Mac and Intel???

[PorscheGuy997@yahoo.com]

I recently saw a commercial for Intel advertising that they will begin using Intel processors in Mac computers...

A. Why? I thought that the Mac processors were a high point of buying a Mac.
B. Why did they choose Intel?
C. Does this mean that Mac is dying or what?

I personally saw this commercial and it just sounds crazy.

[meesta_sparkle]

Mac processor where not made by mac. They were firsted made by motorola unitl the PowerPC came out, then they swithced to IBM. IBM promised Apple a 3.0ghz G5 chip but failed to deliver so Apple switched to Intel, more specifically Intel Dual Core chips. These ARE NOT the same chips as what are used in PCs. It is not only the processor that makes macs fast it is because the OS is much more opitmized to run on them, than Windows is on a PC. Its like the way an XBOX can play doom 3, and half-life 2 with hardware that is 5 years old and still run better than most peoples computers can. They chose Intel because at the time the contract was made Intel had the best options for Apple. Particularaly Apple needed a way to fit a more powerful processor to run in their laptops, while run cool enough so they could maintain a 1 inch thick body. IBM couldn't do it with the G5 chip so Apple switched to Intel. Finally this does not mean that Apple is dying they just needed someone who could meet their demands for a CPU.

[casecutter]

Very nice response meesta sparkle!! And you are 100% correct, smartest thing for them to do was switch, especially with the future of intels upcoming CPU's looking so bright. They are about to give AMD a run for their money and they may even win the speed wars. Great for competiton too!

[Darthtanion]

meesta sparkle hinted at the main reasoning above. Mac hardware has been going downhill lately and crashes were beginning to become very common. These problems were all hardware related. Mac hardware has never really been anywhere close to AMD/Intel... IBM Compatible ...hardware. There OS is just very streamlined and works well, particularly with video encoding. This will likely still be the case, the Mac OS will still be a good stable platform.

My biggest problem with the Mac line is the lack of standard software. Just about everything currently available is made for the IBM machines and maybe, just maybe, the programs will be ported to Mac.

[Yawgm0th]

He's wrong about one thing: Macs are not fast. Even the high-end models were not all that fast, and the Mac software is incredibly slow. It is well-optimized for both architectures, but that's the only thing that made it usable. In any case, anyone who ever bought a Mac for the hardware is ignorant. The hardware was never very good. At one point in time it did excel at video encoding in comparison to high-end X86 processors, but that was a long time ago, and the software was more of an issue than the encoding speed.

Both the high point and low points of the Mac are it's software. Mac has some unique software (Mac OS itself, FinalCut Pro, etc.), yet as Darth said it also lacks quite a bit of good software. Many people also buy Macs as a sort of "lifestyle" statement. Basically, Macs have lots of aethetic value. My personal opinion is that anyone thinking more about the appearance of a computer than its internals is uninformed. Granted, there is something to be said about eMacs being a monitor/desktop in one, but it's not much harder and quite cheaper to stick an LCD to a mATX or mBTX case and call it an ePC.

Also, in a fairly unrelated point, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 don't run well on X-Box because of opimizations alone. You could run both just as smoothly on similar PC hardware (700MHzish P3 or P3 Celeron, GF2 video card, though you'd need more RAM just to meet minimum requirements), except the PC versions don't go down to 480x320 resolution, which is what consoles render all games at internally. Additionally, most visual effects are turned down, which helps performance and makes both games look quite crappy.