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It's no secret that Apple (courtesy of Motorola) has been
lagging quite badly in the Megahertz War. Stuck at 867 MHz, Apple
has stood on the sidelines as Intel and AMD offerings have soared
past the 1 GHz mark and now reached the 2 GHz level.
Of course, MHz only matter in the mind of the uneducated public.
A faster clock speed does not automatically translate to a faster
machine. How power is used is more important than how much power is
available.
These arguments (quite valid, really) have been trotted out over
the last little while as Apple slowly slid behind in the MHz race.
Of course, several benchmarks show the G4 holding its own against
Pentium and AMD chips with higher clock speeds. 800 MHz just
doesn't sound as good as 1 GHz when a machine is on the shelf,
though. The world's psyche is geared toward the "more is better"
mentality.
Now, it seems the table may be turning again. Motorola announced
that it has developed a way of mating two materials (silicon and
gallium arsenide) in a way that allows much more efficient chips.
If the PR flacks are to be believed, chip speeds could become up to
35 times faster.
Whether this type of technology ever makes it into a mainstream
Apple computer remains to be seen. However, if it does, MHz will
suddenly matter again.
The snail advertising campaign re-ignited the MHz war a couple
of years ago. A snail with an Intel chip would creep across the
screen, and Mac users could revel in their hardware superiority.
MHz mattered. In this case, it was a joy to finally rub the Wintel
world's smug, superior nose in the hard facts that the G3 chips in
Apple computers outperformed the Intel offerings.
Then, of course, Apple lost the edge. Intel and AMD, in an
effort to surpass each other, sprinted past Apple's (really
Motorola's and IBM's) chips. Apple responded with dual-procssor
machines but remained stuck at the 500 MHz for a long while.
In the mind of the consumer, Apple is still behind the others,
shipping "only" 867 and dual 800 MHz machines.
Now, however, the tables may turn. How will the Apple crowd
respond if Motorola's fast new chips make it to the desktop?
Hopefully, a measure of humility will temper our enthusiasm.
Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes your behind.
We're about due to get ahead again.
Stephen Van
Esch is the founder and president of
the
E-learning Foundry, an online training
resource for Mac users. Steve loves the Mac and is doubly bilingual,
since he's also fluent in Windows and French.
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