Apple Product Cycle with Intels

it's very likely product cycles will be shorter and less abrupt.
As apple will be less involved with the hardware design (they can order their pc boards and chipsets customized from taiwan) they can respond faster to changes.
Also, since Apple will be in direct competition with other pc vendors they will probably not be able to keep prices steady throughout the product cycle. I think it is pretty safe to assume Apple will need a more flexible pricing policy going down as the product gets older and up when there is a product refresh. A wider product range may also be very likely.

In reply to that, if you think about it, Apple's product range is perfect. The only this it may be missing is a inexpensive G4 tower, but that's what the Mini's for. I think they have a great product library!

I wonder if we are going to be able to easily upgrade the CPU's just like in PC's today. I'd say that Apple can easily limit the CPU speed in hardware so that you couldn't just swap in a faster CPU, but would they actually do this?

I think they will stay about the same. About 6-8 months give or take but the upgrades will trounce anything you are use to today with regards to proc speed boost upgrades. That and you wont have to wait weeks for new products to ship,

t^3 said:

I wonder if we are going to be able to easily upgrade the CPU's just like in PC's today. I'd say that Apple can easily limit the CPU speed in hardware so that you couldn't just swap in a faster CPU, but would they actually do this?

Click to expand...

The eMac and Mac Mini already have underclocked CPUs. Well, the eMac used to, the new chips in them may not be. But I do know the 1.25 GHz Mini is almost always able to hit 1.42 GHz, and it has been done before. eMacs too, they were 1.4 GHz chips set to 800 MHz.