“In the long term, the change [to Intel processors] will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it. That’s because Intel’s processors and other chips will give Apple more options than IBM’s products could for building Macs that run faster and cooler, and have longer battery life,” Walter S. Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal.
“In the short run, however, the chip changeover should make little difference to average consumers… What makes a Mac a Mac isn’t the processor under the hood. It’s Apple’s elegant operating system, OS X, which won’t see major changes for 18 months, and the company’s stylish hardware designs, which it will continue to produce. When you peer at the screen of the first Intel-based Mac, it will look just like today’s PowerPC Macs, only it should run faster,” Mossberg writes.
Mossberg also writes that he expects “some third-party company to supply the missing drivers and otherwise make it possible to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Microsoft itself might even do this. That would allow Mac users to run Windows programs that lack Mac equivalents at speeds comparable to a Windows computer’s.”
Full article here.
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