Approx. transl. : article author - Jean-Louis Gasset , entrepreneur, manager. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he led the launch of the first scientific desktop computer at Hewlett-Packard. In 1981 he became Director of European Operations at Apple Computer. In 1985, having learned about Steve Jobs's plan to expel director John Scully from the company, he informed the board of directors, which eventually led to the departure of Jobs himself.
He then took over from Scully's former job as Jobs, managing Macintosh development. In the late 1980s, he personally introduced several new products from the scene, including the Macintosh Portable and the Macintosh IIfx.
Crushed the idea of licensing Mac OS for use by other companies. In the mid-80s, he took up a side project that eventually resulted in the creation of the Newton MessagePad.
In 1988 he became Head of Advanced Product Development and Global Marketing, and it was rumored that he might take over as CEO. In 1989, he crushed the Drama project, which planned to sell inexpensive versions of Macintosh computers, on the pretext that buyers would always pay money for excellent quality computers.
He enjoyed the support of the company's employees, but in the 1990s he was ousted from it by Scully and members of the board of directors who were dissatisfied with his work.
In the 90s, he organized the company Be Inc., the goal of which was to create a new computer from scratch (enticing several Apple employees). The company has developed a new OS, BeOS, written specifically for the company's own dual-processor machine, the BeBox. Later, the OS was ported to other systems, and the company stopped producing its own hardware, concentrating on programming.
After leaving Be Inc in 2002, he worked in various technology companies, incl. in the role of a consultant. Since 2009, he has been a tech blog on the Monday Note website.
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We are on the verge of a new, exciting and unpleasant transformation. Apple Silicon will not only make better Macs, it will force Microsoft to debug Windows on ARM, pulling up both hardware and software. This will force PC OEMs to reconsider their commitment to x86. All of this will seriously affect the old Wintel partnership .
Should Intel be worried about Apple's decision to make future Macs based on Apple's own System-on-a-Chip (SoC)? According to Dataquest and IDC estimates , Apple has no more than 7% of the PC market. Moreover, Apple does not buy expensive Xeon chips.used in millions of cloud servers - and their share of Intel's revenue is constantly growing. Plus, this Apple is a headache. She makes demands and complaints completely out of proportion to the profits that you get from her. The loss of Apple will be symbolic, in fact.
Or not? The implications for Intel - and the entire industry - will be felt beyond Apple's small share of the PC market.
Apple isn't just installing a proudly nurtured processor instead of Intel's on Mac motherboards. Moving to Apple Silicon is a costly venture involving hardware and software development, developer communications, marketing ... If the transition to Apple Silicon was a simple processor swap, billions of dollars would be wasted.
No. Apple sees its SoC as just a way to improve Macs. Naturally, improvement is too vague a concept that requires proof.
Let's start with energy dissipation. My MacBook Pro is getting hot ... it just gets hot. Apple does not specify a specific chip, but, apparently, it uses this Intel iCore 7 processor , with a heat dissipation (TDP) requirement of 28W - this is something like an "energy budget".
Compare that to the latest iPad Pros, which have Apple's A12Z processor.
According to tests from GeekbenchThe performance of the A12Z is on par with my MacBook Pro. Apple does not disclose the TDP for the A12Z, but we can rely on indirect evidence - the iPad Pro's 18W AC adapter output power. This gives an idea of what to expect from Apple Silicon in future Macs: significantly lower TDPs without sacrificing processing power.
Now energy efficiency. Considering what today's A12Zs are demonstrating, you can imagine tomorrow's Macs from Apple Silicon to be no more than 25% more energy efficient than their respective x86 PCs. This, of course, is all theoretical, general assumptions about Apple's Silicon Macs - but it will have to be faster and slender laptops that last up to 10 hours on a single charge. If not, then why waste billions at all?
Then there is the question of software - Apple went out of its way to demonstrate at WWDC in June, native versions of large standard packages (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop ...) and the Rosetta 2 emulator . More specifically, Apple immediately released a large number of DTKs (Development Transition Kits) to help third-party developers port their applications. The first impression of the kit, thanks to which the Apple Silicon Mac prototype is powered by the A12Z processor inside the mini-box, is promising. The hardware is fast, the software tools look more mature than one might expect at this stage of development.
When the first Apple Silicon Macs come out in a few months, we'll know more. But, apparently, the transition to new hardware and programs is carefully planned and implemented.
So how will this affect Intel and the entire industry?
In 2012, Microsoft began to move away from Intel's x86 processors with the release of the first Surface computer running on an ARM SoC. It didn't work out very well. However, Microsoft persisted, and late last year released a Surface Pro X based on another ARM-based SoC, and also launched Windows on ARM. It was a step forward, but many critics were not satisfied. Let's remember just one problem - the main applications from Microsoft did not work there in native mode. The situation became even more awkward when Office, powered by Apple Silicon, was shown at WWDC.
Microsoft is left with a choice: either to forget about Windows on ARM and leave modern PCs at the mercy of Apple, or to mobilize, solve compatibility problems, and offer an alternative to the new ARM-based Macs. But, of course, Microsoft really has no choice. Microsoft will rush forward, which will affect the rest of the Windows PC industry.
Specifically, what will Dell, HP, Asus, and everyone else do if Apple offers significantly better laptops and desktops, and Microsoft continues to improve Windows on ARM Surface devices? To compete, PC makers will have to submit and follow the ARM road as well, as the actions of Apple and Microsoft will show that the x86 architecture is actually outdated.
It won't happen right away, and there will be an interesting jumble of x86 machines and ARM SoCs vying for market share. Large organizations need consistency, they will face the challenge of maintaining two kinds of Windows machines and applications. They will, as usual, downplay Apple's advantages and scold Microsoft for causing problems. But if the new machines are really better, the disobedient members of these organizations will push through new devices and programs, as they always have.
And now we come to Intel's reaction. Not to what they say when the problems really start - and this may be happening soon.
Intel CEOs know they missed out on the Smartphone 2.0 revolution because of cultural blindness. They couldn’t part with the big profits that the x86 cash cow brings them, and they couldn’t understand that the lower profits could be offset by an incredible increase in sales. Now Intel is facing a more serious problem: x86 makes a lot of profit not because of the chip, but because of the Intel / Windows duopoly, which means that, all things being equal, chips that do not run Windows do not make as much profit as x86 ... And now this union and this advantage can disappear. Intel will face ARM-based SoCs that run Windows, shipping in the same size as today's PCs, and at a lower price.
Intel has one choice: if you can't win, join. Intel will regain its ARM license (it sold its ARM-based XScale business to Marvell in 2006) and will release a competitive ARM SoC for PC makers. Profits will suffer as this area is packed with serious competitors like Qualcomm and Nvidia, which will surely be joined by their main enemy AMD and others, and all this will usher in a new era of the PC.
I avoid speculating about lucrative server chips from Intel, and whether they will be affected by more energy efficient ARM chips like AWS Graviton. I lack the knowledge of the electricity-hungry monsters of the Xeon line, which run a huge number of cloud servers, to form an opinion on this matter.
For today, such a topic as the end of the Wintel era will already be enough.
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