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[Mr. Bangeman] said that Wednesday's news could simply mean that "Apple appears to be after a way to do apples-to-apples comparisons when it comes to benchmarking, instead of its treasured SpecInt and Photoshop bakeoffs."

That's it. After years and years of people saying "Macs are slower" simply because of the MgHz difference Apple is drooling at that idea that they may soon be able to say "This Mac is faster than any Windows PC" and have everyone actually AGREE instead of arguing about it.

I'd say that's the goal here.

I think the that Apple had a real problem on its hands not being able to boot Windows on its Intel Macs. They probably had a bunch of engineers try, but it just wouldn't work. So they couldn't join BALCO when the x86 Macs were launched. This was probably the biggest reason for the almost 25% skid in share price since just after MWSF. Fortunately, the hackers came along and saved Apple's butts, much like Metrowerks did back in the PPC transition. And now Apple can join.

Well I'll give you props for making sure to label it speculation up front. But yikes man, what you been smokin?

How is the inability to boot Windows on a Mac suddenly a problem. Last I checked that never worked. And who actually cares about BALCO? Wall Street? Who's even heard of BALCO? When was the last time you saw a computer being advertised with BALCO scores and people buying a computer based on BALCO scores? Grandama was gonna get a ThinkPad but she didn't like the MobileMark score so she went with a Compaq. Right.

The current Windows booting on a Mac is only partially functioning and a bunch of work to get running. I doubt this would satisfy whatever "you must run Windows" rule you think it is that Apple has to meet to be given the amazing honor of being considered for BALCO membership. More likely is that Apple wanted to join (for reasons not yet known) and BALCO fell over themselves and said "hells yes!". See it's already working. We're talking about BALCO right now!

So considering how insignificant BALCO really is, I don't see how their acceptance of Apple is going to save Apple's butt. Apple is profitable and their market share growth is outpacing the rest of the industry. But getting on the Apple bandwagon will probably help out BALCO.

Of course, coupled with Avie Tevanian leaving so abruptly, it's clear that Jobs has declared that Apple will abandon Mac OS X, and just go to Windows. Didn't Dvorak predict this?

(Just kidding)

Bosco - Time to change your med’s; you’re hallucinating again.

I should point out that Apple has nothing to do with BALCO, which baseball fans know is part of the steroids controversy. Apple joined *BAPCo*.

You guys are too gullible. BALCO... Geez... Maybe I should have mentioned that the new Intel Macs are like Macs on steroids. And the idea that Apple needed outside hackers to figure out how to make Windows work!! I kill me somedays...

Gearlog's speculation is totally absurd. ArsTechnica came to the natural conclusion: that Apple wants the same system used for benchmarking PCs to work on Macs. This does not in any way point to Apple embracing Windows. These benchmarking tools, after all, are not made to measure the performance of Windows; they're made to measure the performance of hardware.

Intel Macs were designed and engineered to be Macs that run OS X, not Windows. I find it interesting that they run Windows XP faster than WinTel machines. This demonstrates that Apple's hardware engineering, innovation, and quality surpasses its competitors.

Perhaps the BAPco news is an effort for Apple to show the market that their harware is indeed better. Can a marketing campaign be fothcoming?

http://switchtoamac.com

If hackers got Windows running on Intel Macs, Apple engineers could do it in a walk.