Good numbers, bad reasons? Apple has announced good numbers for the past financial quarter. That's a good thing. But I stumped at something Steve Jobs said about the good numbers, and I have an explanation for him that he might not particularly like. He said: "We're thrilled with the growth of our Mac business, and especially that over 75 percent of the Macs sold during the quarter used Intel processors. This is the smoothest and most successful transition that any of us have ever experienced." - Well, why is it that this transition went so smoothly? That's easily answered, Mr. Jobs: It means that the products which were replaced with intel-processor equipped ones, sucked. Apple themselves have pointed it out... If the MacBook Pro really is four to five times as fast as the last PowerBook G4, this doesn't only mean that the MacBook Pro is one heck of a fast computer. It means that when Apple told us that the PowerBooks were good computers, they actually sold us relatively slow ones instead. Maybe this transition should simply have happened sooner. Even the previous generation notebook processors made by intel - you know, those "Centrino" Pentium M notebooks - were simply better than what Motorola was feeding Apple.
But I don't want to dwell on it. At least Apple has made the big step. And my motto shall be: Better late than never. I just hope that Apple doesn't defend intel as long as they've defended the PowerPC, should intel ever slide. If AMD should come back with a vengeance in 2007/2008 - right now it doesn't look like it, intel looks good with the Core 2 Duo families coming up -, I hope Apple has the guts to say that they adopt the best processor family for any given product, wherever that comes from. Certainly a good and healthy relationship with one vendor can be more important in some cases, but I for one don't buy "intel" or "AMD" or "IBM", I buy a Mac. - posted by Patrick Armbruster @ 23:17 [article link]