Steve Jobs offered Cell. he rejected.

Lt Major Burns

Lt Major Burns

"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
Sony tried to convince Apple to adopt the Cell processor, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs rejected such overtures, the New York Times reports.

Sony's PlayStation guru Ken Kutaragi tried to sell Jobs on Sony's Cell processor. However, Jobs rejected the idea, saying he was "disappointed" with the Cell design.

The New York Times adds that Jobs "believes Cell will be even less effective than the PowerPC".

There's everything to play for, the report states that: "Many people in the industry believe that Mr. Jobs is racing quietly toward a direct challenge to Microsoft and Sony in the market for digital entertainment gear for the living room."

The report also explains that Jobs left IBM hanging until the eleventh hour. The famously brash CEO didn't tell IBM of Apple's plans until 3pm on June 4 - scant days before he told the world.

Jobs is reported to be "still committed to the idea of an Apple culture," as the "counterculture to the dominant Windows culture.
Click to expand...
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?home&NewsID=11825

well how about that then....
 
Funny ain't it, here's the guy who dumped IBM because they didn't have a road map....

Cell makes less sense for the Mac if Jobs is interested in performance-per-watt. I can't remember the numbers but the power consumption of the cell processors wasn't something amazing.
 
(Sarcasm)Yeah. I'm sure Steve Jobs flat-out lied to Sony, because he was so angry with IBM.(/Sarcasm)

Really: While some marketing-blurbs about Cell _do_ sound interesting, I must say that we haven't heard anything about Cell fitting desktop/notebook computers other than Sony saying they'd install linux on it. Well: Linux has been brought to the iPod, iPaqs, probably even some cash-registers. Doesn't mean Cell would be a good option for our PowerBooks and PowerMacs in my opinion...
 
We sometimes even talk about _really_ old stuff. Like about the days when Apple presented the first Macs. Or 8 days ago, when PowerPC was still the processor family of Apple's choice. Either way: The news about Cell isn't _that_ old, Mr. Me.
 
I didnt realized that Intel is much bigger than IBM. Intel can give lot of promises to Apple for having a better processor than IBM have. What I understand CELL have very little fast than G5. That didnt impressed Steven Jobs. He want big lap of mhz than little increase only 200mhz or whatever.
 
I don't know whether intel's much bigger than IBM. But quite certainly intel sells a lot more desktop and notebook processors. IBM does a lot of other stuff, and processors are only a small part of their overall business.
 
I understand. Look at market cap, volumes and average volume of people investing. Intel is bigger than IBM. Suppose 1,000,000 people decide to sell their shares. IBM will lose lots than Intel have due to high volumes than IBM have. Anyway, I was curious about their market cap. Also want to look different options why Steven choice Intel over IBM.

Intel Corporation NASDAQ:INTC

14 Jun 2005, 01:12pm ET
26.81
0.19 or (0.70%)
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Ask: 26.81
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Previous Close: 27.00
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Market Capitalization: 165,498.14 M
52-week range: 19.64 to 28.65
1 week change: 0.18%
1 month change: 5.84%
1 year change: 4.21%
P/E: 21.53

Intl Business Mach NYSE:IBM

14 Jun 2005, 01:07pm ET
74.84
0.21 or (0.27%)
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Day's Low & High: 74.80 - 75.43
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Avg. Volume: 7,307,445
Market Capitalization: 120,740.94 M
52-week range: 71.85 to 99.10
1 week change: 0.26%
1 month change: 0.67%
1 year change: 16.90%
P/E: 15.3
 
MacFreak said:
He want big lap of mhz than little increase only 200mhz or whatever.
Click to expand...
But Intel hasn't been pushing up their clock speeds much lately, either. The entire industry is at a virtual standstill as far as that goes; it's not just IBM.

I still don't think Apple's decision is based on the performance of their desktop processors. The Cell could have made an awesome desktop processor if it were properly revised (the version in the PS3 would NOT make a really good desktop processor, however), and it wouldn't have required nearly as much effort to implement as x86. And even the current G5 is still looking pretty good.

But I doubt a high-performance Cell would ever have made it into portables. Especially since it would (in theory) use a more or less standard G5 as its core (the Cell design has one large CPU connected to many smaller, simpler processors). Any Cell design Apple could use would probably be bigger, hotter and more power-hungry than a G5 — and that's clearly not what Apple wants.

If Apple's decision was about performance at all (which is up for debate), then I think it's either about portable performance, or desktop performance several years down the line. Steve kept using the word "roadmap", so I assume it's about long-term performance. And again, that's IF it's about performance at all; I'm still more inclined to think it's about Intel's DRM or the potential for ultra-small tablet Macs.
 
Some reasons for the switch:

- Dual-core
- 64-bit support
- 65nm process technology
- Security/virtualization (i.e., Lagrande, Active Management Technology, Vanderpool, etc.)
- "Platformization" (i.e., development and marketing of CPU and feature-rich chipset combinations)
- Performance per watt
(From ArsTechnica)

Doesn't sound bad at all, especially when compared to the deafening silence at the Motorola/IBM side of the ring ...
 
Well...I still would like to see a Cell processor in future Macs...we could run Nintendo Revolution, Sony PS3/2/1 and XBOX2 games ;)
 
I don't think this has a thing to do with performance or performance/watt at all. I watched the keynote and although that's what Steve Jobb's has said, I don't think he believes it any more that I do. The G4s aren't that bad compaired to Centrinos.

I believe this is entirely to do with market share, I think Apple are hoping for cheaper desktop/laptop computers as surely that is the greatest barrier for Switching when a iMac G5 2.0ghz is the same price as a high end P4.

I'm not very technically minded, but would it not be easier to get more software avaliable on an x86 machine when most companies develop for x86 than ppc? I believe Steve Jobbs also sees this as an obstical, that Windows has more software (not that it matters, but it may to some users.)

Also being able to dual boot into OS X and XP/Longhorn (if it's ever released) its a massive benefit for Apple. A lot of people want to play games on their computer but cant on a ppc Mac, if these new x86 Mactels can run Windows games with no loss of performance surely more consumers will consider and maybe even buy Apple.
 
v8_kompressor said:
I'm not very technically minded, but would it not be easier to get more software avaliable on an x86 machine when most companies develop for x86 than ppc? I believe Steve Jobbs also sees this as an obstical, that Windows has more software (not that it matters, but it may to some users.)
Click to expand...

I doubt software availability is a problem. Most shrink-wrapped software is written in C/C++, custom in house software is largely done in VB, Java and Delphi. The problem isn't so much the language availability. Most of these languages are available on Mac OS X now (C, C++, Java, REALBasic, etc). The main issue is libraries.

Most software is written for MS Windows. Now they are either using the native Win32 API, which is a set of functions that are used for programming and they provide facilities like drawing buttons, establishing network connections, and a whole load of other stuff. Or they could be using something like MFC (which comes with Visual C++) or VB. All of these are native to Windows only and is largely independent of the CPU windows is running on. Remember, Windows was available for the DEC Alpha and the Itanium, completely different processors from the common x86.

Moving to x86 isn't going to help the Mac in terms of software availability. Windows programs will still be Windows programs. Windows games will still be difficult to port to the Mac because the Mac does _not_ provide libraries like DirectX which the majority of games use. Conversely, Mac programs are going to be just as hard to port to Windows and any other OS mainly because Cocoa and Carbon aren't available on other OSes.
 
According to game developers, porting games _will_ get easier, because most problems apparently stem from the byte-order difference between the processor worlds. At least that's what's been said at several sites after the intel-announcement.
 
Only slightly easier :). Those problems are trivial compared to porting the entire DirectX over to the Mac.
 
OpenGL might achieve similar things, but it's certainly not similar in that game developers would have an easy task because of there being OpenGL. But DirectX is Microsoft, and game devs can't simply port _that_ to the Mac.
 
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