Hell Has Frozen Over, or... Intel Powered Macs

If you are into tech and have been living under a rock for the past 7 months, you may be surprised to find out that Apple is moving to Intel to power their computers.

Otherwise, you probably know that Steve Jobs has said that these new Intel processors make the Mac "4 times faster" than their predecessors.

These new Macs feature the Intel Core Duo processors fabbed at 65nm. In laymen's terms, sorta, these are dual core processors with reduced power consumption due to new architecture AND the small process size.

Arstechnica.com has a great review on the Apple 17" iMac Core Duo:

"The Big Switch has been publicly underway for a mere seven months, and it has borne fruit in the form of a new iMac and laptop, the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is due to hit store shelves at some point in February. The iMac is available now, and we've had a 17" Core Duo iMac up and running at the Ars Orbiting HQ since we were able to get our hands on one."

I think this brings Apple as a company into a whole different light. They still have complete control over their hardware, but this hardware is no longer exclusively used by Apple. These Intel processors are used in PCs as well. Does this bring Apple closer to being a software company, ala Microsoft? If so, their market positioning has changed dramatically.