Continued:

Basically, Intel had only to gain by criticizing AMD about their 64-bit chips, mostly to cover the fact that they did not have 64-bit desktop chips ready. Let’s examine Intel’s motives here for their actions. Might the fact that AMD is continuing to take away market share from Intel, according to a recent Mercury Research report, have had some influence? You can find a news report on eWeek’s website for further details on this subject.

As a side note, I must add that 64-bit software is making progress on all fronts, as Ubisoft has just released a 64-bit patch for Far Cry. Though the performance gain isn’t anything significant, the image quality improvements are certainly there for anyone with a 64-bit chip and a copy of Windows 64-bit OS to check out.

As I stated at the beginning of this column, there are perhaps more examples of such competitive incompetence throughout the various IT fields, but these probably are two of the most prominent instances in the hardware area. What’s really saddening is that companies continue to criticize their competitors when they announce new features that will be utilized in the future, fully knowing that their hardware should have included these features, and they will soon be added.

These transparent attempts to hide competitive incompetence through carefully constructed criticism can only hurt the company’s reputation. Moreover, if certain products lack the features that will most likely define the next generation computing, customers should not have to pay the same price for the products that lack these features. Companies that can’t support the same features as their competitors must find a way to compensate us, as customers, one way or another. One would think that customers would realize when they are being "taken", but the PR machines do a fantastic job of insuring "brand loyalty" and confusing us all. Hopefully, the market will wise up and refuse to believe such irresponsible claims in the future.