Apple Switching to Intel CPU's 2006,2007

⚠️ 📜 This is archival content from many years or even decades ago. Links may not work. Images may be broken and my opinions may very likely have changed. Please do not judge the content here too harshly.

| | | jduprey | June 10th, 2005

Current Mood: happy

So Apple is switching from the PowerPC to Intel x86-based chips. I’ve long desired for this to happen. The PowerPC is a nice CPU and the G5 is awesome. At the start of each generation it beat Intel’s best, but would quickly lag behind Intel’s relentless release of next generation chips. Apple makes awesome, elegant, computers regardless of the CPU “inside.” This won’t change. I think switching to Intel chipsets will level the playing field in terms of performance comparisons.

There are a couple of articles that discuss the ramifications of the switch in more detail. The first is an article from ars.

Hell freezes over; it must’ve been the liquid cooling: Hannibal on the Apple-to-Intel transition

I particularly like the author’s conclusion about the Apple-PowerPC mythology:

”..Apple is morphing into a different kind of company—a post-PC company—and the Mac as a platform is going to follow it. “Computers for the rest of us” are taking different forms and filling different niches in our lives, and a machine with the heart of a “RISC workstation” and the elegant, intuitive usability of a fountain pen represents the dream of the bygone PC era. The Mac, for good or for ill, is now free to follow the rest of the market and to leave the idea of the PC behind even as it embraces the “PC” architecture.”

Cringely thinks its all about business and crushing Microsoft - an Intel-Apple power play. Personally, I’m not feeling it, but then what do I know about the ways of business.

This should be a wake up call to my Linux brethren (and sisthren). OS X is what desktop Linux should be. “All your desktops have gotten bloated. ” You’ve lost your way in some ways. What’s it going to take to get a viable desktop Linux to the end of that last mile?

Tags: apple, geek, osx

*[June 10th, 2005]: 2005-06-10T00:53:00+03:00