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January 10, 2006
MacBook Pro and the ending of an era
The first Macs with Intel CPU's have just been announced: the 15" MacBook's and the new 17"/20" iMac's. Both use the new Intel Core Duo CPUs (aka "Yonah" a dual-core Pentium M) built in 65-nanometer process. No word of an Intel-based MacMini, so far.
For the same price, you get four times the speed of a PowerBook or twice the speed of an PowerPC-based iMac, says Apple (now).
The Intel-based Mac's run MacOSX 10.4.4 for x86, which is able to emulate a PowerPC G3 CPU at modest speeds. There is no AltiVec emulation whatsoever, meaning that once you get a new Intel-based Mac, you'll have to find Intel versions of all your power applications, ~especially~ Photoshop, which is maybe the most important reason alone for which professionals used to buy Mac's instead of PC's.
Job's announcement from today marks the end of an era which lasted for almost a decade - the era of the PowerPC-based Mac's. With Apple being the largest client for IBM's PowerPC processor making division, this will most likely result in a severe jobs cut, although it's for sure that the PowerPC will not die. Actually, lots of new cars (eg. the new BMW 7 series) use various types of PowerPC's for the control systems which take care of the engine and other essential subsystems.
PS: I wonder if the new Mac's can run Windows. In theory, Apple could build an x86 computer on which Windows doesn't work, but the question is if they actually did it. Sure thing, if I were Jobs, I'd have done it. Then again, I'm not. :)
Posted by Costin Raiu at January 10, 2006 10:56 PM
Comments
I'm still waiting for the announcement of the intel based mac mini. If it ever happens, i'll get one as my home emulation pc haha.
Posted by: Jonathan Poon 
at January 11, 2006 5:08 AM