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Macs got the name "power mac" because they used "powerpc", not necessarily because they were powerful.(though they are just that) These machines will be intel based, seems like the "powermac" moniker is strictly because of how powerful it will be.

Incorrect - Apple in the past released a computer called a PowerMac without a PowerPC CPU. PowerMac is simply their way of differentiating their consumer and professional lines, just as there is a difference between iBook and PowerBook lines.

which model was a PowerMac without a PowerPC? Better make sure, and was it a PowerMac or a Power Macintosh...?

"Apple in the past released a computer called a PowerMac without a PowerPC CPU. "

I looked all over www.everymac.com and can't find a single Power Macintosh/PowerMac that did not have a PowerPC chip in it. Care to elaborate?

"I looked all over www.everymac.com and can't find a single Power Macintosh/PowerMac that did not have a PowerPC chip in it. Care to elaborate?"

I guess s/he's confused with the Power Book.

Exactly, PowerMacs were meant for the power user (also called professional user), had nothing to do with PowerPC. It's like saying NT in Windows NT means networking (we all know that NT is an abbreviation for New Technology)

Edited 2005-12-28 20:47

I have been buying "powermacs" from their very first line, the 6100/60 (the one with no level 2 cache). I can not recall a single "powermac" that did not have a powerpc chip. Name one! The fact that powermacs are used by "pros" or "power users" is incidental to their naming. While the first generation powermacs were indeed powerful, subsequent generation powermacs got blown away by Intel and AMD crowd. The reason I kept buying Apple was because I was used to it, and did not want to learn a new OS.

From memory - all PowerMacs were PowerPC based. Everything before the switch to PowerPC based macs were either Quadra's, Mac II's, LC's etc.

I hope that clears this little misconception up.

Anon

Hmm, I had a look, it was the PowerBook that was called that, even though it it had a 68K processor, but with that said, Power doesn't equate to the use of a PowerPC, just as a Dell Power Edge server doesn't equate to using a PowerPC CPU.

As a side note, I don't reply to anonymous posters; if they're too lazy to register, I'll do like wise and fail to respond to their garble.

Sorry, but you're wrong. The Power in Power Macintosh always indicated a PowerPC based system.
In my eyes, It will be pretty blasphemous if they decide to continue to use that moniker for the Apple PCs, but with all the changes Apple has made in recent years, especially with the new types of users on the platform, that they might just ignore these long established conventions, how sad.

Intel manufacturing PPC chips for Apple would defeat the purpose of switching to an Intel platform. Apple switched to Intel because the PPC architecture consumes too much power and generates too much heat for the amount of work it does. Having Intel produce chips that don't suit Apple's needs wouldn't further their effort.

An architecture can't consume more power. Intel *could* make a PowerPC CPU that was as fast as Yonah, and consumed as little power, and it would even be marginally cheaper, because you'd save the extra 5% of die space used to handle the complex decoding of x86.

However, that is a pointless theoretical exercise. Apple isn't big enough for Intel to make a PowerPC CPU just for them. Apple switched to x86 because PPC fell to the same market pressures that Alpha, MIPS, etc did --- the x86 manufacturers simply have too much R&D money to allow the maintainence of competitive CPU lines in the desktop/workstation marketes.

Rayiner,

If that were true that PPC would be continually behind in the speed race. Aside from a 2-year fiasco with the G4, PPC has continually sped past x86 (except at the end of a chip's product cycle when it is due for replacement.

The ONLY area where x86... or rather Intel (not AMD) has excelled past PPC is in mobile technology (laptops). Its not because PPC could not, its because Apple didn't want to play IBM's politics when it could be in the same processor boat with the rest of the industry... AND benefit from running all the other x86 OSes while excluding the other PC manufacturers from running the best.

I find it interesting how some of the PC fanboys are trying desperately to make the chip transition something that it is not in an effort to support the party line that they've spouted all these years.

"Which it has been. Even Steve realized it, five years ago, the first time he wanted to jump ship."

You're mixing up Steve's practicality of using an operating system that's already established and optimized for x86 5 years ago with your need to try to communicate that PPC is somehow inferior.



>>"PPC has continually sped past x86"

"There have been moments, but they have been short

Again, excluding the 2 year G4 fiasco, PPC was more often than not faster than x86.



"The G4 actually beat the PIII for a short bit during its life-cycle, because they were comparable clock-for-clock"

Actually, the G4 beat the PIII and P4 for about 6 months... because it was so much faster than x86 clock for clock.


"The G5 beat out the P4 for a few months, but then the Opteron was released, and as soon as that hit 2.0GHz, the G5 was on the losing side."

The G5 was only on the losing side of that equation for about 6-8 months total throughout various iterations of its lifetime.


"Now, it can be argued that the G5 is faster when running highly optimized floating-point code taking advantage of AltiVec (like Final Cut Pro), or when running silly benchmarks like LINPACK, or when running FORTRAN-code compiled with IBM's XLF running on AIX, but those are very specific circumstances."

Actually, that argument held true for the G4, but the G5 is faster in raw performance and optimized floating-point code. Its the Opteron that has demonstrated that it could be faster in very specialized circumstances.


"Yes, I'm a PC fanboy. Believe whatever makes you feel better."

I don't need to. You show your colors repeatedly on this site's forums.


"In truth, I'm a Mac and Linux user, who has both a recent-model PowerMac and a recent model AMD PC."

And you're claiming that because you own a Mac that this doesn't make you a PC fanboy?


"The AMD PC is cheaper, quieter, and faster, no two ways about it."

That's actually not true. When you build an AMD PC to the exact same specs as those which come standard on a Mac (or as close as possible without substituting anything) the Mac is actually less expensive in almost every instance. Apple's current laptops are really the only exception.


"I am excited about the Intel transition because it means that I don't have to put up with an inferior CPU platform in order to use a superior OS."

If that's your rational then you deprived yourself for no reason.


"If you were a real Mac user, rather than an Apple apologist, you'd feel the same way."

If you were a realist rather than a PC fanboy you wouldn't make such ridiculous statements.

You're mixing up Steve's practicality of using an operating system that's already established and optimized for x86 5 years ago with your need to try to communicate that PPC is somehow inferior.

NeXT was very cross platform. Before Apple bought it, it had already been running on 68k, x86, SPARC, and PA-RISC. Trying to pretend Steve wanted to switch to x86 at the time because of the "hassle" of porting NeXTStep is idiotic. Rhapsody was running on PowerPC the same year Apple bought out NeXT. Steve wanted to jump ship just to save a few months of porting work? Please!

And I have no need to try and communicate that PPC is inferior. Architecture is largely irrelevent. The relevant fact is that Intel and AMD can devote much more R&D resources into pushing x86 than those pushing competing architectures can combined. That's the only reason x86 has survived as long as it has, and why it has beat architectures like SPARC, Alpha, and MIPS. Motorola doesn't have the funds and IBM doesn't have the desire to make PowerPC competitive with x86 on the desktop/workstation space. That's why PowerPC chips are less suited for such uses, not because of any inherent flaw in the architecture.

Actually, the G4 beat the PIII and P4 for about 6 months... because it was so much faster than x86 clock for clock.

This is a myth. The G4 was never faster than the PIII clock for clock. http://www.heise.de/ct/english/02/05/182/

The G5 was only on the losing side of that equation for about 6-8 months total throughout various iterations of its lifetime.

A G5 is slower, in most real code, than a comparably clocked Opteron. I'm not the only one who thinks so: http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html Again, the SPEC benchmarks are definitive in this regard. Discounting the cherry-picked, overclocked, and overvolted 2.5 and 2.7 GHz 970's that Apple put in the PowerMacs, the Opteron held the clock-speed advantage over the G5 ever since it hit 2.0GHz.

Actually, that argument held true for the G4, but the G5 is faster in raw performance and optimized floating-point code.

I have a G5. No it's not.

Its the Opteron that has demonstrated that it could be faster in very specialized circumstances.

The Opteron is an extremely well-balanced chip, but its not something you can get a lot of extra performance out of through tweeking. Its relatively insenstive to scheduling, and its low-latency memory controller means its also relatively insensitive to memory access patterns (within reason!). The biggest bottleneck in the Opteron for integer code is usually its mediocre branch predictor, and for floating-point code is its limited FPU capacity (asymmetric pipes, no multiply-accumulate). The G5 can be a lot faster in FPU code, per clock, than the Opteron, which is something the recent 970MP SPECfp results show, but to achieve that theoretical performance, you need a compiler (XLF 8.0) only available for AIX and Linux.

And you're claiming that because you own a Mac that this doesn't make you a PC fanboy?

Um, yes? I like my Mac very much, moreso than my PC. How am I a PC fanboy? Just because I don't drink the kool-aid and pretend my Mac if faster, despite the fact that I can run the same code on each and see the reality for myself?

That's actually not true. When you build an AMD PC to the exact same specs as those which come standard on a Mac (or as close as possible without substituting anything) the Mac is actually less expensive in almost every instance. Apple's current laptops are really the only exception.

Kool-aid. Why don't you actually try doing that, and see what you come up with?

If that's your rational then you deprived yourself for no reason.

Deprived myself of what? On a given day, I can set and flip my KVM to either my Mac or my PC. You think I'm going to use the slower one, and pretend its faster, just because of some deep-seated mental issues? Please!

"Rhapsody was running on PowerPC the same year Apple bought out NeXT. Steve wanted to jump ship just to save a few months of porting work? Please!"

Oh, then you must be trying to tell me that it took 4 years AFTER the acquisition to develop... A USER INTERFACE? Excuse me... but thats just wrong. In addition to interface, they were optimizing for PPC. x86 was what NeXT was optimized for... so much so in fact that steve used an IBM thinkpad for those 4 years.


"And I have no need to try and communicate that PPC is inferior."

Ok, then give me a genuine reason why you came to that far reaching conclusion?



"Architecture is largely irrelevant. The relevant fact is that Intel and AMD can devote much more R&D resources into pushing x86 than those pushing competing architectures can combined."

IBM sells as much if not more silicon that Intel and Moto sells more than AMD.



"That's the only reason x86 has survived as long as it has, and why it has beat architectures like SPARC, Alpha, and MIPS."

The reason why x86 superseded these architectures has very little to do with superiority or lack thereof of any processors but everything to do with breaking a widely used standard.


"Motorola doesn't have the funds and IBM doesn't have the desire to make PowerPC competitive with x86 on the desktop/workstation space."

Motorola is a bigger company than AMD. It wasn't for a lack of funds, it was lack of ROI. IBM on the other hand has more than proven that it has the desire to make PowerPC competitive with x86 on the desktop. PPC currently boast the speed crown right now. Apple is switching not because of speed issues so much as IBM's lack of desire to make a mobile chip. There are other issues too... such as Apple immediately having all the advantages that every other PC manufacturer has while keeping all the advantages they had previously.



"That's why PowerPC chips are less suited for such uses, not because of any inherent flaw in the architecture."

But they're not less suited for such uses.



"This is a myth. The G4 was never faster than the PIII clock for clock. " rel="nofollow">http://www.heise.de/ct/english/02/05/182/"

In the SPEC benchmark... a benchmark that is heavily optimized for x86.


"A G5 is slower, in most real code, than a comparably clocked Opteron. I'm not the only one who thinks so: http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html "

I said 8 months.


"I have a G5. No it's not."

I do to. Two of them in fact. Yes it is.



"Um, yes? I like my Mac very much, moreso than my PC."

Maybe you're not a fanboy. Maybe you're making all these incorrect statements because you don't know any better.



"How am I a PC fanboy?"

I came to that conclusion after you defended the argument that x86 has been faster than PPC for the majority of the two chips lifetime. As I mentioned in my response above... maybe you didn't know any better and were among the legions of PC users who defended their arguments be referencing PC fan sites that made comparisons using very specific benchmark specifications offered to them by Intel that would show a performance advantage.


"Just because I don't drink the kool-aid and pretend my Mac if faster"

As if kool-aid is what's needed to come to this conclusion?


"despite the fact that I can run the same code on each and see the reality for myself?"

I've done the same (repeatedly in fact) and had respults which justified my comments.


"Kool-aid. Why don't you actually try doing that, and see what you come up with? "

I've done it MULTIPLE times and came to the same conclusion nearly every time. When I've done such comparisons in the past, the ONLY way the PC came out to be less expensive is if you exclude some of the extra hardware or software that came standard with the Mac and swap it out with something else or exclude it all tegether on the PC... essentially trying to leverage the PCs ability to be infinately configured to achive a supposed price advantage. Yes, the PC is more versitle. It allows you to buy less and spend less. The Mac requires you to buy more, but it is less expensive when compared equally.


"Deprived myself of what?"<?i>

You said that you opted to use a PC despite prefering to use OS X so that you wouldn't have to use an inferior processor. I'm telling you that you deprived yourself if using your preferred operating system for no reason, as the pricessor was in fact not inferior.


[i]"On a given day, I can set and flip my KVM to either my Mac or my PC. You think I'm going to use the slower one"

You just admitted to using your PC because you thought the procesor was superior... so yes. Apparently you do opt for the slower of the two.

"That's actually not true. When you build an AMD PC to the exact same specs as those which come standard on a Mac (or as close as possible without substituting anything) the Mac is actually less expensive in almost every instance. Apple's current laptops are really the only exception."

We keep seeing this posted time after time in exactly the same words by allegedly different people on various different topics. It is evidently a matter of faith, or perhaps it is Cupertino Marketing speaking.

It is simply false. Some months ago I compared products available for sale in the UK from Evesham, a well known good value, quality mail order house, with the PowerMac, and I also compared what MacWarehouse sells at the low end with the Mini that it also sells. Generally, the Macs are between one half as much again to double.

Now, if you look at what extra, if anything, you are getting with the macs, it turned out to be less of some things and more of others. It was less hardware. Lower spec graphics, less disk space, less memory. What you got more was the bundled software. Turns out, if you are going to make the above argument about getting more and paying more, you have to value iLife at many hundreds of dollars at the high end. And you have to argue that iLife on a PowerMac is worth a lot more than iLife on a Mini - because the dollar discrepancy is so much greater at the high end, this is what it takes to make the numbers add up.

This is not a reason for buying PCs or avoiding Macs. It just says, know what you are paying and what you are getting. It may well be 'worth it' to lots of people.

As a social phenomenon, I no longer believe people who post these things really believe them either. I'm in two minds about the explanation. It could be Astroturfing. Or it could be spectacular Groupthink. In any case, its a turnoff. When you have a bunch of guys who go around chanting that black is white when it comes to one matter of fact, sensible people avoid their whole cause.

The right way to approach this is just to say, yes, its more expensive, but I like it, I can afford it, and its worth it to me. Argument over. Its your money, its your life, do what you want with it. You don't have to convince anyone else.

But they are not really reusable. They are going to be designed to run only OSX. The volume of motherboard being sold will not be any greater than what they would produce themselves. More likely it's just a short term shortage of engineers.

Why couldn't they be used in other computers? Apple has already said that Windows will boot/run on their Intel boxes so it isn't a matter of designing them only to run OS X. It's actually a matter of designing them so that OS X won't run on non-Apple boxes. All Intel has to do is build a chip onto it that OS X can check to see if it is an authoried machine and then omit that chip on the ones they sell to other companies.

Intel has wanted to get DRM in their chips/motherboards for the whole "trusted computing" thing. If they put a trusted chip on these motherboards, the ones sold to Apple could use a chip allowing OS X while the ones sold to other companies won't have that authorization.

99% (if not 100%) could be reused while keeping OS X exclusive to Apple-branded machines.

Apple didn't say "Windows will boot/run on their Intel boxes", Apple said they would not try to avoid (as in "we don't care if you do it"). Apple NEVER said windows would boot on an Intel Mac... NEVER, EVER!

If Apple knew Windows wouldn't work on the new Intel Macs, then they wouldn't bother making the statement about "we won't try to stop you". I don't wear hats, but I'll print out this post and eat it with ketchup if you can't install Windows on the new Intel Macs!

You don't get it do you. You seam to not understand the statement very well, the previous poster got it right. Apple simply said with that statement they won't stop people from installing windows. Doesn't mean it will work out of the box. They probably would be happy if MS made windows run on their macs. People would still have to buy the mac to be able to do that. And no one is going to buy a mac to just run windows on in. Windows may very well run with no effort on the new macs, but it won't be because apple designed them to be able to.

Also their statement about not stopping people didn't have a press conference built around it. It was just a side remark. The blocked people in the past like Be from running their OS on macs. They are just stating they won't do that this time. Also, they probably slipped it in there because if they didn't the first question they would get asked is if windows would be able to run on them.

Windows XP (32bit) that you buy shrink-wrapped today probably won't work. Rumours suggest that Apple, with no legacy concerns, will adopt Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). This is Intel's substitute for open firmware and replaces the traditional BIOS. Rumours are that OS X's "Am I running on an Apple" check with be written with EFI and a custom 'ROM' chip.

64bit XP supports this for Itanium and no doubt will support it in Longhorn.

Linux will probably lead the migration since Red Hat and others already have an EFI bootloader for Itanium.

more info about EFI:

http://www.deviceforge.com/articles/AT9479223305.html

They only stated, "We won't try to stop you" but didn't state that it'd work immediately out of the box, or with some tweaking, based on the information made available about the Apple hardware/firmware.

So, I don't know and won't claim to know (as I don't have a released machine, or even one of the leased development machines) if they will run Windows or not as-is, but if you can't install Windows as-is on the new macs, I'd like to request that you print out your post on Tyvek paper and eat that

Uh, no mobo built for the powermacs will be available for sale to other companies. Clearly apple would not allow that. Just because they hire intel to make it, does not mean they can sell it to others. It will be some ultra custom non standard (as in form factor) mobo the same as every mobo in powermacs.

The CPUs will probably be much the same. I highly doubt apple will be using socket compatible cpus with non apple computers running the same cpu. Expect daughter cards to remain and so forth. Thus without those bits of hardware OSX will not run. I think the copy protection the dev box intel OSX have seen are for just the dev boxes. It may remain in production just as one extra thing to get through, but I don't think there is any chance in heck Apple would protect themselves just on software. Also with the custom socket it makes it less easy for people to go and upgrade to a faster mac. They would have to get expensive 3rd party solutions, not go to the electronics store and buy a boxed cpu.

Custom chips set is believable, they don't need PS/2 ports and other legacy hardware, but they probably will want lots of USB, FW (if apple hasn't deemed it dead), SATA and such.

The CPUs will probably be much the same. I highly doubt apple will be using socket compatible cpus with non apple computers running the same cpu.

Apple isn't nearly a big enough vendor to get their own CPU pin-out!

Expect daughter cards to remain and so forth.

No way in hell.

Thus without those bits of hardware OSX will not run.

By all indications, OS X x86 is a month from shipping. If the TPM chip is the only dependency now, it will likely remain the only dependency.

Custom chips set is believable, they don't need PS/2 ports and other legacy hardware, but they probably will want lots of USB, FW (if apple hasn't deemed it dead), SATA and such.

Current chipsets support everything Apple needs (my PC has more USB ports than my Mac!) If they support some things that Apple doesn't need, then Apple needn't connect them do they. Making a whole seperate chipset just to leave some little features out would be a major waste of money. There would be no point in doing that.

"so why do I have this irresistible feeling it'll all end in tears"

Probably what worries you is the comparisons. Reasonable enough. It will be identical main board chip sets, cards, disks, processors. There will inevitably be direct price comparisons.

Then you'll have Photoshop etc running on both halves of a dual boot system with XP on one side and OSX on the other. If it should all go pear-shaped, there will be nowhere to hide.

One hopes they did the studies before going into this and that it won't be so, at least not the performance part. But, you never know.

The Apple change to Intel silicon, Intel design, all sounds so logical and well planned and a good business decision - so why do I have this irresistible feeling it'll all end in tears

Basically because Intel is a crack-pusher. They sure pushed that Itanium crack onto SGI, and look where they are now..

Well at least on the good side when the intel crack causes too many mac deaths, they can easily switch to AMD crack. Couldn't do that with the itanium.

Though the problem with AMD is they aren't as big of a dealer and can't seam to make enough product to serve addicts like apple. They are too much of a niche club designer drug, not a wholesale dealer.

Because they don't use standard ATX designs (or any xTX design). They also want to make it more difficult to run OSX on non-Mac hardware.

I doubt they are designing an entirely custom board for Apple. Likely, they are doing the same thing they do for Dell, taking a standard Intel motherboard, and customizing it for the customer's use. Dell motherboards (at least back when I bought my last Dell tower system in 1998) are just regular Intel boards with custom power connectors, slightly different layout, etc. These changes are made to better fit the case and PSU Dell will use for the computer. Apple's PowerMac boards have always been immaculately routed (in mine, every connector is placed just so so all the cables reach without cutting into the air-space inside the case). I presume Intel will take one of their standard boards and customize it for Apple to fit their new PowerMac case.

It'll probably use a modified version of a board already in production or in the pipline. The mods will probably be BIOS and the custom chipset, which will probably be just a modified Intel chipset that has something special that the OS will need in order to run on only boards with those chipsets.

Mac motherboards (even today) have a ton of commonality with PC motherboards. For ages now, Macs have gone the route of PCI, AGP, PCI-X. Macs use the same RAM as their PC counterparts. IDE is another commonality as is USB.

Common hardware isn't what holds the Mac back from better hardware compatibility. It's drivers. I can physically connect pretty much any external drive to a Mac today (since almost everything external is USB) and I can connect any PCI card to a Mac, but without the drivers to make it work, I'm out of luck.

Take a printer as an example. I can connect a printer to any Mac OS X box, but there's no guarantee it will work since it might not have Mac drivers. Heck, I can connect a printer to a Linux box and there might not be drivers which means it won't work even though I can run Windows on the same machine and get the printer working.

You must buy seriously weird printers - I can't think of one offhand that doesn't support Mac/Linux drivers. Doesn't Mac now use CUPS (common unix print system) just as Linux does anyway?

Hp LaserJet 1000

Needs firmware downloads, provided by Windows driver.
There is an implementation of that on Mac, but have not been able to make it work. Yes I googled around, and found lots of people similarly annoyed.

Fair enough - never heard of it. I assume it's fairly ancient as the only quick Google I could find was one on e-bay (current bid price $0.99).

See last 2 paragraphs of my post directly above - that's why I reckon it supports most (though as you say apparently not all) printers.

I have an ancient A3 scanner from Mustek that won't do anything but W95/96 and Macs - I'm waiting for my daughter's Mac (hoping it will work with it) so I can finally wipe W98 (much too flaky for the way I overload machines with heavy graphics work) off the old machine in the corner!

Edited 2005-12-29 14:04

Moderation strikes again! The author makes two points which are not at all inflammatory and, whether you agree with them or not, are not idiotic or obviously false.

The first is that he finds the mid/low range macs unremarkable in technical specification, which he is careful to say does not mean industrial design. Well, its a point of view.

The second is that he thinks if Intel designs the mainboards, it may widen the choice of peripherals for mac users. I don't know if it will or not, but its not a totally insane suggestion.

People, you really have to stop marking down things just because you disagree with them. Its not about disagreement. Its if they are offensive, inflammatory etc, which this just isn't.

The release is going to be late 2006, not January 2006. You're thinking of the low-end Macintoshes which people believe will be out in January.

Uh, yes, actually, they have been doing this for the last 16 years. The only thing that has changed since the NeXT merger, was to replace some interfaces and components with commodity PC versions. SUN did the same. But Apple continued to design their own system controllers, the parts that really made sense to develop themselves. This made the Mac more competitive on price, while still maintaining it's own unique architecture (besides the PowerPC itself, mind you).

One primary motivation for this switch is that it will likely allow them spend considerably less of their own time & resources on hardware architecture design, just like any other PC vendor. It's sad in many respects, as it's liable to make the Mac just another ordinary PC, internally at least. We shall see just how ordinary it really is, with the first shipping Intel based system. If the DTK, transition documentation and rumors like this, are any indication, it's likely the architecture will be decidedly "PC-ish". If this is the case, it's likely that the only redeeming value to the Mac will indeed be the OS, as Jobs so boldly stated, at the end of that memorable keynote, in June 2005.

I second that. Intel builds great and very reliable boards. I've never seen a faulty one and they last for 10+ years. That's off-topic though...

Aren't these all just buzz words, or marketing terms, for how to fix a motherboard into a box? It doesn't matter which two letters you prepend to "X," it's just a motherboard. You can make it any size and shape you like. You can make it L-shaped if you like. If you're building a completely new platform like Apple on Intel, it won't be too far fetched to create a new form factor.

OS X itself will use the new hardware that is not available in commodity white box PCs.

Like? Can you name some of these technologies that are not available from commodity motherboards from Intel?

The previous poster was saying that if Apple combined their programming ethics and OS concept with Dell's build and distribution marketing they'd have a more powerful selling force. Thanks for understanding how analogies work.

Oh, not this again. The only thing seperating the two is the case/PSU and the motherboard. Similar brands of RAM, similar brands of hard drives, similar brands of graphics cards, etc. With the motherboard switched to Intel, the *only* difference between a Mac and a Dell will be the case/PSU. Otherwise, they'll be the same, right down to the customized Intel motherboard.

I see you have been marked down to -3, and I to -4. Heaven knows why! Perhaps we are committing the cardinal sin of thinking aloud in public?

"All your thoughts are belong to US" - but who?

I thought we were having an interesting discussion, but obviously I'm wrong. I must be musn't I? - THEY have spoken.

Not to worry, I've just reset my preferences to browse at -5.

"Leave it to OS News and Thom in particular to misrepresent the facts by posting a sensationalistic headline"

The problem isn't Thom posting a sensationalistic headline... he posted the same headline that the other site posted. The problem is the headlines Thom chooses to exclude because the headline or article doesn't support his OS politics. Thom has repeatedly shown that his Apple-centric news must never show news of Apple growth, Apple being less expensive, Apple having better support, Apple system's being faster, or news mentioning interesting upcoming systems (unless there is at least a subtle implication that Apple is somehow selling out).

Its interesting that several sites published these headlines, but they were all curiously absent from OS News:

Quad G5 Macs outperform all systems
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/12/22/quad.power.macs.deliver/


Apple Specialists say holiday Macs sales up year-over-year
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1429


All eyes on Apple for its 2006 offerings: Maybe an iPhone?
http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/technology/story/5416865p-48...


Apple Sells Out of 1GB iPod Shuffle
http://www.betanews.com/article/Apple_Sells_Out_of_1GB_iPod_Shuffle...


Apple will rule notebook roost: study
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2005/12/19/2003285097


Apple: # 1 in Reliability Survey. Again
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=5580