Rob Thorpe (rthorpe@robertthorpeconsulting.com) on 1/18/11 wrote:
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>Brett (ggtgp@yahoo.com) on 1/18/11 wrote:
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>...
>>Here shows the GLU chip that made the MacSE/30 possible:
>
>Max and the others are quite right. The chips that you mention aren't particularly
>major efforts. Other computers manufacturers did similar things, even small ones.
>Acorn, for example, built a processor and chipset the architecture they used eventually
>becoming ARM. At that time even quite large chips weren't necessarily being made
>by large teams. MOS technologies and Western Design Centre were small companies.

I never claimed that Apple was a CPU design company.
Building a SOC (System On Chip) complete with Apple designed ADB and Apple designed FireWire and Apple designed IWM is not a trivial task.

My claim was "Apple has a long history of using SOC to drive cost down and volumes up."
And then I gave URLs to prove what I had said.
The resultant commentary is little more than Apple bashing.

I am aware of the downsides of SOC, Apple was locked to specific clock frequencies for literally years, where as the PC companies tweaked a few more MHz out of their PCs every few months.

Apple has an appliance mindset, not geek clock rate mindset.
Clock rates no longer matter, appliances that work do.

(Some geeks just went postal. ;)

I could use HP instead as an example of a company that drove use of SOC to drive down cost and enable smaller/cheaper form factors.
This has made HP the largest PC company, and profitable, against Dell who spends NOTHING on design and is not very profitable.
Dell could disappear tomorrow and no one would notice.

The problem with using HP as the example is that HP did not invent the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Each time creating massive new markets that did not exist before.

The PC and Microsoft folk all stood up and said "we will copy Apple and steal 90% of the market" iPod still has 90% market share.

The day when you could be Dell and slap your sticker on some one elses hardware and make money is over. These poor fools do not have a clue.

HP has the best chance to compete with against the iPad and Googles pad efforts. Everyone else is doomed. Microsoft will keep its ~10% pad market share.

While everyone is copying Apples old iPad, Apple is just about to change the market again with the quad pixel retina screen iPad2.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/16/apple_expected_to_pack_ultrafast_dual_core_sgx543_graphics_into_ipad_2_iphone_5.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/17/why_high_resolution_screens_matter_for_apples_ipad_2.html

Just try and tell me that the penny pinching PC companies would have spent the money to develop and pay for such technology.
The PC company mindset on costs and indifference to usability would have meant a half decade wait for such technology.

The PC companies would have waited for the volumes to justify the costs.
Apple creates the volumes by spending the money first.

Without Apple how long would we have had to wait for Microsoft to make its pad products into something useable with mass market volumes?
Another decade?

(Some geeks just went postal, again. ;)