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Next year Apple will start shipping Macs with an Intel rather than a PowerPC (PPC) processor. The company expects to take until the end of 2007 to bring its full line over to Intel processors. Why would anyone possible still want to buy a Mac with a G4 or G5 processor? If Intel is the future, why buy the past? If I were doing a thesis, this would be a great case study on the psychological buying habits of consumers. The way I see it, it makes more sense to buy a G4/G5 Mac before buying an Intel Mac. Crazy talk? Not at all. Rosetta Rosetta is Apple’s bridge technology that will allow existing Mac OS X software for PPC Macs to run on the upcoming Intel Macs. This is essential to help make the transition between architectures. It’s yet to be seen how well Rosetta will work. For sure, there will be incompatibilities for some applications and performance loss for all applications, even if modest. How well Rosetta works will be a major factor for when people will adopt Intel-based Macs. If you’ve got an expensive software library, you won’t be too keen on buying all new software along with your new Intel Mac. I think the key thing here to emphasize is that Rosetta only affects software running on an Intel Mac that was designed to run on a PPC Mac. If you’ve got a PPC Mac, how Rosetta pans out won’t be of any concern. Past is Prologue It’s tempting to compare today to Apple’s other major platform shifts, but this seems to be a different ball game. I’m not a developer and it’s still early in the game, but from what I gather, there’s no advantage between running an application under OS X for PPC or Intel. It’s just different, or at most different brands of the same flavor of ice cream. We didn’t see this with OS 7, PPC or OS X. Each technology migration brought a clear advantage for applications to adopt the new technology. This is largely due to the fact that OS X is the common binder between architectures. From what I’ve gathered, an application written for Intel should function, similarly to a version for PPC. Having an application available for both OS X platforms will be accomplished through dual binaries. A dual binary is how developers will make the same program available for both platforms. Apple states that offering dual binaries for both Intel and PPC Macs will be relatively easy. If this is true, I just can’t see support for PPC Macs going away any time soon. The market just won’t allow it. When to Buy? This brings up my favorite general question of why I should buy a Mac today. Should I buy now when Apple might have something new at next press event or conference? There’s nothing more disheartening than buying a new Mac and have it either replaced by something faster or reduced in price the following week. That’s just the way of the industry. I always tell people to not buy for your ego, but buy for your needs and pocketbook. If buying a new Mac today makes sense in terms of performance and price, then go for it. Don’t worry about what might happen, because if you wait long enough, it will happen, and if wait long enough again, it’ll happen again. It’s all about opportunity cost. Why buy a PPC Mac anymore? The simple answer is because that’s what Apple is selling today. You can be confident and buy a new PPC Mac knowing it’ll last you for years to come. Even if you bought the last PPC Mac off the line, you should be able to get a respectable return on investment. The market can’t afford to just drop support for PPC. If creating dual binaries work as advertised, I see developers supporting PPC for quite some time to come. What I’ve come to realize and suggest to others is that it is actually far more risky to soon buy an Intel Mac than a PPC Mac. Yeah, you won’t be on the bleeding edge, but you’ll be confident that all your current and foreseeable future software will work. You can’t say that about an Intel Mac. So what’s going to be my next Mac? A PowerMac G5. What’s going to be your?
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