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Message: HTML is not enabled. UBB Code™ is enabled.	[QUOTE]Originally posted by jfw: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Stereo: [qb]I'm not sure whether you are right or wrong. I got a new iMac two months ago. I am not happy to know that in two years, that Mac will be utterly obsolete, and I'm scared that by then, any new software will be made available for the new chip only - even if Apple says fat binary will be easy.[/qb][/QUOTE]Funny you should mention that. I had been on the cusp of replacing a couple of Macs, and I'm now in a serious quandry. But here's the thing: the Macs in question are a 2x1GHz MDD Powermac, and a 1GHz lump-stick-rectangle iMac -- two years ten months and two years four months old, respectively. Granted, they aren't "utterly obsolete": the only reason to replace the iMac, and the primary reason to replace the PMac, is that neither one will run The Sims 2. (My wife, the only one in the family who does not play computer games, is the only one with a Mac that can comfortably handle The Sims 2. Figures.) (The other reason for replacing the PowerMac? "Wind Tunnel." It's in the bedroom...) So that means that I would be replacing them with "doomed" machines with a practical lifetime of, um, just about what the machines to be replaced have had. And what with the continuing march of progress in writing more and more bloated, complex software, new machines would probably be doomed to being too slow to run the tastiest software of 2007 anyway. But still -- there's a difference between a graceful retirement into the closet (a closet with an outlet and ethernet jack of course -- gotta have a spare file server!), and a forced retirement due to not having [i]any[/i] new software at all. Except... 68K software continued at least a couple of years after PPC machines started shipping, and the differences -- to a developer -- between a PowerMac and a PentiuMac are less in most regards than the differences between a 68K Mac and a PowerMac. (Byte order mistakes are for newbies, harrumph!) So I strongly suspect that the real motivating factor in early 2008 for considering a 2005 PowerMac to be a dusty relic will not be the absence of software but the raw power that a 5GHz PentiuMac can deliver. [QUOTE][qb]More of concern is the fact that I've read on Macworld's forum that Intel chips are actually cost more than the actual PowerPC. I don't know if it's true, but if so, that's a huge hit for Apple's margin, and new Macs may end up costing more than they already do.[/qb][/QUOTE]Even if the Pentium is cheaper than a PPC (which was certainly true the last time I compared prices, but Intel may have offered Apple a sweet deal, and the rumors indicate that IBM recently declined to do that very thing), Apple's indication that a PentiuMac will "probably" run Windows indicates that Apple is going to be using standard system chipsets, which means they will save money on that part. (It's actually kind of unfortunate, because they'll be inheriting a bunch of legacy DOS-oriented hardware crap they would be better off without, but at least they won't have to actually try to support it, which will minimize the impact on system stability.) [QUOTE][qb]Imagine a few million more copies of OS X sold because of its sudden availability to the Wintel world.[/qb][/QUOTE]Imagine a few dozen more copies of OS X [b]sold[/b] and a few million more copies of OS X [b]pirated[/b] because of its sudden availability to the Wintel world. No, I suspect Apple will be tying Mac OS X to their own hardware for some time to come. Anyway, Apple hasn't got the support staff needed to handle every cheesy white-box PC combination in the world. Microsoft wouldn't, either, if they actually provided anything even remotely like "support". [QUOTE][qb]My main sore point at this time: Altivec. How will Intel replace that is a big question mark.[/qb][/QUOTE]Reportedly, the latest SSE3 vectorization instruction set for the Pentium is of equivalent quality to Altivec. And well it should be, it's their fourth or fifth try! (What the heck, shove another instruction set in there, the chip isn't vaporizing the Vdd traces yet!) It's not a direct mapping, though, so all four developers who bothered to use Altivec are in for some hard thinking. [/QB][/QUOTE]