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• PC World - The Fastest Windows Vista Notebook is a Mac “…the MacBook (Pro)’s score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn’t care less whether you run Windows.”

• Rosetta Compatibility: PowerPC Applications on Intel Macs A good reference list when transitioning from a PowerPC Mac to an Intel Mac.

Apple’s new series of commercials touting Boot Camp on Intel Macs* is hilarious. It features a bespectacled, paunchy guy in a suit as the PC and a laidback, John Leguizamo-lookalike** as the Mac. The ad on viruses should get heavy rotation, I think. The rest of the ads, however, should probably get limited play. They’re funny alright but a little condescending. They’re potentially off-putting to PC users that Apple is trying to woo into the Mac fold. Unless, of course, they’re not Apple’s target audience at all. I suppose the ads could serve well to give Macheads a feeling of smug superiority over Windows users. Bleh.

*In a rush to create this entry, I totally missed that these ads are not about Boot Camp at all. I guess this Joy of Tech strip was still indelibly etched in my mind that I thought the new Apple ads were personified versions of it. If these ads are not about Boot Camp, then what this tells me is that Apple reluctantly bowed to pressure to provide users the ability to boot into Windows and these ads aim to show that OS X is the far superior OS to boot into. (Take that, Dvorak!)

**ok, just found out the actor is Justin Long from Herbie Fully Loaded. You can’t blame me for not knowing that.

In honor of Apple’s announcement yesterday of Intel-powered Macs at Macworld, I post here this photo I took in 1999 in San Francisco.

A new Apple ad was being painted over an AMD ad making it look like a billboard for an Athlon-powered iMac. Here’s a photo from a slightly different angle.

Update: I’m also adding this photo to the Silicon Valley Tourist gallery to welcome Intel to the Mac fold.

Update 2: When adding the Intel pic, I inadvertently caused some pictures (Adobe, Woz) to disappear. They’re back up. For Apple pictures go here. I just now need photos of Google.

The overwhelming interest generated by a link to photos I took of the Apple campus has prompted me to finally post pictures I was saving for later. I introduce to you The Silicon Valley Tourist, a gallery of Silicon Valley signage I took over a span of several weeks.* A boring set of snapshots perhaps to some but I’m sure it would interest a couple of you out there. The album is by no means complete. I plan to visit Google, Adobe, Intel (which is really tough to take a picture of), HP and others soon.

You may be wondering why I frame the company signs between my index finger and my thumb. Well, I figured that’s the only way I could include myself in the picture. At first I thought about using the Pets.com sock puppet or the Geekman action figure as my prop. But in this post-9/11 era, holding up an indiscernible object with a camera pointed at an American high-tech icon would only cause a swarm of SWAT team members to surround me in a matter of seconds. So I settled for my ultra-portable, less suspicious-looking appendages. Besides, there’s something empowering about holding Corporate America between one’s fingers. Mwuhahaha… squish, squish…

*for a true tour of historic Silicon Valley, I direct you to this guy.

Update: Adobe pics are up!