Mac Hater,

For one, they aren't using Netburst they are using the Yonah which is almost antithetical to the horrible P7 architecture.

I think you may be misunderstanding what Apple is saying, not that what they are saying is so important. They don't approach a computer from a hardware perspective, even though they've been making them longer than any other maker left in the business. They are talking about the whole package, mainly from the ease of use perspective and making people more productive. So, I presume that is what they are saying, they are making Intel processors more productive not because of the hardware it is in, per se, but the whole package.

Of course, I don't know how true it is. I think they made an excellent choice in processors though.

22,

I'm not sure what your point is. I said the Yonah wasn't the "Netburst" (what an idiotic name, huh?) and was almost antithetical to it. Surely you're not implying that because externally they are similar that invalidates this claim. The problems with the P7, like virtually all processors, are more defined by the internal architecture than the memory bus (which is quite good in this case).

I'm not really defending the MacIntosh users, as I've never really liked MacIntoshes (I'm more used to calling them "MacIntoys" in fact), I'm explaining the mindset that Apple has. They don't care about hardware so much because they sell the entire solution. They worry more about actual productivity of the user, and if their computer/OS/application works better overall, they feel they did their job. In that regard, I agree, but I'm not as sure that they are the best at this as they claim they are. I was only illustrating that their claim isn't as silly as it initially sounds; they aren't claiming the Yonah is somehow turned into some super hardware, but that it is finally in a useful solution. The overall computing experience is better, is what I mean. Like I said, I won't pass judgement on them because I don't have a MacIntosh and my experience with them is somewhat limited, I am only trying to shed light on what Apple is saying and how, while it may not be true, it is not as ridiculous as it might sound initially.

Mark,

AMD took a big risk with x86-64??? You're kidding right? They took the extremely safe approach and the only choice they had. Intel took the risky approach with the Itanium and AMD had to offer something, so they took a very straightforward approach. If no one wanted their 64-bit enhancements, it made almost no difference since they focused mainly on 32-bit performance and could match what Intel had, and in fact surpass it.

This has nothing to do with roadmaps. Apple can switch from one processor to another just as easily as other manufacturer's do. They aren't married to Intel, they are married to the x86 instruction set. This is probably one of the reasons they chose it.

MacIntoshes have historically been jokes, at IBM we would call them MacIntoys. They had decent enough interfaces, which were intuitive but very limited compared to OS/2's Workplace Shell, but the underpinnings were way behind OS/2 and Windows NT. They are probably much better now than they were, but when I used them back in 1997 I was shocked at how far behind they were. It looks like they never could figure it out and simply went to Unix. Not really a big accomplishment, since Microsoft had Xenix out in the early 1980s.

The vast majority of users pick Windows, not Mac OS. Mostly because of the applications, of course, not so much because they prefer Windows over Mac OS.

People have been saying operating systems were becoming irrelevant seemingly forever. When the internet and Java were gaining in popularity, this was said over and over. Maybe it should be true, and maybe it will be some day, but so far all speculation regarding this has been wrong, so it's not a safe bet. Still, I hope it does happen and I don't see any technical reason why it shouldn't be.

I don't know what you are referring to about a processor made two years ago running a 64-bit version of Windows. I am hoping you are not saying that you are surprised AMD's initial processors should not have been able to run the 64-bit versions of Windows, because that would show a complete lack of understanding of what happened. I am going to assume you are aware that Microsoft was intimately involved in the creation of x86-64 and had more than a little input into the instruction set and worked with AMD the entire way. So, it would be far more shocking if it didn't work, in fact it would border impossibility because of the involvement of Microsoft.

The reason Betamax lost to VHS was due to technical inferiority, although only in a limited but extremely important area. Initially, the Beta machines could not record an entire movie on a single tape. VHS could and this was more important than the slightly better picture quality Beta had. Later on, they created Beta II and III recording modes that could fit movies easily on a single tape, with a slight degradation in quality, but by this time VHS had become more popular and it was easier to get movies for it. Also, rewinding a Beta tape wore it down, as the tape was not removed from the heads, whereas VHS did and thus caused no degradation when using forward fast and rewind. So, while I'll agree that Beta was better in most ways than VHS, in the way that mattered the most, it was inferior. Later fixes were too late to reverse the trend, since by that time momentum had become a more important issue.