Intel ducks for cover

[Jason Dunn]

Well, I tried. I wanted to give Intel a chance to respond to the public criticism being levelled against them, but they've declined to do so.<br /><br />"Your request for comment on the previous article was routed to me. We respectfully decline the opportunity as [the] first products using our new processors are just now coming to market."<br /><br />Best regards,<br />Mark O. Miller<br />Intel Press Relations<br /><br />For those of you criticizing Microsoft in the other XScale thread, remember that regardless of how bad the news they were delivering, they had the integrity to respond to my questions. Intel doesn't want to step up in the same fashion, which is pretty unfortunate. Now I have no choice but to randomly speculate, which as entertaining as it may be, is always better when it's based on facts.

[Robotbeat]

That's not really someone in Intel that would necessarily know the answer to your question, anyways. It says "Mark O. Miller -- Intel Press Relations", not "Mark O. Miller -- Intel XScale Development Head".

[AZMark]

It may be unfortunate, but most likely wise. I'm sure everyone involved is still scrambling to figure out where the problem lies.

Is it MS fault in Pocket PC somewhere?
Is it a hardware problem implemented by the Hardware folks?
Is it a translation problem imbeded in the xScale chips?

Or anyone of a million other problems.

Unfortunatly, us the consumers have let them get away with this for years, with the first generation chips, just plunked down into old hardware platforms. Yet we go out and buy them by the thousands. Why would they change now?

[Foo Fighter]

Jeez, is anyone going to step up to the plate and admit guilt? :x

The communication channels between Microsoft, Intel, and the PocketPC community sucks!

[JonnoB]

This is a stall tactic to prepare a more collective and understanding response. I am sure that both Intel and MS are feeling the heat to an even greater degree from the PDA manufacturers. I suspect we will get the real story from one of them first. In general it is dissapointing and does nothing to further promote the platform at all.... at this point, why even bother with an XScale upgrade?

[Jason Dunn]

That's not really someone in Intel that would necessarily know the answer to your question, anyways. It says "Mark O. Miller -- Intel Press Relations", not "Mark O. Miller -- Intel XScale Development Head".

I originally emailed an XScale evangelist of sorts that was supposed to be able to answer my technical questions. He punted it to the PR guy, and the PR guy punted me...right out the door. :roll:

[JonnoB]

I originally emailed an XScale evangelist of sorts that was supposed to be able to answer my technical questions. He punted it to the PR guy, and the PR guy punted me...right out the door. :roll:

Either company policy to not make public statements..... or just running for cover. As this person is an 'evangelist' I would guess the latter is the case.... too bad, this could have really put a damper on Palm - now I think they can catch up in speed.

[Sslixtis]

Company Policy IS to not go making public statements, that is why the PR guy got it handed to him. His job is to get together with Intel Legal and decide what can be said without getting sued. By the way, why isn't anyone nailing the OEMs??? Neither Intel nor MS forced anyone to use the X-Scale in PDAs. In fact MS and Intel are more interested in X-Scale for MS Smart Phones where MS is optimizing for the new X-Scale and Samsung ARM 10 chips! (ARM V5 and ARM 10 are the same architecture, visit ARM website) I believe that MS is just more concerned with a MultiBillion dollar market than with the emerging PDA market. Here is an ARM/MS SmartPhone article.

Telecom carriers earned about $500 billion in service revenues last year, primarily on voice services. "It's out of that opportunity we will carve a market for wireless data," Christensen said, projecting wireless data revenues of $86 billion by 2005.



Here is the link for the full article

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020523S0032

[mookie123]

you won't coaxed Intel to say anything if you are a small fry. They'll skip the marketing spin and right to legal press release if you are big fish.

Otherwise, tight lips.

The only way to make them talk is publish an independent study proving their product really do suck. (pentium calculation debacle, MMX, P4 performance, etc)

[Paragon]

Jeez, is anyone going to step up to the plate and admit guilt? :x


To be honest, I think the manufacturers have to take a good chunk of the responsibility.... not for the less then perfect performance of Xscale or Microsoft's OS, but for rushing to put out devices that are less effective then what they should be. I think they should have waited til they had much better fixes for some of these problems. It's much better to wait and "Do it right the first time" then it is to shoot yourself in the foot and hope the wound will heal properly. Ask Casio, or the old HP, if being first to market is such a great thing. It sure didn't work for them with the origianal PPC 2000 offering. People waited months, and months to get a better Ipaq.

Yes I realize that a total fix for the whole situation may be a long time coming. However I think if they were to wait a few months they could put out a much better device then what is coming out now.

My 2 cents

Dave

[Sslixtis]

To be honest, I think the manufacturers have to take a good chunck of the responsibility.... not for the less then perfect performance of Xscale or Microsoft's OS, but for rushing to put out devices that are less effective then what they should be. I think they should have waited til they had much better fixes for some of these problems. It's much better to wait and "Do it right the first time" then it is to shoot yourself in the foot and hope the wound will heal properly.

I think if they were to wait a few months they could put out a much better device then what is coming out now.

My 2 cents

Dave

EXACTLY!!! Thanks Dave I was begining to think everyone out there had lost their minds! :lol:

[pt]

For those of you criticizing Microsoft in the other XScale thread, remember that regardless of how bad the news they were delivering, they had the integrity to respond to my questions. Intel doesn't want to step up in the same fashion, which is pretty unfortunate. Now I have no choice but to randomly speculate, which as entertaining as it may be, is always better when it's based on facts.

yah, jason gets it. other folks get it. here's the deal. if i were intel, or toshiba and saw the comments on the various web sites, i think i'd remain silent too. the personal attacks on folks like ed s. are pretty crappy. on pda buzz "foo fighter" who usually has pretty good comments here and elsewhere decided to make a talking ed icon/avatar, that's not cool, these are people, humans, they have feelings too ya know. don't get me wrong i love parody and i plan do make fun of all you shortly, but this certainly doesn't encourage companies or people at companies to jump into the community and do something / anything when ya'll do stuff like this.

maybe we could start our comments with stuff like "thanks ms for responding, i don't like what you said, but please always keep talking to us in our forums and community". and perhaps we can save our personal comments, attacks and photoshop skills for other stuff? dig it.

[Jonathan1]

yah, jason gets it. other folks get it. here's the deal. if i were intel, or toshiba and saw the comments on the various web sites, i think i'd remain silent too. the personal attacks on folks like ed s. are pretty crappy. on pda buzz "foo fighter" who usually has pretty good comments here and elsewhere decided to make a talking ed icon/avatar, that's not cool, these are people, humans, they have feelings too ya know. don't get me wrong i love parody and i plan do make fun of all you shortly, but this certainly doesn't encourage companies or people at companies to jump into the community and do something / anything when ya'll do stuff like this.

maybe we could start our comments with stuff like "thanks ms for responding, i don't like what you said, but please always keep talking to us in our forums and community". and perhaps we can save our personal comments, attacks and photoshop skills for other stuff? dig it.


PT,

What no holding hands and sharing our feeling too? Give me a break. Foo and A LOT of others, me included, are pissed at what Ed said. Many feel that Ed’s comments showed a total lack of interest in getting the OS "up to par".
And was nothing more then marketing-speak. I can partly understand why Intel kept their mouths closed. I'm betting, like many, that they will address the issue eventually but not in this haphazard manner Ed did. He didn't answer the questions. He skirted them and this is the core reason why people are pissed by that Q&A.

Foo's animated head is no worse then some of the other people he's made talking heads of. (Micheal Mace) And I'm sorry but if someone doesn't have thick enough skin to take a talking head, Which by the way I think is funny as heck, and a bit of criticism they should crawl into bed and stay there sucking their thumb. What did he expect?!!? Anyone with even a bit of intelligence would KNOW the reaction this was going to cause. So its not as if Foo's comments should have totally caught him by surprise.

[Foo Fighter]

I posted this at PDA Buzz, but it applies here as well:

Ok, I'm a reasonable person, and I don't want to appear as the "bad guy" so the Ed avatar will be gone in a few moments (give me some time to rummage through my archive). But let me make a few points. First off, in no way was I poking fun of Ed's appearance, insulting his character (or family) or making a mockery of him in general. The avatar was meant as a political statement more than anything else, and anyone who knows me is aware that I often create avatars of public figures in the mobile industry in such cases as this. I find it odd that NO ONE has ever lodged a complaint when I satirized Palm executives such as Carl Yankowski and Eric Benhamou, but it suddenly becomes unacceptable to likewise turn the spotlight on Microsoft.

That said, this still doesn't address the issue of why I, and the rest of the free world, are frustrated with the xScale fiasco that has blown up in our face. The answers provided by Mr. Suwanjindar are unacceptable. But that's for another discussion.

Everyone have a great weekend. Get out, enjoy the sun, have a beer (I am), go boating...whatever. Do something that doesn't involve PDAs.

Peace, out.

[pt]

I posted this at PDA Buzz, but it applies here as well: Ok, I'm a reasonable person, and I don't want to appear as the "bad guy" so the Ed avatar will be gone in a few moments (give me some time to rummage through my archive). But let me make a few points. First off, in no way was I poking fun of Ed's appearance, insulting his character (or family) or making a mockery of him in general. The avatar was meant as a political statement more than anything else, and anyone who knows me is aware that I often create avatars of public figures in the mobile industry in such cases as this. I find it odd that NO ONE has ever lodged a complaint when I satirized Palm executives such as Carl Yankowski and Eric Benhamou, but it suddenly becomes unacceptable to likewise turn the spotlight on Microsoft. That said, this still doesn't address the issue of why I, and the rest of the free world, are frustrated with the xScale fiasco that has blown up in our face. The answers provided by Mr. Suwanjindar are unacceptable. But that's for another discussion. Peace, out.

hey foo, this is just my opinion, don't change anything cause' of me (really). i think it's a crappy thing to do, but that doesn't mean you need to do anything, your choices, good or bad. but let's talk about this for a sec...did carl yankowski and eric benhamou ever get involved in a community site like ed s. just did? maybe, maybe not, i don't recall that ever. i tellya what tho- if they did and if i noticed you simply posted their icon / avatar and didn't offer up anything thoughtful, or interesting, i'd say the same thing, it's just my opinion though. for whatever reason, this time i noticed, and i posted. i'd like to encourage them to keep talking to *us* not just the press. you usually have pretty good posts and and when i see your name i read them. "kill the messenger" is soooo roman times - b.c.

the discussion *is* about the answers, not the messenger. so that said, let's talk about that stuff.

i think toshiba goofed, after all they shipped the product and surely did some type of testing. no one forced them to sell this product. ms never said they were going to deliver an xscale version of the pocket pc os to toshiba for their new device.

i'm off to get really tanked and watch a movie, cheers.

[fmcpherson]

pt, I think you know the answer to your question.

Toshiba is not the only manufacturer coming out with X-Scale. HP is and Fujitsu is. So surely all three of these companies should have done testing. How can all three of them make such a mistake?

Toshiba is trying to become the leading Pocket PC manufacturer. They could have done that with just the integrated WiFI in the E740, but my guess is someone convinced the decision makers that being first with X-Scale will make things an even greater hit.

[Take1]

The PDA market is so competitive now Toshiba probably felt that they HAD to be first with XScale to get attention. Either way everyone involved with this roll-out deserves some of the blame.

Can't beleive MS is going to sit back and do nothing about the performance problems. It could be a wait-and-see thing -- see if OS5 is a major improvment in multimedia and audio like Palm is patting itself on the back about. What MS COULD do to help smooth things over a bit is to work higher-rez compatibility into the OS. That would at least make Sony less of a threat in the near future hardwarewise.

[pt]

pt, I think you know the answer to your question. Toshiba is not the only manufacturer coming out with X-Scale. HP is and Fujitsu is. So surely all three of these companies should have done testing. How can all three of them make such a mistake? Toshiba is trying to become the leading Pocket PC manufacturer. They could have done that with just the integrated WiFI in the E740, but my guess is someone convinced the decision makers that being first with X-Scale will make things an even greater hit.

sounds logical to me.

if i were at intel i'd push the xscale to all these folks, i would say it would run all the apps as good or better than the arm5. i'd also say if there are any performance issues, it's software and ms will "fix" it. the blame as we've seen has largely been directed at microsoft, right or wrong.

since ms never ever promised a version of ppc os for xscale, it sounds like they're gambling. if all the oems went for it, shame on them.

but no matter what, oems are the ones who sell the product, so i blame them if they bring a product to market and something like this happens.

i could wrong, all the facts and evidence is slowly coming in. the worst part is that i doubt we'll get more interviews here from ed s.

[Jason Dunn]

I find it odd that NO ONE has ever lodged a complaint when I satirized Palm executives such as Carl Yankowski and Eric Benhamou, but it suddenly becomes unacceptable to likewise turn the spotlight on Microsoft.

For me at least, this is because I know Ed personally. I don't know Karl or any of the other talking heads you've made. If you made a Ballmer talking head I wouldn't be offended - I don't know the guy. Ed, on the other hand, is a cool individual. 8)

[Foo Fighter]

For me at least, this is because I know Ed personally. I don't know Karl or any of the other talking heads you've made. If you made a Ballmer talking head I wouldn't be offended - I don't know the guy. Ed, on the other hand, is a cool individual. 8)

You can read some of my points at Buzz. I understand where you are coming from, and I removed the avatar. No offense was intended.

[Mobile Bob]

The PDA market is so competitive now Toshiba probably felt that they HAD to be first with XScale to get attention. Either way everyone involved with this roll-out deserves some of the blame.

Can't beleive MS is going to sit back and do nothing about the performance problems. It could be a wait-and-see thing -- see if OS5 is a major improvment in multimedia and audio like Palm is patting itself on the back about. What MS COULD do to help smooth things over a bit is to work higher-rez compatibility into the OS. That would at least make Sony less of a threat in the near future hardwarewise.

I agree Take1. The PDA market is very competitive, and MS has a lot of ground to cover to overtake Palm. Obviously, taking a lot of the market share Palm is enjoying is important to MS. While they may not be at blame (or at least not primarily at blame) for the disappointing performance of the XScale-based PDAs, they have a vested interest in its success. Nothing personal about Ed S. I'm sure he is only doing his job. But their indiffence towards their customers (and potential customers) as reflected in that interview is very disappointing. With so much at stake, you would think they would show more concern. I would hope that MS was aware of the great anticipation that existed for the XScale processor over the last few months. This was a golden opportunity to take a large chunk of market share from Palm, and collectively, the companies involved (Intel, MS, the OEMs, the manufacturers) are fumbling it bad. They should at least show some concern for their customers and offer some hope that the problems will be resolved. Whether they are to blame for this or not, both Intel and MS have a lot at stake here, and with all of their clout, should have taken care to at least shepard this highly anticipate rollout to prevent fiascos like this.

We have all heard during the last few weeks that there were some problems with the XScale, and that was why the release dates of these new PDAs were being pushed back. If the problem turns out to be a hardware issue, then all Xscale PDAs will be similarly affected; not just Toshiba's e740. If it is not a hardware issue, I feel confident that the problem will be resolved very soon.

I for one am very pleased with my e740. It has some issues, but very minor ones in my view. I have no intention of sending it back. But if Toshiba does not resolve the performance issues with video intensive applications, I'll never buy another PDA from them again. I don't play videos or video intensive games on my e740, but I would like to in the future, and I understand this feature is important to others. I think this will be resolved in the near future. The question is when? And buy whom? As for the present, their silence, as a group (Intel, MS, Toshiba), is very troubling.

[Paragon]

yah, jason gets it. other folks get it. here's the deal. if i were intel, or toshiba and saw the comments on the various web sites, i think i'd remain silent too. the personal attacks on folks like ed s. are pretty crappy. on pda buzz "foo fighter" who usually has pretty good comments here and elsewhere decided to make a talking ed icon/avatar, that's not cool, these are people, humans, they have feelings too ya know. don't get me wrong i love parody and i plan do make fun of all you shortly, but this certainly doesn't encourage companies or people at companies to jump into the community and do something / anything when ya'll do stuff like this.

maybe we could start our comments with stuff like "thanks ms for responding, i don't like what you said, but please always keep talking to us in our forums and community". and perhaps we can save our personal comments, attacks and photoshop skills for other stuff? dig it.

pt

I agree with your thought that many developers, ect. would be turned off coming to a forum such as this after seeing the way we treat some people. I have taken my share off shots at poeple here and elsewhere so I'm not innocent by any means.

I have always been a bit disappointed that developers, both hardware and software have not participated more in forums such as this. I'm sure that most are a bit 'gun shy'. I have noticed over time though that the ones who do and don't normally find themselves in hot water, it's because they give straight forward honest answers if asked a question. The ones who do get into trouble are the ones that talk using breaucratic babble. We are big boys and girls hear we don't need, or want it sugar coated. When we do we get our backs up. This is where our friend Ed got into trouble. He tried to make it sound like a positive thing....with an attitude of "We did it this way because we really care about you, our customer." Every time I hear some say something like that I know I've just been had.

I think to get someone from Microsft to come out and speak on the subject was a bit of a coup. I woud love to see more of this kind of thing, only handled a little better by us, and by the person being interviewed.

Dave

[Timothy Rapson]

This is a huge debacle no matter whether Intel, MS, or the OEMs are at fault.

At this point it appears some huge reengineering needs to be done. Otherwise we have the same situation that PPC has lost and lost again and again over the past three years. $600-700 PPCs against $400 and less for Palms that are faster, getting better screen resollutions, and adding multimedia features.

6 months ago, it looked like Intel would own the world with their processors going into desktop computers and set up to virtually own the PDA market. Now, the Motorola, TI, and Samsung ARMS are going to look very good with:

1. TI taking low power consumption honors (TI claims they use 1/10 the power of similar powered processors in some applications)

2. Motorola taking integration to a new level with graphics and in/out right on the chip and practically 100% swap with VX (68000) motherboards.

3. Samsung taking the 300+ MZ speed crown with no need to reengineer anything.

What a stunning development. But since Palmsource has already tested these with OS 5 it appears MS is going to be in catchup position this Fall. Very unexpected.

[Skoobouy]

I still don't understand why the focus here seems to be on MS and Intel. If you ask me, they share very little of the blame here. They might have a few things to work out, certainly, but their burden is nothing compared to the huge, steaming piles of problems more likely caused by Toshiba and ATI, the makers of the new graphics chip.

Hardly anyone on this thread has mentioned ATI, even though they were the ones promising the high speed movie and low battery life noone is seeing. Somebody call them.

[dave]

when the xscale devices were announced, i quickly ebay'd my ipaq 3765 before its value plummeted. i got about $400 for it and a cf sleeve. i thought i would wait a few months and toss in a couple hundred extra to be state of the art. in the meantime, i have been syncing my calendar with my rim 950 and being really bored in many meetings, not to mention less productive. i flirted with a toshiba e570, but that battery sucks.

i got in on the amazon pre-order for the e740, but cancelled after they kept delaying and i could buy the device at compusa and circuitcity. but i held off because of the impending arrival of the loox and the new ipaq. i figured i would cool my jets and see which one of these three devices was the bomb.

all this xscale performance confusion was more than i could take.

today i went out and got me a jornada 568 before they quit making 'em.

i don't want to re-hash a different tired thread, but those guys went with the ipaq over this thing? that blows me away. after toying with the 568 for a few hours, 206mhz..... 400mhz...... i don't care.

[mookie123]

well. ugh ..

-about Palm.
there is never any indication that Palm will support complete set of instructions, specially the DSP functions of Xscale or Omap. So until somebody comes up with official count. I have to say It is highly unlikely Palm will "fully utilize" all those chips. Palm would probably just uses the majority of standard ARM instruction sets for portability reason. That's how they can claim they run on every major ARM based core.

if Palm indeed supports all those instructions, than come these questions, how good the implementations are, is there any good tool, library, and ultimately any interesting apps which uses this "multimedia". PPC is ahead miles away in tackling these.

Thus far for eg., Palm has not shown any solutions, including "GAPI" like library and there is also no developer creating multimedia application approaching what PPC2002 has.

--Microsoft.
I believe Microsoft needs some spanking for not utilizing Xscale to the fullest. The multimedia extensions in current PDA are very similar to pentium MMX goal. In that it speeds up a lot of audio/graphic calculations. Microsoft hasn't learn even a bit from the "MMX" debacle. MMX was an utter waste of silicon until they finally put out DirectX that support those instruction. Tho' granted that the MMX case also involved Intel suing AMD creating developer uncertainty. But in the end Microsoft should do the initiative since OS is the central point on this vicious circle.

Microsoft should put out, some sort of OS extension similar to DirectX in desktop, so that Xscale based PDA can give the best multimedia performance. That on top of also optimising the OS for battery and speed reason.

the iPAQ compatibility problem can be also solved with this DirectX approach. Xscale dsp instruction would be supported somewhat in emulation mode in old iPAQ. It would be slow, but supported nonetheless.

NOT pushing for better features and performance in Handheld is definitely a mistake! And the compatibility probelm is not an excuse since there has been numerous solution created in Desktop world.