Goodbye G5?(WHAT'S NEW)

At the recent Macworld in San Francisco, Apple showed off its promised Intel-based computer. The newest iMacs and MacBook Pro sport the Intel Core Duo CPU but lack the "Intel inside" sticker. Consumers will find it difficult to distinguish the Intel-based iMac from the G5 units without a thorough examination. The new iMac has a DVI video port replacing the analog VGA port that was a G5 standard. Not long ago, Apple boasted how much faster the G5 was than the Intel P4 CPU, but all of that has changed. The 2GHz iMac Core Duo is claimed to be two to three times faster than the G5 2.1GHz 20-inch iMac.

Before I go any further, I want to set the record straight. I am a die-hard Mac user and fan. I am excited about the new platform, but at the same time, I am concerned about the future for Apple and its nearly bulletproof operating system. The new Intel product line from Apple looks like a real winner from a hardware perspective, but will the OS still be bulletproof or will those of us who choose to be pioneers find ourselves out in the wilderness unable to work reliably?

OK, now that I got that off my chest, let's look more closely at the new Macs. The iMac has some cool stuff built in that may not help directly with using it as a production system, but does offer some possibilities anyway. The Intel Core Duo processor gives the new Macs two processors and twice the speed without needing G5 CPUs and the heat they generate. The promise that "most existing applications will run on Intel-based iMacs" still is not fully tested by the masses, so it is yet an unknown for those of us using some current and especially older applications.

Apple made iSight webcam a standard feature; from a quick look, it might appear to be a counter-productive add-on to the hardware. There is potential for both enterprise and customer conferencing using the iSight and iChat software, and iChat supports one-to-one conferencing, conferencing with up to four people, or a "push" (my term) mode to enable a person without an iSight to see but not be seen while conferencing. If this works well, it will provide a way to review jobs, layouts, and proofs in a visual "conference" call without using a third party to support the meeting. The downside of the iSight/iChat solution is controlling it so that staff members use it ...