The Intel Inside campaign wasn't just a consumer branding strategy. First and foremost it was a predatory marketing campaign that turned into exclusionary behavior. PC firms that used Intel chips and put Intel Inside on their PC's were given funds to use in advertising and were reimbursed for "marketing expenses". In reality these marketing funds were actually a subsidy/discount (some would say kickback) on Intel chips. As Intel's power grew they would only give the PC manufacturers rebates if they would buy 95% of their Microprocessors from Intel. If they used AMD or other microprocessors - all the Intel rebates would disappear. By the end of the 1990s, Intel had spent more than $7 billion on the Intel Inside campaign and had 2,700 PC firms locked up. By 2001 these rebates were running $1.5 billion a year.
Intel was sued in Japan (for offering money to NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Sony, and Hitachi,) in the EU (for paying German retailers to sell Intel PC's only) and in the U.S. for predatory (pricing), exclusionary behavior, and the abuse of a dominant position (HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway and Hitachi.) The legal record is pretty clear that Intel used payments, marketing loyalty rebates and threats to persuade computer manufacturers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP), to limit their use of AMD processors. U.S. antitrust authorities have focused on whether the loyalty rebates used by Intel were a predatory device in violation of the Sherman Act. The European Commission (EC) brought similar charges and imposed a 1.06 billion Euros fine on Intel for abuse of a dominant position.
The sum of these efforts not only killed competitors but it killed innovation in microprocessor design outside of Intel for decades.
Ironically Intel's lack of innovation in the 21st century is a direct result of its 20th century policy of being a monopolist.
Not to disagree with your point about monopolism, but "Intel Inside" came about in that weird period of PC history where IBM had been dethroned, but nobody had taken charge. PC companies were manufacturing "clones" of increasingly outdated systems, and the pain-points were numerous and obvious. It really was a "unique branding opportunity" for someone to step-up and define the post-IBM PC market.
Which Intel did. They were largely the one who turned primitive PC ATs + 57 different hacks into the modern PC platform. APIC PCI USB etc. (AMD gets credit for 64-bit largely because Intel refused to do so.) "Intel Inside" wasn't just marketing kickbacks, it was a badly-needed standardization program.
> AMD gets credit for 64-bit largely because Intel refused to do so
Yeah, no. Amd64 was made at a time where AMD was on top of its game, they released to the general public first while intel64 still wasn't ready, and microsoft annonced both that 1. windows was going to support amd64, and 2. windows was not going to support two different instruction sets for x86_64, effectively forcing Intel to implement the amd set which they still need to licence to this day.
Calling it "Intel let AMD get the credit because they couldn't be bothered" is either a lack of information over what happened or a nice rewrite of history, back then Intel was already feeling the effect of monopoly without competition which made them late on everything and pushing their pentium4 against the upcoming athlon 64 monster.
I think there is a reasonable argument that Intel "refused" to create a cheap 64bit competitor to IA-64, which they tried to push "serious" users (server business) to. When the shoe dropped that only pushing Itanium wasn't going to work, AMD already was ahead on the 64bit extension to x86.
No there isn't and this is history rewriting, even if you genuinely believe this could be this is not what happened at all.
First it's pretty clear, seeing how Intel played their game with the x86 licence, they would never have voluntarily made themselves depend on AMD licensing them x86_64 for the next decades like they are now.
Second, back then Intel was very seriously asking / pressuring microsoft into not supporting amd64 extension and wait for intel64 to be released instead. But intel64 was late and delayed, pentium 4 kept hitting brick walls while Athlon started reigning supreme, opteron was starting to be noticed on the server side, and IA-64 was not getting outside of niche territory. Meanwhile linux started making some real pressure on the server andbusiness demands meant microsoft needed to show a windows that supported 64 bits on commodity hardware, asap. Amd64 was ready and the chip using it were cheap and powerfull, so microsoft made their choice.
I'm still not sure what part exactly you see as inaccurate. The notion that Intel didn't work on x86_64 early enough? The assumption that if Intel had an x86_64 product first it would have had a chance against AMDs?
Not trying to rewrite history at all. It was reported that Intel had developed their own version of x86-64, but was withholding it because of Itanium. If Intel had pushed it to market first, both Microsoft and AMD would have followed along. Intel abandoned leadership and AMD was able to set the standard.
And we'd still have people saying that monopolies are only granted by the government, and that without the government, or with a small one, the Free Market(TM) would sort it all out.
Apart from the predatory behaviour, the basis for Intel's monopoly is the hundreds of patents on x86 and it's instructions. Those patents are a government granted monopoly, by definition.
True, but irrelevant to the issue of cartel behaviour. Granting limited monopoly rights to people for their own discoveries The can give net benefits to the economy in some cases. Such as patents encouraging investment in technology research. Simultaneously market monopolies established through predatory pricing and cartel deals can stifle innovation and harm customers.
There is no single ideologically pure one true best answer in all cases. The real world just doesn't work that way.
Only if the entity has the power/money or otherwise to protect the patent. In most cases that favours the existing player in the marketplace.
If I come up with a unique patentable idea and facebook copies it, I would not have the legal funds to fight such a big entity. The patent is useless unless I team up with another entity big enough to fight that battle.
In the end I am better off in an environment with no patents because the ability to defend my patent is beyond me. If facebook patented a slightly modified version they may sue to invalid my patent and prevent my ability to use my idea.
Much safer for the little guy to not have patents.
I suggest the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Graber shows that markets cannot exists without a state. (Even when anarchists argue about state-less markets, it's usually after a state has fallen and there are still state-like actors around).
It seems to me there is nothing inherently anti-competitive about requiring people who buy your component to advertise that they are using it (or, a fortiori, with incentivizing them to do this with discounts). But offering rebates to customers who by 95% of a certain kind of component from you does seem anti-competitive to me. That should probably be illegal.
But Intel did innovate: The processes for fabrication are ahead of all others.
Also, they were the first to move away from the "higher frequency is better" to running lower power CPUs with more computation per clock cycle for mobile.
IMHO, Apple should have moved to Intel when the IBM PC came out. The IBM PC used the Intel 8088 which ran Intel 8086 16-bit processor while using a cheaper 8-bit bus which could use the more mature and less expensive 8085 interface chips. The Apple II had only an 8-bit processor.
The processes for fabrication was surely because they maintained their monopoly and having money to buy the best tech rather than innovation.
And, no, intel was the last to move away from "higher frequency is better". In fact, they were the ones that created that whole mindset since they were the ones that benefited from it. All because their Pentium 4 NetBurst architecture required high frequencies to remain competitive.
> "The processes for fabrication was surely because they maintained their monopoly and having money to buy the best tech rather than innovation."
My first job was VLSI designer (GPUs) and I follow the industry. Intel is the innovator when it comes to fab. IBM has a fab (or just sold it) in Upstate NY, but they could not keep up with Intel.
The Pentium M (Banias was the first processor) was developed in the Haifa, Israel design center and it is the first example (in microprocessors) of slowing the clock rate and performing more computation per clock cycle. This was released in March, 2003. Could you please cite examples of competitors releasing low TDP models before this?
> it is the first example (in microprocessors) of slowing the clock rate and performing more computation per clock cycle
I'm sure designers were trying to get more out of each cycle, even while they were pumping up the clock frequency.
With the AthlonXP/MP, AMD was the first company to really market outsize the Ghz speed; pushing model numbers they believed rivaled their Intel equivalents that were lower than the actual clock speed. Today both manufactures market using model numbers.
Well, the Pentium M was just a refreshed PIII and was born out of necessity as the P4 was so disastrous on mobile platforms.
AMD was way ahead of Intel at the time regarding IPC, the Pentium M was just Intel catching up to AMD, and had about the same IPC as A64 that was released the same year. But unlike Pentium M the A64 was a real performant CPU.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Pentium M and I when looking at laptops there was no reason to bother looking at anything else at that time. But it was a parenthesis few even knew existed. It was more of a successful prototype proving that the (future) Core series had a good foundation.
AMD didn't have as good fabrication, which is partly why they couldn't compete with Pentium M on power. But that's not what we are talking about either, because of the higher IPC the A64 smoked everything Intel had for years coming. Despite Intel having better fabrication.
The Pentium M was released (not to mention designed) well before the giant ship that is Intel slowly changed course from P4.
And you shouldn't be comparing IPC of P4 or PM to A64. A64 was more a shot across the bow at Itanium at the time. You can rightly accuse Itanium of a lot of things, but lack of innovation isn't one of them.
I respectfully disagree. These are direct quotes from the Wikipedia article mentioned above. The Pentium M (Banias) was an innovation of increasing the (maximum) speed vs. power ratio. Intel chose not to extend to x64 because they wanted to market an entirely different 64-bit architecture, the Itanium processors.
I am very pleased that AMD came out with it and forced Intel to do the same, but the Pentium M was (for microprocessors) a true innovation.
"The Pentium M coupled the execution core of the Pentium III with a Pentium 4 compatible bus interface, an improved instruction decoding/issuing front end, improved branch prediction, SSE2 support, and a much larger cache. The usually power-hungry secondary cache uses an access method which only switches on the portion being accessed..."
"Other power saving methods include dynamically variable clock frequency and core voltage, allowing the Pentium M to throttle clock speed when the system is idle in order to conserve energy, using the SpeedStep 3 technology (which has more sleep stages than previous versions of SpeedStep)..."
"...Pentium M varies from 5 watts when idle to 27 watts at full load..."
I guess I thought this might actually tell the story of how Apple negotiated not to have the Intel inside sticker. Instead it just states that the sticker wasn't there and goes "we can only guess"
Intel Inside was actually a tricky way for Intel to undercut their competitors.
You had to apply to the Intel Inside option. You don't need to do anything to avoid it. If you are accepted, you get a kickback from Intel for every chip. Part of the condition is you put a little sticker in plain site.
Any manufacturer could have shipped their machines without the Intel inside sticker, they just wouldn't get that moneyback.
I wonder if there should be consumer protection laws that require anyone selling a product to disclose all the kickbacks they receive on that product to the buyer?
I would love to know how much each product placement in a movie cost, how much some shady third-party paid to have their bloatware installed on all new laptops from a particular vendor, how much it cost to set the default browser, how much a TV manufacturer was paid to include a "smart TV" device in their product, etc..
For LG phones, it's their own bloatware. Not even as good as the Android equivalents. LG even have their own, unremovable parallel system for software updates.
The idea being that if all phones ran the same software no one would choose their phone on brand but rather on what particular phone was best suited for their needs.
But that's not good enough, manufacturers create a custom feel solely because customers will get accustomed and need to relearn if they choose another manufacturer.
It doesn't matter if their software is worse than stock (and they all are (much much) worse), the only thing that matters is that it is unique.
IIRC the Intel Inside sticker got OEMs a better price on the CPU. Apple probably agreed to pay the higher price and not have their sleek hardware cases sullied by the presence of a (gasp) sticker.
Or perhaps there was enough incentive for Intel to get rid of the last remaining PowerPC platform in end-user computing. Certainly in volume alone Apple doesn't represent a very significant supplier of Intel-based computers.
Apple has more market power than you think -- they focus on a few models, those models sell like hot cakes and Apple pays for guarantees to get inventory. For Intel that means their factories keep pumping out chips like clockwork and inventory is low.
Dell or HP sells more units, but in 300 or more SKUs each. Apple is different enough to get better terms.
This. Intel does not make money from the CPU in the broader sense, they make money by running their production lines at full tilt and getting paid for what comes off them.
Possibly part of the reason that other manufacturers did join the programme is that they thought it would help them sell more of their PCs. That was unlikely to be the case with Apple, who had their own marketing and didn't need a sticker to sell a laptop.
I just had a look at a newish Lenovo sitting next to me and it's packed with gaudy logos stuck to the inside hand-rests:
* Intel Inside
* AMD Radeon graphics
* Energy Star
* 2x JBL speakers (two mentions of JBL, one's not even a sticker)
* Dolby Digital Plus
...and a few others that depict generic features of the laptop (Do I really need a sticker to tell me I have a webcam on this thing?) Honestly it just looks tacky, like a Nascar car. I'll peel them off some time but yuck, totally tasteless.
Huh. Now that you mention it, I have a Windows _ (the _ is where the sticker is worn down -- 7, I think?) sticker on my Lenovo Thinkpad (which doesn't have Windows currently installed, mind you).
Never really noticed it. I'm usually too busy starting at the tastefully design webpages dancing on my screen.
Yeah but if you remove all of that except for the Intel Inside Core i7 and the NVIDIA GEFORCE stickers... well you've just maintained the resell value of your Lenovo.
Yeah, sort of a ritual of changing jobs for me. Reject the three different Macbooks on offer, request a Lenovo Thinkpad with crazy specs, remove the gaudy stickers, install Linux, and then get the trackpoint working on boot/reboot/wake/thaw with my preferred sensitivity settings.
Which thinkpad model? Screen size? Weight? I must carry three (!) laptops with me: shitty windows that I nearly never boot, macbook pro for webex (!) and not to get in trouble with bosses in meetings, and my beloved 17" asus, with ubuntu, which I kind of hide, and which is getting too heavy for me. In all over 10kg. I work remote, so this is only a problem for the occasional gatherings.
I use a P50 with 64GB of RAM, and an i7-6700HQ Intel processor. It is not light by any means, but it is certainly less than your 10kg (the specs I'm looking at say it's about 5.6 pounds, which sounds about right). It's got a 15.6" HD display, though I could have (and probably should have) opted for a 4k display. Also has a 1TB HD and a 1TB SSD. At my workplace, we're using Zoom, which works flawlessly on Linux. I have worked at a place that used Bluejeans, which did not work so well on Linux, and so I actually ran that inside of a Windows VM in Virtualbox. I would highly recommend one of these Thinkpads. It seems you would greatly benefit from buying one. They are packed with enough specs for you to run whatever combination of virtual machines you could possibly need in your everyday work.
Holy cow! The closest I could find in Amazon.de [1] is selling for 2200€, and it has only 8 GB RAM. Do you mind sharing how much did it cost you, and where did you buy it?
Sure, I bought mine through Amazon, but like with any of these machines, you will save a lot of money by purchasing a machine with the lowest specs possible, and then buying the upgraded parts (RAM, CPU, drives, etc) and installing them yourself. I bought mine for about US$1700 altogether, including the new RAM and storage options. It is not cheap, but it is absolutely worth the money if you work with computers professionally at all. The only thing you can't really swap out is the display, so you'll have to buy that in the base model. These Thinkpads are not cheap, but it's easily some of the best hardware I've ever bought. Better even than all that old phenomenal Asus hardware! Thinkpad models seems to be hit or miss, and so I would research beforehand which ones are not great. I've previously used for example a W530, which is definitely a hit, along with the P50.
But I'm genuinely curious why people want to pay this huge price for merely okay hardware? You can get a lot more power out of a non-Apple product for a lot cheaper. I am not trying to start a flamewar here, I've just never been able to wrap my head around this idea.
Since my main development environment is Linux, having to work inside the VM is actually making this problem more difficult:
1. I have problems getting used to the Mac keyboard
2. I have problems getting used to the keyboard mappings inside the VM running in the Mac, which is different to the keyboard mappings in my barebone Ubuntu machine, and different to the mappings in a VM running in my barebore Ubuntu machine
3. Integration of host OS (macOS) and VM is another source of pain (copy-paste, file sharing and so on)
If I was able (or willing) to ditch Ubuntu and do everything in the Mac, without VMs, this would be easier to achieve.
As a software developer, I find the lack of dedicated home/end/page up/page down keys almost impossible to get used to. The new Touch Bar makes things even worse.
Oh come on. I consider myself an anti-snob but when your laptop is the primary tool that you use throughout your day I think it makes perfect sense to very picky about it.
Such a weird comment on a Hacker site (at the top too). Hackers used to care a lot less about status and appearances, and more about doing cool shit. It's unfortunate that changed.
Taste clouds the mind. It introduces preconceptions, encourages judgement, and makes it harder to see the true value in something. Thankfully, many hackers were not dismissed due to their lack of "taste".
Just take the Lenovo laptop for example. I don't know which model it is, but some models are incredibly practical. They have very long battery life, beautiful keyboards, and are built like a tank. But no, let's focus on the stickers.
Just take the Lenovo laptop for example. I don't know which model it is, but some models are incredibly practical. They have very long battery life, beautiful keyboards, and are built like a tank.
Which is presumably why the previous poster has one sitting next to him.
But no, let's focus on the stickers.
It is the focus of this thread. Why would you even open it if you're not interested in discussing them?
Exactly. I got the laptop because it's an excellent work horse, has specs suitable for what I need it for (programming), and runs Debian like a champ. The point, which I probably failed to get across, is that I find it funny how Lenovo put so much care into making a kickass laptop, then proceeded to carelessly slap a whole bunch of stickers all over it. Obviously the stickers can be removed but it seems like such a lapse in design quality for an otherwise very good laptop.
In as much as taste = preference, I'm not sure that is an accurate statement. Preferences do not necessarily cloud your mind, nor are hackers devoid of them.
Personally, it's not so much how it looks, it's having those damned stickers right underneath my hands as I type. I'm one of those people that washes my hands a couple times a day -- not like anti-germ OCD washing, but just... conscious washing -- and those stickers always mess with me. Though it is a little bit about looks, because I always end up putting on my own Linux Mint sticker on the case and a little penguin sticker over the Windows button. But only marginally about looks.
Hackers didn't "use to" anything. Some do, some don't.
I care about aesthetics and design a lot and I always have. I consider it related to the ocd-like tendency in me that sortof itches when I see code that is inconsistently indented or when a non-mutating function is named with a verb that I feel indicates mutation.
Steve was right. It really set the MacBooks apart when all of the other computers were literally festooned with a dozen cartoonish stickers all over making them look like cheap toys.
Worse still, as you used the computers in real life, all of those stickers degraded into a gluey mess that got all over everything when you touched them.
I still have flashbacks of using a heatgun and alcohol wipes to un-sticker 2 dozen new HP laptops before rolling them out. Ugh.
I collect those stickers and intend to use them mischievously. Chromebook? i7 sticker with a tiling window manager and you instantly have what appears to be a hacker grade laptop. Fancy i7 machine? Celeron, obviously.
This I do not do due to the shortage of genuine stickers. Maybe I will fix someone's computer one day. I will just add the sticker and they will feel it go faster.
Something I'm more curious about is how they got out of putting carrier branding on the iPhone. As others have said, the Intel Inside program wasn't mandatory. But from what little I've heard about this, AT&T was very reluctant to concede this when the iPhone debuted. I wonder what concessions Apple had to make, and if the initial exclusivity had anything to do with it.
Was it Cingular that got that very first Edge iPhone? Man that was so long ago, but that does sound right. IIRC Cingular was part of AT&T originally, then split off, and then was re-absorbed. Eventually SBS bought AT&T, a couple of Bells and other carriers and renamed itself to AT&T.
Probably having Apple as a customer mattered a lot to Intel, so they were willing to be flexible. The HPs and Dells of the world are important too, but they can't afford to offend Intel, since they're all in a fierce low-margin competition with a bunch of other vendors that sell basically the same product. If they're at even a slight cost disadvantage, their profits evaporate.
Apple had more leverage because they sell a product that's unique that their customers are willing to pay more for, and because they had a plan B if Intel refused to accommodate them.
No. You just gave up a bunch of co-marketing dollars. (Probably a bit more complicated than that but basically you left the money associated with the stickers on the table.)
Or some other consideration; it doesn't have to be monetary.
For instance, maybe the fact that they heavily refer to the architecture switch as "Intel" vs. "PowerPC" instead of "x86" vs. "PowerPC" was enough to assuage Intel from a marketing standpoint.
Yea I was disappointed in this reveal as well. I mean the title isn't "Why Apple's don't have an Intel Inside Sticker" so I guess it's not a click-bait-n-switch.
The author seems knowledgeable, having worked in marketing for both companies, and it was an interesting read. But we still don't have any details of what kind of deal was made? Did Apple chose to pay a higher price or did they get a similar discount with only have Intel on the box?
Apple switching to x86 was great publicity for Intel. It was a big deal. People, blogs, mass media talked about it a lot.
Because of this, I'm sure Steve negotiated a good price on those chips without Apple needing to be part of the "Intel Inside" program to get cheaper CPUs.
This article is not quite correct about why Apple switched to Intel. IBM was unable to provide a G5 chip suitable for laptop use. That's the whole reason in a nutshell.
The PWRficient processors started shipping a year after Intel's 64-bit mobile processor (Core 2). If PA Semi had delivered those chips two years earlier, Apple would probably have used them and put off the Intel switch.
Did Ken Segall work in Apple during the time of iMac ? According to his linkedin Profile he was a consultant for Apple between 2005 - 2008. iMac was introduced in 1998.
Probably during the Intel iMacs which came out in 2006ish, thus the reason he discusses the switchover from PowerPC to Intel.
The move to Intel in 2006ish really was a genius move and game-changer just before iPhone launched. At agencies and game studios suddenly Apple was it for both designers and developers wanting a pretty *nix. Just in time for the new gaming/app platform 1-2 years later once the SDK launched.
Am I the only one who thinks that the three ads mentioned in the article (Snail, Burning Bunny, Steamroller) are incredibly tacky?
The Apple ad from that era that people love and remember is Richard Dreyfus' Crazy Ones, and the author even thinks that they "upgraded to Jeff Goldblum".
I like them as ads. I still have the pentium snail somewhere in my desktop pictures folders. I don't mind negative ads at all when they're clever (and come from the underdog).
Just to save folks some time, this doesn't give any details of how Steve got away with not putting on the sticker. Just says he said "trust me I'll make sure that won't happen " and then he negotiated it.
This is a very long-winded way to say "We tried one tactic, they didn't take the bait, so we suckered them by buying their product". It's painted as an Apple victory because there's no sticker on the laptop, but not as an Intel victory, despite Apple switching to their chips. Weird.
Intel was sued in Japan (for offering money to NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Sony, and Hitachi,) in the EU (for paying German retailers to sell Intel PC's only) and in the U.S. for predatory (pricing), exclusionary behavior, and the abuse of a dominant position (HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway and Hitachi.) The legal record is pretty clear that Intel used payments, marketing loyalty rebates and threats to persuade computer manufacturers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP), to limit their use of AMD processors. U.S. antitrust authorities have focused on whether the loyalty rebates used by Intel were a predatory device in violation of the Sherman Act. The European Commission (EC) brought similar charges and imposed a 1.06 billion Euros fine on Intel for abuse of a dominant position.
The sum of these efforts not only killed competitors but it killed innovation in microprocessor design outside of Intel for decades.
Ironically Intel's lack of innovation in the 21st century is a direct result of its 20th century policy of being a monopolist.