On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 03:12 +0800, Doug Wilson wrote: > I just know I'm going to have nightmares of Intel chips chasing me across > Apple motherboards.
Aah, but there you have it. If they're not *Apple* motherboards, probably with OpenFirmware, I'll be shocked. It sounds a lot like they've chosen Intel for Pentium M (note Jobs' comments on power efficiency) - but that doesn't mean they'll want to use unmodified Intel/Via/SiS chipsets and boards. I'll be very surprised if they'll make it possible to run MacOS/X on standard PCs or Windows on macs. As for what's ahead, my money - if I had any to spare - would be on Opteron for the G5 replacements, or failing that EM64-T Xeon. Current users of Virtual PC might be interested to note that it'll almost certainly get a massive speed boost on the new systems, as it'd only need to virtualize the CPU, not emulate a different CPU. I'd put money on VMWare and QEmu ports for MacOS/X in a hurry, too. I wonder how long the WINE (http://www.winehq.com/) port is going to take - imagine being able to run some of those Windows-only apps without emulating all of Windows? Interesting times head. If I can run MacOS/X as a guest OS under Xen (and they put two trackpad buttons on their new iBooks), I might even buy a Mac laptop for my development work. I have a half-finished MacOS/X port of Scribus to help finish, and this news makes it all sound much more fun :-) -- Craig Ringer
