Power6 and the Intel Mac
One word. Premature.
Not that I am a PowerPC purist by any means. I'm a dyed in the wool AMD man. My last desktop ran an AMD Athlon 1700+. My current machine, a notebook, uses a AMD Turion 64.
And while I understand that Apple needed more processing power than the current line of G4s and G5s could provide and that the desktop was not Freescale's target niche, moving to Intel has not provided the boon to the Macintosh , at least in the immediate term, that was promised. (Steve Jobs promised a speed increase by a factor of 2 to 4.)
While many native Intel applications *do* run faster on the IntelMac, those that have not been ported (including Adobe Photoshop) run at considerably slower speeds than on the G5.
With IBM's announcement of the upcomingPower6, Apple's audacity in moving to Intel seems eclipsed by the foolishness of it.
Now some might argue that waiting until 2007 would have been detrimental to the Macintosh and Apple as a company. But with the array of unique products like the iPod, the reputation of quality many of Apple's tried-and-true product line boasts of, and the loyalty of the customer base and the large number of those switching to the Mac, these fears seem to me to be more a tempest in a teapot.
It also must be pointed out that many platforms, including the Intel XScale, Intel Itanium, Irix, and Sun's SPARC utilize CPUs that operate at frequencies far below that of even some of the faster Pentium IIIs. (An Irix Tezro for example uses 1-, 2-, or 4- MIPS R16000A CPUs running @ 800 Mhz.) And while it may be be said these are all niche systems, it can also be said that the Macintosh is also a niche platform in its own right. Clock speed doesn't matter so long as the customer is generally satisfied. Besides, with CPU speeds running at over 40 times faster than the original speed of a Pentium I, the fact of the matter is the FSB speed and chipset capabilities are the real bottleneck to speed and productivity.
So is the move to Intel an archetypal SNAFU? Not necessarily. The Macintosh may have to jump a few hurdles, most compelling of all the reduced speed of PowerPC binaries on the IntelMac, but this is certainly not the end of the Mac. And despite my belief that not waiting for Power6 might have been unwise, the Macintosh will continue, naysayers and all.
Not that I am a PowerPC purist by any means. I'm a dyed in the wool AMD man. My last desktop ran an AMD Athlon 1700+. My current machine, a notebook, uses a AMD Turion 64.
And while I understand that Apple needed more processing power than the current line of G4s and G5s could provide and that the desktop was not Freescale's target niche, moving to Intel has not provided the boon to the Macintosh , at least in the immediate term, that was promised. (Steve Jobs promised a speed increase by a factor of 2 to 4.)
While many native Intel applications *do* run faster on the IntelMac, those that have not been ported (including Adobe Photoshop) run at considerably slower speeds than on the G5.
With IBM's announcement of the upcomingPower6, Apple's audacity in moving to Intel seems eclipsed by the foolishness of it.
Now some might argue that waiting until 2007 would have been detrimental to the Macintosh and Apple as a company. But with the array of unique products like the iPod, the reputation of quality many of Apple's tried-and-true product line boasts of, and the loyalty of the customer base and the large number of those switching to the Mac, these fears seem to me to be more a tempest in a teapot.
It also must be pointed out that many platforms, including the Intel XScale, Intel Itanium, Irix, and Sun's SPARC utilize CPUs that operate at frequencies far below that of even some of the faster Pentium IIIs. (An Irix Tezro for example uses 1-, 2-, or 4- MIPS R16000A CPUs running @ 800 Mhz.) And while it may be be said these are all niche systems, it can also be said that the Macintosh is also a niche platform in its own right. Clock speed doesn't matter so long as the customer is generally satisfied. Besides, with CPU speeds running at over 40 times faster than the original speed of a Pentium I, the fact of the matter is the FSB speed and chipset capabilities are the real bottleneck to speed and productivity.
So is the move to Intel an archetypal SNAFU? Not necessarily. The Macintosh may have to jump a few hurdles, most compelling of all the reduced speed of PowerPC binaries on the IntelMac, but this is certainly not the end of the Mac. And despite my belief that not waiting for Power6 might have been unwise, the Macintosh will continue, naysayers and all.
posted by Kenneth at 9:20 PM
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