The MHz wars are over—and this could be great for Apple
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jun 20, 2005 at 12:35am
Now that Apple is transitioning to Intel chips, the megahertz wars are over. There are lots of potential speed bumps (no pun intended) along the way, but there’s certainly one major advantage Apple has in this scenario: the playing field is now level and Apple can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft and Dell and its other competitors in the two areas at which it excels: the design of its hardware and the elegance of its operating system.
And on those two fronts, Apple is well prepared for battle. Look at the Apple hardware line-up: the Power Mac, iMac G5, eMac, Mac mini, iBook and PowerBook (not to mention the iPod, but we’re concerned about computers right now). Is there anything in the Wintel world that can measure up to these designs? Are there any computer systems that have won as many awards? The answers are, obviously, no and no. Only Sony has made any serious headway into designing truly “cool” and stylish computers.
When it comes to operating system, there’s nothing out there that can compete with Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”). Linux is good for a certain audience, but still lacks the end user friendliness that will get it into home and creative environments. Windows is kludgy and prone to bugs and viruses. Longhorn, whenever it finally arrives, may offer some improvements. But does anyone really think that it will measure up to Tiger, much less surpass it? And by the time Longhorn finally stumbles onto the scene, Apple will most likely have released Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”). And the Mac OS will leapfrog ahead of Microsoft yet again.
I expect the next 12-18 months to be somewhat trying for Apple and Mac users. Transitions always involve some hardships. But if Apple handles this transition well—and I don’t doubt they will—the platform and those of us who love it have some truly exciting times ahead.
(By the way, the idea for this column popped into my head during a round table discussion I had with Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer and Jim Dalrymple of MacCentral. We did it for a special upcoming audio segment at The MUG Center, the online resource for Mac User Groups. I’ll keep you posted as to when the round table discussion is available.)
Thoughts? Write me at dsellers@macsimumnews.com
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
