fatfish said:
I don't understand why the new mactel powerbooks can't role out in six months or even less.
Because the SDK P4 is not ready to be a commercial product and even if it was, that does not address the powerbook. They have design and production work to do before they can release a product, they want to give time to 3rd parties to redo their work(Some of it will be easily recompiled, other stuff not so much), This is very similar to the delay between the announcement of OS X to developers and the release of 10.0 commercially, they have to get the developers onboard first and then they can go about their commercial releases.
There's likely also work that needs to be done on OS X for Intel, including but not limited to Rosetta, I mean they may have been developing it parrallel but it hasn't had all the same resources and will likely have some issues to be worked out, even once they have the new hardware settled.
Also, Apple likely has learned from some of their mistakes and are not wanting to announce a product for sale and not have it ready to ship until 3-4 months later.
PPC sales are going to drop, and probably fairly significantly, but I don't think they'll zero out or anything. More computer users than you'd think don't know anything about computers, and they'll continue to buy Macintosh because brand loyalty and familiarity means more to them than any processor nonsense. Many institutions will likewise not let this news affect them, we won't.
It's better to take a couple of shots while you get all your pieces into place than it is to rush out the door with a half-assed product.
