Once Bitten

I have (mostly) resisted the urge to say “Hah!” to any and all Apple Zealots over the past couple of weeks, as the rumours of Apple’s switch from an IBM/Motorola to an Intel CPU design. Mainly because it’s such a tedious topic that really only excites nerds and doesn’t mean a lot in the whole scheme of things. And also that pissing off Apple zealots is about as easy and satisfying as pissing off Segway Dorks. Anyway, it’s been quite interesting from a human psychology viewpoint to watch the zealots progressively freaking out as the reality of Apple’s about-face became evident. Apple corners a neat little 2% or so of the PC market by selling “difference” to people, who think that by buying Apple’s commodities, they can differentiate themselves from the proles. “The Computer For The Rest Of Us”. “Think Different”. All that rot.

By switching to Intel, Apple neatly removes a little bulwark of that “difference” mentality. It’s been fun watching some of the more crazed nerds come up with, initially, desperate denials, then later weird, theologically contorted explanations for why everything Apple does is good, natural, essential, and pre-ordained. It’s a bit like listening to fundie Christians explain why birth control is bad.

Anyway, now Apple has finally decided to tacitly admit that its IBM/Motorola CPUs have been dogs for years (unless you run very specialized, custom-designed vector processing scientific application). The price/performance/heat gap between it and the rest of the marketplace has got too extreme to ignore. Consider its current flagship consumer machine: the G5 Mac that looks like a pizza box. People applaud the design, but when I first saw it I realised what it is: a failed attempt at a notebook G5 Macintosh. Obviously, the chip inside turned out to be too hot and power hungry to run as a notebook so Apple desperately adds on some serious cooling and external power supply and calls it a new design. Desperate for some kind of notebook possibility (given that it relies on notebooks for around 50% of its PC revenue), Apple cozies up to Intel, a company Apple has spent many, many years of effort dissing, while ignoring the only company that beats the crap out of Intel for speed and price, AMD. At any rate, using the new Intel CPU will let Apple make high-end machines that aren’t quite such huge hulking monsters. Consider one of Apple’s high-end workstation, which runs its underperforming G5 chip with nine (!) fans to stop it melting down. That fills up all the internal space, making the case bigger and leaving less room for more interesting stuff. By comparison, the Intel Macintosh that Apple demo’d uses exactly one fan on its CPU, and looks empty inside by comparison.

How hard and for how long has Apple been dissing Intel? Like, for ever. Here’s a classic “Megahertz Myth” video, where Steve Jobs and some techie dude basically spend a few minutes ‘explaining’ how the Apple CPUs, that run at half speed, beat the crap out of Intel chips running twice as fast. Whatever. And here’s an old Apple page, since mysteriously deleted, explaining exactly by how much Intel CPUs suck arse.

As for me, I am glad that my trusty Windows Mac emulator will soon be able to emulate the newest Macs better than, well, current Macs.