With Apple, "Intel inside"
Computer hardware manufacturer Apple has unveiled its first computers based on Intel processors.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 10 at the opening of the Macworld trade fair at the
Mosconåe Center in San
Francisco. Groundbreaking, because Apple's
Announcement of two computers equipped with Intel processors after the
Commitment to a processor change last summer now followed by action
lets.
But Apple would not be Apple and Jobs would not be Jobs if this news
would not have been finely packaged and embellished. So the
new processor in the new, otherwise outwardly only slightly
modified computers after Jobs to be a real workhorse: Until
twice as fast as the previous model equipped with G5 processors
iMac, the new model is said to work up to four times faster than the
new MacBook Pro, which as a PowerBook, however, never benefited from the
G5 chips arrived.
Apple's decision to switch to Intel does not come from
about: The fact that the new Intel chips in the portable
devices can be installed without any problems, the computer manufacturer
no longer rely on processors from the
PowerPC G5 supplier IBM.
Unusually aggressive and apparently not to Intel's delight is a
advertising spot for the launch of the new processors, which is
Intel processors as stupid, so to speak. How
However: The new technology, first introduced in Switzerland at a
The new computers shown at the press conference clearly demonstrate the
are significantly faster than the previous models.
After PowerPC now Core Duo
The processors called Core Duo were newly developed by Intel and
was also presented at the beginning of January. The name reveals that the
chip is equipped with two cores (processing units). The
The presence of these two closely interlinked cores explains
This includes the performance increase of the new Apple computers.
However, by using these processors, Apple loses a piece of its
Exclusivity. Were the G5 computers able to compete with the Pentium PCs (not always, but
again and again) - currently the Power Mac
Quad with two G5 processors also designed as dual-core chips
-, this trump card is unlikely to be used in future. The
IT platform Heise has researched that since January already
Core Duo notebooks from Asus, Dell, LG and Samsung are available in the
Apple, Acer, Lenovo and Sony will follow in February, followed by Fujitsu in March
Siemens and MSI.
The change has another catch. As was the case when Apple
switched from the Motorola 68040 processor to the PowerPC platform,
it is also only possible indirectly with this change,
applications that are not adapted to the Intel processors.
are. As compensation, Apple has developed a technology called Rosetta in
the new Mac OS X operating system, which was also launched at the keynote.
10.4.4, which makes this shortcoming unnoticeable for the user.
compensated. Even if performance suffers somewhat as a result, the
so that at least most of the programs that previously ran on OS X
applicable.
The Mac OS 9 emulation including all OS 9 applications will be
will definitely no longer be supported in the future. Above all
However, numerous Pro applications from Apple (Final Cut Pro/Express,
Motion, Soundtrack, Aperture, Shake ...) were initially withheld from Intel Macs. These are in their
previous versions initially only on the specified hardware
can be used. Apple promises a remedy here: users of their
Pro software can be ordered according to the availability of so-called
Universal applications (these are available for PowerPC and Core Duo
equally suitable and without emulation) and against a
Cost contribution for your Pro applications in universal-coded versions
exchange. The corresponding programs are due to be launched in March of this
year will be available. Most other software providers will only release customized Mac applications with new
versions/updates on the market. First information from Quark and
Adobe are listed in the box on page 23.
Updates to the iApps
Many users rely on Apple hardware, not least because of the modern
operating system. The introduction of new operating systems based on the Intel platform
optimized software was therefore discussed at the keynote.
time granted.
In addition to the aforementioned availability of version 10.4.4 of the
operating system are important applications for the private user.
already available as universal programs. These include the
software collections iWork and iLife, also known as iApps.
These have been updated and marked with the corresponding year
provided.
The changes to the iWork '06 applications Keynote
(presentation program) and Pages (text/layout program) are
far-reaching. What I particularly like about Keynote is the option of
to better organize individual slides/slides on a general overview
can. Pages has been given a page palette which, thanks to thumbnails
would look good on many a professional program. Especially
practical here is the link with the
Apple software "Address Book" to convert documents into form letters.
to be able to convert them. Footnotes can now be created with Pages and
The comments/notes can be collected at the end of the document.
All iLife '06 applications were significantly more than completely
renewed. The changes here range from the management of larger
image data stocks in iPhoto through to extended options for the
Create podcasts within the GarageBand environment and in
iMovie. iLife '06 is also supplemented with the iWeb application. With
This iApp allows you to quickly and easily create websites, blogs and
generate RSS feeds and send them to the .mac address - an Apple-owned
Web service - transfer.
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