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http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1449

Check out this article about the new Macs

"... Jobs announced that the first Macs to go Intel would be the iMac, with new 17- and 20-inch models that are nearly identical to their predecessors but sport Intel's new Core Duo processors. Benchmarks show the new iMacs to be 2-3 times the speed of the current iMac G5...

... Just before closing out his speech, Jobs kept to tradition and announced that he had "One More Thing..."

He said the 15-inch PowerBook product line would be going away in favor of a new "Mac Book Pro." The laptop features a 15.4-inch display and is a hair thinner than the 17" PowerBook. Additionally, it's about 4-5 times as fast as the previous PowerBooks, Jobs said."

Damn! I thought Mac had the fastest computers in the world.

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Someone on another forum brought up an intersesting fact, something that I had not even thought of, it seems that intel/macs are going to be able to accept other operating systems such as windows, so now you can dual boot windows and OSX on the same machine, could be cool...

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The other way around is also true. You can buy a Dell and put OSX on it. BTW.... dell is also offering the dual core centrino.

 

This is not exactly true.

 

You "may" be able to use a beige box and install OSX on it, however, it will not be supported and it will be a hack to do so - probably illegal. As far as I am aware, there are security chips on the Apple machines to allow the install of OSX. Without that chip the install is a no go.

 

With that said, I am totally pumped to get OSX on Intel and hopefully soon an AMD (purely speculation).

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when this news came out i found it ironic that apple was touting that the chips made their units 2 to 4 times faster than they previously were. all i have heard for years was that the G series chips from apple were every bit if not faster than what intel was pushing.

 

oh well. please don't flame me on this, i just found it curious.

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i found it ironic that apple was touting that the chips made their units 2 to 4 times faster than they previously were. all i have heard for years was that the G series chips from apple were every bit if not faster than what intel was pushing.

 

Sort of true. The Apple spin machine can get a little out of control and it takes a careful read to sort out the bull. Some thing to consider:

 

1) The new machines are dual core replacing single core and in the laptop's case replacing a G4 not a G5. are either of these machince going to be twice as fast as a Quad G5? Not even close.

2) Apple has stated in the past that the "Mac of the Day" is faster than an "Intel Machine of the Day "running Windows...not OSX. Others may argue this, but I think OSX is much quicker than Windows - this is from friends who have run OSX on P4s.

3) Apple's benchmarks are always selective, as are the benchmarks from any manufacturer. The demos of PhotoShop ripping through 78456834 actions faster than a P4 were always biased. Intel could have easily selected a different 458768 actions with a different outcome.

4) For every task there is a processor/setup that does it best. Most people want to believe that one computer to rule it all, but that just isnt the case. In my experience Intel machines are faster for 3D work. They have been for quite a while. Macs are faster print graphics. My two yr old PowerBook handles 2Gig print files without a hicup, none of my much faster PCs can. I have found the video/audio arena, once dominated by Apple, to be a bit of a stalemate. OSX still holds a trump card in this space due to software like Final Cut Pro and Shake.

 

The bottom line is that OSX is now available on slightly more commodity hardware. I would love to be able to buy OSX and build my own Mac. I dont see this happening anytime soon though. Another alternative I would be happy with would be a Case/Motherboard/OSX combo from Apple - let me fill it how I see fit.

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As far as I am aware, there are security chips on the Apple machines to allow the install of OSX. Without that chip the install is a no go.

 

I stand corrected. There is no "chip" on the new Intel Macs. Instead, Apple using EFI instead of BIOS. Installing Windows in its current form is likely still a no-go. I dont know about Vista.

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I stand corrected. There is no "chip" on the new Intel Macs. Instead, Apple using EFI instead of BIOS. Installing Windows in its current form is likely still a no-go. I dont know about Vista.

 

Apple has said they won't be trying to stop people from loading Windows, neither has Microsoft and I can't imagine Intel cares. AFAIK Intel EFI is an open spec - so it's possible for random Internet types to write bootloaders for it (I bet some Linux people already have) and you can circumvent BIOS with a bootloader. I give it a week from when these things hit the shelves until somebody with a garage in northern California or a dorm room in Cambridge has it quintuple-booting MacOS, Windows, Linux, NetBSD and OS/2 just because they can, and a month until somebody releases a stable and easy-to-use bootloader.

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I stand corrected. There is no "chip" on the new Intel Macs. Instead, Apple using EFI instead of BIOS. Installing Windows in its current form is likely still a no-go. I dont know about Vista.

 

I think it may still be possible...

 

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0506intelmac.html

 

And this is a link to OSX on a Dell...

 

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=102382&highlight=osx86

 

granted, all of this is "hacked" but still possible. Fact of the matter is, in order to make a faster a computer, Apple had to make themselves a PC. Pretty soon, hardware and OS will be interchangable.

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Pretty soon, hardware and OS will be interchangable.

 

Truthfully, that is all I really care about. Both Apple and MS want to lock the user into their systems. I want flexibility and freedom to do as I please. Also, if Apple is reading.... I'd pay a premium price to get OSX(with all the trimmings) to install on my PC.

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Both Apple and MS want to lock the user into their systems. I want flexibility and freedom to do as I please.

 

That is the first rule of the Unified Church of Apple. Keep them in the dark and force them to upgrade every 6 months based on hype. Actually now that Apple has finally upded their procs, I am interested in them again. But since they are playing this game of tying hardware to OS, they are upsetting me too. The other issue I have is software available on the MAC is so limited. But if the OS was not tied to the Box, then I could do a dual boot. Surf and email on the Apple side, maybe some photoshop, editing, then slip over to the PC side for some Max/Vray and maybe a game of F.E.A.R

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Chris-

 

I think those references are outdated. Apple put out a prerelease, NDA'ed, developer version of OSX86, with a reference platform, that was for fairly generic Intel hardware. The release version of the hardware will have a different BIOS and the software will be set up to run on the Apple machines only - so if you see a guy on the street with a Dell laptop running OSX it probably didn't come from "proper channels", if you know what I'm saying ;)

 

Of course, I love the idea of Windows running on one of these Macbook Pro laptops - they look SWEET and indications are that will be possible to do. A dual-core with a fast ATI card, widescreen, Apple design and choice of OSX or Windows - I think I know what my next computer will be.

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  • 2 months later...

Apple just announced that today they will put up a download called "Boot Camp" today, which will be their version of a boot loader for MacOSX+Windows.

 

The hackerware loader that somebody did recently seemed to work fine but required Slipstreaming a Windows disc and didn't fully support the video card. If the Apple one does support the video card and let you use ATI's drivers, I figure Apple now has the best available PC laptop.

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Apple just announced that today they will put up a download called "Boot Camp" today, which will be their version of a boot loader for MacOSX+Windows.

 

The hackerware loader that somebody did recently seemed to work fine but required Slipstreaming a Windows disc and didn't fully support the video card. If the Apple one does support the video card and let you use ATI's drivers, I figure Apple now has the best available PC laptop.

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Apple just announced that today they will put up a download called "Boot Camp" today, which will be their version of a boot loader for MacOSX+Windows.

 

The hackerware loader that somebody did recently seemed to work fine but required Slipstreaming a Windows disc and didn't fully support the video card. The Apple version makes things simpler, and if it supports the video card and lets you use ATI's drivers, I figure Apple now has the best available PC laptop - and the iMac and Mac Mini look likt they'd be pretty useful as well.

 

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/apr/05bootcamp.html

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