They should have waited for the MPC8641D. Dual G4 core, and dual
733 MHz DDR memory busses. That would make a killer powerbook even
if it wasn't any faster in MHz.
Except Moto can't get the damned thing out the door in quantity at
a reasonable price, and would really rather make other chips anyway.
We all know the dual core thing from moto has been promised for some
time now - whilst the specs are impressive - proof is in delivery. I
too lament the passing of PPC.
I am also going out on a limb if people really think that first
generation or even second revision Intel mac, be it desktop or laptop
(most likely in my opinion) be significantly faster than the models
they replace then I suspect many are in for bitter disappointment.
Geez, it's not like the people running Apple are blind to the
things we see. Steve Jobs is neither stupid or capricious (on this
scale anyway). There's a meme out there that "Steve Jobs threw a
hissy fit and decided to switch Apple to Intel chips", and
amazingly enough, people are *buying* this bull.
He's not that stupid; and (the Enrons, Global Crossings, and Tycos
of the world aside) publicly traded companies don't operate that
way. If *I* can see that switching processors (and all the forced
change that goes along with it in the developer and customer world)
is a huge gamble for Apple, I'm reasonably certain that Steve Jobs
and the Apple BOD can, as well. This wasn't anything done lightly
or on the spur of the moment.
I am betting that Steve and his BOD has had access to information
from Moto, IBM and Intel that show what is really going to happen
rather than what we are seeing (call it industry access if you like)
and thats where the decision was based.
We've been getting PC laptops that are *killing* Macs in price,
performance, weight and power consumption for a year now. *This* is
why the change to Intel.
Unfortunately the design edge, feature edge and cache that came with
earlier Powerbooks (most notably the Titanium which still command
stupid prices secondhand here in Australia) no longer exists for
Apple so they cannot command the premium prices and seemingly lesser
speed capable machines. I will conceed the real value of their
laptops has fallen dramatically over last few years but still
"generally" cheaper to buy a windoze box, particularly when you look
at vanilla machines.
Laptops are the fastest growing segment of the market, obscenely
profitable (compared to desktops), and have been a major part of
Apple's lineup since the PB100, and all we've gotten over the last
year or more are a soupcon more speed and a smidgen more resolution.
Had Apple been able to count on Moto's dual core chips or others
from IBM, they wouldn't have undertaken this sea change in their
design. At the time this decision was made Apple was riding pretty
high, more and more people were saying good things about Apple,
Windows was having severe, and widely advertised security issues,
and the potential was there to go higher, so changing everything
over ran the risk of disrupting that momentum.
Worst part is they were not in a hardware position to really attack
this weakness. Even with the change to Intel the bias against the Mac
is still going to exist so we are still going to have to try and
convince the darkside why we use what we use
But Motorola would rather make and sell cellphones, and IBM would
rather make CPUs for game consoles and high end servers. At least
Intel is focused on the kind of chips and goals Apple needs.
And given they have been chasing Apple for over a decade then they
will most likely provide good supply at least in first part of
relationship. I just hope that the "intel inside" is a sticker that I
can remove as a Mac user of some 18+ years I am still struggling to
swallow that I will have to see "Intel Inside" on my Mac. However, do
I care about commend line, terminal, UNIX commands etc - In short NO,
why cause I work in Graphic Arts arena and to me it's a tool I choose
Macintosh for exactly that reason - plug something in it generally
works, install software it generally works. Sell my machine and
generally retains pretty good value (heck why else would we be trying
to put OSX on effectively ancient machines - don't see XP on really
old stuff being used efficiently).
Sorry this has been a long one.....I want a good operating system
(OSX), running fast on a machine that gives me little grief with
hardware. Intel may or may not provide that in the future the way PPC/
moto have done historically for the Mac since 1984 and for me there
is a lot for Intel and the new Apple to prove before I agree with the
switch.
Simon
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