How hard the end product will be to hack, only time will tell. Someone MAY come up with a hack to work around this, but you’d probably have to buy a copy of OSX,Intel version, hope it works, and kiss any warranty good bye because you weren’t using Apple approve hardware.

This, by the way, is one of the ways that Apple has kept it’s costs down over the years-the hardware can be designed for very specific software, which Apple either manufactures or licenses/approves.

Aunty is right. This is aimed squarely at Window’s users who are about to upgrade to Vista, and are buying an new comp.

Regarding why get excited: anyone who’s tried to edit video (or even a big .jpg file) on a PowerMac knows exactly why a processor that runs three times as fast is big news. And a lot of folks use Macs for graphics editing. This also makes people like me, who need the speed, far more likely to switch. Long needed, and a really smart move by Apple.