Wharton Tech Blog

Unless you lived under a rock and have not been exposed to media (not likely since, after all, you are reading this post), you probably have noticed that manufacturers of venerable iPod made change to the other white product line.  Yes, Apple still makes computers, and good ones at that, and no, they do not run Windows.  However, they are a step closer: now two of four Apple’s computing lines feature processors made by Intel, same as those commonly found in new Windows computers.  Now that architecture differentiator has been removed, what lies ahead for the consumer and the industry?

There are two key issues underlying this change: speed and heat.  The latter one is also referred to as power, since higher power chips consume, more heat they usually dissipate.

During the annual Macworld keynote, Apple CEO, Steve Jobs showed some benchmarks that pitted G5 (processors based on PowerPC architecture and made by IBM) against new Intel, and claimed that new Intels are 2-5 times faster. There’s been a lot of head scratching about this in user and tech communities since nobody can really believe such a quantum leap. IBM guys are no duds, they know performance computing, and sans specialized architecture optimized code (aka AltiVEC for those of you initiated in PowerPC ways) applications should run comparably, if not faster on PPC solutions featuring similar clock speed.  Some benchmarks have been run by 3rd parties to see what’s up.  A good comparison is done by Ars guys here, and benchmark results are here.  Also, Walter Mossberg in his WSJ column compared usability aspects before and after.

Here are some bottom line(s):
1. Dual core Intel processor = higher performance on multi threaded applications v. single core G5. In real terms that means that stuff that has been developed with multi processor architectures in mind (e.g. ripping a CD or exporting a movie in quicktime) will run faster on dual core intel than on single core G5. DUH!
This, however, is the crux of Intel advantage: ability to provide a solution with 2 cores consuming same power as IBM’s one.  Marketingly (is this a word?), Jobs used SPEC benchmarks that favor mutithreaded apps over those that test peak performance to show off new computers.  And voila!  Performance in real-life apps, however, does not appear nearly that much better: 40% faster on CD ripping, 15% faster on movie recoding, and no advantage in many other apps.

2. Some software is not native and has to run through a PPC-to-X86 translation engine (a.k.a. Rosetta). But, things are not all that bad.  Again it’s a 2 core thing: one core translates code and cashes it for later use, while second core executes.  On "simple" applications such as MS Office - lag is apparently imperceptible.  Photoshop and other heavy duty workhorse programs have issues - obviously.

3. Core graphics performance.  This is where G5-based architecture has an edge (as much as 15-20%), which comes as no surprise because Quartz has been tuned for years to run on PPC optimized architecture.  Given Intel’s interest in taking on graphics processor manufacturers, I believe it’s a matter of time before they lick this issue.

4. Intel-based system seems to have higher disk performance. This is a bit of a puzzle to me right now, but it’s a welcome development in a long run due to rapid proliferation of files and their size - mostly driven by media content commonly found on our computers.

So, if you are a consumer with regular needs (documents, pictures, home movies, music, and occasional games) this transition is as lateral and as seemless as it probably could be.  In a good old Apple way, things just work, and do so out of the box. Wisely, Apple changed one thing and one thing alone, and made sure this change is as imperceptible as possible.

In terms of industry and future developments, Intel and Apple have aligned incentives: low power, high performance consumer devices.  Laptops and small-format machines are becoming prevalent and substituting common workhorse desk stations. While it remains to be seen how fast will true benefits of this alliance be realized, exponential growth in performance will certainly be significant as cumulative effects of optimized code and architecture kick in.

What happens next?  Well, it’s no news that OS X (Mac operating system) works on already available Thinkpads, Dell’s etc. While compatibility is not perfect (incomplete graphics support and some networking issues), it’s more than 90% there. This opens up a logical question: Will Apple return to clone war days of John Scully and thus launch a frontal assault on MS by licensing OS X for OEM distribution?
While PC industry has been becoming boring for years now - with competitors edging each other out on shipping costs, and although such lateral assault would provide something for journalists to write about, I personally doubt this initiative will give quick results. MS is built its ecosystem very carefully with OS at its base and communication and data productivity applications around it.  In addition IT staff (which makes purchase decisions) is more likely than not educated (indoctrinated?) by MS and will go the route they know better - not necessarily one that is better, even if products do offer some advantages.

But is this where the beef is?  PC manufacturers are emphasizing laptops more and more as portability becomes crucial and technology allows desktop replacement workstations to be packaged into mobile formats. Apple has been there about four years ago, with Jobs declaring the year of the laptop when Apple launched the new generation of Powerbooks. Now, Apple it’s mostly about consumer electronics and associated devices.  All along the industry, in fact, consumer segment is what has been driving growth and novel applications for a while now.  Gateway got out of trouble with TVs, Dell followed into PDAs, TVs, projectors, and HP went in with Media PCs. What all PC manufacturers are finding though is that CE space is fundamentally different from PC one.  Consumer demands simplicity and performance combined, as opposed to extensive set of features. Just think of VCRs flashing 12 because nobody in the household knows how to program them.  Such demands are contradictory with requirements traditional, enterprise-oriented manufacturers are used to, and hence they tend to get products wrong.  They attempt too much and achieve too little. Apple’s core, however, is the widget that works out of the box: fully integrated, everything plays together, and thus is positioned to succeed in CE market.
Thus, I don’t think opening OS to OEMs is on top of Apple’s list - no matter how funny it would be to see Dell ship OS X powered computers few short years after Michael himself said that if he were Jobs, he’d shut the company down and return money to shareholders. What I do expect to see, is further strengthening of home-base and building a network of externalities akin to that of MS in enterprise market, and keeping OS wars on a low heat.  One way of doing so, perhaps, would be opening some aspects to the open source and letting pent up demand take care of compatibility issues.

Lest few weeks were rather fertile when it comes to announcements of portable video players and related services.  Apple announced video-capable iPod with capability to download TV shows (only ABC for now) 24 hours after they air.  Dish Network announced PocketDish player series which allows Dish Network (DN) customers to download and view any TV programming stored on their DN DVRs. 

At first glance DN presents a first formidable attack to iPod fortress.  DN owns programming relationship, and apparently they
have achieved the holy grail of mobile content by ironing agreements with content originators to distribute
programming, and at much wider scale and lower marginal cost than ITMS can. Sure, you have to pay for DN subscription, but hey you are doing that anyway if you are considering this device. Which brings me to the second advantage Dish Network has.  They own the customer. If you’ve got the dish, they’ve got your address, and they can easily target their marketing to you thus getting higher marketing ROI. In addition, if you are in the market for this type of device,
and already DN customer then you are more likely to stay w/ Dish, and they can reduce their
overall costs from customer churn.  Finally, if you are interested in this particular device, then you might be interested in signing up with DN, thus their customer acquisition costs may go down somewhat.

However, DN still has a fairly small install base (compared to iPod user base) which in turn means that devices penetration and thus economies of scale will be limited, and therefore device price will likely remain high. In this I assume that device as is will not be interesting to non-users of DN services.  This is consistent with adoption of other mobile media players so far. Thus, adoption will likely be both slower and limited to a subset of DN’s install base and will not likely represent a significant competitive threat to Apple’s offering.  Moreover, popularity of iPod stems from superb integration with computer and service,
streamlined UI and multitude of price points - some being more accessible than
the others, but offering more or less everybody a taste of technology leadership. Given features, I don’t see PocketDish being anywhere close to iPod prices, and it certainly does not look easy to use.

Be it as it may, this development offers some possible insight into what’s to come from Apple side.  Should an universally DVR reusable device emerge, i.e. one that would work with TiVos, Dish Network’s DVRs, Time Warner’s DVRs, etc. we’d have a real competitor.  Or perhaps Apple’s on the way there.  Wide speculation is that MacMini is actually a DVR in disguise, and it even may offer iPod docking capabilities in one of next revs. Also, we’ve seen some of DVR-ish features coming along with new Front Row application.

One thing is certain: Apple, even in current state of iPod world domination can afford to stand still. Digital revolution is only starting.

Those of you that have even given a thought to Wharton Computing’s recommendation against going through Wharton with a Mac, I am here to reassure you that it not only can be done, but for all practical purposes you won’t see much difference between services available to you and to your fellow Wintel users. Unless you count in problems with viruses, spyware and various hacks, that is. There are plenty of those you won’t experience if you do choose to go on with a mac.

Here are some tips to make your Wharton mac experience as smooth as possible:
- You will absolutely have to have MS office installed. Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Both versions X (2001) and 2004 work just fine, and documents are imminently shareable.
- Wharton email is accessible through imap and exchange protocols from outside the school. I personally use Apple Mail.app built in mail client, but any other imap capable client would work as well. Here are the steps to set up your mail.app to communicate with Wharton’s exchange server:
1. Start up mail.app and click on Mail menu, and select preferences (or simply press apple and “,” keys together)
2. Select accounts tab
3. Click on the “+” key to start new email account wizard
4. From the pull-down menu select Exchange server type and fill-in your email, password, and name information
5. In the next menu fill out the following information for server:
Incoming mail server: post.wharton.upenn.edu
Outlook web access sever: webmail.wharton.upenn.edu
And that’s it. Once you save the account you are all ready to go! Now that was not very hard was it?
- Synchronizing calendar to your iCal with Exchange works (and trust me, you will live by your calendar) through GroupCal software. You can get it at www.snerdware.com. Use post.wharton.upenn.edu as your exchange server.
- You can import Wharton class schedule to your iCal by simply downloading the file from spike, renaming it to .ics file, removing the first blank line of the file (you can do this in a program such as TextEdit) and dragging it onto your iCal.
- You can import Wharton Facebook address cards in the same way as iCal items: download, rename to .vcf, remove first empty line, and drag onto your address book.
- If you wish to get all of the wharton addresses from exchange directory and synchronize the changes, you may consider snerdware’s addressX software that does just that. I would not recommend doing this due to the size of the address list.

Alas, there are some things that won’t work on your mac, but they are far from being essential:
- Wharton VPN: You won’t be able to connect to Wharton VPN, but I don’t know why would you want to, since you can access the exchange server without it
- During your second quarter you may be required to use Excel plug-in tool called Crystal Ball. Irony is that Crystal ball was originally a Macintosh application. A few years ago, MS made Excel on Macintosh work differently from that on Windows, and as a result Crystal Ball stopped supporting the platform. There are a couple of workarounds for this:
a) Don’t use Crystal ball on your computer (you’ll have to do perhaps one project or a homework with it, so it’s not a big deal - trust me)
b) Use Virtual PC for that much.
- During the fourth quarter you will be using SABRE simulation interface which works only on Windows. Fortunately, this tool is available on every lab PC, and the simulation requires a lot of group work, so you should be all set there as well. If need be, get it going on the Virtual PC.

Ars Technica has a great review of several desktop search software packages available currently. It really goes through good enough detail to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each software and matched my experience as well. The only ones here I haven’t tested are Copernic and Ask Jeeves. But the winner is my choice as well: MSN Desktop Search. This has consistently stayed on my desktop and laptop and I use it several times a day. It’s interface is clean and instant, with highly relevant results (beats google anyday) and indexes my OnFolio collections and OneNote files in addition to all the other stuff. My pet peeve is the size of its index which can hit 90MB in virtual memory. I admit to also keeping Yahoo! Desktop Search as well, although I don’t use it as often, sometimes its a life-saver simply because of the breadth of file types and content that it indexes. So, despite Google’s well-publicized release of GDS, it’s still far behind the two major betas MSN and Yahoo! Good luck next time, Google.

OnFolio is a really cool software for your IE browser that helps you collect and organize info and research from the net. Its very useful for us MBAs who constantly search the internet for useful (and trivial) stuff. The best feature is that it takes student collaboration to a new level. Your research can be organized and sent as a file, html report or RSS feed for sharing. Awsome! Now, if they could attach this to the MS Office apps for retrieval, we’d delighted. I have more ideas on my blog at Vele’s Thoughts and will add more ideas here as my usage progresses. In fact, I encourage any current and future MBAs to review it and give me comments.