Hell Freezes Over — Again
When Steve Jobs announced the move to Intel chips during his WWDC 2005 keynote, people claimed that hell had finally frozen over. In a way, it has frozen over again, because, despite the many times I made fun of Intel, despite my childish amusement over Apple’s Burning Bunny Man TV ad, despite all my concerns about Intel’s control of the PC CPU market, I realized today that I actually seriously look forward to seeing Intel chips inside a Mac. Even if, at least for now, there’s only a single, highly specific reason for that.
My 12″ PowerBook G5 dubbed Verne (if you’ve seen the initial ad for the 12″ and 17″ AlBooks you’ll know where that comes from…) that I use as my main computer is a superb little high-tech package. It handles all those daily geek chores like tackling email, surfing the web, writing letters, etc. with aplomb. And it comes in a well-equipped, stylish, and highly portable aluminum package. However, once you get to more demanding applications like iPhoto or iMovie, the ‘Books little 867MHz heart does have to work hard. And let’s better not even talk about serious processor-hogging media creation software like Logic Pro 7…
Just like us humans, when computers work hard, they heat up. Unlike us humans, however, they don’t break into a sweat (thank goodness!), but kick up those fans’ revs to help blow all that heat out of their cases. And ever since I installed some system update a few months ago, the little fan in my PowerBook kicks in far too often for my taste. Probably some users complained to Apple that they got second-degree burns on their thighs while using their AlBook on their laps…
I agree that, before the update, the fans rarely kicked in at all, and the PowerBook’s case got seriously hot, indeed. With the current setup, though, it’s even enough to have Safari open with two pages sporting flash animation adverts to get the processor load up high enough to be presented with the soothing sound of the ‘Book’s fan working its butt off. I mean, come on: two flash-animation-cluttered web pages are all it takes to get the fan going? That’s just rediculous!
Now back to the Intel promise. During the keynote, Jobs mentioned that “mid-2006 and beyond, we see PowerPC gives us 15 units of performance per watt, but Intel’s roadmap gives us 70.” While the G5 generates way too much heat to use it (unmodified) for mobile computing applications, Intel, with its Pentium M and Centrino lines of chips, has a low-power-consumption solution available right now. And if that translates into an Intel-based PowerBook, that is not only noticeably faster than the current PowerPC G4 models, but also operates much cooler and is, thus, a lot quieter, then I’d be a happy man. And I’ll never make fun of Intel again, either. Well, OK, at least I’ll try…
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Ed 03 August 2005 at 15:36
Hmm,
“My 12″ PowerBook G5 dubbed Verne” …. So you have something most other powerbook owners want?
Have Fun,
Ed
Jochen Wolters 06 August 2005 at 11:20
Oh no! I shouldn’t have let that slip out since I’m still under NDA!