DrunkenBlog

Apple and x86 Questions, Part 6

This go around it's Digital Rights Management (DRM), whether or not Apple and Intel are cooking up a revolution, and a small redux on the PowerPC versus Intel brought about by a reader trying to juxtapose what they were being told yesterday versus what they're being told today.

We're still chewing through these, although the order is a little out of whack because I messed up how I was sorting them by their first-come-first-serve basis and the text file never seems to shrink.

Still, if you sent one we'll get to it eventually...

Hiya drunkenbatman. I've got a question for you about the x86 *thing*...you're still taking questions, right?...oh no this could go badly...well here goes...

Is there any chance Apple is working with Intel to create anything truly novel? That is, will Apple really be shipping computers with the same exact innards as Dells and HPs, etc? A lot of people talk about this Intel transition being a great opportunity for Intel to try out all the cool ideas they have for processor designs, in which Microsoft won't allow them to indulge. Do you buy any of that?

Charles

People are always going to latch onto things when uncertainty has been introduced into something important in their lives, and well, Apple is important to a lot of people and they're trying to fit what's going on with how they percieve the world to be.

There's the old question that gay couples always get asked, or people always want to ask: "Which one's the girl?" No one wants to think of Apple as being the girl in a relationship, and whatever gets you through the night is alright, is alright. Unfortunately, when you try to really make this speculation fit, no matter how much caulk is used there are a hell of a lot of holes...

• We know where Intel is going from a technical standpoint, because they telegraphed it ages ago (relative in computer years) when they said they were going to scale back from the Pentium 4 core and build their technology for the future with the tech in the Pentium-M as a base. Big companies sort of have to tell the market -- and shareholders -- what they're doing if it could have long term consequences or benefits for the company.

  Their efforts since then have been to pump the Pentium 4 in GHz and give it dual cores, while adding in technology where they can from the Pentium 4 to the Pentium M. Obviously the Pentium M will only scale so high as it is for the future, and the Pentium 4 is at the end of its marathon, so something has to give. It would make sense they're working on a more capable and scalable core that takes energy efficiency into account as well as GHz.

  It isn't as though Intel is working on another brand new ISA (instruction set architecture) that Apple is going to run in the vanguard on, or that Apple would find religion in the Itanium. They're going to be using the same CPUs as everyone else, and while they may not choose to use boards in standard sizes off the shelf the tech will generally be the same.

• There isn't really anything coming to mind that Microsoft could be crimping Intel's style on that Apple wouldn't be just as big of a bitch about if not more. Obviously corporate partnerships are things each party keeps an eye on, and Intel knows that while its interests and Microsoft's 'cooincide often' they can't count on spooning every evening, but there's just little Microsoft has held Intel back on.

  Intel keeps a few toes in the Linux world, but just the tips. We know Microsoft made Intel its bitch when it came to some subsystem software quite awhile ago because it came out in the anti-trust trial -- forcing them to kill the tech -- but Intel just doesn't really do much in this arena. There was a time when everyone thought x86 was dead, and that CHRP boxes with PowerPC's inside would be the future, and Microsoft gave Intel some headaches in that period by porting to just about everything... but as of now they primarily just keep to licking AMD now and again to keep them moist just in case.

  There's a symbiotic relationship there that neither is going to screw up even as they make little feints -- because they're practically required to as good corporate stewards -- to the contrary. Intel plays in software, but it's primarily to support its own tech, and the areas Microsoft might be crimping their style on out of self preservation are the areas Apple would care about just as much if not more.

• You have to have a realistic perspective of Apple's position in the marketplace. People are picturing Apple coming into this with as big a stick of Intel, and I'm guessing that's where some of this is coming from: Mindshare is getting in the way of reality and throwing the equation wonky. Apple going with Intel was a feather in Intel's cap, because of Apple's image and visibility and the fact that they weren't choosing AMD, not because of sales.

  Remember, Apple has less than 5% of the market in North America. World-wide, it's much lower. Depending on whether you are looking at just North America or world-wide, Apple generally comes in at #5 or #9 in terms of CPU units sold. While the pack is pretty close down at the lower numbers, but even if we look where Apple is at its best -- North America -- we're talking Dell having a 30% share compared to Apple's 5%. They're way behind Gateway.

  This isn't the end of the world, but it's relevant because you have to realize Intel is a supplier. If one guy is buying six times as much they're going to get the most grease. You may be able to allow for some more grease because of the noise Apple can make, but you have to call a spade a spade here and recognize which one of the couple is on top. If Intel was funneling Apple some uber-tech that they weren't making available to the others, they'd be screwing themselves for very little gain.

If I had to guess, some of the seeds for this speculation comes from many, many years ago during the iMac days when Intel seemed to be primping Apple and trying to get x86 computer makers to be more 'creative' and was showing off all these concept PCs based on cubes and pyramids and who knows what else. It was more than a little amusing and made the rounds in the Mac world in a big way.

There's always a chance, and I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round like everyone else, but no I don't really buy it.

DB, can you do anything to send relief to my DRM paranoia? I do feel very troubled advocating for a friends iBook purchase theese days, guess they'll end up with Pentium M flavoured Dell or Medion* products soon (*=´cheap´ pcs sold via supermarket discount groups like Aldi, etc in europe. Cheap in quotation because actually not really cheap but stuffed with features so much it challanges system stability).

And what is so bad about that PowerPC? Hasn't it only been a year or so when i read why PowerPC was surperior to Intel and its architecture was way more future proof, even that Intel has been cought in a cul-de-sac? All marketing hoax? I am confused, enlighten me, i feel like a toy at the moment.

losof

I'm going to guess your questions about the PowerPC have been taken care of by some of the earlier entries or other things around the web, but the big thing you have to take into account is that no one really knows whats going on, just that we probably don't have the whole story. I.E., it's been said over and over that the PowerPC is superior architecture and a much better starting point going forward, yet Apple isn't sticking with it, so the speculation has to wrap around that loose end.

My guess was that Apple's share and buying power couldn't support the costs of turning out what they needed from the PowerPC, and IBM didn't see any reason to suppliment them and was turning its eye towards the much larger embedded market.

As it is, Apple iMac G5s are cooking in their own heat and Apple is adding liquid cooling so chips at 2.5GHz+ won't burn micro holes into themselves, but this was a chip derived from a core with anything but power management in mind, and Apple really needed an effort there.

IBM has since claimed they could put out chips with the watts Apple wants, but didn't really say why they weren't. Others have speculated that IBM just got tired of dealing with Apple -- that it was a losing effort for them in just about every way -- and that they politely told Apple they weren't interested in getting involved with what Apple wanted. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

To my knowledge, that's the extent of the available knowledge on the subject, which brings us to the other part of your question... Digital Rights Management.

Dun dun dun dun.

Unfortunately, there's very little I can do to dispell your fears regarding DRM in any way. Not long ago, it was discovered that Apple had support for some features in Intel's chips called "Trusted Computing". Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing had a writeup where he damned it to hell and says he'll switch from the platform if Apple goes ahead with it.

It's worth reading, and I'm pretty much with him, but there are some things I think are really important to keep in mind when discussing this...

1. Apple is already a DRM company, and its not going badly

   I.E., it's working for them with the iTunes Music Store and there is little reason to think it won't work in the future. Geeks are heavily annoyed, with DVD Jon causing some gray hairs by constantly hacking it to work with something or other, but real geeks generally buy CDs and rip the content in at higher bitrates anyways. In other words, Apple is more than happy to lose the geeks if the general consumer isn't aware or doesn't really care, because once it's pervasive enough the geeks will have little choice but to toe the line down the line.

   The only real way to put the brakes on it is to have the conversation now and to get Joe Public talking about it now. Cory talking about it is a start, but few others are yet and no one is really asking Apple the questions they need to answer.

   I'm serious -- if larger publications are asking Apple the questions and not getting answers, and creating the discussion their readers, it's a whole different game than some geeks bitching about it on the internet. If it's found that people aren't interested yet Apple still ships it... If this doesn't happen, it's pretty much too late. Once it's birthed, everything will be about scaling it back in little areas for PR soundbytes.

   Unfortunately, the only way larger publications know they should be tackling this is if they sense their readers want to know, and Joe Public is only barely aware of DRM if at all. This would require initiative on the part of the publishers instead of taking what's fed, and larger publications aren't really known for that. It's also not an easy issue to boil down into why you should care for Joe Public, which means it takes nuance, and nuance often doesn't sell en masse.

   And of course if you piss off Apple with uncomfortable questions, and you probably won't get the quote you want for your next story, or your iMac will arrive for you to review a few weeks later than others get theirs or, worse yet, Apple just lowers its advertising buy in your publication. If everyone wants the questions asked that's one thing -- because there is safety in numbers for the publications -- but these types of things takes guts to ask.

   Even worse, much of the base won't get it and could well be annoyed with the publication for asking the hard questions. "Wait and see what it is and then complain!" they'll say, but as we've established this is one of those issues you can't wait and see on.

2. Don't get too hung up on Trusted Computing

   Or rather, don't get too hung up on the hardware aspect of it on say, the Pentium-D. It's not necessary for lock-in and DRM, it just makes it harder to hack and easier to implement. That's it.

   Apple's Fairplay DRM can be gotten around, but only with enough hacking that a fractional amount of users will actually bother. WindowsXP has included activation since it shipped, and activation tied to hardware is certainly a form of DRM.

   Adobe's flagship applications require activation which is tied to your hardware on the PC, and now with the Mac since Creative Suite 2 shipped. Macromedia has been using their own scary activation scheme for quite awhile. Basically, there is the behavior (DRM, Activation, etc.) and there is how its implemented, and by focusing so much on the implementation the behavior could well sneak between the legs.

   There's nothing stopping Apple from adding a kernel extension to Mac OS X right now, and shipping their apps with code that requires a check against it after a phone home, except users saying they won't accept it.

Above it all, don't forget the Electronic Frontier Foundation. People can get confused about what the EFF does and doesn't do, but this is the type of thing they'll try to get involved with because the precedent is so incredibly dangerous.

They can't do a whole lot until the picture has been painted and things are going out the door, but assuming consumer apathy doesn't stop their rights from being trodden it'll be up to the EFF to take it up in the courts.

It certainly wouldn't be a bad time to head over to their site and to get an idea of what they're about and how you may be able to help them out.