Filed under: Apple Corporate, Hardware, WWDC
Editorial: The Day After WWDC Headache
Ted Landau, of MacFixIt fame, has a very realistic look at the headache we're facing post the recent news from WWDC: the Apple switch to Intel. It's an interesting read. I have to say, though, that now that I have managed to work past my initial shock, the announcement is making more sense. The only part of it all that still doesn't sit well with me is the DRM issues involved. That, and I'm feeling a bit odd about how dead wrong my thoughts in the podcast were.
Also, now that it is the day after, I'm left feeling very disappointed by WWDC. This was simultaneously the most uneventful and eventful WWDC in a while. I mean, the only real news presented was the huge news of the switch to Intel. But, if most of the Mac spin on it is to be believed this is really only developer news. The only other new goodness discussed were the podcasting iTunes capabilities, which we already knew about. No new hardware whatsoever. No "One more thing." I'm feeling a little let down by the whole affair.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
C.K., I had the same feeling when it ended. No new stuff? No new hardware? It reminded me of the WWDC a few years ago that was little more than an advertisement for Panther (or was it Tiger?).
Then I thought: Of course there were no hardware announcements. Just imagine his Steveness: ". . . so that's the Intel deal. Oh, but there is one more thing. Here's a new PowerPC based laptop that none of you will buy."
But you're right. At least the Intel news was jaw dropping, because the rest of the morning was kind of a dud.
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jimmy said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
so that iTMS that Steve showed with podcast support hasnt been released yet, has it?
i have read a few of the financial firm's thoughts on WWDC and they seem to think that the positive announcements on Tiger and Intel are offset by the modest disappointment of no new products announced.
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Scott Elfstrom said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Um... World Wide *Developers* Conference?
Why is it surprising that there was mostly news for *developers*?
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Frank said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
"I mean, the only real news presented was the huge news of the switch to Intel. But, if most of the Mac spin on it is to be believed this is really only developer news. "
So you're disappointed that the Keynote at the developers' conference was targeted at developers?
I know we've gotten spoiled as WWDC has sometimes replaced MWNY for summer product intros, but still, it's a developers' meeting, right?
I think it's kind of silly to introduce updated iBooks or iPods at a developers conference. The switch to the G5 and 64-bits is developer-worthy, so it made sense to announce it at WWDC. But the iPod, for example, is a closed platform, and therefore of zero interest to developers who paid lots of money to attend (except of course that most of them are mac fans and they likely own one, but still, that's a different thing).
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gwm said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
The bright light will shine at the end of the conference, it would be hoped. What will be telling is how many developers walk out of the WWDC declaring that they are fully completed with their Universal Binary porting. I'm guessing there will be many.
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Margaret said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
My PowerBook was giving up the ghost so I bit the bullet and got a new one last week, wondering if I was going to be sorry. I'm both let down by the no new hardware announcement and relieved at the same time. For once I didn't buy something that was obsolete the very next day.
Margaret
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KissTheRing said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
So does anyone have any rumors about when iTunes 4.9 possibly could be released? I've only got 28 days left on my iPodderX 3.0 trial. Hopefully it's before Macworld Boston.
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Eric said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
One thing that I haven't heard in all the Intel noise is what IBM has been up to besides not making better G5s.
They are all about their new baby, the Cell processor. The engineering effort has been huge on the Cell and IBM thinks it's the wave of the future, so there probably hasn't been much effort devoted to PPC development.
So if you are Steve Jobs and you have a choice of switching CPUs to IBM's Cell or Intel, the choice seems easy. Cell is an unknown and Intel has the history and a long roadmap.
Intel ends the megahertz debate when comparing hardware. It forces Microsoft to compete on merit, where it is weakest. It allows Adobe (and others) to not divide its developer time optimizing for two architectures.
Intel is more than just CPUs. They make all the other guts as well, so Apple potentially saves R&D money by not having to build the entire system bus; Especially since Intel has been doing a lot of stuff with highly integrated systems. I think this is another reason why Intel was appealing versus the currently superior AMD offerings. AMD tends to leave the rest of the mainboard to other companies.
The timing isn't the greatest. It would have been better if this had happened before anything G5 was ever mentioned, but it appears that IBM really dropped the ball on what they thought they could/wanted to do with the G5. We should be happy that Steve was smart enough to have a backup plan.
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paul shafer said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
maybe this article sheds a little light onto what apple was looking forward to with the switch, a dual core processor with a unified cache that will not blow up in a notebook
http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4922
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David Barrett said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
The Mac will now actually have decent performance relative to the PC, and within the year.
Complaining about not having any other announcements? You might as well complain about only getting an enormous sack of diamonds.
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Robert Knight said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I have to agree on the WWDC being less than stellar. I found myself checking the Apple site numerous times yesterday looking for the new or updated hardware. To no avail...
The other disappointing thing has been the "I'm not buying another Apple product ever again because..." comments. I watched the Jobs keynote last night and I was pleasantly surprised by the candor. Admitting that PPC chips couldn't deliver a G5 Powerbook or a 3Ghz G5 PowerMac was a strong statement to why this move to Intel is necessary. I think it is quite premature to pass judgement on Apple for wanting to deliver a faster computer.
Furthermore, I fully expect that once OSX kicks Windows' rear on similar hardware, there will be no doubting the superiority of OSX and there could be more switchers coming Apple's way.
The knee-jerk reaction of "Now I dislike Apple" seems unfair.
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Sy said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Why did it surprise you that Steve Jobs did not announce any new stuff during this year'ss WWDC? Anything new would of been overshadowed by the Intel switch story. It was just NOT a very good time to announce any new product line, etc.
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ScottBruin said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
why is the pic for this post of the ITMS?
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jan Dixon said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Does this mean MACs will get the Windows viruses easier - especially those who will want to dual boot????????????
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Scott-O-Rama said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Okay, everybody seems to have their own opinion about this, so I wanted to share my two cents. It's too long to post here, but I discuss it on my blog. You can read it here: www.scott-o-rama.com/2005/06...s_blog_entry.html
Leave a comment to let me know if you agree, disagree, or have another insight.
Thanks!
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Small Paul said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Yeah, I understand the desire for every conference to feel like christmas, but the *only* thing on developers' minds over the next two years will be sorting out their apps for Intel, so I think its entirely right that got top billing.
Any other announcement next to it would have been utterly lost, so even if they had any new hardware, they may as well wait to announce it. And the fact that they've just dumped IBM suggests that we really shouldn't expect any new Macintoshes for a year.
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