I admit that I am very excited about the new Intel-based Macs that Apple plans to release next year. There is talk that the newest iBook will be released as early as January 2006 WITH the new Intel architecture.
So, you might ask, am I excited because I want to run OS X on my mega-PC desktop? No, absolutely not. That desktop will run Linux (http://www.linux.org) until it dies. However, I love the functionality of Apple portables (iBook, Powerbook, etc.) Linux (http://www.linux.org) already runs very well on PowerPC architecture. And there are already quite a few distros that ship PPC versions (Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), Debian (http://www.debian.org), Gentoo, SuSE (http://www.suse.com), Mandriva, etc.)
What I see as exciting is the possibility of running SuSE (http://www.suse.com) or Kubuntu on an iBook with realtime binary compatibility. That adds tremendously to the amount of software available and the speed at which software can be installed (minimizing the amount of software that must be compiled for PPC). Also, with losers like Macromedia refusing to make PowerPC versions of Flash, Linux (http://www.linux.org) Mac users will finally be able to see wonderful flash web sites. (OK, that is a blessing and a curse).
At any rate, it’s nothing but good news for the
GNU/Linux (http://www.linux.org) users. Forget what people say about Mactel being bad for Linux (http://www.linux.org). After all, we’re not trying to wipe Apple off the map. We just want everyone to play fair. As far as I’m concerned, with the new Mactel factor, the playing field just leveled. The only potential loser here is Microsoft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft).
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