"The new model was actually a little faster at a few of the tasks we tried, but nothing like the two to three times as fast that Apple claims. A mainstream user who didn't know what was under the hood couldn't tell the difference between them, even after using them for hours. It appears that the faster chip roughly balances out the translation effect.
So, if the new model works only about as well as the old one, what's the advantage for consumers? Well, the slight, scattered, speed gains we saw should grow greater over time, as Apple and third-party software makers tweak their applications to take full advantage of the dual-core Intel chip. A year from now, an Intel iMac purchased today will likely be notably faster, if you update your software to newer versions."
BUT, as I have pointed out a billion times so far, if they had simply put the latest PowerPC processors in there, with double the speed memory and dual cores, these machines would be faster NOW.
Even Bill Gates, who has a good track record for being able to accurately predict things that have already happened has said that the "future" will see desktop machines with multiple processors. It wouldn't surprise me to find that someone within Microsoft is working on full Windows operability on the same Cell processors that power the Xbox and if this is so I'd be forced to applaud them (something I'm not used to doing) for at last giving users hardware choice again, not to mention the potential for much more bang for the buck than we have ever gotten from Intel.
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