At the time, PowerPC chips were more powerful than x86 in terms of raw computing power. I believe that the G5 Mac was technically classified as a supercomputer based on an old standard of flops and could not be exported until the US government updated the definitions.

The reason for the switchover to x86 had to do more with power efficiency, customization, and logistics. While the PowerPC architecture did lend itself to better overall computing performance, it was lacking in power efficiency and heat. For a desktop that's not a major problem, but it is a problem for laptops. It's a problem that IBM never really solved as they never released a mobile G5 and Apple was stuck with mobile G4s until the Intel switchover. Here is one area where Intel was way ahead.

The two other related issues have to do with Apple's needs and IBM and Motorola's manufacturing logistics. Apple despite ordering millions of chips a year was always going to be a small customer in terms of volume. However Apple was going to need a heavily customized consumer PowerPC chip that required to be updated almost every year. Meanwhile most other PowerPC customers would want server/workstation chips that IBM used in their own products. Now these can be done but these factors cost time and money. I can see why Motorola and IBM (and also Apple) would be less likely to invest into new chips.

On the flipside, the Xbox 360's Xenon processor would be more the model of what IBM/Motorola wanted. Although it was heavily customized, the basic design has not changed in 8 years when the Xbox One was launched with estimated sales of 40+ million. This gave IBM enough time to do a die shrink to cut costs.

The change to Intel gave Apple many advantages. First of all, faster and more efficient mobile processors were available. Second, most of the features that Apple wanted were already in the x86 design as they were designed for consumer PCs. Third, any customization Apple requested from Intel, Intel could sell to competitors like Dell. For example, the first MacBook Airs used customized Intel Core processors in which the chip package had been shrunk 40%. Intel didn't mind investing the money for this customization as they sold them immediately to other customers. Many of the features that Intel got in the collaboration became part of the Ultrabook specification.

Because you don't want to annoy large customers with requests for small amounts of money you know they can afford and will pay for at some point.

> Unless I'm missing something, the hardware seems relatively unremarkable.

It's a PC, playing Windows games. It's hard to imagine anything Google would find less interesting in taking over.

Squirrels eat pine cones; i've never heard of a person doing that.

And you can't have salad for breakfast; that's just wrong!

I take it you believe that everything should fall right on your lap the moment you START a business? This is the game - you start a business and ONE of many businesses will succeed and it takes YEARS to succeed. I know that majority of you here don't understand such concepts as long term vision and you believe that you have to be rich already to make it in the world, but damn, when did this change occur, WHO told you that you should become a millionaire 4.5 years after starting a business exactly? Majority of business owners only make it into the black by around that mark.

By the way even without talent hard work beats talent that does not do hard work. I am not confirming anything that you wrote, I am telling you straight out: your claim (and this subsequent comment) doesn't make any sense. Nobody becomes a millionaire or a billionaire right away in business, it takes years, possibly decades if your business is even viable and profitable in the first place.

any sufficiently truthful statement is indistinguishable from flamebait.

Yes you do, you become rich by working hard. You become rich by building your own business, you need capital savings to start a business, which is why you will have to get that money somehow. I did it by working on contracts for 10 years before starting my own business. I am not 'rich' as in millionaire rich, I am rich by doing what I like, building products I choose to build with a team I hire and maybe over years it will make me enough money to put me in a category that you define as 'rich' or maybe it won't work out. One thing is for sure, if I do make it, some total asshole will be posting comments somewhere how I must have stolen something from somebody rather than building my own business over years of actual hard work. My employees have weekends and holidays and a steady paycheck, something I do not have, that's my risk and that's my choice.

Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Jobs, etc. Millions of people got rich (or at least rich enough for them) by building and running their own businesses.

You are totally mistaken, nobody depends on USA economy except for the welfare recipients and there is no more such thing as a 'USA economy' anyway. USA doesn't produce enough to have an economy.

It's the exact opposite that is the case, China, Germany and many others FEED USA, USA is the welfare recipient of the world and nobody depends on them for their economy. Economy is not consumption without repayment, economy is trade of goods that all sides participating in the trade produce and USA has been running 500Billion USD / year trade deficits for over 20 years now to claim that it has an economy that anybody relies upon, that ship has sailed together with the gold dollar.

What would actually HELP all of the countries suffering from the USA initiated inflation is to stop throwing money into the bottomless pit that is the USA welfare state. Germany needs to get whatever gold it can back from the USA Fed in a short order otherwise it will never see any of it again.

Since I hit the posting limit wall on my first account, I am going to reply to you from my backup one. ...

False choice! HL NEVER TOOK ANY FREEDOMS AWAY from anybody, government took freedoms away from HL. HL compensating their employees in currency rather than in whatever government tells it to compensate employees in is a freedom that HL AND employees must have and that government must not be able to steal.

Freedom to negotiate a contract between 2 parties is an essential freedom that cannot be impeded by government and nobody should lose those freedoms regardless of whether they become an employer or whatever.

By the way, thinking that HL is 'dictating choices' is a gigantic misconception! HL is not coming to anybody's house and not looking for contraceptives they don't like and not preventing people from buying the contraceptives with the MONEY THAT HL PAYS THEM. This is a huge lie perpetrated upon the population stupid enough not to understand the simple concept: you get paid and then you buy the products you want regardless of what anybody thinks.

[Citation Needed]
This is the original press release about the 97%. By the way, the correct citation is "In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. "

Basically the survey found that the experts in the field have 97% consensus. For overall numbers of scientists:

No I think computer models are really the only thing we have as we don't have a spare planet to experiment upon and god-like powers. But with all models, I don't assume that they are all 100% accurate. But I think they can be constructed to be close enough to determine a reasonable outcome.

No one has ever said that these models are 100% for all future predictions. Like most of science, theories (and models) that best fit observable data are used. And like most of science these are tested. I don't know if this is some sort of delusion or lack of understanding of how science works. Just because a scientist proposes something or releases a paper, it is not automatically accepted without challenge. Data is challenged. Conclusions are challenged.

All science is challenged. Consensus is reached after enough data and evidence is presented that favors the conclusions. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity wasn't accepted because Einstein proposed it. It took a solar eclipse before many physicists began to accept that it might be the best theory. Now by today's standards, the results of solar eclipse experiment would not have been enough.

They could still do it, and then the "spotlight" will be on a bunch of clowns in suits trampling over common sense and decency. They could always fire whichever clown was responsible and say "we apologize for our gross error of judgement; clearly you'd have to be on drugs or mentally ill to refuse such a simple request".

But the UK is telling people not to travel to the US with flat batteries. Why? If you don't have a connecting flight, you're not getting on a plane at the other end.

Especially when you consider the size of MicroSD cards (which you'd connect to your pc using usb converters). You don't need to keep them on the floor where dogs can physically walk to; instead, they could be hidden above doors/windows, attached to the tops of curtains, etc. Next to invisible, disposable cost, and containing encrypted data. I suppose the police could start to train smaller dogs which the officers could hold above their heads to scan the room.

That has a limit on the number of feeds (or "subscriptions" as it quaintly refers to them) you can use on the free version, though.

Now if there could just be some change to "how shit works on the internet" so they stop getting taken down by DDOS's, apparently at the whim of script kiddies demanding ransoms.

But yeah, nothing beats RSS. Google can come up with all funky magazine viewers, along with Flipboard and god knows what else, but only 0.00001% of the internet ever gets on board with that (and those overdone interfaces with shitty functionality - give me a break), and other people can suggest "social...uh..stuff, you know, like twitter, facebook..." as somehow doing what RSS does (still waiting for someone to explain exactly how that's supposed to work, but thanks for suggesting it anyway)
whereas RSS is trivially added to any website and is platform/ui agnostic.

Google killing Reader really woke me up to what can happen if you use a non-core part of a company; I don't start using anything now from any company unless it appears to me that the company wouldn't survive withdrawing the service.