[ltp] Why do you love your ThinkPad?

[David A. Desrosiers]

> It's the BIOS. They are going to make the BIOS incompatible. The 
> Processor will be standard x86. That's because Apple has x86-MacOs 
> in his desk since MacOS X 10 and the only problem is to get drivers.

	It runs on a highly-modified P4 today, but that won't be the 
reference platform for what is delivered in 2006 and 2007. Steve's own 
demo machine was a 4-way P4 with 3gb of RAM (from the keynote). Of 
course that machine will out-perform a dual G5 at the UI level. OSX's 
graphics are *PITIFULLY* slow, making the UI drag and lag worse than a 
64bpp refresh rate. Its horrible. Put Linux on the same metal, even 
with GL support, and watch it perform snappily.

	But nobody said it would be an x86... Not Steve Jobs, not 
Otelli, nobody except the confused media. Its Apple/Intel. It _could_ 
be an x86 chipset, or it might not be. It may end up being an 
x86-compatible chipset, but it certainly won't be a "PC" processor 
that will look the same as it does today when you open your "PC" case. 
It will be highly-specialized, highly-proprietary form factor and port 
designs.

	Also, let's not forget that its going to be based on the 
Pentium-D series and the LaGrande chip features, which means software 
controls built into the raw silicon. Intel has said this over and over 
and this is where ALL Intel chips are going in the next 2-3 years. 
Look for it to appear early in the Apple/Intel proprietary builds and 
boards. You won't be able to buy an Intel machine without it by the 
end of 2007, if their projections are on target.

	And lastly.. this is about cooler, faster chips for portable 
devices (including next-gen iPod devices based on the Arm chipset line 
of course) and controlling access to media, which is what Apple is all 
about. iTunes, iMovie, iLife... and many other things which intertwine 
their business model (Disney? Pixar? Apple? Intel? See the 
connection?)

> On the other hand I hope companys like ATI and Nvidia are going to 
> produve some better drivers for their products for MacOS X which can 
> be used on Linux as well. Maybe we can get easy-to-setup ATI-drivers 
> with suspend-to-ram and powersaving this way. :)

	Linux will most-likely run on it, as it does today on PPC 
gear, and it will perform faster than its OSX counterpart, again.. as 
it does today, but don't expect Windows to work on it. Who is going to 
write the drivers for it? Who is going to write all of the motherboard 
specific resources? ACPI? Proprietary port designs? Chip features? 

	Certainly not Microsoft... 


David A. Desrosiers
desrod@gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com