“The first of Apple’s all-new G5 Power Macs should be in Australian stores this week, sources say, and it’s possible personal computing may never be quite the same again,” reports David Frith for Australian IT. “The new Mac desktops — the first personal computers by any maker to sport processors that can handle data in 64-bit chunks as well as the conventional 32-bits — are the ‘fastest personal computers on the planet,’ according to Apple chief executive Steven Jobs.”

“More important[ly]: they are the first PCs to break the 4GB random access memory (RAM) barrier, opening the way to a new generation of extremely powerful applications — especially in graphical fields,’ writes Frith. “The first G5s began shipping in the US early last week, making Apple the winner in the race to bring 64-bit computing to the desktop. In second place: the US chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, which is planning to launch the Athlon 64, a 32/64-bit chip for Windows desktop PCs, in September. AMD’s much bigger rival Intel has no current plan for a 64-bit desktop chip, but will tweak more performance from the 32-bit Pentium 4 later this year with a new design dubbed Prescott.”

Full article here.