But Uncle Steve, I thought Intel chips were faster?

I was on that same website wondering the same thing; why has apple left this up, and is it true. http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ , look at the titles, almost all of them are some sort of heavy rendering, which a 64 bit is perfectly suited to do, not many people are rendering bibng files on a day to day basis. Beside in a year or two, I'm sure Intel will have 64 bits throughoout their line.

To: Sean Cheers mate. To be honest I was still thinking of buying one, but wanted a mac user's point of view. I don't really see the big difference in the Intel switch myself, especially for what I have in mind for the pb, but hey it's worth finding out. Thanks again.

Hi Er rember those tests were made against P4's running windows. the biggest question becomes how much does Windows suck CPU wise.... We will find out which OS eats more CPU cycles and the biggest CPU hog. This will really Show whats going on for the 1st time ever.

1. These look like the original Pentium 4 processors, probably on anemic motherboards compared to what's available today. A single processor 3.6GHz Pentium 4 today clocks in at over 22, and dual Xeon at 30-40 on the SPEC CPU2000. The fastest machine you can buy in the Intel world gets over 100. Same with SPECfp. The whole point of this switch is that now Apple has options. http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q2/#SPECint_rate 2. SPEC is very compiler dependent. One thing I didn't note was whether the Intel compiler, which spanks gcc's booty, will be available to Mac developers. That could make a huge difference. 3. If today's PowerBooks give you what you need today, there's no reason not to buy. They'll be supported for years, likely as long as their useful life would have been, anyway. That being said, next year's Pentium M (which is going dual-core at year-end,) should be rather amazing.

I have to echo Mike Steinbaugh's comments above: this chart shows a dual 2-ghz G5 compared against 3Ghz Xeons (which are designed for servers, not general use) and a single 3ghz P4. What does this prove, exactly? How about comparing 2ghz G5s against 2ghz P4s?

Maurice: I've been using my Powerbook since fall 2004 (when I 'made the switch') and I couldn't be happier with my decision. Not only does it handle my (similar) web/graphic development needs, the OS stability, iLife extras and new OS X 10.4 features are worth the switch alone. (I've managed to convince at least 3 other individuals + my office to go mac since that time.) In regards to Intel, all >new< software developed "for" the Intel platform Macs should be 100% compatible with PPC basec macs for several years past 2007. Remember, the transition itself will take two years, and that is the point at which they want 100% of their developers and new computers operating with Intel support. Thanks to Dual Binaries in XCode, support for both architectures in any newly developed software should continue far past this point. Remember, they'll still be releasing NEW models of PPC based macs within this time. I'd say your more than safe in making the investment. Make the switch, you'll be glad you did!

I think there's something bigger in store at Cupertino. Steve was pushing the idea that power consumption was more important to them than performance. That message came across to me much heavier than places are reporting it. This makes me think that Steve has something quite revolutionary and culture-changing up his sleeve for the way we use computers. Maybe that tablet-looking thing that they secured a design patent for? I think Apple's about to transform our concepts of computers and mobility. As for new PowerMac performance running on Intel? Don't worry about it. I'm sure by the time they get to those models, they will be using very fast dual-core Intel CPUs in the desktop models.

This chart compares apples and oranges. Wow, the dual G4 system wins out over a single Intel chip system. Big surprise. However, if you had a dual Intel chip system, Intel would win out. So I fail to understand why this is a significant graphic.

I was planning on buying a Powerbook G4 in the next few weeks (my first apple!) and I've been reading posts & comments here and at Engadget for the past while now. The only thing that I want to know is, is it worth buying a powerbook now or when they come with Intel chips? I'll be using it for web development and graphics, so what impact will the Intel chip have on that? Thanks.

Well according to that graphic, divide the dual G5 score by two and you get 7.85. That's lower than the speed of the 3GHz P4. With the new dual-core Pentiums I think Apple will find a way to do amazing things with Intel.