by , 10:00 AM EST, November 6th, 2003
Steve Jobs says that Apple could move Mac OS X to "any processor," but that the company is sticking with IBM and its family of PowerPC processors for the time being. Why? Because he thinks that IBM's chips are competitive with Intel. The comments came during a financial analyst meeting conducted by Steve Jobs and other Apple execs late on Wednesday. C|Net has an outstanding report on the meeting, including the following:
"It's perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," Jobs said at a meeting with financial analysts. But Jobs said the company is happy with IBM's PowerPC family of chips and feels the performance is "quite competitive."
"Right now we don't see a compelling need to switch processor families," Jobs said. "We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong."
C|Net is also reporting that Mr. Jobs has effectively closed the idea of the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) supporting any MP3 players other than the iPod, or the iPod supporting downloads from any download service other than the iTMS. From C|Net:
"Why should we work with another music store when we are working with the Microsoft of music stores?" Jobs said. "I'd rather spend our engineering dollars on enhancing the iPod and the iTunes music store."
There's more information in the full article, which we recommend as a very good read.
Do you hear that Rob Enderle? Are you paying attention Andrew Neff (and again)? How about you, John Dvorak?
YOU WERE ALL WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!
Not that we're one to tell you "We told you so," but, well, we told you so.
As for this iPod/iTMS issue, we hope Apple isn't making a mistake. If Apple's plan for the iTMS is to sell iPods, then why limit the iPod to the iTMS? Let other services sell a few devices for Apple. At the same time, why not license FairPlay to other hardware vendors, and let them sell some songs for the iTMS?
That said, this is Apple and Steve Jobs about whom we are talking. This sort of hardware/software lock is exactly and precisely the strategy that Apple has always pursued under Mr. Jobs. It's all about controlling the whole widget.
Let's hope that it works out better in the music industry than it did for the Mac platform. The situations are not exactly analogous, but the comparisons are there.