Apple's Intel-based systems to be impressive

If we can believe recent reports from developers then we can expect Apple's upcoming Intel platform will be impressive.

Developers who have benchmarked the Intel-based dev kit from Apple claim Mac OS X runs a lot faster on this system than on a Power Mac G5 system with a dual 2GHz PowerPC processor from IBM.

Rosetta, a binary translator which will enable users to run old PowerPC applications on the new x86 Mac platform, also promises a lot. It's still an early test version but developers claim it is able to run old PowerPC apps with only a 30-35 percent performance reduction. Some native PowerPC programs like Firefox even take little to no speed hit.

It looks like Apple's future Mac systems, fuelled by the success of the iPod, will be able to capture a bigger share of the computer market.