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Apple-Intel partnership to be rocky?

updated 07:00 pm EST, Mon December 26, 2005

Apple-Intel partnership

Both Apple and Intel are companies notorious for their , says tech columnist Rob Enderle. He looks at the various stumbling blocks that will affect that Intel-Apple relationship. These include the fact that "Intel tends to make decisions critical to the success or failure of the OEMs without adequately taking into account the needs of these companies." And a source of aggravation from the Apple camp could come from its refusal to participate in Intel programs like "Intel Inside." And PC makers aren't too happy about the newfound relationship either. Their concerns stem from the prospect of Apple getting deep discounts and early access to next generation processors. "I'd hate to be the person responsible for maintaining the Intel-Apple relationship," writes Enderle. "Whoever that is, my heartfelt prayers are with them this season."

by MacNN Staff

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beeble
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2004

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12/26, 08:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
DumbA$$

You need further explanation of my opinion on this guy?

rubik
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Joined: Aug 2005

0

12/26, 08:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
not again...

If people keep giving Rob Enderle attention, he'll never go away!

alfredo
Forum Regular

Joined: Jul 1999

0

12/26, 08:48pm | report spam | close Reply |
As long as both

Intel and Apple are making money, they will find a way go get along.

thesearcher
Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Mar 2002

0

12/26, 08:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Here we go again...?

Is there such a thing as an analyst or tech journalist that you guys actually *do* like?

SpaceMonkey
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Oct 2002

0

12/26, 09:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
No perfect world

There's no such thing as perfect in business. On balance, though, I can't believe that an Apple-Intel partnership could be any worse than the Apple-IBM partnerhip. At least Intel is actually interested in making laptop chips.

Gorloth
Registered User

Joined: Nov 2001

0

12/26, 09:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
And Apple is going

Oh Yea and don't forget the remind folks that Apple is going out of business again. Yea I thought so when I bought 2000 shares @ $34 for the second go around. Gotta keep some of these "Doom sayers" around so we can have a laugh now and then.

gunnar
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Feb 1999

0

12/26, 09:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
With Luck

Sometimes difficult people get along best...

Eriamjh
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Oct 2001

0

12/26, 09:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Pure FUD!

Based on less than nothing.

Why use facts when you can speculate?

slider
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 1999

0

12/26, 10:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
Boring and Dumb

Could it really be any worst than the IBM relationship? This is FUD. I often wonder how writers such as this come up with their piece ideas, sitting there trying to think of what to write about next.

gurman
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12/26, 10:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Da FUDmaster

Why do you bother to quote a "journalist" who uncritically slams Apple and praises Microsoft every chance he gets? Given the repeated revelations of "journalists" on the take from corporate interests to tout their stuff, can anyone doubt this character's in the pay of Redmond?

rubik
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12/27, 12:01am | report spam | close Reply |
@ thesearcher

"you guys"? am i part of a group now? i can't think of any other tech journalist i don't like. but Enderle is... Enderle.

piracy
Mac Elite

Joined: Mar 2001

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12/27, 12:05am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Here we go again...?

thesearcher,

Rob Enderle has nothing but a huge stream of negative bullshit coming out of his mouth about Apple. Constantly. It never stops.

If there is some off-the-wall, looney, predicting-the-future, negative article about Apple, you can bet it features Rob Enderle. And because Intel is associated with Apple, now he's down on them, too. He's one of these guys who was wrong about Apple going out of business for as long as he's been an analyst, and just can't come to terms with Apple's stock records, record profits, record earnings, record revenues, record unit sales, and utter domination of some markets (portable music players and online music and video downloads, for example).

And, to be perfectly honest, most of these analysts don't know what the f*** they're talking about. (No, they really don't. No doubt you'll say something like "well, it's their JOB to do this; they must know what they're talking about!" No. Most of them really don't. Like, at all. They have no more information than you or I or anyone else, and then try to predict the future. And most of them are horrifyingly bad at it. Rob Enderle is one of these people, with some kind of a grudge against Apple to boot. Go ahead: find any article about Apple with Rob Enderle in it and see for yourself. He's a first class idiot.)

arthur dent
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12/27, 01:02am | report spam | close Reply |
FUD

This guy doesn't have a clue what facts comprise a story.

Keep moving...

ZinkDifferent
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Joined: Jan 2005

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12/27, 04:08am | report spam | close Reply |
Two Words

Rob Enderle

'nuff said

Fiyin
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12/27, 04:16am | report spam | close Reply |
You're all wrong

Did you people even read this article before commenting? There's nothing anti-Apple here. There's nothing that smacks of "Apple will be dead in 6 mos" or "This partnership is doomed to fail" He's just pointing out two somewhat obvious facts. Apple is a pain to work with (He cites HP, but I think Motorola's cellular group is a better example as the tension over an phone iTunes was public and HP never gave a detailed reason why they chose to break things off) and Intel's Customer Excellence scores aren't as high as they'd like. In fact he mentioned that Apple might have even gotten preferrential pricing and delivery from Intel. Sounds fairly pro-Apple to me...

henryblackman
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Joined: Feb 2003

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12/27, 05:27am | report spam | close Reply |
Right on fiyin

I agree with fiyin, it's hardly anti-Apple, and even if it is, we should try to keep a balance. I do believe that Apple doesn't partner well, but then few companies do - especially Microsoft. Microsoft, par example, create technology (some of it actually is good) and then force other companies to work around them - this is partnering to them.

Apple on the other hand don't really partner, but to create technology that uses XML (e.g. Keynote), or Bonjour (e.g. HP, Lexmark, Canon partnerships) that is open, and allows anyone to use it. The list goes on... Nokia with Safari, CD Baby with iTunes. These are real partnerships where business is good.

The Intel-Microsoft partnership is one of necessity. Microsoft needs Intel, but Intel doesn't need Microsoft, not with their ARM processors, their work with Linux, their clear partnership with Apple, etc. While Apple might not use "Intel Inside" (and I don't believe they will do anything to weaken their brand), or even use the "Centrino", or VIIV names, it seems as if they are very interested in creating better actual products than Intel has created prototypes for. Intel are just dying to get their chips into the living room, and beat IBM/Toshiba/Sony with Cell, and Power, and Apple are perhaps their last chance.

Peter Bonte
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12/27, 06:02am | report spam | close Reply |
RTFA

Read the article, its a good read and he makes valid points. Not anti Apple at all.

gurman
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12/27, 08:31am | report spam | close Reply |
Not anti Apple?

Well, you have to look at the guy's life work to see where this fits in context. It's not pretty, and anything he, as a confessed Windows lover, says about Apple has to be viewed with suspicion (at least). Is Apple hard to deal with as a "partner?" I thought their relationship with Motorola (now Freescale) and IBM was that of "customer" --- and the customer, once a contract is signed, is proverbially always right. If Jobs wanted to ditch Motorola and go Intel five years ago, it was because of Motorola's poor performance in producing competitve CPU's, not (just) because Apple/Steve is cranky. Likewise IBM's performance in the last couple of years, and the continued inability of Freescale to produce what Apple wants (whether it's practical is another questions).

I suspect Apple will be dissatisfied with Intel sooner or later, too, but it will be interesting to see how the business relationship (not partnership) turns out.

As for the article, the real angle is, "How does this affect my beloved Microsoft and Windows?" It's an interesting perspective for the Mac faithful to read, but no more rooted in reality than our own fanatics. A hard news story (oh no, not leaks! Call Legal before Steve goes ballistic) would have told us roughly what Apple was paying for which Intel products. But that sort of journalism would have been a lot harder work than FUD.

pixegenguy
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12/27, 08:49am | report spam | close Reply |
don't feed the troll

Enderle is looking for hits before the end of the year. Don't feed the troll!

This guy is so out of step with reality, it isn't even funny.

MrWizard
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Joined: Oct 2003

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12/27, 11:29am | report spam | close Reply |
It looked relevant

until I got to, "says tech columnist Rob Enderle". He always manages to find soup on his fly where Apple is concerned.

chas_m
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Joined: Aug 2001

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12/27, 12:11pm | report spam | close Reply |
Halleleujah!

Wow, I was worried about the Intel-Apple relationship myself, but now that Rob "I'm ALWAYS wrong" Enderle has weighed in, I can breathe a sigh of relief that this is going to go just swimmingly!

Jeebus, the guy may be an expert at SOMETHING, but tech analysis ain't it -- which makes me wonder how he keeps his job. Suffice to say this guy has a LONG track record of making s*** up and being wrong about reality. I'm surprised he's not based in Washington, quite frankly.

He's basically Hiawatha Bray before HB drank the Apple Kool-Aid. He's like Dvorak but somehow manages to APPEAR sane. He's not worth your time, in a nutshell, and I wouldn't trust this guy to pick fantasy-football winners much less stocks.

testudo
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12/27, 12:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Halleleujah

Hey, he's not always wrong. He got the intel switch right. Oh, of course, he said they'd switch years and years ago, and he kept saying it, but it finally came true. That's kind of like foretelling the future.

Sort of like people saying over and over again that Apple's working on a set-top box, or a PDA, or a phone, or a digital clock, or anything else. I can see it now: "July 23, 2009: Today Apple announce the iWalk, their new PDA. As we first predicted back in 1999, this iWalk will....."

bcthedj
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12/27, 12:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
Bless His Heart

Po ol' Rob, he tries

But, no, I won't give him a 'hit', though always happy to read what MacNN says he says - that's it.

Do like the quote -

"I'd hate to be the person responsible for maintaining the Intel-Apple relationship," writes Enderle. "Whoever that is, my heartfelt prayers are with them this season."

Rob, hint hint - that person is Steve

And thank God/Buddah/Great Spirit you're NOT him

However, do imagine he appreciates the prayer ;-)

BC Kelly Tallahassee Fla bckelly.com

testudo
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12/27, 01:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: right on flyin

Apple on the other hand don't really partner, but to create technology that uses XML (e.g. Keynote), or Bonjour (e.g. HP, Lexmark, Canon partnerships) that is open, and allows anyone to use it. The list goes on... Nokia with Safari, CD Baby with iTunes. These are real partnerships where business is good.

Wait, you say these are real partnerships, but that they don't partner, they just open things up. Which is it? Of course, I must've missed the whole Nokia/Safari thing. And I'm not sure of this CD Baby thing. But besides that....

Apple opens what they want to open. Basically it falls under the "Well, we're late to the game, no one uses our tech, so let's open it up and hope it becomes a standard". Or, if you like, its the "We don't make money on it, so let's open it up to fool people into thinking we're for openness".

And Keynote isn't open, per se. It just uses XML. But that's different. I don't recall seeing a "Here's our Keynote Schema, use it as you see fit!" documentation floating around (but since so few people use Keynote, it doesn't matter anyway).

As for Bonjour (nee Rendevous), this isn't an open standard from Apple. Its an open standard (zeroconf, I believe it was called) that Apple used.

But, the key here is that they open only what they don't lead in. Do you see them opening up Fairplay? Nope, and its not going to happen unless they fall real far behind the digital music landscape.

And MS might not play well with others, but anyone can license WMA for music without any problems. Does MS worry about losing revenues to other companies? No. Because they have a larger goal then to just sell more music players. World domination!

And if you think Intel doesn't need MS, you're nuts. Windows updates feed computer updates (which feed Intel sales) a lot more then Linux boxes or ARM sales or the like.

Fiyin
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12/27, 02:28pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: Not anti Apple?

gurman, why do I care about his "life work?" It's just an article, and I don't feel like digging around for some deeper evil plot against Apple.

This goes well beyond a business relationship; they've already had one of those for years: open up your machine, and you'll see a few Intel components inside. Apple needs a better platform to build products around, and Intel needs a more dynamic customer to complement the likes of Dell, Toshiba, etc. The level of cooperation required to make this successful for both parties is deeper than most partnerships in this industry.

What's the pro-Windows slant of this article? Well, it's right there at the end of the apple-intel section. He's hoping Apple's design and polish will impact the industry as a whole and improve the overall attractiveness of Windows-based systems. Sure that's not in Apple's best interests (ok, ok, I guess that's the evil plot you had in mind), but if it actually does benefit non-Mac users I can't really complain about that.

[soapbox] Fwiw, I think it's pretty bad that many of the comments were about the author and not the content. It kinda weakens the Mac user's position, if we ever had one, as informed users when we respond like fanboys. [/soapbox]

Andrew
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12/27, 02:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
FUD

FUD

shmoolie
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Joined: May 2002

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12/27, 09:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
For real?

This guy is all over the place. He says that Apple makes IBM and Motorola jump but in the next sentence he says that they don't jump. He says that Intel forces its customers to all use the same strategies (Intel Inside, etc) but then says that Apple won't be doing this.

I guess the moral of this story is that any "columnist" can write a story about anything they can think of and never bother to do any real fact checking or actually talk to sources at either company.

My prediction is that the Apple-Intel partnership will be a fairly normal one. Apple is relying on Intel to produce the brains for their computers and Intel wants Apple as a customer due to their increasing market share and their very public brand recognition, even though overall the revenue from Apple will be minor.

Intel won't insist on the Intel Inside sticker because they don't need it for branding since the term "Mactel" has become popularized; they will be able to run their own advertising letting the public know that Macs are now run by Intels' chips, and they will be able to use this to counter any monopolistic claims by AMD.

alextr
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Joined: Jun 2003

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12/28, 08:17am | report spam | close Reply |
?

as the article said, its an opinion and speculations! if then the big companies are unhappy then why don't they use AMD processors.

and its a bad article full of speculations. intel annouced the new processors everyone speculates apple will use them, most pc ventors announced their new computers with the new processors and apple hasn't. how then is it possible that its journalist knows that apple had the technology first?

because this is the only solid thing available at the moment ... and the viv which noone announced anythign yet.

corsair
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12/29, 12:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
I see his point

"He's just pointing out two somewhat obvious facts. Apple is a pain to work with (He cites HP, but I think Motorola's cellular group is a better example as the tension over an phone iTunes was public and HP never gave a detailed reason why they chose to break things off)"

Not just the Motorola cellular group. Steve pissed off Motorola when he killed the clones, forcing Motorola to lose the money they sunk into the Starmax line. Steve pissed off Motorola/Freescale over his handling of CPU schedules, I think this was in Ars Technica and it goes on and on. You can add the phone thing on top of that. Regardless of Rob Enderle's history, the fact is that Apple is what he says they are: a difficult partner.

corsair
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12/29, 12:24pm | report spam | close Reply |
i see his point 2

I forgot to mention. Ars Technica even postulates that it may not have been a brave story of Apple dumping Motorola/Freescale/IBM for Intel, so much as a sad story of Apple being dumped by Motorola/Freescale/IBM and being forced to go to Intel. http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/mac/mac-20050710.ars

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Apple-Intel partnership to be rocky?

updated 07:00 pm EST, Mon December 26, 2005

Apple-Intel partnership

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DumbA$$

not again...

As long as both

Here we go again...?

No perfect world

And Apple is going

With Luck

Pure FUD!

Boring and Dumb

Da FUDmaster

@ thesearcher

Re: Here we go again...?

FUD

Two Words

You're all wrong

Right on fiyin

RTFA

Not anti Apple?

don't feed the troll

It looked relevant

Halleleujah!

Re: Halleleujah

Bless His Heart

Re: right on flyin

re: Not anti Apple?

FUD

For real?

?

I see his point

i see his point 2

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