So IBM and Apple announce that they're going to jointly create a new computer - a universal PC - in the next year or two. It will be a single hardware design that will run any software ever written for Apple or IBM-compatible machines. The new PC will be better, faster and more flexible than any PC today, the companies say.
You just shelled out $2,000 for a computer or prowled computer stores ready to make a purchase. Now you wonder: What does this mean to me?
The answer: not much.
"It's kind of a ho-hummer," David Coursey, editor of P.C. Letter, says of the IBM-Apple announcement Monday. "Consumers should not change their buying plans because of any announcement that does not have an immediately releasable product attached to it."
Don't put off a purchase. Don't worry about one you just made. Computer stuff already gets obsolete quickly. Monday's announcement won't speed or slow the process.
IBM and Apple may eventually make an important new PC, analysts say. But technical, political and marketing hurdles are huge, while IBM-Apple ventures so far have had little success in the marketplace. (Anybody remember Kaleida? Taligent?)
At best, the new PCs won't be out until a year from now. It will take far longer for the products to put a dent in PC market share, if they ever do.
At a press conference Monday, the partners made grand promises. "For too long, our customers have been locked in finite sets of hardware and software choices," said IBM's Nabuo Mii. The partnership will end that problem, he says.
And in a phrase that only a computer nerd could love, Apple's Ian Diery said: "This is both forward-looking and backward-compatible." Which means current Apple Macintosh owners, for example, would be able to buy the IBM-Apple PC and still use their old software.
The gist of the agreement: IBM and Apple - along with Motorola, which makes the PowerPC chips which will go into the new machines - plan to make common hardware.
Now, IBM and Apple PCs have different internal workings, so they can't run each others' software.
Long before the new PC comes out, IBM and Apple will both be making PCs based on the same PowerPC chip. But that won't end the dichotomy. Other chips and electronics inside each kind of PC work differently. Software is written to take advantage of the specific innards of an IBM or Apple computer. Software meant for an IBM-made PowerPC machine should run on an Apple PowerPC machine, but not as well.
The new machines, yet unnamed, would have the same innards, whether from IBM or Apple. Software for one would run on the other. Older software could be run on either, though it may not work as well. The machines could run any operating system - Apple's Macintosh, IBM's OS/2, Microsoft's Windows.
For consumers buying one PC, the IBM-Apple venture may never mean much. Most people just want one operating system and a handful of software programs. But, "it's attractive to a buyer at a large site," says Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of PC Week magazine. A company may have pockets of Apple users amid IBM users. One model would let them share software and training.
Still, even if the IBM-Apple partnership creates a great computer, it may not get anywhere.
More than 80% of PCs sold are based on Intel's chips and Microsoft's operating system. Companies that create software, whether games or Lotus Notes or screen savers, want to make products for those machines. They won't spend the money or time to create software for a new machine until the machine starts selling well. If there's not a lot of good software available, people won't buy the new machine - a chicken-and-egg kind of thing.
Meanwhile, Apple and IBM won't abandon their current PC designs - Apple's Mac and IBM's Intel-based PCs. So the companies will continue to fiercely compete while trying to marry their products and strategies.
"Remember," says editor Coursey, "a lot of these same characters have screwed things up before."
Details from long-awaited announcement
IBM, Apple and Motorola announced a long-awaited agreement Monday to make PCs using a common hardware design.
Details of the agreement:
-- The pact covers PCs run by the PowerPC microprocessor, co-developed by IBM, Apple and Motorola.
-- The computers will share internal workings, allowing them to run software created for either Apple or IBM PCs.
-- The companies didn't agree to create common software or a common operating system. The machines will run using Apple, IBM or Microsoft operating systems.
-- The agreement doesn't involve any exchange of money or shares. The companies would not say how much they'll spend on the new PC.
-- IBM and Apple will continue to make PCs based on current designs, even after the new PC comes out. Motorola, meanwhile, plans to make its own line of PCs as well as a version of the new machine.
