FW: [IP] !!! More on Apple to Ditch IBM

Now this sounds quite credible.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Saturday, Jun 4, 2005 7:47 pm
Subject: [IP] !!! More on Apple to Ditch IBM

Begin forwarded message:

From: Anthony Baker <anthony@thinkbigideas.com>
Date: June 4, 2005 6:06:43 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: More on Apple to Ditch IBM

Dave,

This is a post from Anonymous Coward over on Slashdot. He's provided a lot of great insight on Apple issues in the past and this message, in response to another post, seems to make a lot of sense.

If true, it just means that Apple might be arranging a deal with
Intel to have them manufacture PowerPC chips for them -- not switching to the x86 chipset.

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You are close but your anger is clouding your vision. I will fix up your list.

- IBM and Apple sign a multi chip agreement with very specific clock speed, power usage, production quantities and target dates built into the contract. the first chip is the PPC970.

- Jobs and IBM publicly trumpets that the chip will hit 3GHz in a year's time which is actually well below the contractual promises IBM made.

- Jobs and IBM get humiliated by the fact they didn't even come close and still aren't there after 2 years.

- Jobs throws constant fits and points out that IBM has missed every metric they contractually promised to meet. Jobs also points out that the way the contract is structured that Apple now has a right to a significant chunk of IBM IP and the right to shop for a manufacturer who is able to produce any and all of the chips under the original agreement.

While this is unfolding, IBM has been making the same pie in the sky promises to Sony and MS. As with Apple, IBM begins significantly scaling back the promises made to Sony and MS.

- Jobs get jealous of the attention paid to said console manufacturers

- Jobs exercises the options available and IBM gets taken to the cleaners.

I will restate. The contract Apple has with IBM has a "Moto" contingency. There are extremely tough provisions in the contract that Apple insisted upon to prevent another Motorola scenario from happening. IBM had no problem with the provisions because they were positive the could beet the goals by two in half the time. IBM fucked up badly.

Apple now owns a large amount of PPC IP and Intel will now be manufacturing and designing PPC chips.

One last comment on the Altivec "debacle." Considering that 99% of the chips IBM will manufacture over the next five years will have
Altivec or a close derivative, the debacle is IBM's blindness to the importance of vector processing for so long.
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