Intel – Generation 1.5 worth waiting for?

I had a chance to go to an Apple Store and get some hands-on time with an Intel iMac this week.

I was hoping to be able to objectively assess the machine – after all, the furore around the launch was a couple of weeks back now, so some of the dust has settled.

Apple’s flagship London store was crammed with the things – they have definitely moved some floor space away from Power Macs and laptops to be able to showcase them. The only G5 iMacs I saw were the store cashs system machines on the counters.

First impressions were very good – they ‘seem’ REALLY fast! That interface snappiness that has been reported is really cool, particularly with the native apps. The only Rosetta-running application on the machine I was using was Office, which seemed fine – but its only Office, and is hardly a stretch.

I have been looking at the various online benchmarks for the new machine, and it is mostly all good. One or two concerns have arisen in my mind, however. They are:

1) Memory. It is clear that Rosetta offers acceptable performance for many apps – but that it increases memory consumption. As such, anyone contemplating an Intel Mac should be looking at memory upgrade as part of their initial purchase.

2) Dual Cores. The benchmarks I have seen show that much of the performance boost of Intel Macs comes from the dual core processor die, rather than an inherent superiority of the processor architecture. Anandtech did some benchmarks where they turned off one of the cores in a Core Duo iMac, and performance dropped below that of an iMac G5.

Point 1 means your initial outlay for a new Intel machine may be higher than one might think. Point 2 is a particular worry for upcoming consumer machines – if Apple uses Core Solo chips in iBook/Mac Mini replacements, then they may be performance dogs – particularly under Rosetta.

This has changed my view on my approach to machine replacement. I have a Power Mac G5 Dual Processor as my home machine, which I intend to stick with for now. I do want a new laptop, and a recent tax break means I could afford a MacBook Pro if I wanted, but I am going to sit tight for a few more months yet. Why?

Because if Apple launches an iBook replacement with a Core Solo, I can evaluate its price/performance against a MacBook, thus improving the quality of my decision.

If Apple decides Core Solo is too poor for the iBook replacement, it will have to bump up or revamp the MacBook Pro to differentiate it further from a Core Duo iBook machine.

In the meantime, every day produces more Universal Binary apps that run native on the Intel machines, and allows more time for those working on Windows dualboot/emulation for Intel OS X. I want to replace my work-supplied Windows laptop with a Mac, so this last point is important to me.

In the meantime, I have some friends who are thinking about switching. I am advising them to keep a close eye on Apple pricing for the PowerPC lines – I suspect price cuts are going to spread from the 20″ iMac G5 to other lines, and for the average consumer these deals are likely to be rather sweet. I saw at least one person walking out of the Apple Store with a 20″ G5 rather than an Intel machine, for what it’s worth.

UPDATE – Barely two minutes after I posted this blog, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) reported that the 17″ iMac G5 has disappeared from the Apple online store. I wonder how badly overstocked resellers will want to clear those puppies?