Status of 6.0 for production systems

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC [mailto:chad at shire.net]
>Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 6:08 AM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: David Kelly; FreeBSD-Questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: Status of 6.0 for production systems
>
>
>
>>
>> You keep talking like the laptop market is paramount - but who says it
>> is?  Laptops are always more expensive, and much more fragile.  Do you
>> honestly think that laptops make up the bulk of Apple's sales today?
>
>Yes, Ted, laptops are fragile, but they are also a very important
>part of ANY computer manufacturer's lineup and a growing part of
>their mix.  Go read the sales stats Ted.  For any PC manufacturer the
>laptop is growing greater than the desktop.
>

That is because there's very few "clone" laptops.

The PC market overall is growing.  Assuming that growth is evenly
distributed among clone (white box) makers like the corner computer
stores and the national makers like Dell, and evenly distributed between
laptops
and desktops - the lack of laptops from the corner computer stores is
going to mean
ALL computer manufacturers will see a high growth in sales of laptops
compared to desktops.  This doesen't mean a higher percentage of
the market is switching to laptops.  It means that the national makers
like Dell are losing a lot of desktop sales to cloners.

Also keep in mind that "sales growth" is a figure like "accelleration"

Suppose you and I get on the drag track, your in a 1000 cc Kawasaki
motorcycle and I'm in a top fuel dragster.  We both start at the same
time.  For the first 200 feet, your accelleration, or "growth" in the
sales parlance, will be greater than mine.  But at the end of the race
your going to be going at 100Mph and I'll be over 200Mph.

Laptop growth right now is higher than desktop growth but unless
it stays that way for another decade, the percentage of laptops
in service compared to desktops will still be smaller.

Laptops are important for Apple right now because they allow
Apple to offer a full service product line - in short, there's places
where you need a laptop and if your a Mac user you will need an
Apple laptop.  But I don't think Apple is expecting that it's going to
see it's desktop sales volume drop below it's laptop sales volume
in the future.  Unless of course Apples laptop sales growth stays
higher than it's desktop sales growth for as long as it takes to
change the volume ratio (probably 20 years)

>
>If Apple really only cared about pushing more kit (instead of
>creating and nurturing a growing market over the long haul) don't you
>think they would have come out with a G5 laptop if it were possible?

Your presuming that they have the technical know how to do so.
I always posted the info on the low-power 16 watt design, and
you ignored that because it didn't fit your world view of Apple.

If Apple uses wintel designs in it's future laptops, that pretty much
proves that they are as far as they can go in personal computer
design.

Compaq went through this 20 years ago, early in the DOS 2.0
days the DOS for Compaq machines was different than the DOS for
IBM machines - because Compaq had a complete set of architecture
designers and their Compaq "XT" computers at the time were
really different than the IBM ones.  Eventually Compaq found they
couldn't keep up with the changes that all the cloners were making
and gave it up, and then their designs reverted to the same thing
everyone else was doing - basically just copies of each other.

Apple may be in that boat now, we won't know until people start
taking apart the new x86 Macs.

In fact it may be that we are both completely wrong about this and
the real reason Apple went to the Intel chip is because they just
can't keep up anymore with the motherboard companies who are doing
wintel motherboards, and all the future Macs will be wintel with a
few additions (like the security chip)

Ted