Daring to Dream: Apple & IBM 523
Anonymous writes "The Register has
a comment piece of the marriage (speculative) between IBM and Apple. Although wildly speculative, it is not improbable. With IBM already supplying PowerPCs to Apple and Apple having not signed up to IBM's PowerPC consortia, there are hints in this get-together. Apple would also supply IBM with the "lifestyle" side of things. If it does happen, it would be most interesting."
Um.... no. (Score:1, Interesting)
buy (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM + Apple = good news for Linux (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Except... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool! That would be akin to my lifelong dream of an asteroid passing the planet and infecting all bears with some kind of mutation that would make them as big as godzilla and give them a taste for people filled buildings. Life is too boring without that kind of thing happening more often.
In other news... didn't Jobs market the Mac as being anti-suit, anti-corporate, anti-business, anti-IBM originally? Oh well, if we had republicans voting for Kerry and deomcrats voting for Bush this past election, ANYTHING is possible.
Re:Except... (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM growing it's services biz and apple not having one is okay, they compliment each other. Apple has a reputation for building easy to use interfaces on top of *nix hardware/software. I'ved used OS X server and it makes running apache/mysql/etc. a lot easier for a *nix novice.
I've been a long time apple fan and I would be cautious of this merger. I'd hate to see apple's "style" or whatever you want to call it formed into the mainstream by the behemouth that is big blue.
Change from RUMOR to WILD SPECULATION (Score:5, Interesting)
For all we know, some editor could have forgot to put Apple's name in there. Or maybe Apple is still sitting on the fence about it, who knows. But this isn't even a "rumor" yet.
the new chic (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see teh future of IMB/APPLE laptops being the new chic. High class execs and those that want the style and performance of IBM/APPLE will buy these. Hot damn, I can picture this being the downfall of Microsoft. Now I'm not one to point a finger at anything *nix or not and proclaim the death of MS, but with this I can see it actually happening within the better half of a decade.
I'd buy it.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not at all - this was being touted 15 years ago. The whole Pink/Taligent/Magic thing was an Apple and IBM alliance (I may get some codenames mixed up, anyone who knows the ones I'm looking for please jump in). I can remember reading this on the long since defunt UK weekly New Computer Express.
It was actually more plausible then too. IBM were still a major power in the PC world, and Windows dominance hadn't completely taken over.
Cheers,
Ian
IBM selling PC division (Score:3, Interesting)
Its all about return on capital and as the Ipod thing fades (at least from a margin standpoint) Apple once again reverts to a niche player without great prospects for increased return on assets or equity.
This is not to say that Apple wont make money or continue to evolve, it just doesn't make sense financially for IBM to be involved.
My Christmas wish... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Except... (Score:4, Interesting)
I found a giant tree frog in my toilet one morning. When I tried to fish him out, he retreated down the hole and I had to get to work. He wasn't there when I got home. About a month later, moving a desk, I found his mummified body.
Another Load... (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of industry writers don't seem interested in understanding Apple's motivation (which of course means trying to understand Steve), so they ascribe standard corporate motives, and we end up with wild-ass rumors like this. But of course that doesn't work, and they're wrong a lot (they're right sometimes too, but how many crazy rumors have you heard?), and so the industry looks at Apple like they're the crazy unpredictable man-child of computing. Who happened to get lucky once or twice with the iMac and maybe the iPod. Won't happen again.
But the thing is, they don't want to be on par with other manufacturers, and they don't want to beat them at their own game. Apple wants to change the rules and beat the others at Apple's game. That's the approach they've taken for a long time - iPod being probably the best example. It's also why Apple won't release a sub-$1000 machine, even though it might mean huge market share.
So in short, the article's another load of poorly thought-out crap. The idea that IBM could/would buy Apple is like saying that when you hit the lottery, your boss will be cleaning your house - the transaction has to go both ways, and as willing as IBM may be (and I'm betting they're not), Apple won't bite.
IBM PowerPC consortia (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I think that'd be pretty cool and may happen. I just don't see this as very good evidence given the circumstances surrounding PPC and Apple's seminal involvement in the architecture.
Not a merger, how about partnership? (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM has wanted to get rid of Microsoft for the last 20 years or so without much success. Microsoft takes a big chunk of the profit in the low margin corporate PC business which does not leave much money on the table for HW vendors. IBM is a company that built its brand recognition on (at least perceived) quality, reliability and security of its products. Being forced to rely on a Microsoft OS as the most user visible part of a corporate IT solution is a disaster. The latest round of security problems with Windows XP and IE over the last year may have pushed IBM over the edge.
For the server side of the corporate IT market, IBM can rely on Linux or internal IBM OS variants. For desktops and notebooks there is really no option to Microsoft since the death of OS2.
If IBM chooses to offer Apple desktops and notebooks as part of their corporate solution portfolio, this will immediately make Apple products more acceptable from the perspective of CIOs. OSX user interface is easy to learn and use and OSX already supports the Microsoft Office suite, which is pretty much the only desktop (un)productivity suite used by most corporate customers.
I have no problem with this concept (Score:3, Interesting)
Or high-end Macs being sold through IBM, just like iPods are now being sold through HP.
This doesn't seem like such an absurd reality to me.
Another alternative (Score:4, Interesting)
As has been stated here often enough, Apple does not really have what businesses need in a machine: inexpensive (relatively) headless machines that can be dropped into an office cubicle. And there's a good reason for that. An Apple workstation for $800 or so would cut into their Power Mac
However, if IBM were to release one only available to businesses it might satisfy this need while allowing Apple to protect their core business. IBM could then add their own software or add-ons to integrate with their server line. Maybe even ship the systems with Office pre-installed for businesses.
Whether corporate America would buy into it or not is another story, but it makes for an interesting thought.
Re:Except... (Score:2, Interesting)
I can speak for Lotus. It worked well for a while, but now, IBM just re-brands everything as Websphere (taking a page out of the .NET book). Every once in a while, IBM wakes up and says, "Let's put some money behind Lotus!" But before the dust even clears, they have forgotten what they were marketing and go back to sleep with tiny dream bubbles that say --websphere-- floating above their PHB heads.
Re:Taligent (Score:5, Interesting)
I do. I worked there. I was one of the system administrators.
You should have seen how the Apple developers (the biggest portion of the developers were from Apple) responded when they all got RS/6000 machines on their desks! They hated them. It was a big honkin' square boxy machine with a clicky keyboard, and a command line. And though the monitor was color, when it booted up, the console looked like a green screen. But it was a PowerPC machine, which they did like. (We used IBM RS/6000 Model 250 machines, which were pizza box shaped 66 MHz PowerPCs. Some of the very first PowerPC machines ever made, I believe.)
Anyway, after a while, sometime in 1994, IBM sent over a bunch of developers. They mixed with the Apple people OK, but they were definitely from two different worlds. The IBM people all brought OS/2 machines with them, and they were just as devoted to those OS/2 machines as the Apple people were to their Macintoshes. Plus they all dressed differently and thought differently. But not entirely differently. They managed to get some work done and build some cool stuff together.
Re:ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
It is also far more likely that this a join venture rather than an take over would happen. Apple licenses the OS to IBM, IBM creates business-oriented Mac-compatibles complementing Apple's home-oriented lines. IBM and Apple get to point at each other as a second source (the main advantage x86 PC vendors have over Apple or IBM trying to sell POWER/PowerPC kit).
It think the problematic word here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did Apple and HP merge? No.
HP is selling iPods. Not a merger, a stretegic partnership.
IBM and Apple could never exist under the same management but they could sell the same products to different people (i.e. HP iPod.) Apple isn't letting anyone build competing hardware but it is letting them sell the same hardware to groups of people that it can't reach alone, in the case of HP that would be windows users, in the case of IBM it would be businesses.
Apple has clearly shown how to impliment open source in their business practice (please feel free to bash on this point, but they are a profitable company integrating open source concepts into their business strategy with success) which IBM is surely interested in, and it isn't windows.
Did anyone read the article on CELL processors? [slashdot.org]
Hello, they're based on 970s.
Re:Taligent (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't recall the dates of Steve Job's absence from Apple. Maybe all the Taligent drama played out while Jobs was off conceiving the Next Big Thing. The cultural differences and Mr Job's, uh shall we call it management style, are certainly impediments to a merger. If you think Apple won't be Apple without Jobs, then even a consumated merger will be between IBM and "some PC alternative that lost its magic"...I'm not so sure.
Just keep in mind how often and in how many ways IBM has been bested by Microsoft and needs, for business and maybe more emotional reasons, to settle the score. Some readers here may be aware that one reason we all use Windows instead of OS2 was that Microsoft was handed the first-mover advantage at the dawn of the PC era by the fact that IBM was still reeling from a 7-year antitrust battle with the DOJ: IBM was forced to find an indepent company to provide the OS for their new PC...by the time they decided that they could push OS2, it was too late. That still stings. Now DOJ is just finishing up with Microsoft, and the cards are not all dealt yet in europe...an IBM/Apple hardware or software offering would not operate under such a cloud.
The fact that Apple has for the most part strangled its market potential by keeping its hardware platforms proprietary and its systems, therefore, more expensive than the waves of cheap biege boxes that microsoft rode to glory would become an advantage to a company with the manufacturing might of IBM. A lesser partner for Apple would not have the "nobody ever got fired for specifying IBM"-mentality going for them. So the proprietary Mac realm, with nary an alternative platform, has been a huge if self inflicted limitation to Apple's market appeal but the IBM name could erase that deficit if only they bring out a few budget models at the bottom of the market. IBM is already making the CPU and has both the "Cell" processor and some low power consumption techologies that can extend the technical sexiness and superior performace of Apple products for quite a few years without increasing the costs. Apple [just ask its faithul users and investors] has been on the perpetual verge of gaining more marketshare: they certainly have mindshare exceeding their market penetration. Who would need much convincing that IBM would love to shove Gate's aside? Having shed their PC division [how many of those PC were sold with *nix on them?], what harm could they do themselves by energizing an alternative platform that, with a few impractical exceptions, demands an OS solution that Microsoft can't horn in on? Remember when you last had an idea for an application and had to choose whether to develop it for Mac or for Windows? You went where the money was probably. Users have a more complicated choice with some driven by price, some needing the security of the most stable vendor or the most supported OS and some more interested in the most elegant and powerful user interface. If all of a sudden the Mac is an IBM product, Apple goes from meeting one out of three to two out of three customer concerns...[and maybe the constant flow of news about Microsoft security holes will begin to soak in, but most PC users aren't reading that news]. The outcome would certainly NOT be the Mac/Wintel ratio suddenly capsizeing. But when you get your next application idea, the decision that could confront you might be more like: "do I develop for the larger but very crowded market with the platform that is peaked or do I bet on the momentum?" Remember, investors invest in momentum ( their guess about where the herd is headed). Users just want to be in the middle of a herd. As a developer, you have to figure out where your paycheck is coming from: investors or users.
Also, IBM has learned how to digest companies slowly: witness Lotus and Rational...by the time the last sandal-shod Apple engineer has been driven nuts by some east coast guys that wear ties [nobody at Rational was wearing a tie when I interviewed there this spring], IBM will have long since assimilated all the Apple ideas that it can use.
Re:Enterprise/business sales (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I got some bad crack or something, but I think it's a good idea....
what comes next? (Score:1, Interesting)
the iHome. for slightly more than the price of a high-end pc you get a home server (xserve without enterprise stuff) , a few dumb terminals (imacs with no guts), airport, airtunes, and 1-3 mini-ipods. it all runs from a tricked out pre-installed OS X server and all the ical/isync/iapps goodness. also includes an apple-ized X10 control program complete with apache served web interface so you can monitor and adjust your house from work. maybe a few starter X10 interfaces with links to more.
all pakaged and run through the apple human interface and industrial engineering teams so it ends up in pretty apple box with quality apple instructions. at compusa for under $5k. THE yuppy and high-tech family must have.
apple's engineers should be given a green light, good things will happen if so. but selling to IBM is huge, i can't say i'm a fan of it. i'd rather see apple pull off the iHome on their own.
if only sony would get in the picture.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, All the news is starting to make sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Only an idiot thinks Apple is up for sale (Score:3, Interesting)
Any one who believes this clearly never worked in a Steve Jobs company.
Nor do they know their history. Back when NeXTSTEP was natively ported to IBM systems it outperformed AIX. That was not cool to the suits so they promptly forced it to run at the interpreter level and buried the joint venture.
Steve never forgets. And to the dickwad that claims his ego is enormous I say, "Feelin' inadequate still?"
Ugh, just shut up please (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM could gear up and go all consumer on our asses if it wanted, but it's not going to because the company is committed towards moving away from things it is historically weak in. It could gear its PC unit up-scale and sell value-added, noncommoditized PCs if it wanted, but it doesn't because they're not particularly useful to enterprises.
It would NOT be possible for IBM to suddenly leverage Macs from 5% to 80% market share, and if it tried such a pitch to a valuable customer, well, HP would be up one valuable customer and IBM down one Sales Manager and one Palmisano.
Re:Ugh, just shut up please (Score:1, Interesting)
Imagine if Apple was able to cut their production costs due to a sweetheart deal on hw technology from IBM giving them both better and cheaper in the personal computer market. Imagine if IBM deployed cross platform (linux, aix, big iron) business solutions coupling the Apple GUI and usability with the reliablity, support and power of their traditional server offerings.
Now imagine what the MS/x86 vs. Apple/IBM market share would look like a few years after the above occurs. Personally, I would be shocked if three years after the above occurs, that Apple/IBM joint venture had less than 50% penetration in both the home and business markets. What would the feasability of a merge be then?
Of course if the above occurred I wouldn't care whether or not they merged, since both the beast from Redmond and the crappy x86 architecture processors would be rotting in their conjoined graves.
Steve Jobs on IBM Hardware [Thinkpads] (Score:2, Interesting)
When asked about this, he said something like, "Once Apple builds a better machine, I will buy it."
Other rumors like this had Jobs booting up OpenStep and using Omniweb instead of MacOS 8-9.x.
I tend to believe these rumors. Jobs has always been the idea man. Holding to an ideal as a challenge for his engineers to outdo him seem right.
Anyway, earlier posts saying that contracting with IBM so that Big Blue can sell machines using its own PowerPC chips instead of Intel/AMD stuff does make sense in a way. Maybe such a deal would be contingent on IBM increasing PPC production, who knows.
IBM could ship servers running some *Nix variant (maybe even based on Darwin [yes, now I am dreaming]) that is optimized for interplay with MacOS on the desktop. End users, get Photoshop and MS Office on their Macs, IT guys get *Nix security, IBM sells its chips, I don't see a loser here.
Re:Taligent (Score:3, Interesting)
anyway, one important thing has changed since then: Macs used to be based on OS 9 - very nice GUI with almost no technical merit. Now they run OS X, which, while still sporting a nice GUI, is technically the most advanced OS shipping. large parts of it are written in a dynamically binding OO language, for chrissake! it's heaven for techies.
missing piece (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure IBM HATES putting "Intel Inside" stickers on their laptops and machines they use for desktops. Throwing a PowerMac under a desk at a client's operation is a DOUBLE win for IBM. Eats into Microsoft and it doesn't say "Intel" on it anywhere.
IBM and Apple have one major thing in comon. They both sell HIGH quality solutions which come with a pricetag. Sure, Apple has some sub $1000 solutions, but there are venders out there selling sub $300 systems which totally lack quality. Sellings systems with such a pricetag requires consumer confidence and a "NAME". Receiving a product purchased from IBM having a sticker on it that says "Intel Inside" is a HUGE blow to IBM.
I don't know about you, but I was shocked to see the POWERMAC G5 when it was released. My VERY FIRST thought of the Powermac G5 was "This looks like as if Apple had designed a system for IBM." I don't know exactly why I had that thought, maybe it was all the hype around the IBM PPC 970. But if you look at a powermac, it looks like the combination of eligance but the look of power. In otherwords, Apple + IBM.