> Apple Raises Prices on Macs, iPads by $200 or More on Some Models

Assclown Mini Tacos wrote:

That's a pretty big drive for the time - I have a PDP11/34 that has space in the rack for what were apparently a pair of RL02 drives - but the drives themselves are missing and trying to find a functioning one seems challenging.

You're not in the US, correct?

wrote:

You're not in the US, correct?

Not any more - although this machine did come from the US. It's currently sitting in a 20' container with a bunch of other stuff I shipped that I haven't got around to working out what to do with.

Heekee wrote:

ah interesting, i always thought risc ran cooler and more efficient because of the lower clock speeds

They typically had higher clock speeds, but a much simpler internal architecture so they used less power per clock. RISC machines are also generally load/store with all other operations occurring between internal registers which reduces bus loading and the associated power consumption. Especially when you compare it with and architecture like x86 that has huge numbers of instructions that operate directly on memory.

But this became much less of an issue with the later x86 type CPUs because they had really sophisticated instruction decoding and scheduling which allowed the CISC instruction stream to be effectively decoded into a whole bunch of RISC like instructions inside the chip - it couldn't do the same depth of analysis that a complier for a RISC chip could, but it did a lot to close the gap.

The other problem with Motorola had was that they simply didn't have the volume to invest in really extensive and expensive design projects and they were falling behind in process technology (one of the reasons that they teamed up with IBM on Power PC - they had more up to date fab technology).  In the end, it didn't matter much because Intel were making enough money they could easily outspend both Motorola and IBM on process technology and make chips that could easily overcome the slight architectural disadvantages of CISC by having parts that just worked better on a technical level.

Intel then proceeded to piss that technical leadership away by losing focus on the fabrication side of things - with the ultimate result that TSMC (who are a foundry operation with way smaller profit margins than a product owner like Intel) started making objectively better chips than Intel did.  Which, in combination with some good or possibly lucky architectural decisions managed to turn AMD around from near bankruptcy and near irrelevance to extremely serious competition. 

But at the time I think that Apple made a good call - the PowerPC product line was running out of steam and although ARM was well established in low power applications even the fastest ARM parts were running at a performance level that was low-end by desktop standards, so x86 was really the only plausible option.

wrote:

Did you even read my post?

I clearly said "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

I saw that, but I also saw that "they're raising prices to maximize profits"

I guess so, but I don't think that they're raising their profit margins.

That was my point.

Assclown Mini Tacos wrote:

The other problem with Motorola had was that they simply didn't have the volume to invest in really extensive and expensive design projects and they were falling behind in process technology (one of the reasons that they teamed up with IBM on Power PC - they had more up to date fab technology).  In the end, it didn't matter much because Intel were making enough money they could easily outspend both Motorola and IBM on process technology and make chips that could easily overcome the slight architectural disadvantages of CISC by having parts that just worked better on a technical level.

Intel then proceeded to piss that technical leadership away by losing focus on the fabrication side of things - with the ultimate result that TSMC (who are a foundry operation with way smaller profit margins than a product owner like Intel) started making objectively better chips than Intel did.  Which, in combination with some good or possibly lucky architectural decisions managed to turn AMD around from near bankruptcy and near irrelevance to extremely serious competition. 

But at the time I think that Apple made a good call - the PowerPC product line was running out of steam and although ARM was well established in low power applications even the fastest ARM parts were running at a performance level that was low-end by desktop standards, so x86 was really the only plausible option.

Apple did not want to pay for PowerPC improvements. 

Intel pissed their leadership away by going curry.  The Americans ended up at AMD & Apple.

I wonder if they'll actually release a MBP with cellular. Or maybe satellite data?  Apple's always had overpriced ram and storage, it's just more of the same. But if they want to sell the same product in EU they'll have to be repairable.