It appears that Apple has joined the BAPCo benchmarking consortium. BAPCo produce the industry-standard SYSmark and MobileMark benchmarking tools. The SYSmark and MobileMark benchmarks are used as performance tests by media outlets, corporations, and government agencies worldwide. Apple commonly uses SYSmark to benchmark Dells against PowerMacs. So what does this mean? Well it seems that Apple could be planning Windows support with Mac OS X 10.5. By developing drivers to run Windows accurately on their Mactels, Apple has a fair benchmark platform for the future Intel-powered PowerMacs as well as the MacBook Pro. Bare in mind this could be just for internal benchmark use, but the “Chameleon” technology mentioned briefly last week would fit in with the idea of a Mac “changing its Leopard spots” to run Windows.
