Guys, calm down about Intel, keep buying PowerPC Macs.

[iJaz]

People can't have it boths ways - applauding Apple's promising Intel future and at the same time encouraging people to buy (at no small expense) a current Mac if it's simply convenient for them.

Why not? The Macs today are really fine, buy one now and you will be pleased. When it's time to buy a new one in 3-4 years the transition will be completed, all the rev. a bugs crushed and you will be able to buy a nice Intel Mac and you will be pleased. What's your problem with that?

 

[BornAgainMac]

My concern

You can build universal binaried w/ the PPC xcode 2.1. People on this board have done it already (with no way to test, obviously).

MP

I felt comfortable with the Intel transition but I thought of a snag.

What about the reverse? Suppose 3 years from now, a new developer creates a program but only has the Intel Mac but doesn't have a PPC Mac to test on. I assume all developers will have to double their testing budget to test both platforms. That can be expensive in labor and time. New developers may not be able to even purchase a PPC Mac for testing unless they go to eBay.

 

[iJaz]

I felt comfortable with the Intel transition but I thought of a snag.

What about the reverse? Suppose 3 years from now, a new developer creates a program but only has the Intel Mac but doesn't have a PPC Mac to test on. I assume all developers will have to double their testing budget to test both platforms. That can be expensive in labor and time. New developers may not be able to even purchase a PPC Mac for testing unless they go to eBay.

Yes, that is troublesome, even though I don't think it will be too much of a problem finding an old but still usuable PPC Mac. Did you read that a game developer thought that porting time would increase about 30% because of the double platform testing and developing. More labour probably means higher prices also. http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=355&Page=1

 

[cwerdna]

Would it be possible to use Rosetta technology to build an Intel emulator for the PPC?

What would be the business reason for doing this? What's the purpose in confusing the consumer further? If PowerPC is really hit a brick wall or dead end while x86 is advancing further, why would Apple want to continue selling any PowerPC machines after say end of 2007?

The only scenario I can see is somehow the switch backfiring and nobody wanting to buy MacTels, but that seems unlikely. They'd be stuck at roughly the PowerPC speeds that we see now.

 

[caveman_uk]

You only hear what you want to hear. Did you notice in the other article, the game developers "can't wait to drop support for PPC"?

Nobody cares about millions of old computer owners. If they did, we'd still see Mac OS 9 applications being shipped today. Do we? After all, Mac OS 9 was still current 3 years ago. Do you really think more than 50% of all Macs in use today run Mac OS 10?

Didn't you hear? Most game developers dropped mac support years ago

Game development is a highly specialised niche that usually deals at a much lower level with the hardware and performance issues and is more likely to have highly optimised CPU specific code. Most applications simply don't have to do that - they work with much higher level abstracted frameworks. If it's Cocoa you're really insulated from the platform you're running on, less so with Carbon and POSIX where you might have to deal with issues such as Endian-ness. I doubt there's many applications that use pure assembler for much of their code. There is an issue with Altivec support where developers have used their own bespoke Altivec code - many apps won't have. They will have done what Apple advised them to do and used the Accelerate frameworks which as part of the OS will automatically use Altivec on PPC and SSE on Intel.

The OS 9->OS X analogy is a red herring. It's a hell of a lot easier to shove a CD in and change your OS than it is change your machines CPU architecture. Anyone still using OS 9 is either

1) Using a machine that can't run OS X adequately.
2) Has very good software/hardware reasons why not
3) Is a masochist
4) Is either stubborn or stupid or both.

 

[sbb155]

I am so glad that there are people here that are so blindly enthusiastic about current macs which now have a planned obsolescence and likely poor resale value! It ensures a trickle of sales that will make apple some good $$$, while those of us on the sidelines wait until 2007.

I say "Bravo" and tip my hat to the mac-fanatics who are willing to buy PPC macs now, with even the CEO of apple switching to intel and obviously not enthusiastic about PPC. Thanks for keeping the company going!

 

[caveman_uk]

I am so glad that there are people here that are so blindly enthusiastic about current macs which now have a planned obsolescence and likely poor resale value! It ensures a trickle of sales that will make apple some good $$$, while those of us on the sidelines wait until 2007.

I say "Bravo" and tip my hat to the mac-fanatics who are willing to buy PPC macs now, with even the CEO of apple switching to intel and obviously not enthusiastic about PPC. Thanks for keeping the company going!

What is so hard to understand? Any machine you buy today is obsolete in 3 years anyway - regardless of if new machines run on PPC, Intel or fairy dust. Your machine you have now will be very obsolete in 2007 - Intel or not. So join the club.

 

[steve_hill4]

What is so hard to understand? Any machine you buy today is obsolete in 3 years anyway - regardless of if new machines run on PPC, Intel or fairy dust. Your machine you have now will be very obsolete in 2007 - Intel or not. So join the club.

What? Apple are planning to run on fairy dust? When was this announced?

 

[iJaz]

What is so hard to understand? Any machine you buy today is obsolete in 3 years anyway - regardless of if new machines run on PPC, Intel or fairy dust. Your machine you have now will be very obsolete in 2007 - Intel or not. So join the club.

He's probably trolling, seen much of that lately.

 

[rosalindavenue]

After some initial hesitation, I'm OK with buying a PPC mac. I'd love a 12" ibook. Great battery life and wireless reception, more than enough power for me. However, I'm not buying the current model, with insufficient RAM and a not-fully-compliant-with-Tiger video card. No way. I can't imagine that anyone who does not HAVE to have a computer right away would buy one for these reasons-- the buyers guide has told us not to buy this model since February at least. I just can't understand why it hasn't been upgraded, just on these two items alone-- Apple is blowing off the (non powerbook) education market, like it did last year with the imac. At least the imac flub was IBM's fault. What a shame.

 

[gabriel_uk]

I can't imagine that anyone who does not HAVE to have a computer right away would buy one for these reasons-- the buyers guide has told us not to buy this model since February at least. I just can't understand why it hasn't been upgraded, just on these two items alone...

On that score, I wonder what Steve Jobs meant when he said 'we still have some great PowerPC products to bring out'? (That, by the way, was about the only reference I recall him making to the current chip line.)

Is it conceivable, for instance, that the PowerPC-based PowerMac line-up could be (slightly) upgraded again - or will it stay more or less as it is until it appears Intelized sometime in 2007?

Any ideas?

 

[the future]

The "my G4/5 is worthless now" and/or "I'm not gonna buy a PPC now, it's a dead technology" posters really need to calm down and realize that all Macintosh software that has been released or will be released until the middle of 2006 will run better on PPC machines (all native, no Rosetta needed), 99,9% of Macintosh Software released thereafter until at least 2009-2010 will run just as good on PPC machines (because of Universal Binaries). If you have a load of software, the most sensible thing is to buy the fastest PPC Mac you can, IMO, because "upgrading" to Macintel versions of that software to run it natively on Macintels will not come for free.

 

[3lions]

Why not? The Macs today are really fine, buy one now and you will be pleased. When it's time to buy a new one in 3-4 years the transition will be completed, all the rev. a bugs crushed and you will be able to buy a nice Intel Mac and you will be pleased. What's your problem with that?

I agree with that, I plan on buying a 12" PB next week and when I'm ready for a new computer (prob 2008) I can get an intel mac rev b or c with the bugs worked out of it.

 

[stcanard]

People are going to laugh at this, but it is really important from a business perspective: Gartner has issued a report on the shift that is very positive, and recommends that customers can continue to buy PPC based macs now without worry, but should shift to the intel Macs as soon as they are possible.

This is a huge thing, for them to be so upbeat on it, because it will settle a lot of the business world down.