06-09-2005, 06:22 PM
gekko,Jun 8 2005, 10:04 PM Wrote:Well, you may or may not be aware of it, but apple has recently announced they will be switching to intel chips in 2006. The repurcussions of this should be interesting, to say the least.
Now, I've been planning on purchasing a Powerbook in September, for school and such. However, with this news, I've decided against doing so. I really don't want to plunk down a few grand on a laptop just before apple makes such a huge change. Nor do I want to purchase one of the first models off the line after the change. So while I really would love to get a mac laptop, that purchase has been put off for a few years, at least.
As I read it, the full switchover won't happen until 2007. I'd say the probability is high people will still be making PPC-compatible binaries for at least a couple of years after that. So the useful life of any laptop you get would be 4+ years. At which point you'll most likely want to upgrade anyway.
A lot depends on what you want to do with a laptop, and how much you want that OS X interface.
I've survived several major transitions on the Apple; they've done a very good job over the years of managing chip and OS changes.