Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I’ve been reading some reviews from people who I thought would know better about how “disappointed” (and so many people are always so disappointed when reality doesn’t match up to their fantasies) that the Intel-based iMac is only about 1.84x faster, at best, than the current iMac G5 offering, and that emulating one processor type on another is *gasp* slower than running things natively!

It is true that Apple has used certain CPU-specific benchmarks to highlight the power of the new Intel Core chips, and it’s true that those CPU-specific benchmarks yielded results much better than 1.84x. Let us remember, as Steve said plainly in the keynote, that not all computer parts have undergone the same speed increase as the CPUs, so performance gains system-wide will be different than the CPU-specific gains. I knew that before Steve even said it, and unless these reviewers have warmed-over poo for brains, they know it too. So I don’t understand all the grousing that the new Intel-based machines aren’t ludicrously faster than the G5-based ones that preceded them, just as I don’t understand why some people are grousing that Rosetta, Apple’s PPC-to-Intel emulation layer, isn’t indistinguishable from the real thing. Those expectations are simply unrealistic, and holding any company to them, whether that’s Apple, Intel, or anyone else, is an exercise in stupidity.

Also, let us not forget the primary reasons why Apple chose Intel: Supply and performance per watt. Never did Steve, or any Apple rep I’m aware of, state that Apple was changing to Intel CPUs because they were faster. Apple is now using Intel chips because IBM and Motorola were unable to supply adequate quantities of chips for computers Apple wanted to sell, and because Intel’s new cooler, less power-hungry chips are going to enable Apple to create and market a plethora of non-computer devices in the coming months, as well as (already) updating their aging notebook CPUs. Speed was never a factor, and those who expect to make it one are going to continue to “disappoint” themselves.