on 8 July 2005I’m a bit worried about this whole Intel business. Not for the reasons a lot of people on the Mac forums seem to be worried: Intel spelled backwards is Satan, if you put Pentium chips in Macs they’ll start running Windows when you’re not looking, Apple will ship Mac OS 10.5 on beige Dell PCs with an apple drawn on the front in crayon, and so on.
No, like everyone else who’s been holding their breath since Steve Jobs promised us a 3GHz Power Mac and a free jackalope, I’ll be happy to see the back of the PowerPC. Put it in games consoles where it belongs, I say. Ironic that the first company to think of that was Apple. Remember the Pippin? Didn’t think so.
True, there was a brief Age of Gold in the late 1990s when Intel chips were too hot, too slow, and couldn’t add up properly, while Apple’s shiny new PowerPC G3 could do anything – even make laptop computers as powerful as desktops, something that hasn’t happened in the PC world since the days when ‘portable’ meant ‘fits in elevator’. But today’s PowerBooks can’t even keep up with the iMac, and Apple has gone very quiet about the Power Mac G5 being the world’s fastest personal computer, stung by nit-picking technical objections like ‘No it isn’t’.
I’m not inclined to lump Intel with Microsoft in some sort of PC axis of evil. Intel has a distinguished history. One of its founders, Gordon Moore, came up with Moore’s Law, often quoted as the principle that computing power doubles every two years. What he actually said, in 1965, was that the number of transistors in a given area would double every year; later he adjusted this to two years, like Moses popping back up the mountain and calling down, ‘When I said adultery…’ The point is, he was roughly right, which is more than can be said of most predictions about computers. DEC’s Ken Olson probably regrets opining in 1977 that there was ‘no reason anyone would want a computer in their home’. Then again, maybe he really had travelled to the future and tried re-installing Windows XP.
Nor am I particularly bothered that we’ll no longer be able to avoid debates about the relative speed of Macs and PCs. Let’s face it, there was never much credibility in shouting ‘Ner ner, different processor architectures’ and running away. In any case, Macs should turn out faster. Windows is a hideously bloated operating system that wastes most of the processing power it’s given; there’s no way the Mac OS would use Intel hardware so inefficiently. Well, unless you made it do something really silly, like trying to emulate a completely different processor architecture so that you could run all the existing Mac applications. Oh.
Yes, I’m slightly miffed that putting its chips in Macs will give Intel the final excuse it needs to claim credit for everything that was ever invented. It’s bad enough having to watch those TV adverts where the ability to run applications, play CDs and access the Internet is attributed to the Pentium processor, as if computers with other chips could only display telexes. Now, inspired by the 40th anniversary of Moore’s Law, they’re really going for it. Without Intel innovation, we’re told, ‘cell phones could be the size of cars’. Blimey, if a mobile was the size of a car, how big would an iPod be? No, hang on, iPods don’t use Intel chips. Hmm. Still, there’s no denying Intel has revolutionised the cell phone industry. Just think how many Intel mobiles you see around, compared to the PowerPC people – what are they called – Motorola.
In all honesty, had Gordon Moore decided to devote his attention to saving the whale or winning the PGA Masters, it couldn’t have taken more than a couple of decades before someone else slapped their forehead and exclaimed: ‘I know! The chips! Why don’t we try making them smaller and faster?’ Although they might have forgotten their flash of insight by the time they remembered where they’d parked their Nokia.
But what really worries me about the Mac getting better processors is that things are starting to go too well. If you want to predict Apple’s progress, forget Moore’s Law. It’s always followed Murphy’s.
Adam Banks may not be as rich or thin as Steve Jobs, but at least he can say ‘Jaguar’ properly.
adambanksdotcom Google Instant seems like the search equivalent of the Interrupting Cow knock-knock joke