Applelust.com: All Mac Considered - Failing The "Smell Test", Part I

All Mac Considered

Failing The "Smell Test", Part I

"Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire!"
~ Children's chant

Unless you have been living under a rock or in a cave high in the Himalayan mountains, I am sure that you have heard about the shock generated when Apple announced that it was leaving PowerPC and getting in bed with Intel. What I find even more interesting are the reasons given for the switch... and then how the story started changing when the first version didn't quite fly right.

If you have ever been a fan of police reality shows you might be aware of something that real world police detectives call the "Smell Test". This means that once the stories are given by principals involved in a Dastardly Deed, the detectives check to see how the story holds up against verifiable facts and how consistently the stories are maintained. If there are discrepancies or the stories start to change, then they are considered to have failed the "Smell Test". That is exactly what has happened over the past month in the Switch To Intel Caper. In fact, the odor was so rank that I couldn't help but notice that someone (or multiple someones...) were being a bit less than truthful.

First, Apple told the stunned audience at this year's World Wide Developers' Conference that they were going to drop PPC entirely by mid-2007 and go to Intel processors. The initial reason given was that IBM was unable to provide the quantity or kind of processors Apple needed, implying unspecified production failures on the part of IBM, and that IBM was unable to provide the processors Apple was going to need in the future. The unspoken accusation was that the PPC is a failure and only Intel had a viable path to the future.

When Rod Adkins, vice president of development for IBM's Systems and Technology Group, (the IBM subsidiary that produces IBM's PowerPC chips) was asked about the rumors about Apple's impending move to Intel, he responded, "What rumors?". He also was reported to have responded to confirmation of Apple's switch to Intel by saying that Apple represented only 3% of IBM's total sales and that IBM would not notice the departure.

Curiously enough, over the next month both sides started "modifying" their stories about what was happening... thus generating an even more rank odor that wasn't conducive to passing the "Smell Test". Apple dropped the insupportable claims about IBM's not being able to supply enough chips because some analysts noticed that although IBM had production glitches overt the past year those problems were solved and Apple has a good enough supply of chips to both drop the single processor models of PowerMacs (originally introduced as a stopgap due to chip shortages...) and to help boost their computer sales by a hefty 79%, pushing Apple's market share from barely more than 3% in the US (a bit more than 2% world wide sales...) to a solid 4.5% US market share (now making Apple the number four computer maker... replacing IBM/Lenovo in this spot). If in fact IBM wasn't able to make enough processors as was an implied part of Apple's initial claims, then those figures would not have been possible.

Apple's "modified" or "enhanced" story began to emerge about PPC processors producing too much heat relative to their performance and only Intel had powerful enough processors that ran cool enough to use in future products. Apple cited an Intel roadmap that they had been shown that Apple claimed was better than the road maps shown to them by either AMD or IBM. Curiously, there was absolutely no mention of Freescale (formerly of Motorola) in these stories even though they currently make the processors used by Apple in the iBook, PowerBook, Mac mini and eMac. The problem with Apple's newly "enhanced" version of the reasons for the processor changes were also brought into question by analysts who noticed that Apple had ignored AMD which already makes 64 bit low power processors such as the low power version of the Athlon 64 that Hewlett Packard now uses in at least one model of laptop computer, making Hewlett Packard one of the first computer makers to offer a 64 bit laptop computer. Intel on the other hand, won't have a viable 64 bit version of their x86 processors until sometime in 2006, and no dual cored 64 bit processor until 2007. So, why ignore AMD which already has the processors Apple claims it needs?

Computer processor analysts I read expressed a great deal of skepticism about Apple's claims about Intel's roadmap. They noted that unless Intel had a secret roadmap which they supposedly were not showing to anyone else in the industry, that Apple's claims did not make sense. Intel's lowest power processors are the Pentium M processors used in laptops and they use up to 27 watts of power... which is why PC makers using Intel processors often have to use liquid cooling systems to keep their laptops from literally melting. To date, no iBook or PowerBook has needed to use such extremes of cooling in their laptops.

Rod Adkins of IBM also started changing his story, apparently after about three and a half weeks from their initial claim that the loss of Apple was no big deal, to trying to look innocent and saying that Apple could have had the processors from them that they wanted, all they had to do was ask. This looks a bit like his higher ups called him in on the carpet and had a little heart-to-heart talk about losing a major and very visible client in such a spectacular manner. Rod Adkins is, after all... still only a Vice president, not a CEO. Only a CEO gets to make a blunder that big and be allowed to live... even if sometimes only for a short time.

In an article written by John G. Spooner and posted at eWeek on June 30, 2005, "IBM to Apple: We Have the Right Watts" Rod Adkins finally responded to Apple's charges about IBM's failure to produce the needed processors. He first chose to blame Freescale's failure to produce a low power processor for laptops and that Apple's public charges didn't really apply to IBM anyway, supposedly leaving Mr. Adkins puzzled about the switch.

"Our point of view is that was somewhat misleading, (referring to Apple's claim that future PPC chips run too hot). Apple positioned it that way in the public. Obviously I have a different point of view, because there's nothing about power architecture that limits you in any way in terms of power management or power efficiency.

They had Freescale primarily for the low-end and mobile solutions, and they really had IBM focus more on PowerBook, xServe and iMac. That's where we collaborated deeply with Apple. There's really nothing in the architecture that prevents having an end-to-end line that can serve their needs."
~ Rod Adkins, vice president of development for IBM's Systems and Technology Group

Of course, Mr. Adkins then proceeded to attempt to cover over the problem by citing future sales of other PPC products... all based on the G5 processors originally developed for Apple...

"Given the success that we've been having with Power in many, many segments; think about the game consoles where we're actually enabling new market opportunities; we think Power continues to be a highly differentiated solution that can scale from consumer through commercial-based, traditional computing applications.

We continue to work with a number of customers in terms of deep collaboration and how they can leverage out engineers as well as access certain technologies and certain design capabilities."
~Rod Adkins

Curiously enough, at the Power Everywhere Forum 2005 in Tokyo, Japan as reported by Tom Krazit of the IDG news Service in his posting, "IBM extends PowerPC with dual-core, low-power chips" Rod Adkins showcased exactly the same processors Apple claimed that they needed but IBM supposedly could not produce. Even more interesting, the newly announced PPC 970gx, IBM's new low power processor uses only 16 watts of power as compared to Intel's Pentium M that uses up to 27 watts. Adkins also announced a dual cored version of the PPC 970 that could make dual cored processors available for Apple's top of the line PowerMacs. What Adkins did not mention was when such processors would be available for actual sale. Mr. Adkins also seemed to take great pains not to mention Apple.

Adding to the confusion, Freescale also just announced their new version of the G4 processor that could run at 1.7 GHz and use only 10 watts of power, as compared to a Pentium M's use of up to 27 watts. Details can be found in a June 20, 2005 posting by Dennis Sellers at Macsimum news, "Freescale touts new PowerPC processor" These announcements from IBM and Freescale seem to directly contradict Apple's claims... so this would seem to indicate that someone is lying... but who?

In short, Apple's story has obviously failed the "Smell Test", but the claims from IBM, Freescale and Intel don't smell so great either. In the next installment I will show what I was able to find after doing some extensive detective work. I spent quite a bit of time figuratively overturning rocks, digging in the bottoms of garbage bins, checked out a few closets for skeletons, and what I did find was very interesting indeed.

Stay tuned for more smelly stuff in the next installment.

- Joe Carson

What do you think? Talk about it in our Forums...

MacBook Pro (5-17-06) Dr. Neale Monks. A subjective review of the MacBook Pro
Freeway 4 Pro (2-28-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Freeway Pro, the Quark-like web design program from Softpress, has been substantially revised and sports a bright new look. But do the changes go more than skin deep? Neale Monks finds out.
Astrostack (1-18-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Long respected as one best astronomical image processing applications about, in its newest incarnation AstroStack now runs on the Macintosh. Has the wait been worthwhile?
Virtual PC 7 (11-23-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Virtual PC 7 is the update to the venerable Windows emulator to be entirely all Microsoft’s own work. Can Mac users expect to see any dramatic changes?
Eudora Pro 6.2 (8-5-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Eudora has been one of the most popular e-mail clients for the Macintosh for more than a decade. Neale Monks finds out how it compares with the Mail application that comes with OS X
MacAstronomica (4-22-05) Dr. Neale Monks. How does this amateur naked eye astronomy software stack up?
iKey 2.0 (3-11-05) Jeremy Young. How well does this automation utility work? How much time will you save?
Wolfram Research Publicon (3-11-05) Jeff Terry Does this new scientific word processor live up to the potential?
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 3, Word (1-28-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Are there enough new features to necessitate a jump from v.X?
REALbasic 5.5 (12-03-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the latest version of this programming package.
Office 2004, Part 2, Excel and Entourage (11-05-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the second part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at Excel and Entourage.
Phone Valet 2.0 (11-05-04) Pat St-Arnaud. The best question to ask might be "Is there anything that you can't do with this telephone/Mac integration tool?"
TiPaint Touch-up Kit and iKlear iPod Cleaning Kit (10-29-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Is it possible to restore the shiny good looks of iPods and PowerBooks even after years of use? Neale Monks looks at two cleaning products designed especially for Apple hardware.
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 1, PowerPoint (10-15-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the first part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at PowerPoint, for many people still the benchmark for presentation software.
ScrapX (9-17-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Aqueous Software's ScrapX brings the Scrapbook to OS X
CDFinder (8-20-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Finding what you want from among a stack of similar looking CDs can be a hassle, but help is at hand. Neale Monks looks at CDFinder, a budget-priced but powerful cataloguing tool.
Endnote 7 (8-13-04) Dr. Markus Geisen. EndNote 7 is a literature database that seamlessly interacts with your word processor. Is the latest version worth the upgrade?