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Trial Separation (6/11/98)
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Sounds like the PowerPC chipmaking marriage may be over... IBM and Motorola are splitting up, and Motorola gets the house. IBM is vacating the Somerset PowerPC design center in Texas, leaving the whole place to Motorola. IBM employees at the Somerset center are being offered jobs at Motorola if they's like to stay. Juicy details are in an InfoWorld Electric story.
Don't panic, or anything; PowerPC development will continue. In fact, it's possible that the technology may progress even faster now, since both companies will "leverage their individual design activities" to compete for chip sales to Apple. Motorola, at least, is hoping that having free rein over the whole design center will let them "expand [their] commitment to new designs for Apple." IBM, on the other hand, seems to want to focus their development on "high-end PowerPC microprocessors for its server products," which may or may not have much direct use to Apple. After all, one of the reasons that the G3 is so cool is because it's optimized for Mac OS performance, so IBM's high-end chips might not be as Mac-suitable as they could be. On the other hand, we keep hearing whispers about how servers are a big part of Apple's future product strategy, so who knows?
By the way, we know that the PowerPC alliance includes Apple as well, so before we get a slew of mail referring to bigamy, ménages à trois, etc. keep in mind that it's really only IBM and Motorola actually working on the chips themselves. Although, back in the heady days of Exponential we suppose you'd have had an interesting point...
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SceneLink (767)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 6/11/98 episode: June 11, 1998: A hapless UCLA undergrad illustrates how PC buyers are forced to shell out dough to Bill Gates, even if they don't plan on running any Microsoft software. Meanwhile, Macfolk everywhere gear up for next month's MacWorld Expo, and IBM and Motorola get a quickie divorce...
Other scenes from that episode: 765: Like It or Lump It (6/11/98) You know, with all the hoopla surrounding the ongoing antitrust case against Microsoft, it's easy to lose sight of exactly why the government is taking action against them. One of the fundamental issues at hand is that Microsoft may be using its near-monopoly in the desktop operating system market (Windows hovers at somewhere around 90% market share, by most accounts) to establish a new monopoly in the internet browser market... 766: It's Showtime (Almost) (6/11/98) It's almost MacWorld Expo time again... who else is getting excited? Well, judging by the rumors of a smaller show and poor preregistration, we'd have to guess, "not many." We consider that a darn shame; this is the expo's first year in New York, and despite our ambivalence about the move from Boston (now it's actually a trip, which is kind of a pain, but at least we don't have to deal with the Big Dig and buses between two convention halls), we'd like to see it succeed...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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