Originally Posted by
Slug Toy
well id just like to put my two cents in here because i cant take the torment of not participating in a timebomb debate.
ill start by stating what i agree and disagree with. ive heard it said that one of the few things macs have going for them is their looks, and i would tend to agree that they are probably the best looking stock computers available. i also see a lot of people saying thay macs are well suited for editing of any sort. i would agree with this too seeming as whenever i use a mac, the majority of programs are related to audio/video composition. one thing i disagree with is the outright statement that macs plain suck, because no matter how obscured they are these days, they are still a marvel of space management and technology. i also disagree with the idea that their OS is fairly first-timer friendly. i remember when i first tried to use one of those imacs or emacs.... one of 2004's new ones... man that was confusing. there was no description of icons or anything and i was utterly lost while fumbling with a school project.
now ill move to the question at hand. is switching to intel chips a cry for help? of course it is. any company would jump at the chance to get in on something new and promising. we see adds for intel everwhere, so people would most likely sway to what they know. ive already seen a couple adds for intel macs, and id say they did a good job of painting it as a minor step and making it look like a very good thing. it just makes business sense for macs to switch over to a more profitable platform.
i think another question that should be addressed though, is whether or not this was a good idea. now, in my opinion, it wasnt a very good idea. here is my reasoning. the fact that macs used powerPC chips set them apart from anything else, but now they are just melding in to create nothing more than another glorified x86 based PC with a nifty OS. i personally took a liking to what IBM was doing with technologies that could be implemented in powerPC's, and now with macs gone, im not really sure how the recent advancements in things like UV lithography and strained silicon are ever going to trickle directly from IBM to us... yes there will be servers and such, but i dont know if there will be a large scale distributor for the average person. im sure intel will pick up with the new technologies, but its a bummer to think that the company that originally thought that stuff up will no longer pass it directly to us. not to mention it will probably take intel a good 5 to 10 years to really adopt the IBM fashioned techniques if at all.
another reason why i think this isnt a very good move is because it further expands intel's hold on the market. now before everybody starts agreeing with me on the grounds that "AMD pwns all" im going to say that just because i dont like what intel is doing, it doesnt mean i support AMD. i support whatever is the best stuff out there at the present time. the number one crown will shift back and forth, so my support will shift back and forth. getting back to the market share deal though, i dont like the added share from macs because it just adds more squeeze on competitors. i like free competition because it speeds up creativity and everything to do with production of new technologies. thats just getting less and less possible now days. ideally... the macs should have gone to AMD for the sake of leverage in the market... just to make things slightly more fair.
im just going to keep on truckin here. moving on to why macs are still used so widely in schools for some reason... well i cant say for sure why that is. i doubt they're being paid to use them unless they're a big name school. i suspect that they are used so frequently because of the strong media background, and the need for something to do school projects on.
ok, the truck has stopped. im done with this for now. just one last thing though. for the people who are very pro-AMD, be careful these days, because as many of us have seen in the past day or so, the conroe processor came out from intel, and the early, non-optimized and non-tweaked tests show a large lead on AMD now. these are tests from IDF though, so they may be biased... but just beware that the company that everyone is supporting right now may fall behind again. its the never ending see-saw motion, and that's why i support no one in particular.
ok NOW im done. you may now proceed to burn me at the stake for even thinking that AMD might lose the crown. you may also stone me for saying that macs look good... or hang me for reasons to do with morality... just leave my shoes alone.