It’s been almost three weeks since that fateful day when some Macs began shipping with Intel’s new Core Duo processors. Amazingly, the sun has come up (and set as well) on each and every day since. iMacs have been available since their introduction at MacWorld on January 9th. MacBook Pro laptops will begin arriving at the homes and businesses of eager early order-ers in February.

Although reports are sketchy, it appears that the new iMacs are selling well. Certainly there will be some pent-up demand from folks who were delaying purchases waiting for the new architecture.

What are the new iMac owners saying (at least those that write columns and articles for magazines, newspapers, and the web)?

“Universal” applications that are designed to run natively on the new Intel architecture are reported to “really fly”. These include, among others, the new iLife ’06 suite and Safari web browser. There are real-world reports of 15% to 50% speed gains in iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie.

Software not yet converted to be “Universal” runs in an on-the-fly emulation mode, and suffers some performance degradation. When using programs that aren’t graphics-intensive, like Microsoft Word or Quicken, the performance hit is negligible. However, users will notice slower (at least compared to G5-based iMac) performance in applications like Adobe Photoshop or high-end games.

Some applications don’t run at all. These include Apple’s own pro photo, video, and music editing applications. Apple says that Universal versions of each pro application will ship in March, and be a $49 upgrade from the older version.

Microsoft’s Virtual PC application, which allows users to run Windows on top of Mac OS X, will not work either. Microsoft has, however, announced that a Universal version of Office will be available in March.

Many have wondered whether the new Intel Macs can boot and run Windows. After all, doesn’t Windows run on Intel processors on PCs? It turns out that the iMacs use new Intel technology that dramatically speeds up the startup process and is not supported by Windows XP (at least until someone hacks it). Reports are that Microsoft’s new Vista operating system will use the new Intel technology, so it may be possible in the future.

David Pogue of the New York Times describes the iMac as “deliciously fast”. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal calls the iMac “the best consumer desktop on the market”. Sounds good to me.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski