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Although our world-exclusive preview of the stunning performance of Intel's forthcoming Conroe (more properly, Core 2 Duo) CPUs has, understandably, attracted massive attention, one of the things we didn't have time or space to consider was the likely adoption by Apple of  Intel's soon-arriving super-fast families of CPUs.

Since Apple announced a planned switch to Intel back in June 2005 at its Worldwide Developers Conference, it's successfully moved most of its PCs over to Intel's Yonah-family (Core Duo and Core Solo) of portable CPUs considerably earlier than expected, using them in iMacs, Mac minis and the MacBook Pro and MacBook ranges of laptops.

As a result, it's now able to sell machines that are far speedier than their G4-powered and G5-powered predecessors and better able to match the performance of Windows PCs.

No less significant, Apple can also offer systems that dual-boot into Windows XP and OS X, thanks to the unofficial dual-boot competition and Apple's rather more polished response to it - the Boot Camp utility.

As a consequence, discerning Windows users who want to use Apple's good-looking, well-thought-out and, in some ways still unique, hardware can do so without the inconvenience of having necessarily to learn the arguably superior Mac OS X operating system or give up using programs that run only under Windows, whether games or serious.

It's close to a certainty that Apple will introduce upgraded versions of some or all of these Intel-driven Macs when the even faster Merom (Core 2 Duo) portable CPUs arrive later in the year. However, as yet, the company hasn't been able to move its range-leading desktop Power Macs over to Intel.

It's an open secret - as we discussed back in early March - that Apple has been been waiting for Conroe. As a result, it's almost certainly suffered significantly-reduced sales. The extent of the drop in Power Mac disposals, however, is masked in the company's latest quarterly figures, ending April 1, by their being grouped (see p26) with iMac, Mac mini, Xserve and discontinued eMac desktop ranges.

Yet, even with Power Mac sales hamstrung without Conroe, the Intel-effect allowed the company to grow desktop sales by one per cent compared to the same quarter in the previous year and by four per cent when comparing six-monthly totals.

So, when will we know exactly what Apple's going to be doing with Conroe and top-end desktop Macs? Well, the clever money has to be on the first day of the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference. The event was recently  put back two months and re-scheduled to run between August 7 and 11.

The timing, though not ideal, would allow Apple to include such announcements, rather than being held to an embargo by Conroe's late-June launch and not unveil them at an earlier WDC. We're guessing that a suitable alternative venue couldn't be found at short notice closer to the end of the June.

If this is how things pan out, then we're expecting Intel's CEO Paul Otellini to again take the stage during the opening-day keynote address given by his Apple counterpart Steve Jobs in which the hot news is once more largely Intel-related - this time, the immediate availablility of a selection of Conroe-powered top-end desktops.

What that keynote may also include are details of the arrival later in the year of even faster desktop Macs and servers powered by Conroe Extreme CPUs or, more likely, two or more dual-core Intel Woodcrest CPUs - the low-power/high-speed replacement for Xeon that, like Conroe and Merom, uses Intel Core technology.

We'd also not be surprised if Adobe used WDC to announce the launch (or early arrival) of a swathe of programs that run natively under OS X on Mac Intel hardware since apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign will massively underperform until such versions arrive.  

Thoughts on these or other matters Conroe-related? Make sure to let us hear them over in the HEXUS.community.

HEXUS.links

HEXUS.review - Intel's Conroe spanks AMD FX-62's botty - for real!!
HEXUS@IDF Spring 2006 - Intel's next-generation Core architecture
HEXUS@IDF Spring 2006 - Apple's Conroe Plans
Apple - HEXUS Boot Camp review
Apple - Unofficial dual-boot competition
Apple - 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference
Apple - Announces move to Intel at 2005 WDC
Apple - Quarterly figures to April 1, 2006
Intel -  Wikipedia on Intel Core Microarchitecture

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