Intel inside, but who is it on the outside?

David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle has blathered about the Intel Inside, MacIdiot Outside hype. Read Intel inside -- so what? / Few really care -- or understand -- what's inside anything [www.sfgate.com]

He basically says that people do not give a fig about what goes inside the specific piece of technology they use, as long as it works.

Yes, of course, the masses don't. That is the reason why you have Windows, the US Republicans and the Indian National Congress. Oops! That last one really worked, but is sadly extinct. What we have now pretending to be the INC's heir apparent is the Congress (I), where the (I) stands for (Incestuous).

The industrial age worked. Coal-burning furnaces worked. Gas-guzzling hotrods worked. People didn't care. Till they started to have asthma, tuberculosis and cancer. And two-headed babies. So now even the most moronic of countries care.

So what does the Apple-Intel alliance mean? Of course, for both of them, it means growth. For the customers, it means faster computers and access to a larger family of software. Why? Because a large body of developers/vendors that had not been interested in the Mac/PowerPC platform will atleast give Mac/Intel a try.

Would this mean that now Windows binaries compiled for i86 architectures will run better on OS X with an emulater / wrapper?

If Apple found PowerPC to be too slow and dropped IBM, what would it do when the Cell is released? Apple computers are more about rich media than office or server applications, right? So will Apple continue with dual core Intel processors, or switch to AMD when it needs the power? See this comparison [www.linuxhardware.org] of the current offerings. Of course, it was based on Gentoo, not OS X.

With IBM, I would expect an earlier move towards open hardware, although this means nothing to Apple. Perhaps, with Intel going inside the Macs, many of the GNU/Linux developers might want to try their hands at porting their applications to a Mac, and bring some of OS X's usability that they become familiar with to FOSS.

Wishful thinking. In the meantime, I need to get working on getting my Opensuse 10 installation to play MP3s and ASF, connecting it to the internet, and my digicam.

And trying to play Wet Wet Wet's Love is all around on my guitar.

By the way, IBM gifts you an iPod Nano when you buy certain storage media.

Sooo, getting back to the article, does David Lazarus stand by his observations in his everyday life too? Does he take any medicine if it works, regardless of its side effects? Does he wear garments stitched in third world sweat shops? Does he wear fur?

What comes across from his piece, if read between the lines, is largely that he is upset that the Mac platform has got stronger. I would believe that one company who would feel even a little bit threatened by the deal, apart from IBM, would be Microsoft.

And Microsoft would be one company that would be very happy to know that people do not care what their system/device contains as long as it 'works'.

Nuff said.