Apple With Intel Chip

[jamesm]

I was all doom and gloom for abut 24 hours. But, really, this is an architecture switch comparable to the same advances that would have been made on the PowerPC if IBM had been able to deliver. I just got a new iMac over the weekend, and I have neither regret nor apprehension.

The only thing that worries me is the DRM on Intel chips. But there's no guarantee that Apple will incorporate this (it only works with Microsoft's Janus DRM, AFAIK) -- the company has traditionally worked in just enough DRM to appease the music companies and no more.
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There is some interesting commentary from a guy[1] who has also just made the switch to Apple. He raises some good points. There's also loads of eye-candy images on his website of the new 30" Apple monitor he bought  
[1] [a href=\"http://urbanmainframe.com/folders/blog/20050609/]http://urbanmainframe.com/folders/blog/20050609/[/url]

[padishah_emperor]

Cringley is a crank.

Apple move to Intel, yeah. I was stunned even a bit disappointed, I guess they had to do it, Cell was never an option, it's not designed for that kind of use.  But Intel have problems of their own, they must have shown things to Steve Jobs to convince him this was the right move.  I was expecting to replace my Mac mini with a G5 based mini eventually, I expected a 64bit transition. That's not going to happen, infact the Intel 64bit Macs, look like they'll be arriving Q4 2007.

The Rosetta thing is a bit of a fudge though, if you read through the developer docs, you'll see it will translate only G3 apps, no G4 or G5 code and Altivec has no equivalent on Intel, it's a re-write job.

My initial reaction has been one of great vengence and furious anger, but I read Intel as Windows PC for some illogical reason, there is no reason to expect an Apple Intel Mac will be PC by another name, but there are worrying signs.  No Openfirmware, maybe a BIOS and the remark that Windows could be installed, that would indicate that future Macs will be PCs unless a VM is present for such use.  OSX won't run on other x86 hardware though, probably because of a hardware lockout feature.  Someone will create something to run it fast in a VM though for sure, albeit illegally.

Could be the start of a chain of errors, could be the best thing ever for Macs.