WOW!!!! Apple is going x86:

If I were one of the people that have been defending the PowerPC’s superiority over Intel’s or AMD’s products I’d feel pretty much left out in the cold. Apparently Apple’s marketing tactics indeed were based around falsely debunking other technologies to uphold a fictional superiority. The question now is whether Apple can ever be trusted to offer trustworthy information and benchmarks? There’s light at the end of the tunnel though, as now we can finally silence those that said Apples are faster because previously we weren’t comparing Apples to Apples. Now that Apple has adopted the x86 architecture we can finally make that comparison and silence that discussion once and for all. Good thing that Apple didn’t opt to incorporate AMD’s Athlon-64 processors though as that means that PCs will be the fastest on the planet, as Intel’s x86 architecture still is no match for AMD’s.

Update: John Markoff has this in the NYT:

So what could a Macintel possibly hope to accomplish?

Potentially, quite a lot. In striking the deal, Mr. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has opened a range of tantalizing new options for his quirky company.

Many people in the industry believe that Mr. Jobs is racing quietly toward a direct challenge to Microsoft and Sony in the market for digital entertainment gear for the living room. Indeed, Sony’s top executives had tried to persuade Mr. Jobs to adopt a chip that I.B.M. has been developing for the next-generation Sony PlayStation.

An Intel processor inside a Macintosh could put the vast library of Windows-based games and software programs within the reach of Mac users – at least those who are willing to run a second operating system on their computers.

Moreover, having Intel Inside might solve an important perception problem that has long plagued Apple in its effort to convert consumers who are attracted to the company’s industrial design, but who have stayed away because the computers do not run Windows programs.

There is an immediate risk in the tie-up with Intel, however: Mr. Jobs could soon find himself trapped if his best customers stop buying I.B.M.-based Macintoshes while they wait for more powerful Intel-based systems, which are likely to begin arriving in January 2006.

“There is going to be a long wait,” said Mark D. Stahlman, a Wall Street analyst at Caris & Company. The power-conserving 64-bit Intel chips that Apple is counting on to rejuvenate its laptop products will not be available until early 2007, he pointed out.

In an interview, Mr. Jobs rejected the notion that Apple might suffer from what is known as the “Osborne Effect,” a term that describes the fate of the computer pioneer Adam Osborne whose firm went bankrupt when he announced a successor to his pioneering portable computer before it was available.

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Mr. Jobs talked of a transition that would appear almost seamless to customers. “As we look ahead we can envision some amazing products we want to build for you and we don’t know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map,” he said.