   Mactel has finally launched
Quote:Apple has announced that all iMac G5 computers shipped from 10 January will be powered by Intel's dual processor.LinkyOf course eveyrone knew this was coming, but not sure exactly when and whether it would be desktops or laptops. The article says that the laptops (MacBook Pro) won't ship until february, but Mactel is finally going to be in physical form.I'm personally curious how this will affect the market. The Apple page says that the Intel iMac (powered by the new Core Duo) starts at $1300, which, while still overpriced, is fairly reasonable. The specs are 512 MB RAM, 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, a 160 GB SATA hard drive, an ATI X1600, and a 17 inch LCD at 1440x900. It's certainly a far better buy than Macs have been recently, and the prospects of running WinXP and OSX at once are interesting to say the least, and thrilling if you are interested in a lot of OSX only software but still want access to all the Windows software (games particularly).   
  that's actually a comparable price for a similar wintel machine.   ;  I kind of like the new laptop, but I think "MacBook" is a stupid name, especially considering "Powerbook" was used long before they went to the PowerPC architecture. Then again, I would have probably called it something like "Super Waffle Iron" or "Laptop-o-tron".However, it runs with an ATI X1600 on PCI-Express and has SATA, so it looks like a very nice rig. I may upgrade to one in the far future once they get past "Rev A" hardware.I was really hoping for an Intel-based Mac mini though, because then I'd have a cheap-ass test environment for seeing if my universal binaries work.   ;Quote:Original post by RavuyaI was really hoping for an Intel-based Mac mini thoughMe too [sad] Perhaps in time...   ;Quote:Original post by Promitthe prospects of running WinXP and OSX at once are interesting to say the least, and thrilling if you are interested in a lot of OSX only software but still want access to all the Windows software (games particularly).That is indeed very interesting. Probably of little use to me personally, but interesting nonetheless.But, is it definite that you can dual boot into XP? I'm sure someone will find a way regardless.. but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple at least tried to lock people to their OS on their hardware.Jack   ;  It will definatelly be interesting for the first few months. Now we'll start seeing benchmarks that compare the two OSes on similar hardware.   ;Quote:Original post by jollyjeffersQuote:Original post by Promitthe prospects of running WinXP and OSX at once are interesting to say the least, and thrilling if you are interested in a lot of OSX only software but still want access to all the Windows software (games particularly).That is indeed very interesting. Probably of little use to me personally, but interesting nonetheless.But, is it definite that you can dual boot into XP? I'm sure someone will find a way regardless.. but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple at least tried to lock people to their OS on their hardware.You could definitely dual-boot the development kits, but they were using a legacy BIOS. I think the new machines are using EFI(?) which is Intel's next-generation BIOS. I know that Vista will support it, but I don't know if mainstream XP currently does.I'd be honestly very surprised if there wasn't an immediate port of VMWare or some kind of hack to dual-boot XP if indeed the BIOS does prevent XP from operating correctly, though.   ;  Why does this have an X1600 with a shitty processor and only 512MB of RAM? Seems a bit badly weighted...   ;Quote:Original post by MercuryWhy does this have an X1600 with a shitty processor and only 512MB of RAM? Seems a bit badly weighted...Never checked out a Mac before huh?Quote:4 times faster!Apple still seems to be selling floppy drives...   ;Quote:Original post by MercuryWhy does this have an X1600 with a shitty processor and only 512MB of RAM? Seems a bit badly weighted...Have you noticed that Pentium mobile chips have never really gotten above 2.2 ghz?Their speed ratings are really irrelevant. Mac software does tend to utilize resources better.   