chicks dig unix

Ars Technica (who else?) have a good article about Intel’s upcoming chips and architecture developments and how they relate to Apple’s future.

They also capture, and dispel, exactly the reason for my apprehension about the move. I’ve always perceived the RISC PowerPC to be superior to Intel’s chips, and it is that perception, regardless of actual performance, that for me, and a great deal of others, was one of the benefits of the Macintosh platform.

Or, to put it differently, the “RISC” PowerPC architecture has been a core part of the Apple brand and the overall “mythology” of the Mac platform since the 68K transition, even if that architecture rarely delivered on company’s promises with benchmark numbers. So what Apple fans are mourning right now isn’t the loss of some actual technical superiority of the Mac hardware, but rather the loss of the perception of that hardware’s “technical superiority.” Even more importantly, Mac enthusiasts are also mourning the loss of that perception’s role in the ongoing maintenance of the myth of Apple and of the Apple brand in the form in which these two have coexisted in the PowerPC era.

It is fair to say that the PowerPC is a great architecture but it is also true to say that Intel have closed many of the performance gaps apparent in RISC/CISC comparisons of yore. I still have a whole gaggle of reservations and fears that only time will, hopefully, vanquish.

I really do hope that an updated iBook comes to market soon. I’ve been waiting for a while for that range to be updated and I’m not at all worried that the PowerPC will be left for dust as “Universal Binaries” will be shipped and supported by major and minor software vendors for years to come.