switching to intel why...

[beatle888]

The simple and succinct reason that Apple is deciding to switch to Intel, Steve made the decision. I trust his judgment.

he also made the decision to go with IBM. at that time he could of chose intel if he had foresight.

 

[mcarnes]

he also made the decision to go with IBM. at that time he could of chose intel if he had foresight.

IBM was the better choice at that time. Steve could not have predicted IBM would drop the ball so badly on chips for the mac portables.

Excrement happens.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Great another person who thinks faster Ghz=better performance. A single dual core 2.5 Ghz G5 will be right up there with the 3.2 Ghz Pentium D or even beat it. The dual core 2.3 Ghz G5 already beats the dual processor 2.5 Ghz G5. So grow up. The G5 is still one of the best CPU's. I say 2nd only beaten by AMD's chips.

You're right. And Steve-o even admitted this. He said that there are great PPC products coming. BUT, in the long term, Intel looked better. Intel's 'NetBurst' architecture (Pentium 4, Pentium-D, and the latest Celerons,) is crap. And I used to work at Intel. I know. It was a hack. It was a backup plan for if Itanium didn't take off. (Which, as we know, it didn't.) That said, Intel has done amazing things with it. They pushed it to almost 4GHz. They've slapped dual-cores in. They even have cheap dual-cores. (Unlike both IBM and AMD at present.) But, the steam for the NetBurst line is basically out. Unfortunately, so is PowerPC's. The G4 is floundering at 2GHz with a 200MHz bus. The G5 is an amazing architecture, but IBM has dropped the ball. IBM committed to providing custom processors for the next three big games systems, to the detriment of Apple. (They should have had a 3GHz proc for Apple a year and a half ago. They still don't have 3GHz for Apple, even though they've promised Microsoft a TRIPLE-CORE 3.2GHz chip for the new Xbox.)

Prediction: We won't see a single Mac with a NetBurst processor in it. Because Steve knows it sucks. He went with Intel for their NEXT generation of machines. (Why else would he have not just released the IntelMacs already?)

I, for one, am a huge PowerPC fan. I am extremely sad to see that fantastic architecture go. (And Apple's implementation is the best around, for ANY processor.) The G5 looked very promising. But IBM dropped the ball, and Steve can't/won't stick around to let IBM jerk him around anymore. If The G5 were at dual-core 3GHz, with a roadmap for 4GHz (or triple/quad core) next year, MAYBE it would be worth sticking with.

And that's only on the desktop. While you COULD cram a G5 into a laptop now (P4 laptops suck down way more power than the G5,) it wouldn't be able to be elegant. It would be a big-ass brick like all the Windows 17" laptops, with a jet-powered fan. Steve doesn't want that. He wants to get Pentium-M/Centrino in his laptops. (Or its sucessor. I have a feeling he's waiting for the 64-bit Pentium-M replacement.)

 

[Mechcozmo]

So what you are saying is that OS X won't run windows natively, but with some extra software it could run them at almost native speeds and it would seem to the user that they run natively. Functionally speaking, what's the difference?

Hold your horses their, I didn't say you could just double click and it would run. That would involve the Windows API sitting next to the OS X API... not going to happen, nor could it work. More like something where you open a program that either, like WINE, runs in the background to allow you to doubleclick on a program and have it run, or something like VPC is now. You open VPC, start Windows, and play in there-- but it runs at near native speeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
That should help... it is a complex idea, but workable.

It will still be humongously faster than VPC for mac is now.

Very true, with ease of use that is the same or greater.

Finally, I'll be able to install windows on my mactel, so I will be able to get native performance that way.

Maybe. Apple said they wouldn't stop Windows from running on the Intel Macs. That doesn't mean that Windows WILL run on Intel Macs correctly. Yes, on the developer boxes they work, but the dev boxes are NOTHING NEAR the real thing. Get that right everybody. Just because the developer kit can run Windows doesn't mean the final product will.

 

[CubaTBird]

two words:

cost efficiency

 

[blitzkrieg79]

Great another person who thinks faster Ghz=better performance. A single dual core 2.5 Ghz G5 will be right up there with the 3.2 Ghz Pentium D or even beat it. The dual core 2.3 Ghz G5 already beats the dual processor 2.5 Ghz G5. So grow up. The G5 is still one of the best CPU's. I say 2nd only beaten by AMD's chips.

And I am gonna be even bolder and say that the G5 is the best desktop processor considering that most of my applications are Altvec optimized which basically puts G5 above anything there is right now...

Anyway, to those who know what is going on in the CPU industry, AMD is too tied up with IBM (IBM helps them out a great deal with developing new technologies)... One thing no one can take from IBm is that they definately have the best processor designers in the world (G5 being a prime example, they designed/delivered a great desktop processor in short amount of time per Apples request)...

Roadmaps don't mean squat to me, most of the time they never come true... Intel, supposedly the greatest CPU manufacturer in the world, is getting beaten badly by IBM in the high-end computing arena (Power5+ vs Itanium), it was beaten to 1 GHZ by a much smaller AMD company and is still getting beaten by them in the desktop arena performance wise...

Only advantage they have is the mobile chips but its nothing revolutionary, they basically abandoned NetBurst and went back in time to Pentium 3 architecture and reworked it so its just a matter of time when they will get beaten up by someone else in the mobile arena... Those people who think that Intel came out with some magically revolutionary architecture needs to wake up and smell the coffee, they are moving towards more parallelized architectures (specialized processors/coprocessors inside making up the entire CPU), something that IBM/SONY/Toshiba has ready for production NOW...