Well, I wasn't one of those Mac heads, I own PCs still and will continue to buy them. When Macs were painfully slow for multimedia work, I did most of my production on my PCs. I use both platforms, so I can generally see through the hype of newer machines.
And you didn't need to be a Mac head to know that Mhz really wasn't the end all factor. Look at Intel, they had to take a big step back in speed, so that they could take one huge step forward. The Conroe that decimated the 2.8 Ghz X2, was only 2.66 Ghz.
Just so you know,I was realy pissed of at the announcement last year and until now, I was still doubtful of the move for anything besides notebooks, which was the only place it made sense do to my limited understanding of the whole picture. Intel has been lagging behind for a few years now, so the last thing I would have wanted to do, is downgrade from a G5 to a second rate Xeon 64, just to stay current.
Regarding the ones that were "blindly" praising Intel and still do. Some of these Mac peeps are coming from dated Macs, which barely have enough juice to run OS X, and are generally quite ignorant to anything beyond their 4 to 6 year old box. So a new Mac, even one from 2 years ago is generally quite a bit faster by many times. Even a fricking Mini is 2x to 3x the performance of an earlier G4.
I personally know one of these uber zelouts/Mac heads, which praises his archaic G4. I kid with him to upgrade, but he's waitin patiently for the right Intel to come along.
Another thing, these benchmark tests are easilly skewed by hard drive performance and graphic performance, so they're good comparissons when putting a stock machine up to another stock machine, but most peeps don't set idle and have upgraded many elements, which negate some of the performance advantage of these newer systems.
The biggest problems with most of these benchmarks, is that they're comparing 2 processors to one. They're also copmaring graphics performance on a card that 2 generations ahead, so "duh," these things are faster.
For consumers, these current Intels are a definate plus, but for peeps like me, the lack of greater than 32-bit memory support, lack of AltiVec and lack of native pro apps, makes them an unworthy replacement.
Now to finish my ramble. These future Intel processors, meaing the Conroe and Woodcrest are faster than a G5 and have a worthy AltiVec replacment and for that matter every other chip out there, including AMD's "current" offering. The current DC being used, is not. Technically the G5 has, or had the best future for scaling up, but IBM blew it. I'm currently working on 2x 1.25 Ghz front side busses. Blah. Yipee for this new 667 "Mhz" FSB... DAM YOU JOBS!!!
OH, did I mention that most Mac heads generally aren't that technical? Case an point, tis why they love the simplicity a Mac can offer, becasue it allows them to be productive and not have to worry about changing its diapers, like the PC!!!
<]=)
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