no powerbooks for a year?

[kashou]

Does all of this Intel news mean that Powerbooks won't be updated in any meaningful way until at least June 2006?

I can maybe see people buying the next ibook rev, but there is no way a powerbook buyer will put down $2,000+ on a processor with no roadmap (rosetta or not). How do they expect to survive when they go over 1.5 years w/o an upgrade that means anything?

So what the heck am I supposed to get??

-kash

[Brad]

The PPC is not dead and will not be dead for many years to come.

I strongly urge you to read:
http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=7319

Note the bulleted item that starts with "Apple is not dropping support for PowerPC-based systems."

[iDare]

"Apple is not dropping support for PowerPC-based systems."

That actually, finally hit home for me. It makes sense.

[kashou]

Thanks Brad. I understand that the PPC chip/line will be supported, and I understand that the new Xcode with fat binaries and Rosetta will make the transition smoother.

My question was more directy related to where apple could possibly go with the current G4 powerbook/ibook line in the interim and how they are going to market it as a good purchase for consumers. Kind of hard to justify waiting over a year for an intel mac, but equally hard to justify buying a powerbook that was aged 5 months ago.

It does seem to be more of a "Speculation and Rumor" kind of thread at this point...

-kash


EDIT: I was just looking over the apple site and came across this (http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/). At this point, I am going to put my trust into two things:

1) There are more G4/G5 improvements yet to be released for the next few quarters.
2) The IBM roadmap really must have looked bad next to the Intel roadmap.

So G4/G5 is better now, but there was no real successor that could compete with future Intel offerings. Here's to hoping that the first Mactel machine doesn't have a P4.

[beginning to catch my breath...]