On Friday, I pointed you to Round 1 of my heads up debate with Rob Enderle, the current record holder for our Apple Death Knell Counter. Our friends at MacNewsWorld.com organized and published the debate, which consisted of three questions centered around the basic question of which processor should Apple use, Intel or PowerPC.
In Round 1 of this debate, Mr. Enderle and I laid out our fundamental arguments on which processor family Apple should use (the other two questions will be published later). Today's installment, Round 2, consists of our rebuttals to each other.
In other words, I get the opportunity to deconstruct Mr. Enderle's amazingly inaccurate arguments to his face, instead of having to wait and do it from the confines of a column. For his part, Mr. Enderle tries to counter my arguments with more inaccuracies that I believe will have to go unanswered at MacNewsWorld.
Accordingly, I thought I would take a second to quickly go over them. I am writing from the assumption that you have read Round 2 first, so if this doesn't make sense, head over to MacNewsWorld and read. I humbly offer it as a good read, at least half of it.
IBM's G5 has had production problems: Thanks for that news flash, Chicken Little. It's true that IBM has had production problems at its G5 production facilities, but the sky is not falling. IBM will work through those problems, and everything will be OK. Intel itself has had its share of production problems through the years, but that's hardly a reason for every PC company to abandon ship.
Pentium M outperforms the G5 in some measure: Whatever. That's patently absurd. Or perhaps Mr. Enderle meant that the Pentium M outperforms the Pentium 4; again, whatever. The Pentium M is definitely a step forward in mobile processing technology, but it's still an emasculated x86 chip.
IBM controls PowerPC, while with x86 one gets a choice of vendors: AMD does indeed make great processors, but one of the reasons to go with Intel would be to go with Intel. Transmeta and AMD lack that "Intel Inside" marketing punch. Also, Transmeta hardly has a reputation for desktop computing power, and the company has been targeting the embedded market. Honestly, if at some point IBM were to fail utterly with the G5, I imagine Apple would go with AMD because AMD groks 64-bit processing, but that means Apple is stuck with AMD. The issue of "choice" is a non-issue, no matter how you slice it.
Also, while we're at it, IBM does not control PowerPC, as Motorola is also a PowerPC vendor. I am not going to offer Motorola as a long-term option for Apple as the company has done such a miserable job for Apple's desktop market, but it bears mentioning that Mr. Enderle was wrong yet again.
Apple doesn't control the whole widget because FreeBSD provides the kernel: Stupid, stupid, STUPID! FreeBSD doesn't provide the kernel at all, as OS X's kernel is based on Mach. Indeed, Apple's version of Mach is controlled by Apple, and is developed, in part, with the open source community. The FreeBSD layer, which sits atop the kernel, was originally based on FreeBSD (and Apple keeps up with FreeBSD development), but Apple controls the development of its implementation of this layer in any and every way it wants. He says "If you think about it, Apple probably controls less of its platform then companies like Wyse do." Mr. Enderle is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Patently and absurdly wrong.
Comparing computer OSes to embedded OSes: That's an absurd comparison. Embedded systems largely "just work," as Mr. Enderle suggests, but it's because the hardware is locked down, and the machines do buy one thing. In other words, embedded vendors have all but total control over the whole widget (Linux-based systems more so than Windows-based systems, but even there the hardware lock offers almost total control. In fact, thanks for making my point, Mr. Enderle. It's not about controlling the experience, it's about ensuring that systems work through the kind of total-control that allows you to control the user-experience.
Emulation issues: While interesting, this hardly negates the many, many issues I raised that make moving to Intel the wrong move.
Trending towards being a software maker: Mr. Enderle still doesn't get it. Apple's software is filling niches that Apple has identified as crucial to the Mac platform. These niches are either in markets that Apple wants to dominate (digital film and content creation), or in markets where Apple saw unfulfilled needs it could exploit (i.e. the consumer space and the iLife suite). This is not a trend away from hardware, but rather an expansion to make sure the Mac platform has what it needs.
Moving to Intel means cheaper Mac boxes to address the low-end market: Wow, that's just ignorant. While I too think Apple needs to address the low-end market, or low-expectations market (a term I coined in one of the installments of this debate that has yet to be published), the reason it has not done so has nothing to do with which processor is in a Mac. Look at the US$799 entry-level eMac: This machine is packed with features, is inexpensive, and comes with an G4 processor. If Apple wanted, it could shave another couple of hundred bucks from the eMac by stripping the CD burner, ethernet, modem, FireWire ports, etc. In fact, it is Apple's insistence on including such features, in addition to its desire to put form at the same level as function, that keeps its prices high. It is most specifically and certainly not the price of the processor. Why does Apple do this? Because for whatever reason, the company has decided not to go for the low-expectations market. While a mistake (IMNHO), it is far different from Apple not being able to make a cheap box because the processor is too expensive.
OK, there you have it. Even his rebuttal was filled with factual inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and downright fabrications. Go read both of our rebuttals, if you haven't already.