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Waiting for Merced (5/29/98)
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Merced, Merced, Merced-- that's all we ever freaking hear about from those who try to wave off the PowerPC's large (and growing) performance lead over Intel's processor offerings. Merced, as you probably have not been able to avoid hearing, is the next-generation 64-bit chip that Intel has been working on (together with Hewlett Packard) for several years now. It's the bee's knees. It's the cat's pyjamas. It's all kinds of body parts and sleeping apparel belonging to various mammals and insects. Unfortunately, it's also going to be late. According to PC Week Online, Intel's wonderchip won't be making its messianic appearance until mid-2000, instead of its most recently reported ship date of late 1999.
Given Intel's absolutely huge presence in the processor market, everybody on the planet expects Merced to be a major factor; in addition to 64-bit Merced versions of Windows NT, other operating systems targeting the processor are Hewlett Packard's HP-UX version of Unix, Sun's Solaris, and DEC's Digital Unix. Apple had even publicly mentioned that they were planning to get Rhapsody running on Merced; now, with Rhapsody's expected absorption into Mac OS X, Mac OS Rumors is even reporting the remote possibility of Mac OS X for Merced. Stranger things have happened. Each of these vendors' operating system plans may have to be reshuffled now that Merced is still two years away.
That doesn't mean that Intel's going to be shipping the same old Pentium II's until early 2000. Well, actually, yeah, in a sense it kind of does mean that; Intel's upcoming Xeon, Willamette, and Tanner processors, while faster than today's Pentium II's, are apparently all 32-bit chips that continue to squeeze more and more performance out of the increasingly tired-looking Pentium architecture. It's a testament to Intel's damn-near-godlike technical ability that they've managed to get blood from a stone, but the stone's got to run dry eventually. And that's why Merced's delayed appearance has the potential to shift the landscape significantly. Bring on the G4's!
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/29/98 episode: May 29, 1998: The giant icons that graced the park outside Apple's Cupertino campus have been deleted; are they simply in need of repair, or is the explanation much more sinister? Meanwhile, Intel's upcoming Merced processor sees another delay, and the final death of the clones threatens to leave a six-slot void in the Mac market...
Other scenes from that episode: 747: Missing CRSR Resource (5/29/98) Yet another symbol of Apple's past is gone. This time, it's the famous "icon garden" that's gotten the axe. For the uninitiated, the public park outside Apple's headquarters in Cupertino includes huge sculptures of famous cursor icons, such as the arrow, the pencil, and the dogcow-- at least, it did until a few days ago... 749: Playing the Slots (5/29/98) Soon, six-PCI-slot Mac systems may be harder to find than a permanent Apple CEO. Mac users (such as digital video producers) who need more PCI slots than the three present in Apple's current G3 systems have turned to the few remaining clonemakers such as Umax and Mactell, who still sell six-slot Tsunami motherboard systems, typically with G3 upgrade cards installed...
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