The infamous Intel Twitter Survey
On 2015-01-09, I participated in Twitter Survey. It was about Intel. And the questions were more than weird. Here are the questions:
Do you agree that Intel is a brand that enables better experiences?
I strongly disagree. That is a comparative question. Better experience than what? Without? With ARM instead? With AMD instead? I think ARM and AMD are both better than Intel.
Do you agree that Intel is an innovative company?
I strongly disagree. Intel was “beaten” to 32 Bit by Motorola, “beaten” to 64 Bit by Alpha but then failed their own attempts (Itanium), AMD had to fix it (x64 is an AMD design, not an Intel design), and it was “beaten” to Multicore by AMD (Opteron). Intel is profiting much more from AMD innovation and the competition with AMD than from their own innovation or anything else.
Do you agree that Intel is a leading technology brand?
I strongly disagree. Intel is a technology brand, but it is not leading. AMD is leading. In the heads of many people who do not know the technical details or history or drivers, maybe Intel is leading, but in fact Intel isn’t leading. Technological leadership is not defined in market shares but in contribution to renovation, innovation and invention. The relevant technologies in today’s Intel CPUs are coming from AMD or have been forced onto Intel by their competitors.
Do you agree that Intel makes your life better?
I strongly disagree. Intel does not make my life better. The world would either not be different at all, or much better if Intel were not around. What has Intel given us? 80x86 (yuck!)? Little Endian (yuck!)? Segmented Adressing (yuck!)? Itanium (yuck!)? Actually, the world would be better off without Intel. Without Intel, Motorola would have rocked the 80ies and the one who had beaten the shit out of Motorola wouldn’t have been Intel but ARM. M68k, PowerPC, ARM are all better CPU designs, and without Intel we’d all be better off.
Overall, for a technology brand, the survey was really weird. I would expect more hard-facts questions from a technology brand. But then again, the type of questions asked totally fits the reality about Intel - just a big fast follower, not inventive, not innovative, not renovative.