What to call "them"...

[fryke]

I'll add a poll to this thread later. What should we call those future Macs which will be using intel processors? I've personally been calling them intel/Macs most of the time, or intel Macs. Others have been using 'Macintel' and other names... Here's my list. Add a few, please.

And, yeah: Please do _not_ let this thread become yet another thread about whether it's a good or bad decision by Apple to use intel's chips instead of IBM's...

- intel/Mac
- intel Mac
- Macintel
- MacX86

[fjdouse]

Mac/x86 and OSX/x86
also
Mac/PPC and OSX/PPC

and soon...
Mac/x86-64 and OSX/x86-64?

(quietly mumbles something...)

[Satcomer]

How about just a Macintosh? It wasn't MacPPC before was it?

[Mikuro]

Personally, I don't like slashes in the name. I mean, how are you supposed to pronounce that? Bleh.

My favorites are:

Intel Mac — What I use most, because it's generic, descriptive and pronouncable

Mactel — A bit shorter than "Macintel", and it seems to contrast better with "Wintel". And it seems a bit less pun-y than "Macintel", which I consider a good thing. I still think it's too pun-y, though.

x86 Mac — generic, descriptive, and short to type, but not great for pronouncing.

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by Satcomer

How about just a Macintosh? It wasn't MacPPC before was it?

I'm all for that within most contexts...

But I do see a need for a convention on the name when dealing with technical aspects.

We originally had 68k Macs and PowerPC (or PPC) Macs, so it would seem logical that we are now going to have Intel (or x86) Macs.

Of course if this were Apple of 10+ years ago, I would guess that we would be facing a new name for the product line. The mid to high end systems went from Macintosh (68000) to Macintosh II (68020/68030) to Macintosh Quadra (68040) to Power Macintosh (PowerPC), which was shortened to just Power Mac.

[fjdouse]

I was looking at it from a techie point of view, seems to be a common way of doing it. How to pronounce the slash? You dont ;-)

If we are talking about user-level decriptions then:

Intel Mac

seems logical, things like Macintel or Intellimac or whatever just don't sit right with me and reminds me of "Wintel" other things I'd rather forget.

[CreativeEye]

...with the new chips...

PowerMac i5

PowerBook i5

...and those numbers change with the new chips... its keeps the naming convention in line with 'G4, G5' etc - but puts a new streamlined twist onto it... the word 'power' will stay - its now synonymous with the brand - and the brand is stronger than ever so changing that aspect would be foolhardy.

i think OS X will always stay OS 'insert number here'

[fryke]

no, no, not individual products, just to divide them from the PPC Macs... I'll add the poll now, then...