“Intel announced Tuesday that its new line of chips will be built into more than 230 new laptop computers coming in 2006, making them much better at running music, movies and other digital media,” Dean Takahashi reports for The Mercury News. “But it wouldn’t say a word about whether that includes the laptop creating the most buzz, expected from its new marquee customer, Apple Computer. The new laptops are based on Intel’s new Napa platform that will enable the biggest upgrade in two years for portable technology. An Apple laptop with the technology could address the pent-up demand among the Macintosh faithful who have been disappointed with Apple laptops that run on Power PC chips. Apple said this year it would switch to Intel by mid-2006.”
“The Napa-based computers have a microprocessor chip, dubbed Yonah, that has two processing brains on a single chip. It is Intel’s first dual-core laptop microprocessor and can perform 30 percent to 68 percent faster on software programs compared with single-core chips,” Takahashi reports. “Napa computers will also be as much as 30 percent smaller and consume 28 percent less battery power than current Intel-based laptops, said Keith Kressen, an Intel mobile marketing director.
Full article, including info about Intel’s “Viiv” efforts, here.
Just a note that the “Macintosh faithful” we know have not been disappointed with Apple laptops that run on Power PC chips. We and they are disappointed that Motorola (Freescale) and IBM just couldn’t do with the PowerPC processor what their roadmaps promised. Mainly, we wanted a PowerBook G5 before Apple’s June announcement of the transition to Intel-based Macs. The processor brand or type isn’t important, just that it functions well, can offer high-performance speed at the top-of-the-line (we do want to be the fastest or among the fastest at least), and can run Mac OS X and Mac OS X applications. We’d hazard a guess that it’s the Mac operating system combined with the Mac software that’s most important to Mac users, not the name stamped on the chip inside Macs.
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