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I still say the PowerPC is a superior chip no matter how "fast" these Intels chips are.

I have a big place in my heart for the PPC 970's architecture, but I have to admit Intel's current Core offerings plus their upcoming roadmap are pretty good. What's in the new Macs is far better than what was available when Apple announced the switch. Back then I was thinking "P4 in an iMac? No way!"

I still say the PowerPC is a superior chip no matter how "fast" these Intels chips are.

"Superior" is a matter of what you want to do with it. If, for instance, you want to put your "superior" chip in a laptop, you better get a battery the size of a cinderblock and a heatshield for the family jewels ;)

You have to remember, that the Core Single and Core Duo processors are actually the Pentium M processor which dropped the silly design to maximize clock speed vs. maximize work done. The Core processor runs at the familiar 2 Ghz speed using G4 sort of power and generating much lower heat than Pentium 4 or AMD processors.

Apple has lived in this space so it wasn't as much an issue to want to claim insanely high clock speeds as evidence of power. Because Apple users are used to G5 processors kicking Pentium 4 bootie. The Core processor has many similarities to the G5 and unlike the whole G# series, the Intel folks plan a future which had ended over at IBM as Big Blue and Microsoft have fallen into bed over the Xbox. Sony specifically excluded Apple from the development of the Cell Processor, and IBM was almost a year tardy meeting commitments for the Low Power G5 and Multi-Core variants and this was the last nail for Apple continuing to depend on IBM.

So, yes for the short time period.. a Core Single processor is not equal to a single G5 processor but the Core Duo beats the single G5 for the same cost. But this is just the starting point, not the end of the line like it was over at IBM.

The PPC is superior in SO many ways to anything Intel has or is putting out. Unfortunately, the scale of production for PPC chips, and lagging technology on the speed and efficiency (read that power consumption) fronts have really hampered PPC chips.

IF heat and energy use was no option, the PPC would rule the world. Unfortunately in a Notebook computer world where speed with efficiency and battery life is everythign - the Core Duo (and now the Centrino Duo as Winders notebooks are now moving too) holds a lot of promise.

After all is said and done, though I am disapointed in the move away from PPC for Apple, I see it as a long-range wise choice for Apple - even possibly boosting market share somewhat.

Someone posted on the other current thread on speculation regarding X.5 that Dell had better watch out. What we all have to keep in mind is that MS doesn't REALLY care who makes the hardware their stuff runs on - if Apple were to intentionally build a machine with a "virtualization" component to the OS allowing simultanious booting into OSX and XP (Or VISTA if it ever actually comes out...), then it just expands MS's prospective customer base and sales.

As a consumer - if I could buy a machine that could run two OSes at the same time, smoothly and without the penalty that VirtualPC takes in horrid performance, then I wouldn't feel so bad about shelling out some money for software that isn't available for OSX if it were something I needed. That, my friends is a new market where I wouldn't have considered buying it even if I had a need because it was inconvenient (or expensive to buy compatible hardware).

OK - It's been a long week and I have rambled plenty long enough...