OK, I said I wasn’t going to put up any links about the Apple-Intel news but this article was just too good to pass up.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the Apple-Intel deal. I certainly still have some reservations about the plan but I may as well get on board with it since it’s going to happen whether I like it or not. While pondering the details I realized that this will likely open up a whole new world of Linux to Mac users. Right now our choices are somewhat limited at best and I haven’t really found a workable LiveCD/DVD Distro that works on the Mac at all. I like to mess around with Knoppix, Knoppix-STD, DSL, LAS, Morphix and just about any other Live Distro I can get my hands on, even to the point that I enjoy remastering my own versions with updated tools, but I have yet to find anything but a very outdated Knoppix-PPC that is so old I can’t even bring myself to download it. So, with new x86 Macs just around the corner we could see a whole lot more effort going into getting these LiveCDs to play nice on Apple Hardware. This can only be a good thing.

Hell hath frozen over. Rather than post any one link here to the story I suggest you head on over to news.google.com and check it out for yourself. I for one have mixed emotions about this. I can see to some degree why Apple has decided to go this way. I figure for the most part, it has a lot to do with perception… People want to know why it is that they’re supposed to by a Mac running at half the Giga Hertz of the PC competetion. Now I know that even Intel has kind of made a departure from using the Ghz moniker but lets face it, we’ve all been looking at the Hz for so long it’s how we know we have the newer faster model! I still believe that the IBM PowerPC processor is probably a more advanced design but IBM is having trouble kicking up the Ghz that people (even Mac users) want to see. Also, the G5 Proc is water cooled! Uhmmmm… how’s that going to fit into a PowerBook? And then there’s price, Intel is already kicking out Processors left and right and every speed bump will likely find its way into new Macs as they roll off the line making Mac users want to upgrade that much more often. Not a bad thing for Intel or Apple. Now, onto my RANT, why Intel? Why not AMD? AMD has the better 64bit processor and has the better dual-core processor and its well known that AMD’s processors also have the legs to go the distance because of better design. Heck, Intel has resurected the PIII and started calling it the Pentium M and power users are clamoring to shoe-horn it into their desktop systems. Now if you get a Pentium M into my PowerBook I just might feel the need to buy a new Laptop.

Of course Apple say there is no way in hell that OS X will ever run on non-Apple hardware and while I know they’ll do their best to make sure of that, I have faith in my fellow Power Users that someone somewhere will find a way. Will Windows be able to run on the Mac natively? Probably. Will M$ put out a Mac version of Windows XP/Longhorn? I find it likely they wouldn’t miss that opportunity to throw a little salt in Steve Jobs’ wounds.