking with an apple? When Linux is free? When freebsd still holds records for webserver performance and bandwidth? when its not the familiar MS windows? The Cell could turn out to be a superior product in the general computing world but allying with the morons at apple is a deathwish, instead of opening the flood gates they are going to be inviting people to jump into a small pond.

Wow. That's the funniest post I've read in a long time.:lol Ok, Jobs and co. made a mistake back in the 80s, it's easy to call them morons now, but Apple is still around unlike most tech companies that that situation, and they're still relevant. And I love my Apple stocks, bought them back in 2001. As far as Cell goes, it's a bit of a non-issue compared with the general direction Apple is going.

 

[Panajev2001a]

And there is a reason for that, and it is not solved in the CELL. It is still too hot and power hungry in its current stepping to be used in a powerbook. Unless there is some unseen variant out there, the problems they are having getting the G5 into a powerbook are the same as those for CELL. Portable CELL == no right now.

Let's see the cooling solution that PlayStation 3 will ship with and the performance at the shipping clock-speed and configuration. Then let's see how it scales at Notebook levels.

Maybe they need less than a 4 GHz, 8 SPE's processor .

Impossible - of course not. Its a CPU, it can be used. Its not impossible for them to use an AMD64 in there either and the level of kernel work necessary to make either happen is probably the same. It is largely improbable for a variety of reasons at the kernel level.

It would be a good undertaking, but in the long term it would be worth-while. I see Xbox 2's CPU better in the short term.

 

[kaching]

Err... I think we are talking about two different things? I have no idea where you are going with that. :lol

Let's backtrack. You say they aren't hyping ALTIVEC performance of Cell and my question to you was what exactly are they hyping about Cell? i.e. I haven't really seen them hype any particular aspect of Cell performance other than to announce general figures and give more in-depth explanation at the conference last week. For a chip supposedly capable of 256 Gigaflops performance, its been generally very low key in terms of what STI is saying about it. Sorry if I worded poorly.

 

[Nerevar]

It would be a good undertaking, but in the long term it would be worth-while. I see Xbox 2's CPU better in the short term.

Of course it would be good for hte long term, but do you see them able to rework their kernel, clean out all the bugs, and get the hardware in the manufacturing pipeline for 2005 / 2006 like this article claims? I agree with Phoenix, if this does happen I wouldn't be surprised to see it in 2007/2008 at the earliest, with the next generation of cell chips. Maybe they'll run cooler when they mvoe to a smaller manufacturing process, and we'll see them in mac consumer computers at that point too. Who knows.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

Wow. That's the funniest post I've read in a long time.:lol Ok, Jobs and co. made a mistake back in the 80s, it's easy to call them morons now, but Apple is still around unlike most tech companies that that situation, and they're still relevant. And I love my Apple stocks, bought them back in 2001. As far as Cell goes, it's a bit of a non-issue compared with the general direction Apple is going.

BAH a stock holder how can you not love apple. And what direction are they going, id like to be enlightened because at this point it seems like less than 1% marketshare. Good thing they got ipod ne.

 

[shantyman]

LOL apple will STILL find a way to fuck this up. The only shot they've got is if vaio's and satellites start coming with OSX and it just aint happening with apples prices/leadership. They are moronic for having everything proprietary, and they KEEP pricing themselves out of the market. If you think Intel and MS are gonna let these guys come into the x86 dominated market you can forget it, atleast for the time being, in a few years i can see the CELL taking a foothold though esp with its linux compatibility. The problem is this means either MS making windows run on the cell or people converting from their beloved windows to linux...both seem like longshots no? This isnt an alliance its "we dont have a chip IBM help us! the PPC 970 runs way too fucking hot!" Where IBM goes Mac goes... SNIP

That is a very mid to late nineties argument. For better or worse, Apple's strength is because they are proprietary. Control over every aspect of the computing experience equals (to some people) a better end result. Obviously, not to you.

Also, paragraphs are your FRIEND.

 

[sonycowboy]

BAH a stock holder how can you not love apple. And what direction are they going, id like to be enlightened because at this point it seems like less than 1% marketshare. Good thing they got ipod ne.

Depending on how you measure market share, Apple is somewhere around ~3% in terms of market share. They are expected to gain significant numbers over the course of the next several quarters in the consumer market. Their biggest problem is that they still haven't been able to break into the business market (exceptions for desktop publishing, multimedia, etc) or the server market (despite a market leading product xServe)

You may think that's nothing, but Apple was essentially left for dead back around 1997 when they had a billion dollar loss and were completely floundering. There comeback over the past 7 years, IMO, has been the most astounding tech story, even with the dot com bust of 2000. Not cooincedentally, Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996.

The market is extremely high on Apple right now, and they are no longer considered to be just scraping by. They make more money than any other computer manufacturer except Dell.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

That is a very mid to late nineties argument. For better or worse, Apple's strength is because they are proprietary. Control over every aspect of the computing experience equals (to some people) a better end result. Obviously, not to you.

Also, paragraphs are your FRIEND.

This will always be the argument now that x86 has showns its dominance over Mac OS in the market place. For better or for worse apples weakness is they are acting like Dell with an operating system. They assemble pre configured systems built from oem parts and put a bunch of software on it for you. The only difference between Dells success and apples laughable market prescence is that people have chosen x86 over PPC a long time ago ...oh yeah in the mid nineties. Apples recent successes have nothing to do with the macintosh, itunes is on windows , ipod works on windows, and pixar is the movie business. Please all of apples successes have been in the music and movies biz, what about the computer biz? wheres the buzz there? there isnt any besides critical acclaim for "groundbreaking" features and pretty cases their sales and public intrest look like they're going into critical condition. Lack of intrest in the macintosh itself is going to kill it in the long run, itunes and ipod, will live on happily ever after on windows though >.

 

[WasabiKing]

Well, keep in mind that both Apple and Sony can be partners AND competitors at the same time. Remember, Toshiba and IBM worked with Sony for the EE/PS2 chip, but Toshiba still made competing home electronics while IBM still churned out PCs.

Sony has many different divisions, and Apple has really spawned a third leg with its foray into the personal electronics arena.

 

[Chittagong]

LOL apple will STILL find a way to fuck this up. The only shot they've got is if vaio's and satellites start coming with OSX and it just aint happening with apples prices/leadership. They are moronic for having everything proprietary, and they KEEP pricing themselves out of the market.

If you think Intel and MS are gonna let these guys come into the x86 dominated market you can forget it, atleast for the time being, in a few years i can see the CELL taking a foothold though esp with its linux compatibility. The problem is this means either MS making windows run on the cell or people converting from their beloved windows to linux...both seem like longshots no? This isnt an alliance its "we dont have a chip IBM help us! the PPC 970 runs way too fucking hot!" Where IBM goes Mac goes, if CELL takes off and IBM deems fabbing other PPC cores a waste of resources then apple is usin Cell. Thats that, especially since motorolla stopped making PPC chips.

I just dont see too many users giving up their windows environment and freedom of the PC platform for the proprietary MAC platform ...which is what keeps it from the masses, its so stupid. They could've been a much more significant player in the desktop market now they are a joke they dont mean shit what are they 1% of the market? All they had to do was let other companies build macs, and let people build their own from components geezus give the consumer CHOICE. But no they fucked that up again. Sony cant save apple from themselves the morons.

The cell will solve apples sorry ass hardware situation, but whats stoping people from using the cell on linux? or freebsd? wheres the advantage then? Paying an extra 1200 dollars for all those cool apple color cases? The market is getting smaller all of a sudden, IBM will have all servers covered, computer graphics people will use ibm workstations , people who want web performance could use linux. If the cell is as flexible as we are led to believe, by the time Apple has support for it, so will Linux, and if the performance is anywhere NEAR what is promised why the fuck would anyone willing to make the jump bother fucking with an apple? When Linux is free? When freebsd still holds records for webserver performance and bandwidth? when its not the familiar MS windows? The Cell could turn out to be a superior product in the general computing world but allying with the morons at apple is a deathwish, instead of opening the flood gates they are going to be inviting people to jump into a small pond.

:lol :lol :lol

holy shit!

 

[Izzy]

I read that Cell's ALTIVEC performance is pretty shitty. Apple is too invested in ALTIVEC to care about Cell.

Actually, I've heard VMX performance is more than satisfactory.

 

[Phoenix]

Let's see the cooling solution that PlayStation 3 will ship with and the performance at the shipping clock-speed and configuration. Then let's see how it scales at Notebook levels.

Maybe they need less than a 4 GHz, 8 SPE's processor .

All of the PS3s problems are solved with a plug When you have 'nearly limitless' AC power at your disposal you can come up with a variety of active cooling system that just wouldn't work in a portable. Its the same problem that people overlook when they look at the iMac G5 and say 'oh it fits so they shouldn't have any problem putting it in a powerbook', not realising that the iMac G5 in itself is considerably larger than a powerbook and has active cooling. Hell the Powermac sitting beneath me has several cooling SYSTEMS in order for it to work. I know you know this, and I guess this is more for other readers - but just making it fit is the easy part. Making it work as a complete package is the hard part. People thing the PSP has bad battery life - heh, use a laptop and find out what bad battery life really is

It would be a good undertaking, but in the long term it would be worth-while. I see Xbox 2's CPU better in the short term.

Unless IBM plans to abandon Power5 and the work they've already put into P6, I think those processors make better long term solutions. While I am by no means positive, I don't see the CELL as an abortive technology along the IBM chip technology tree. Much like all of the components that are coming to the consoles from ATI, nVIDIA, etc - these are specialized components for special needs of a console but they come from 'next gen' parts that are supposed to be better overall. Perhaps CELL will cause IBM to throw billions of Power5,6 work out the window - but I suspect that the Power5+ line of processors will be even better than CELL by a reasonable margin. Otherwise just crack open and port Linux to PS3s for their processing potential and run your enterprise software from there.

Yeah, that picture doesn't make a whole lot of sense does it

 

[Phoenix]

BAH a stock holder how can you not love apple. And what direction are they going, id like to be enlightened because at this point it seems like less than 1% marketshare. Good thing they got ipod ne.

Lets first dispell the myth that marketshare has anything to do with profitability or survivability. Nintendo has been a marketshare loser for 2 generations now, yet they are the most profitable of the trio of console makers. Lexus certainly doesn't have any issues living with Apple like marketshare in the global car market. The market is simply different when you have 3% marketshare than if you have 18% (Dell) marketshare. Dell's business is driven by selling large quantities of low margin products - they HAVE to move a large number of units just to remain profitable.

Apple could survive indefinitely on 3% marketshare by targetting and serving that niche market. That's all they have to do - keep making money off the customers that they have. What nearly killed Apple was a disasterous attempt to become a Dell nearly 20 years ago. Apple was a hardware company trying to survive on margin and that margin was being taken away by their 3rd party sellers. The company's own market strategy was driving it out of business. When you live on volume and margin, fluctuations in the volume of the market can kill you... quickly. Gateway has been circling the toilet for a while and has fallen steadily down to about 8% share at this point last year. Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachines, etc. are all competing in a highly marginalized business now such that irregardless of how much share they have, any of them are only several quarters from needing to merge with someone to stay fiscally solvent (HP/Compaq).

So now that we've taken care of the whole 'they only have 3% share' foolishness, lets move on.

Where is Apple going? Lord knows where they are going. Apple is really good at surprising the industry and going after the 'low hanging fruit of the industry'. One thing that seems to be certain is that they are likely to attempt more mass market consumer device plays. Will they make a TV? Pfft, if they've lost their minds. That market is currently in pricing free fall. A phone? What's the value proposition of making a phone as opposed to just licensing out the tech that people want (iTunes, iPhoto, .Mac, etc) and letting THEM take a bath on inventories (hopefully the iPhone will help Apple realize that a hardware business model is deader than disco for a growth company and they need to start making more money on software and services - today; unless you have incredible capacity to produce the hardware quickly and cheaply, something Apple has not demonstrated). Will they go into tablet PCs? Pfft, Microsoft and its hardware partners don't even talk about Tablet PCs anymore. I recall someone in the OT talking up tablets a while back and promising me that they would become a major marketshare item and now you barely even hear about them - didn't even bother introducing much about them at CES. Will they go into the living room battle? That seems unclear. Apple only goes into markets where they know they can make profit. This is something that kept them out of the PDA market for a second go round. So who knows where Apple is going, and who really cares as thats irrelevent to this discussion.

 

[ram]

Apple + Sony + IBM + Toshiba > Intel

and where is AMD??? :lol

damn...i shouldnt be joking about the company, i am working for. @_@

 

[Timbuktu]

Watched parts of the Macworld Keynote again. While it doesn't support any rumors for Cell, the exchange between Jobs and Ando does suggest a strong alliance, particularly in 'revolutionizing the way we enjoy video at home'.

Year 2005 is the year of HD.
Ando said,
'Great quality software is the glue, which put together all the pieces and give value to the great hardware...so, strategically, it is very important for Sony to work with Apple, who really creates all the great applications that work seamlessly with Sony products.'

and Jobs ended with 'we work very closely with Sony... and who knows, maybe someday computers and music too.'

 

[fse]

Apple won't use CELL or merge with SONY. Apple doesn't need them.

 

[Lil' Dice]

It's time for Bill to put a contract on steve Jobs' head already.....

 

[Panajev2001a]

Unless IBM plans to abandon Power5 and the work they've already put into P6, I think those processors make better long term solutions. While I am by no means positive, I don't see the CELL as an abortive technology along the IBM chip technology tree. Much like all of the components that are coming to the consoles from ATI, nVIDIA, etc - these are specialized components for special needs of a console but they come from 'next gen' parts that are supposed to be better overall. Perhaps CELL will cause IBM to throw billions of Power5,6 work out the window - but I suspect that the Power5+ line of processors will be even better than CELL by a reasonable margin. Otherwise just crack open and port Linux to PS3s for their processing potential and run your enterprise software from there.

Yeah, that picture doesn't make a whole lot of sense does it

Of course it does not make sense, but it is not my fault... I did not say that there was only space for POWER5/POWER6 or CELL, you ceated a picture on such an assumption.

Different markets and different processors .

 

[Endymion]

This is a quote from Idei in 2003:

"Idei: We actually met several times with Steve last year, in January, March, and June to try to work out a mutual strategy. But you know Steve, he has his own agenda. [Laughs.] Although he is a genius, he doesn't share everything with you. This is a difficult person to work with if you are a big company. We started working with them, but it is a nightmare. We have the exact type of guy like Steve within Sony. His name is Ken Kutaragi. They respect each other. So maybe if we can get them both together then they could figure out how the PlayStation and the Mac can work together. "

 

[pcostabel]

Very interesting. This seems to be a confirmation that the cooperation will have to do with Playstation more than Cell. Either a combined Mac/PS3 machine or a port of OS X to PS3.... We can only hope!

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Man I wished I had the money to buy Apple Stock back in the 90s

I saw this coming since Macworld

I love me some Apple