Remember when Apple told us not to believe the MHz myth? It went even as far to make a commercial with a Pentium on a snail. Remember that? So here we are now hearing from Steve that the new iMac’s really are faster then the PowerPC version. Huh? What about the myth, Steve?

For years, the megahertz myth debate was a heated one between Apple and PC users. I remember being on the PC side as I was in an environment where both PCs and Macs existed. I saw first hand how even the Intels at the same rating as the PPC Macs ran faster. So why did the Mac community believe this to be true? Because Apple said it was. Sander Sassen at Hardware Analysis documents this well by stating:

Apple claimed ’Supercomputer’ performance for their G4 workstation but all they did was break the Gigaflop barrier with a specific application under very specific conditions, upon closer inspection nothing to write home about.

Never the less the media jumped right on it and Apple sold a lot of G4s just because people thought they bought ’Supercomputer’ performance at a bargain price. Marketing and the art of presenting a product properly has always been one of Apple’s, or should I say Steve Jobs’ strengths.

Sassen goes onto to breakdown the myth with an Apple specific example. Her expertise in CPU architecture and design shows just how Apple was playing marketing games more then excelling from an engineering ones.

So why the embrace of the foe and no mention of how Apple once teased Intel about its snail pace? Well, it seems Intel itself has stopped making issue about the megahertz clock as well, according to Insight 64’s Nathan Brookwood. Macworld posted an article on the Intel move back in September of last year and while it focused on the low-voltage aspect of the Intel chips, it sprung a one-liner that Macworld left unexplained.  “Intel seems to have kicked the megahertz habit,” Brookwood told Macworld. So this may explain why Steve Jobs was able to accept moving to Intel now that even Intel “admitted” that it wasn’t about clock speed anymore.

What ever the reason for the burying of the Intel-is-slow campaign of yesteryear, print and online documentation will forever allow us to remember that Apple once use to say it was just as fast if not faster then Intel. Now that it’s on Intel and it is saying it’s faster then the PowerPC, one will just have to take it with a grain of salt and understand that it’s all about marketing at the end of the day.

5 Responses to “What Happen to the “Intel Snail” Apple Once Warned About?”

1. artfull Says:
   February 2nd, 2006 at 16:18

   Of course it is marketing … what is the point of this story?

   Snail add is from the time of PowerPC G3 which was at least as fast as hideous intel 2. (in fact it was superior in most ways) Today Power PC G5 is as fast as any intel chip … even in native applications newest intel dual core chip is aprox. 20-50% faster than single core G5 (over two years old). Also intel is 32 bit, while G5 is 64 bit.

   If apple used dual core G5, situation would have been worse for newest of intel.

   The point is, both chip architectures have certain strong and weak points (Xbox 2, PS 3, Game Cube and Revolution etc are all using Power PC chips now, why if pentiums are faster?)

   But marketing can always try to be creative, everyone does that, not just Apple.

   But who cares, the point is that apple has better OS and finer hardware today, and even not yet released vista is still worse than current MacOS. That is the point that you should care for.

2. Brad Says:
   February 2nd, 2006 at 17:35

   In its day both the G4 and G5 blew the doors off of the intel Pentium line. Now intel has approached apple and said lets build beautiful chips and computers together. The new line is a much different line than the Pentium. Lower power higher output per Watt. Apple is flexible enought to move to a new chipset… If something else came along that was better it would be easy for them to do it again.. As for Microsoft well.. they will continue to build bloatware that doesn’t run well on anyones hardware. Apple and the Macintosh are beautiful things.

3. Sam Says:
   February 2nd, 2006 at 18:00

   Things change. There was a time when the PowerPC 604 was the fastest thing out there. The G4 was darn impressive when it first came out. The fact that half the Macs Apple were selling STILL had a G4 in them years later is telling. Intel caught up and went past. Luckily they stopped and gave us a lift.

4. Sven Says:
   February 2nd, 2006 at 18:57

   Brad, Apple went to Intel and Steve Jobs himself admitted last year that OS X has ran on the Intel chips since day one. Reports are the Intel chips ran it better.

5. TOS Says:
   February 2nd, 2006 at 21:10

   These day, all computers are fast- PCs and Macs. I don’t make my decision based only on speed. I prefer Mac for the operating systems ease of use, and find Windows a pain. But as to the Intel chips running OS X better: not yet. At least mine isn’t. OS X runs smoother on my G4 tower, my wife’s iBook G4, and my G5 at work. My new Intel iMac is slow to wake up from the screen saver, has frozen completely more like a PC than a Mac, and has annoying text gliches when scrolling through Safari. I don’t want to dis my new computer. I love it, and I have no doubt these bugs will be worked out eventually. So anyhow. Um. Yeah. What was my point again?