did my eyes decieve me a few days ago, apple macs with pentium processors  :shock:

if its true apple are crazy imo, the only appeal they had for me apart from looks was the different HW they had

correct, Steve Jobs has swallowed the Intel line after many years of suggesting they should.  Mainly because the PowerPC line was delayed, and delayed, and delayed some more in development.  More than likely because IBM was obsessing over the Cell chips for the consoles (bigger profits).  What it means is the next gen Macs get Intel CPUs, IIRC they are Pentium-Ms as well to keep heat and power consumption down.

I prefered the PPC chip, but since IBM didnt produce the next gen one fast enough Apple had to go somewhere.  

i thought they were X86 processors ?

More than likely because IBM was obsessing over the Cell chips for the consoles (bigger profits).

IBM must be laughing, all three next-gen consoles using their CPUs.

They are intel designed processors but they are not Pentiums afaik.  The Mac mini for example is using was is called the Intel Core Duo and Solo Processors.

The Core series of CPUs are merely slightly updated Pentium Ms (faster FSB and I think possibly a die shrink and bigger cache). The Pentium brand is getting on for what, 15 years old now? so I guess Intel decided it was time to introduce a new brand.

Core Solo and Duo CPUs are available in "standard" PCs as well, theyre not an Apple exclusive thing.

In any case, nothing has really changed for Apple with this architecture change. Yes, theyre using more common CPUs now but the OS is still different, there is a different set of software and you still cant run XP on them (at least not without a major bodge to get it going).

Actually apple have made no efforts to stop people installing windows xp on the new intel macs, they just made sure that osx couldnt be installed on a standard pc.

The award that someone put up for a stable running xp on a new intel mac has supposedly already been won, look on google video for it and it is there iirc

Could be very profitable for apple if it becomes mainstream, the ability to dual boot both osx and winxp only on their machines opens up a completely new market for them

Yes its gone and the award was for a successful dual boot system. Was posted before.