Intel Inside
Invention of the day: Breathing with the fishes
Though my first reaction was “Noooooooooooo!” I’ve adjusted pretty quickly to the New Mac Order. I was hoping that John Gruber would explain why his anti-Intel predictions were so wrong, but the only comment so far from my favorite Mac guru is that classic apps won’t run on Intel.
So I’m going to have to provide the geek commentary myself. I’m not sure why they’re switching to Intel, but I am sure it’s not for the sake of the Apple faithful. We liked the PowerPC chip and no one wants their computers or their programs to go out of date so soon after the last big switch (to OSX).
Intel chips cost more than PPCs, so no savings are going to passed onto us. There’s no huge or guaranteed speed gain with Intel, if you believe the PowerPC benchmark numbers, but there is one concrete advantage to Intel chips: there are a lot of them. Apple has had pipeline problems with PowerPC chips no matter who was making them (Motorola, IBM, or Freescale). Intel will be a cake walk in comparison. Imagine ordering the latest and greatest PowerBook and getting it in a week instead of a month or two.
Of course the biggest advantage is the clone market for MacOS, but I thought Steve was against the clones. Only time will tell whether the clones attack.
(For deeper thoughts, try Slashdot.)
[Update:] John Gruber comes through with some analysis.