Idiot's guide to Macintel computers; rumors and myths dispelled

I swear to god, no matter what Apple does people still find something to complain about. And I wonder how the people who are doing nothing but complaining about the new Intel Macs are able to justify drooling over machines with almost the same specifications?

Firstly: 32 v 64 bit

If you're expecting a 64 bit ICBM (Intel Chip Based Mac) then you're gonna have to wait a while. Apple has absolutely no control whatsoever over Intel and which chips they decide to release and when. If you want to wait for a 64 bit ICBM to come out that's fine, but you're gonna be waiting until September at the earliest, assuming Intel is on track to put out their 64 bit chips and assuming Apple gets them around the same time.

Second: Firewire 800

Now, honestly, how many of you have even seen a Firewire 800 compatible device much less own and use one on a regular basis? Also, why does no one complain about the lack of Firewire 800 on PC laptops if so many people are complaining about the removal of it on the new PowerBooks? Bitch and moan if Apple removes Firewire 400 from their machines, but right now Firewire 800 is an extremely niche market. It is expected that the first ICBM PowerMacs will retain Firewire 800 as the people buying PowerMacs are going to have more of a need for Firewire 800 than those buying PowerBooks, simply for the fact that Firewire 800 right now is usually confined to large external RAID arrays and cumbersome sound hardware that is not portable like a PowerBook.

While it would be nice to have Firewire 800 on a PowerBook just on the oft chance that it might be needed, for most users it will just sit there unused. What would have made more sense, however, would've been to add two Firewire 400 ports instead of just the one.

UPDATE 6/14/06:The 17 inch Intel PowerBook includes a Firewire 800 port.

Third: Battery life

Yes, we ALL want to have a laptop that will last 12 hours while using every component in the computer at 100 percent capacity, but you know what? It ain't gonna happen any time soon. While there are no official numbers yet as to the new PowerBook's battery life, it is completely safe to assume that it will be on par with other comparable PC laptops. If you have a problem with the battery life of the new PowerBook you should not be complaining to Apple you should be complaining to Intel for making chips too power hungry, and to the LCD backlight manufacturers for making the backlights too power hungry, and to the hard drive manufacturers for making hard drives too power hungry, etc...

Being that OS X is usually coded in such a way that it is able to take advantage of pretty much every feature of the hardware it runs on, there's a very good possibility that the OS itself will take an active role in controlling the power usage of the new processors which should make things more efficient.

Fourth: Speed

Recent benchmarks show the iMacs to be quite fast. As the hardware in the iMacs and PowerBooks are fairly identical expect the PowerBooks to be quite fast as well.

As of OS X 10.4.4 OS X runs completely natively under the x86 architecture, as does the entire iLife 06 application suite. Reports have shown that OS X is incredibly fast and responsive as are the iLife applications. Any applications that act slower than they should are most likely running under Rosetta which is an emulation layer that dynamically converts PPC binary instructions to x86 instructions and back. Frequently used instructions are cached which will increase performance, but apps running under Rosetta will still run noticeably slower than x86 native apps.

Fifth: Windows

Currently windows XP cannot run on an ICBM. This is due to the fact that ICBMs use EFI which is a BIOS replacement designed by Intel. There are compatibility modules that can be added to EFI to allow it to emulate BIOS, however, seeing as how people have already gotten ICBMs home and tried booting Windows installation CDs on them, the chances Apple having included a compatibility module are extremely slim unless there is some hidden way of accessing it that no one knows about. While Apple has said they would not prevent users from running Windows on ICMBs, it is doubtful that they would actively help them by including a compatibility module where one is not needed.

Expect Windows Vista to run on an ICBM without a problem as Vista does support EFI. Also expect, before the release of Vista, that someone will find a way around the XP/EFI thing and get XP to successfully run on an ICBM. If a group of hackers don't accomplish this feat I expect that Microsoft themselves will quietly release an update that will allow it to happen.

Also, as it has been brought up at least once in the last week: Apple will not lose anything from allowing users to run Windows on their machines. Both the hardware and OS X have already been paid for by the user, so running Windows doesn't put a dent in Apple's profit margins at all. So the truly have no reason whatsoever to stop users from running Windows.

UPDATE 6/14/06:In March of this year a group of hackers were able to get Windows XP running on Intel Macs. Less than a month later Apple released a firmware update that added a BIOS compatibility module to the Mac EFI allowing the installation of Windows XP without any hacks. Apple also released BootCamp which an application that will nondestructively partition your hard drive and burn a CD containing Windows drivers for Mac hardware.

As of June 14th, BootCamp is still considered to be beta. People have reported problems of not being able to access either OS X or Windows after installing Windows, also some hardware does not have drivers—notably the built in iSight cameras and the lit keyboards on the Intel PowerBooks.

A full version of BootCamp, possibly as part of built in virtualisation, will be included with OS X 10.5 Leopard, which should be released late this year or early next.

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That is all I have to write for now. I'm sure I've missed some things but I have touched on the major points that people have been complaining about or have been misinformed about.

Questions and comments are welcome, flames and abf will be ignored.

Seablade...

Audio and video are niche markets, and most people doing audio and video will be doing so on a PowerMac and not a PowerBook, which is why it makes more sense for the PowerMac to retain FW800 over the PowerBook. And yes FW800 is backwards compatible, but not until you buy an adaptor for it. Makes much more sense to include two FW400 ports instead of one 400 and one 800, unless you're going to include the adaptor with the machine.

And what you've heard about FW800 being absent on the new PowerBooks is what I've heard as well, but I do expect there to be FW800 on the PowerMacs simply because that's where the majority of the audio and video is going to be done and Apple knows this, so they're going to push for it.

Well, maybe by the next revision of the new PowerBooks there will be FW800 included.

I still contend, however, that the majority of PowerBook users are not going to miss FW800.

Thank you, Jrsy.

I'm kind of disappointed that the DVD burner is only 4x but right now I don't care much for DL. It'd be nice but DL disks are too expensive compared to SL disks that I'd rather have a faster burner.

I don't know of any enclosures that can power a desktop harddrive off of firewire. I don't think Firewire specs carry enough power to do that.