Here’s a list of reasons why my next computer will be an intel-based macbook or ibook (whatever they will call them when they come out).

OSX Unix-base operating system

Two words … boot camp

As of now, no major threat viruses

As of now, no major spyware threats

Typically*, they just work

Did I mention Unix?

* All software has it’s quirks; Apple has a better and more stable OS in my opinion and has fewer issues (read BSOD) than PCs do.

I’ve got a new pet project that I’ve been meaning to try since moving out here. It was to use my second desktop machine (which was sitting in my closet) as a Win2K and Linux computer to allow me to play with another pet project that I will be starting up soon. I was greatly surprised when I found out how easy it was to actually accomplish this task in the when I was all finished setting it up.

Here is what I did to get it working:

| Read the rest of this page …

Del.icio.us is the newest addition to the Yahoo! empire as of this morning (story). For those who don’t know much about it, Del.icio.us is a bookmark management website where users are able to keep track of and share links from many locations across the internet where they find content interesting, useful, funny, etc… Other sites to be purchased recently by Yahoo! include Flickr.com (story; Flickr is a cool image hosting/sharing website) and Upcoming.org (story; an event/meeting organization website).

Yahoo! hasn’t just been purchasing websites recently, they’ve also been working on creating new ideas and technologies to make using the internet easier. One of the coolest is their podcasts.yahoo.com site that makes hunting down cool podcasts easy. Yahoo! has also been working on improving their online mapping website maps.yahoo.com as well as their mailing services.

Though it’s not much of a combined force right now, this could be the signs of Yahoo! building up it’s army to dirrectly take on Google’s servies. It will be interesting to see what happens when the purchased websites combine efforts to allow you, with one login, to setup appointments where the map is embedded into the page with detailed directions on how to get there and with pictures, shared by the users of the group arranging the meeting, viewable in one grouped album linked from the event page.

Following a weekends worth of rumors (NYTimes, CNN, WIRED, The Register #1 #2 #3, Google, Engadget #1 #2, Gizmodo, CNet #1 #2, and ZDNet… as you can see, the major news sites are all posting about it) Apple Computers admitted that they are going to make the slow change from using the PowerPC processors of IBM/Motorola to Intel processors. Today was huge for Apple Computers when Steve Jobs, in his yearly WWDC (WordWide Developer Conference), announced the progress of the current PPC chips wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the company’s strive for more powerful machines.

When discussing his old vision for the PowerPC line of processors, he thought they’d originally be able to go up-to-and-beyond 3GHz:

“I stood up two years ago and promised this (3.0G PowerMac), and we haven’t been able to deliver.” Steve says it’s bigger than that, though. No roadmap for the future based on PowerPC – they can’t see a future”
– Courtesy of Engadget

In a remarkable show of fore-sight, Jobs then let out that Apple has been planning a way for quick architecture change for many years in the off-chance that their supply of and demand for the PowerPC chips falls below levels of their liking.

“Every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for Intel for the past 5 years. Here comes the demo!”
“As a matter of fact, this system I’ve been using here…the keynote’s been running on a P4 3.6GHz all morning”
– Courtesy of Engadget

I look forward to the day when my AMD (Intel x86 compatible) processor is able to run the Apple operating system. It would, honestly, be my dream come true: who wouldn’t love the power and stability of an Apple OS mixed with the geekiness of a *NIX OS. The only concern is hardware compatibility and stability issues brought about by allowing just about any hardware to work with the OS. This may be one reason Apple may pick the Itanium processors as opposed to the Pentium line from Intel. I’m thinking this will also allow the hardware costs to be lowered for Apple which will allow the end-user costs to be decreased as well when purchasing the “built for Apple OS” hardware.

I’m interested to see what happens with this in the next few years.

Intel announced yesterday that they are releasing their multi-core processors before AMD made their announcement of a release. The first line of processors “made available” (I say that term loosely because it will be a while until the consumer market is able to touch them since the first run of the chips is going to Dell) will just be regular multi-cored processors and will be just like having two physical chips in your computer.

Actually, they won’t just be like having two physical chips, they really will be two chips built into the same package with the same (if not worse) heat problems that plague the P4 architecture. New hardware will be needed to run these chips, so don’t expect to keep your current computers if you are upgrading to these chips. The only advantage the Intel chips have over the AMDs is that they will be significantly less expensive (until the dual-core and hyperthreded chips become available) and they are backed by Dell

AMD, however, took a very different approach than Intel and integrated the chips onto a single silicon die and started the whole design from scratch to be backwards compatible with its previous generation of Opteron chips. Yes, that’s right, backwards compatible… meaning you won’t need to upgrade your hardware to take advantage of the new 64-bit processors (maybe just the BIOS). Another plus behind the AMD is that their CPUs will be backed by HP, SUN, and IBM; very stiff competition to the Dell-backed Intel processors.

The AMD chips will be shipping, as soon as April 21st, with multi-threading capabilities (from what I can tell, they have three active threads of execution at the same time between the two cores) on the chip along with extremely efficient transport busses designed to make data transport faster. Right off the bat, the AMDs have the advantage over the Intel chips.

I’m waiting for more data and white-papers to show up about both CPUs (the marketing-designed resources on their websites are not very helpful in giving more details about the inner-workings of the chips) before I make final judgment, but it will certainly be interesting to see how the dual-core hyperthreaded processors of Intel stand up to the triple-threaded threat of the AMDs. As for now, even with the Intel chips “coming out” before the AMDs, they AMD Opteron 64 are the clear winner based on specs alone.