After years of making fun of Intel and shunning their chipsets agressively, Apple unveiled a mac which uses Intel chipsets and processors. The switch from IBM chips to Intel was announced last year and I still wonder what led to that decision. As Apple still points out on their website http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ the IBM benchmarked twice as fast as the Intel xeon. So ditching a tested and appreciated chip to use two chips that give only half the performance of the previous provides what distint advantage is beyond me. In fact the hardware complexity is needlessly increased and you are throwing away a good, performing and appreciated platoform and ruining your relationship with a long standing partner.
Well, perhaps theres more business logic going on backstage than I can understand at this step.
? To attract more customers
? Intel making special chips for apple
? Direct competition to M$
? Better app portability
I dont see how it will attract more customers. Also the chips being used are based on the same core that apple has shunned and ridiculed for the past so many years.
Posted by: anya at January 10, 2006 03:49 PMa) Performace/power of the G5 chip was pretty bad, and not at all suitable for laptops.
b) IBM chips were not increasing in performance as fast as Intel Chips. perhaps because IBM's main business is not processors, whereas Intel does only processors - thus being able to devote more resources to R&D.
Much more detailed analysis here.
Posted by: Chinmay at January 14, 2006 04:18 PMmy point is -- and the performance of the intel chip was better than the ibm one? look at the performance charts ...
and the explanation for change is the same on ALL websites .. cos its the one given out by apple PR.
Posted by: anya at January 15, 2006 11:37 AMyours is the most ugliest blog i have ever seen
Posted by: funny at January 15, 2006 02:39 PMpossibly.
Posted by: anya at January 15, 2006 05:04 PMdo u work for cnn? :)
Posted by: anonymous at January 15, 2006 06:12 PMThe comparison you've linked to compares Dual Core G5 to Xeon/Optron/Athlon/Pentium - all single core.
The comparison for the new Intel/Macs is between G4 (single core) and Dual Core Intels. http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/intelcoreduo.html
In both cases, the comparison is rigged to make Apples products (new products, in any case) come out better.
The Dual core G5 might still be faster than Intel Dual Core chips, but it also consumes more power. See the video here - http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6025359.html
Alos, the Register article is not appple PR stuff. It's some pretty well informed speculation.
Posted by: Chinmay at January 17, 2006 12:00 PMWell placed sources inside Intel tell me that dual core is only the beginning. Intel is banking on some very amazing things they have working in their labs in their jump to becoming an 'appliance' company ;)
Posted by: Ajju at January 22, 2006 03:19 AM