Why macs override PC's
APPLE AND THE MACINTOSH OPERATING SYSTEM

Apple, as many of you reading this article are well aware, has had 
financial problems over the last year. These were initially brought 
about by being too successful in the last quarter of 1995! What 
companies would love to have sold more equipment than ever before and 
had the largest turnover in any one quarter ever - over $3 billion, had
backorders of $1 billion and lost only $69 million. Their market share 
slipped only very slightly because they could not deliver enough 
systems!

During the year that has followed Apple has been putting a 3 year 
strategy in place to correct some operations in the company. Yet, every
time a bad financial result is reported, Apple is being hounded by the 
press and usually with inaccurate or misleading comments. This has 
compounded the problems and placed even greater pressure on Apple. 
Fortunately the new senior management team appear to be made of stern 
stuff and are getting on with turning Apple round.

Intel and Microsoft are excellent marketers, but when you look behind 
the hype you find that all is not as one would expect. This series of 
articles attempts to illustrate what is really happening.

THE UNDERLYING TECHNOLOGY

BYTE magazine recently did a comparison between Pentium and Pentium Pros
versus the PowerPC range of processors. This was done before the release
of the MMX technology by Intel, January 1997. Bearing in mind that MMX
does NOT help overall processing, but only multimedia functions, a 
comparison of processors remains valid. Even when they are, they are 
still NO overall match for the PowerPC range of computers. This means 
Intel's attempt to beat the Power PC technology has failed. The Intel 
KLAMATH processor comes in at 233Mhz next month (so what, the Macs are 
already still much faster than this). The 440LX will follow later this 
year, but we await the P7 processor with interest. This was due in mid 
1997 but has been put back to mid 1998..

A point worth noting is that Apple, IBM and Motorola tend to understate
and over deliver in chip performance and to date all new processor chips
have been ready earlier than expected!.

Summarising BYTE magazine's results:

*       a 117MHz PowerPC processor outperforms a 200Mhz Pentium system
   by 5%. 
*       a 200Mhz 603e processor as used in the Apple Performa (home user
   systems) outperforms a Pentium 200Mhz by 80% 
*       a 200Mhz 603e processor outperforms a Pentium Pro 200Mhz by 40%.
*       a 200Mhz PowerPC 604e processor outperforms a Pentium 200Mhz
   system by125% and a Pentium Pro 200Mhz system by 80%. 

Bearing in mind that PowerPC systems are already running at 260MHz 
(603e) and 225Mhz (604e) and are being sold in volume by Apple and the 
clone manufacturers, it begins to make the Pentium look pretty slow, and
expensive, by comparison. The prices paid for these higher performing 
systems are comparable to PC's. Go and investigate if you do not believe
me. By the way Mac prices are set to go still lower and the performance
significantly higher. 

Already Power Computing have released a pre-production version of a 
300Mhz PowerMacintosh system. Some of the sub system components have yet
to be tuned up, but will be up to speed by the time production begins in
February/March 1997. These systems will be cheaper, and faster, than the
current top flight Macs. This will leave the current PCs even further behind.

TriMedia technology and the MMX technology

Now MMX. Great as it is for Multimedia tasks on a PC (and not all tasks
involve multimedia), Apple and Phillips are developing the TriMedia card
(so-called because it tackles the Multimedia issue as well), which has 
the potential to annihilate an Intel PC in any multimedia application. 
Based on information currently available, the first release of this 
card, expected by mid-year, will be able to handle 4 BILLION 
instructions per second, and not be hamstrung by being tied to the 
central processor speed as is the case with MMX.

Having probed a little further into this issue, the second generation of
this technology is expected to be incorporated on the motherboards of 
all Apple and Apple Clone manufacturer systems during 1998. It is 
expected that it will deliver 4 times the performance of the add-in 
card, i.e. it will be capable of processing 16 BILLION instructions per
second. Now, add to this the fact that by mid-year Apple and the Apple 
Clone builders will be delivering systems with Clock Speeds of 466, 500
and 533Mhz (the equivalent for Pentiums would be in the 700Mhz to 1.2Ghz
(gigahertz) range) - then anyone buying a PC right now is buying the 
equivalent of a biplane when they could be getting the equivalent of the
latest and fastest jet fighter. Yet the PowerMacs are likely to prove 
cheaper, especially once the price/power/performance ratios are taken 
into account.

Meanwhile, Apple, IBM and Motorola are not standing still. They are 
producing new derivatives of the 603e and 604e processors (the G1 and 
G2) for release later this year or in early 1998. These are planned to
 start with clock speeds beyond the current top speeds of the Current 
603e and 604e processors. Exponential, the people who have already 
accelerated the current range of 603e and 604e processors to such super
speeds of 466, 500 and 533Mhz, will possibly find a way to incorporate 
their technology into these new chips as well. Then you may just begin 
to see what I mean when I say buying a PC is the equivalent of buying a
biplane. 

This technology will become cheaper over time as all PC technology does.
The K2 chip development for the year 2000 and beyond is being evolved 
now - think what that means given the current processing power in the 
603/604 range today.

MacWorld (an independent magazine about the Mac) have done preliminary 
testing of an MMX enabled PC against a PowerMac at the same clock 
speeds. Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia xRes were used because both have
been rewritten to take advantage of the MMX technology in the Pentium.

Overall, the Power Mac advantage ranged from 10 - 30% with the exception
of some filters in Adobe Photoshop (an image editing program), which
showed a slight advantage to the MMX Pentium. It should also be noted that
the PC performance is partially increased by the CACHE inside the
processor and not by the actual MMX technology itself!

One additional item that I would like to see included in any testing of
software is the addition of tests using Speed Doubler. This could have 
significant benefits because about 50% of Apple's current operating 
system is still not PowerPC native and, therefore, must have a 
significant beneficial impact on any tests which are undertaken.

When it is borne in mind that the Power Macintosh can already run at 
significantly higher clock speeds than a Pentium, it becomes apparent 
that MMX was Intel's attempt to keep up with the PowerMacs. It has 
failed.

The February Byte has some interesting snippets....

"... noticed the launch of the world shattering, multimedia blasting 
revolutionary MMX technology?...renders your current Pentium software 
obsolete at a stroke!"

"Could an MMX Pentium outperform a high-end Macintosh?" The answer: NO!!
Although MMX delivered dramatic performance in some operations, overall,
a Mac still beats an MMX Pentium"

Byte February 1997 p26.

Further unforeseen problems with the MMX technology are now beginning to emerge.

The January 1997 issue of MacWorld, page 15, has the results of an 
interview with a Sam Wilkie of Intel. What follows is a brief summary of
that article. I would strongly recommend you read it in full.

Multitasking problems - speed and corruption issues

Speed problems to come?

The Intel MMX uses the Floating Point registers because otherwise 
Microsoft and other vendors would have had to rewrite their operating 
systems. There is a 50 'ticks of the clock lag' when context switching 
between MMX and Floating point instructions. What really happens to 
performance when switching between MMX and non-MMX tasks has yet to be
done, but on present evidence do not hold your breath.

Corruption problems

If you are browsing the web or doing other work which may require the 
MMX instruction set to be activated transacting work using the floating
point registers (e.g. spreadsheet accountancy software), it is possible
for your work to be corrupted, as the floating point registers are 
overwritten with graphics instructions. Additionally, as you will NOT be
aware whether MMX instructions have been activated in your other 
application, then this situation could become very interesting. 
Alarmingly, Intel offer no solution to this problem as it is beyond the
central processor's control.

What this really demonstrates is that the Pentium architecture is now 
old and out-of-date. Attempts to keep up with the PowerPC are becoming 
increasingly complex and fraught with potential and actual problems 
which are coming to light too late.

Hardware compatibility issues are also now beginning to emerge. When I 
have some more information on this I will add it to this article.

Multiple Processors

Ever since 1989 - through the use of third party add-on cards the Mac 
has been able to handle up to 4 (FOUR) central processors. DAYSTAR in 
1994 produced the necessary software for the PowerMacintosh systems to 
handle multiple processors and Apple licensed it back from them. This is
a good example of the co-operation between Apple and its competitors/
suppliers to its marketplace. Most clone manufacturers are now offering
multiple processor systems.

By the way Windows 3.1/3.11/ and Windows 95 can only handle one central
processor (CPU) - it takes Windows NT to handle more than one CPU.

FireWire

This is officially known as IEEE1394. It is a very, very fast serial bus
architecture. A bus is the means by which information is transferred 
between the different components and devices in a computer system. Apple
has decided that this will replace the SCSI bus architecture and already
there are SCSI to FireWire adapters available.

The initial speed for FireWire is 100Mb/second to be followed later this
year by 400Mb/sec with 800 Mb/sec and 1.6Gb/sec implementations for 
1998. The result, very fast input from all devices on such a bus, 
whether they be disk drives, video cameras (which now come with 
FireWire), scanners, etc. All these devices can be 'hot plugged', i.e. 
you do not have to power down the computer system and turn off other 
devices first.

PC problems to come

The KLAMATH processor due out in February/March 1997 has a motherboard
design that does not allow for clone manufacturers to readily modify it.
This means that all systems using this chip will perform the same and 
thus allow little or no really significant differentiation in the 
marketplace. How many systems will use this in everyday desktop use is 
debatable.

Many PC manufacturers are having to wait up to two months before 
receiving supplies of the 200Mhz Intel processors - what waiting times 
are likely to be for this new chip.

The 440LX - I have not heard much about this chip yet, so cannot comment
further - it is due late 1997.

The P7 RISC processor from Intel is likely to be introduced in mid-1998,
some 4 years after the introduction of the Power PC RISC processor. 
Intel at that time (in 1994) said that going to a RISC processor was 
unnecessary - if this is the case why are they developing one now - 
hmmm? Some concerns remain however. What backwards compatibility is 
going to available, if any? From what I have managed to glean, Intel has
investigated putting a Pentium on the motherboard but ruled that out as
too expensive and no other emulation has been mentioned so far. If no 
emulation is built-in then a whole new computer system plus operating 
system and applications software will be required to run on this new 
RISC processor. This sounds like a very expensive transition.

All the above indicates that the PC systems of today appear a mighty 
expensive option because at least three significant hardware system 
upgrades are due this year alone - MMX, KLAMATH and finally 440LX. All 
this before the P7 hits in 1998. These hardware upgrade issues will mean
a considerablwe expense to businesses with a need to keep up with 
technology. Compounding this will be software compatibility issues that
will add further significant expense as part of this inevitable process.

We will see how well Apple continues to look after your investment in 
hardware and software in the next article: Operating Systems and Hardware.

OPERATING SYSTEMS and HARDWARE

Current Operating system

This has always been Apple's strength and continues so today. The 
current Macintosh Operating system is elegant and highly effective, 
although not perfect. If the OS can be made even more stable then so 
well and good. However, as it develops it requires to remain for the 
user as clear and concise in the way it was initially designed. Should 
the user interface become more complicated it would take on some of the
negative characteristics inherent in Windows 95.

You may not be personally aware, but the most ruthlessly cost-effective
businesses, in my experience, are the Print and Colour Reprographic 
houses. They standardised on the Mac many years ago and no matter what 
new systems have come on the market the Mac has seen off all opposition.
These businesses cannot and will not afford the luxury of networking and
PC professionals on their payroll. They demand a system that is powerful
and as near automatic as you can get and one that is very simple to
troubleshoot and get back working as fast as possible. They know the Mac
is not perfect but it is the best yet in overall business efficiency 
terms.

Protecting your software investment

When Apple switched from CISC to RISC with the introduction of the 
PowerPC they built-in they provided an emulation for software written 
for the previous processor range. This ensured users did not lose their
investment in software applications. The emulation wasn't as fast as 
Apple would have liked and they have since rewritten it to make it 
faster. Connectix, a long time developer for the Mac, saw the 
opportunity to enhance the overall speed of the Mac by providing an 
enhancement to the emulation process. This largely eliminated the 
non-native penalty and so showed the true potential of the PowerMacs. As
the operating system has become more native to the PowerPC and as native
applications have appeared the performance has improved further still.
Native software refers to software that has been re-written to take full
advantage of the PowerPC design and so runs at full speed.

This means that software written for the Mac, some as far back as 1988,
will still run on today's systems - quite an achievement. In the next 
section, Future Operating system, you will see how Apple is going to 
continue looking after your software investment.

Future Operating system

Apple have now acquired NeXT - a company founded and run by Steve Jobs -
one of the co-founders of Apple back in 1976. Steve Jobs and the other 
co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, have both been appointed as 
consultants to Gil Amelio, the current Chairman and CEO of Apple.

NeXT is a UNIX based system that is very fast and more efficient than 
WindowsNT - Microsoft's flagship OS. 

NeXT uses Display Postscript. Postscipt is used to display text and 
graphics on-screen and this may be kept but have added to it many of the
key Apple Technologies required by the Publishing and Print industry. 
The final decision is expected very soon. The new system will have no 
command lines when it is first released to the public in early 1998, 
although developer releases due in the 3rd and 4th quarter this year may
still have this feature. 

Display postscript has the advantage that it means anyone in Publishing
or Printing will work in postscript throughout, a big advantage. About 7
years ago Display Postscript was considered by Apple but found to need 
too much processing power. NeXT have persevered with speeding it up, and
that coupled with the much faster processors available today, means that
it is much more acceptable.

Apple have pledged to continue developing the current MacOS System 7 
whilst System 8 is brought up to speed. Enhancements to the current 
MacOS interface will be made where NeXT has some advantage - but the Mac
interface will remain.

For backwards compatibility Apple has stated that the current System 7 
system will run as one process within the new MacOS system 8 but not as
an emulation so it should be fast. This also means any applications still
written for non-PowerPC systems will run. That is really looking after you
and your investment! Compare that with Intel's attitude to hardware
upgrades.

The average useful life of a Mac is currently 7 years. Most are simply 
retired or kept as reserve machines. They have not failed in anyway, 
they have simply become too slow for current business requirements 
because of software developments.

The new MacOS will also include the NeXT development environment which 
it is claimed to speed up application development between 5 and 10 times
compared with any current operating system from competing companies. 
Also it is very easy to port applications to and from this new 
environment. Large companies with many in-house applications would do 
well to look very closely at this development environment.

The Human Interface

An interesting point about the Mac interface was made by a PC engineer 
with whom I was working for a short time. He said:

"The Macintosh looks bland but then it doesn't intrude in your work it 
simply let's you get your work done easily, I suppose that's why it's so
good. Windows seems to shout at you, gets in your way and is not so 
intuitive." 

Says it all doesn't it?

A point rarely mentioned is the longevity of Apple Macintosh based 
systems to run the latest version of the operating system. For example a
Macintosh Plus (based on the first generation Motorola 68000 series of 
processors) introduced in January 1986 (i.e. 11 years ago) can still run
System 7.5.3 (introduced in July 1996). This is the equivalent of 
running Windows 95 on an 8086 processor - anyone care to try that??

Value for money

Regarding value for money the Macintosh appears largely ignored because
most MS-DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows 95 people I have dealt with are ignorant
of, or have very out of date knowledge about, the Macintosh. Sadly many of
them are IT professionals! Although the information is readily available,
their lack of up-to-date knowledge means that many companies
may be basing their desktop PC corporate decisions on inaccurate 
information. An example in case of - one very experienced PC support 
professional recently commented to me that he did not realise Macintosh
systems came bundled with the operating system as standard!

There is a phrase "Use a Mac you'll never go back" - how true, if people
are given a choice, many in business are not. Why do you think the Mac 
users are so loyal (87% will repurchase, the highest repurchase rate in
the industry, PC User survey) - most have tried other operating systems
and found them seriously lacking. 

One test of any system is how easily is it fixed. From my own experience
most Mac problems (about 95%) can be fixed in 5 minutes and most of 
those by the user if they get given a few simple guidelines. The rest 
can usually be fixed in 30 minutes. 

Another useful test is to look at the installation instructions on 
software or CD's that are both for the Mac and the PC (these are called
Hybrid CD's). Ask yourself, why is one more complex and involved than 
the other (Windows 3.11 / Windows 95)? Answer: one operating system (the
MacOS) does a lot more for you. This being the case it means other 
things too - easier to use, cheaper to support, etc.

Apple's famed build quality slipped with introduction of the first 
series of Power Mac Performas (52/53/62/63xx series) and PowerBooks 
(5300's). These have now been sorted out, and how! If you get a chance 
to see what happens to a standard build (not a ruggedized) 
PowerMacintosh PowerBook under extreme test conditions it will amaze 
you. Care to run one over in a very large car, bake one for hours at 
extremely high temperatures, drop it from 4 or more feet onto an office
floor - it still worked perfectly. Apple tried these stress tests on 
competing PC laptops - not one survived. 

NOTE: Apple stress that deliberately trying out these extreme tests will
invalidate your warranty.

In case you are wondering does any of the above actually happen 
well......I have seen the result of an Apple Duo 230 (now some 5 years 
old) being accidentally run over in someone's driveway. The lid was 
closed at the time. The screen cracked and so did not work but the rest
of the system did when put into to the Docking mechanism, and this was 
some years before Apple decided to make sure their systems would survive
this particular hazard.

Apple desktop systems usually lead the way both in terms of component 
quality, build quality and industrial design. All this means fewer 
problems and they are easier to fix should anything go wrong. In the 
mid-1990's Apple developed some systems that were a little more 
difficult to work on because of the high price of memory. This was done
in an attempt to discourage theft of Macs. Since then each new Apple 
design has increasingly conformed more to users wishes, i.e. they are 
more internally accessible.

WHY CLONE the MAC?

An obvious question, but a necessary one. Apple somewhat belatedly 
decided to allow other manufacturers to clone the Mac. The obvious 
reasons were: Apple's permanent inability to get its market forecasting
right for new models, thus causing unacceptable delays to customers. 
They were unable to keep building sufficient Macs to keep up with the 
overall expansion of the PC market and demand for their own product. To
provide consumers with more variation and price points than Apple alone
could provide.

Now for the not so obvious reasons (these I have had to deduce from what
is happening in Apple's marketplace):

1. If Apple were to fail for any reason - customers would have a choice
of manufacturers who were using both Apple motherboard designs and 
components.

2. By sub-licensing the operating system it means other manufactures - 
one or more together would have the right to continue to develop the 
Macintosh Operating system.

3. Apple now has the choice to decide to what extent it remains in the 
hardware market; currently this is across all market segments.

In other words you now have a choice of good quality suppliers of 
Macintosh systems that are well designed but also with many different 
features, value added points and price levels. It also means long-term 
security for the consumer and Apple's critical significance can now get
to the point where it is important but not critical to the survival of 
the Mac.

Who are the Apple Clone manufacturers?

International players are:

Apple, Power Computing, UMAX, Motorola, Day Star Digital, Everex (just 
announced late January)

USA only: ASP.

Japan only: Toshiba, Apple & IBM (a specific laptop design), Pioneer, 
Akai

Also just announced, late January, is that ACER (the fifth largest PC 
Manufacturer in the world) will start supplying Apple with motherboards
and components. Although no formal announcement has been made, or is 
currently expected, it does not take too much imagination to realise 
that ACER could start manufacturing Apple Macintosh Clone systems very 
easily.

It has been quickly realised by these Clone manufacturers that in order
to grow they must now grow the Mac market and not just cannibalise 
Apple's own Mac sales. In the USA last year clone builders accounted for
8.5% of the Mac Market - they are now starting to come over to the UK 
and Europe.

UMAX, for instance, is targeting selected Far Eastern Markets as well as
Britain and Europe.

Power Computing are very aggressive on price, performance and determined
to increase the Mac's market share. So, watch out!

Motorola offer a five year warranty with a very competitive on-site 
option, keen prices and a reputation for excellence in build quality for
all their products. Their target market will be corporates in addition to
the traditional Mac market.

Apple and Motorola have each got separate partners in China in order to
develop the Chinese market.

Apple also provides the Chinese Dictation Kit, a world first as far as I
am aware. This allows Cantonese to be dictated into a Mac - now I wonder
why Apple feels it has a good chance to develop a significant market 
presence in China. Remember if Apple gets 10% of the population using a
Mac that's roughly 150 Million Mac systems!! English dictation kits are
also available (and have been for some time). No more typing!!
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