There are mixed feelings about the whole Apple-Intel marriage. It’s pretty clear now that Apple is indeed switching to Intel processors by June 2006
So there’s no use in speculating what their intentions are: whether it was a sincere move in the spirit of innovation, or a simply marketing move to ensure stock/market growth are all beside the point at this juncture. Instead, it would be better to think about what possible benefits/consequences/implications this development entails.
I myself am torn. On the one hand, the G4/G5 architecture is obviously more efficient in design, smaller core, less pipelines (so less pipeline taxing), etc. etc. Of course this is all moot if Intel can simply up the GHz on their cores to match the performance (without the core melting down of course) – different strokes for different folks. Normally, I would think it would be cooler to up the core speeds of the existing Gx architecture.
On the other hand, IBM hadn’t delivered the goods according to the Keynote address (missed the 3GHz G5 deadline and no 64-bit computing for portables). In that respect, Intel might be better in terms of a “slow but sure” architectural roadmap.
The benefits I see is of course that Apple will now have more visibility in the market. Ranging from the enthusiasts who knew about Apple ever since… as well as the people-who-simply-buy-what-everyone-else-is-buying demographic. Regardless of Intel being a good core maker or not, its dominance in the market is similar to Microsoft’s – because everyone knows about them and has come to “trust” their products… or sometimes simply have no choice but to use their products hehehe. Pick your poison, it’s all the same.
But as I said, now that even the people-who-simply-buy-what-their-friends-buy (which is probably 80% of the population hahaha) cant help but notice Apple in the same playing field – it wouldn’t hurt them to try… and who knows, realize how better OS X is. Of course all of this is assuming that we’ve reached a point that OS X can now be run on regular PCs – which isn’t a ridiculous prospect given the recent developments.
Another could be the end of the “Mac doesn’t have as much games as the PC” issue altogether. The whole Keynote was done on a P4, and unless they had to create some special motherboard/chipset that deals with the core a different way, it would be reasonable to assume an x86 architecture as a whole.
Personally, aside from the whole “efficiency in design” issue… there’s really not much negative implications one can derive from the move. Or at least not much negative that can’t be compensated with the other positive benefits. Ok, maybe there’ll be a monopoly issue down the line somewhere, sometime, but that’s just something we have to accept should it come to pass.
People making too much of an issue out of the whole “efficiency” are missing the point. An example would be the Intel-AMD debate. In terms of efficiency, we can claim that AMD has the more efficient design… but that doesn’t translate it automatically to be the better chip. This is because it would depend at which point in time the cores are being compared with each other. There was a time that AMD CPUs could beat Intel counterparts they were made to compete with (e.g. Intel chips before HyperThreading more often then not, were inferior to their AMD counterparts). But that isn’t the case these days, Intel has the lead once more… but that doesn’t negate the fact that AMD still has the more “efficient” design.
So what am I saying? Different strokes for different folks. As people could claim that the Gx could do as much as a higher speed Intel, then why don’t they simply match Intel’s speed while sticking to their original design and just blow Intel out of the water? Probably because the chips will not hold in the heat generated by the cores – but it also implies that Intel cores running at such [high] speeds can handle heat better than the IBMs. So it’s all just a bunch of tradeoffs to achieve the same performance goal. And right now it may very well be that Intel has overtaken the IBM architecture in that respect.
At the end of the day, the determining factor would simply be that if the machines will still be as stable as before. Other than that, speed won’t be an issue anymore since there wont be any comparison. The saying “all things being equal” will certainly ring true as far as the CPU arena is concerned hehehe. We’ll now move on right down to the “which is the better OS on a given architecture.” And besides, whatever we do, regardless of what CPU the machines use – ultimately, everything will go faster as technology progresses.