Intel switch. 4 years later.

[macuserx86]

Exactly. The days of classrooms full of Performa 550s and Mac LCs pretty much ran the Macintosh brand into the ground. The iMac definitely helped recover much of this image, but it still ran Mac OS 8 -- and that was a problem.

If it weren't for the stability of OS X, who knows if Apple would have made it this far. Thankfully, the younger folks are now growing up with Macs as being the "good computers" and the PCs as "bad computers". Quite the opposite from 10 or 15 years ago.

Exactly, I remember all the kids saying Macs were "gay," especially in reference to the crappy iMacs we had in middle school. Macs were considered "gay" by everyone around me until my senior year (last year lol) when all of a sudden people would come up to me, sometimes people I had never talked to, and say "whoa, macs are cool, you were right!"
I kinda miss those days, owning a Mac back then was really different and special.

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

I'm just a little worried now that pretty much everything runs on x86 these days. There are still uses for PPC and other architectures, obviously. But it seems the consumer market is pretty much all x86. It's never good to have just one option, IMO... whether it be PPC, or something else, there needs to be a mainstream alternative to x86. Again, just my opinion.

I get what you're saying, but then I have to ask - to the end user, does it REALLY matter? I mean, other than performance, if you loaded up Leopard on a G5 or a Core 2 Duo, can you REALLY tell the difference without checking the system info? No, you can't. That's the thing, the end user doesn't need to know, nor care what is under the hood. The OS hides all that sort of stuff, and as long as the apps and OS support the architecture you're running, it doesn't matter.

So yeah, not having much in the way of choice could be bad, it's not like Intel doesn't have ANY competition. I think PPC not really having a competitor selling the same architecture was what caused the problems for them. Intel has AMD to keep them honest and give them a kick in the rear when they screw up....

 

[m1stake]

It's the reason Apple is a competitive company today.

 

[sushi]

Intel has AMD to keep them honest and give them a kick in the rear when they screw up....

I hope so.

Lately AMD has waned a bit. I was a big fan of their chips and built PCs using them. Today I would use an Intel chip.

I hope that we see AMD come back a bit. Competition is good.

 

[Shake 'n' Bake]

I hope so.

Lately AMD has waned a bit. I was a big fan of their chips and built PCs using them. Today I would use an Intel chip.

I hope that we see AMD come back a bit. Competition is good.

AMD has a tri-core processor. Why doesn't Intel? I guess they think it isn't that great.

 

[kolax]

Definitely helped me switch. I had been considering for some time, always liked Macs - the design of them as well as the OS. But I had a lot of software that was PC only (i.e. Visual Basic NET among some other programming languages, as well as Microsoft Access).

One of my mates got a MacBook Pro when it first came out, and when Parallels Desktop was released, he was showing it off and I was ready to make the switch.

Never looked back. I really wish I could relive the "switchers" buzz. Getting to know a new OS from a geeky point of view. Also, the buzz I got when I found out new features and when I fell in love with OS X.

 

[snouter]

AMD has a tri-core processor. Why doesn't Intel? I guess they think it isn't that great.

Companies handle their yield issues in different ways. The tri-core is nothing more than a quad-core with a failed or disabled core.

It's not like AMD said, "let's build a tri-core and take over the world!" They are just failed quads.

 

[Dr.Pants]

AMD has a tri-core processor. Why doesn't Intel? I guess they think it isn't that great.

Companies handle their yield issues in different ways. The tri-core is nothing more than a quad-core with a failed or disabled core...

Its a disabled core. On some mobos, people have enabled them -- somehow, it managed to spark an ethical debate, such as "is the enabler biting the hand the feeds him?" In the meantime, AMD tightens up how it disables its Triple-core processors and the motherboard manufacturer puts out a BIOS update.

Still, the triple-core processor is an attempt by AMD to boost their sales - some people want more then a dual, but a quad is out of the price range. Its a niche that currently only AMD has filled, and Intel probably wont respond (The Core 3 Trio?).

 

[Shake 'n' Bake]

Its a disabled core. On some mobos, people have enabled them -- somehow, it managed to spark an ethical debate, such as "is the enabler biting the hand the feeds him?" In the meantime, AMD tightens up how it disables its Triple-core processors and the motherboard manufacturer puts out a BIOS update.

Still, the triple-core processor is an attempt by AMD to boost their sales - some people want more then a dual, but a quad is out of the price range. Its a niche that currently only AMD has filled, and Intel probably wont respond (The Core 3 Trio?).

No it would be the Core 2 Trio even though that makes no sense like Core 2 Quad.

Core Solo and Duo made sense.

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

No it would be the Core 2 Trio even though that makes no sense like Core 2 Quad.

Core Solo and Duo made sense.

You're not getting what the names mean...

Core (1) Solo/Duo were the first generation of the Core architecture
Core 2 - second generation of the core architecture. Basically refinements and improvements on the original Core series

The 2 in "Core 2" isn't meant to imply the number of cores. That's what the Solo/Duo/Quad are for!

And yeah, AMD has fallen down a bit, but I'm sure at some point Intel will get lazy/complacent, and AMD will put out a good chip. That's basically what happened both of the previous times AMD was on top. The original Athlon's beat out the P3's and early P4's. Intel hadn't taken the competition seriously for a while and hadn't put out anything major in a while. Then there was the Prescott while AMD was putting out the A64's.

I'm ALL for AMD. I think they do a great job, especially when you consider that AMD makes less per year than Intel SPENDS ON MARKETING! AMD has had a rough time the last few years, but I think they're on the upswing and getting their legs back now that they've finished bringing ATI into the fold, and their CPU's have gotten over the hump. They had a LOT of problems with the first gen quads that took a year longer than they should have to get right.

Intel can afford to screw up a chip generation or even 2 every 3-5 generations... AMD can't.

 

[Shake 'n' Bake]

You're not getting what the names mean...

Core (1) Solo/Duo were the first generation of the Core architecture
Core 2 - second generation of the core architecture. Basically refinements and improvements on the original Core series

The 2 in "Core 2" isn't meant to imply the number of cores. That's what the Solo/Duo/Quad are for!

And yeah, AMD has fallen down a bit, but I'm sure at some point Intel will get lazy/complacent, and AMD will put out a good chip. That's basically what happened both of the previous times AMD was on top. The original Athlon's beat out the P3's and early P4's. Intel hadn't taken the competition seriously for a while and hadn't put out anything major in a while. Then there was the Prescott while AMD was putting out the A64's.

I'm ALL for AMD. I think they do a great job, especially when you consider that AMD makes less per year than Intel SPENDS ON MARKETING! AMD has had a rough time the last few years, but I think they're on the upswing and getting their legs back now that they've finished bringing ATI into the fold, and their CPU's have gotten over the hump. They had a LOT of problems with the first gen quads that took a year longer than they should have to get right.

Intel can afford to screw up a chip generation or even 2 every 3-5 generations... AMD can't.

I see now, I thought that Intel was just a bit lazy.

 

[macuserx86]

Intel can afford to screw up a chip generation or even 2 every 3-5 generations... AMD can't.

Exactly, the phenom launch went very smoothly, with the chips doing perfect math and not needing any kind of patch that reduced performance by 20%.

 

[blackhand1001]

You're not getting what the names mean...

Core (1) Solo/Duo were the first generation of the Core architecture
Core 2 - second generation of the core architecture. Basically refinements and improvements on the original Core series

The 2 in "Core 2" isn't meant to imply the number of cores. That's what the Solo/Duo/Quad are for!

And yeah, AMD has fallen down a bit, but I'm sure at some point Intel will get lazy/complacent, and AMD will put out a good chip. That's basically what happened both of the previous times AMD was on top. The original Athlon's beat out the P3's and early P4's. Intel hadn't taken the competition seriously for a while and hadn't put out anything major in a while. Then there was the Prescott while AMD was putting out the A64's.

I'm ALL for AMD. I think they do a great job, especially when you consider that AMD makes less per year than Intel SPENDS ON MARKETING! AMD has had a rough time the last few years, but I think they're on the upswing and getting their legs back now that they've finished bringing ATI into the fold, and their CPU's have gotten over the hump. They had a LOT of problems with the first gen quads that took a year longer than they should have to get right.

Intel can afford to screw up a chip generation or even 2 every 3-5 generations... AMD can't.

Actually core duo was not core based at all. Its based on Pentium M. However Apple didn;t want to associate themselves with the word Pentium since they had taken an axe at that brand several times in their history so Intel rebranded their new dual core Pentium M's as Core Duo.

 

[Dr.Pants]

(The Core 3 Trio?).

That was just a bad joke on my part involving Intel's naming scheme.

....Intel can afford to screw up a chip generation or even 2 every 3-5 generations... AMD can't.

In this economy? I would beg to differ... Intel maybe could screw up one, but two would put them back in the P3/P4 days (vs. other companies). Considering how Apple's OS is "restricted" to certain hardware, Intel screwing up would make Apple products all the more "overpriced" to the general public.

IBM screwed up (in a sense), and Apple changed vendors. Intel does not have as much to lose if Macs switched off their processors, but it would be a sign to the general computing community of who has the better processors/chipsets.

 

[Shake 'n' Bake]

Only for the next seven years or so. The lifespan of any processor line in Macs historically so far has been about a decade (1984-1994 for the 68000, and 1994-2006 for the PPC).

In about 6-7 years from now, Apple will announce their next big move to another architecture. Maybe whatever they're bringing in all these chip people in-house and buying out chip companies now for. They sure aren't being bought and hired to design Intel chips.

The rate of change in technology is always increasing so Intel may have an even shorter time in the Mac.

But knowing how Apple is always a year slow in getting the new stuff to the consumer, you never know.