Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

(Column) - Do you remember the PowerPC? Yeah, me neither. In all seriousness though, both of my Macs are PowerPC machines, and although I want to get my hands on an Intel Mac, I suppose I can wait. I’m still blown away by how fast the transition from PowerPC to Intel took place. I was expecting it to take much longer than it did, and it feels like I just blinked and the entire Mac product line was switched over to the new technology. There’s nothing quite like a quick hardware transition to make you feel like your tech setup is way behind the times.

If you thought that Apple and Intel would just collaborate on this level, then you’re sorely mistaken. Several of the suits from Intel have already commented on the fact that their relationship with Apple is far from over, and they’ve apparently already been working with Apple on some next-generation stuff. Of course, Apple doesn’t want us to know what’s going on with their working relationship, but I’m sure that there’s some pretty innovative stuff going down inside of Apple and Intel HQ.

Regardless of what’s happening, it’s great to see Apple working closely with the vendors who provide hardware to their machines. OS X is reliant on the hardware that it runs on, and if custom solutions are developed, then you can begin to see how this would benefit Apple’s operating system.

One of the truths of the computer industry is that no matter how fast our machines are, some of us will always want them to be faster. Even if you don’t necessarily need the speed increase for the types of things that you do, the idea of more speed is attractive because, let’s face it - faster is better in the world of technology. In order to bring even more speed to our desktops, Intel has been working on something that will give us performance gains in several key areas, and while Apple has not publicly signed on, rumors as to their cooperation are circulating, and it’s easy to see why.

Next