Tag: apple

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Debated

The Alleged End Of OS X for PPC

History lesson: Back on June 6, 2005, Apple announced that they were transitioning away from the PowerPC processor line to ones made by Intel. Rumblings formed quickly – *how long until they drop PowerPC support from the OS?*

TUAW wrote yesterday about “10.6” being unveiled at WWDC next week:

> We have also learned that OS X 10.6 may go gold master by December 2008 in an effort to start shipping it in January ’09 at Macworld Expo. Mac OS X 10.6 will be a milestone release for Apple, as it will leave the PowerPC behind: a fully 64-bit clean, Intel-only Mac OS X.

John Gruber weighed in this morning:

> I still think it seems too soon by at least a year to drop PowerPC support — especially for G5s, which are still extremely capable machines by today’s standards — but that’s the word on the street.

Gruber’s on the right track here, but not because the machines are still capable (which they are).

Consider two truths about Applecare:

* Applecare typically comes in two quantities: the free one-year that comes with each machine, and a three-year extended service warranty.
* Applecare provides support for all point revisions of the current operating system and the final point release of the previous operating system.

As far as I’m aware, Apple has never released an OS that cannot by installed on computers that fall within the three-year window provided by Applecare. Once a machine falls outside of that window, a machine is not guaranteed to run any new major OS revisions.
The PowerMac G5 was the final machine to be killed in the Intel transition – a slight irony given that the developer kits for the Intel transition were in PowerMac towers. The MacPro was introduced to market on August 7, 2006.

For these reasons, I would not expect Apple to kill off PowerPC support in their OS until after August 6th, 2009.

(An aside: that’s also the day that Classic finally becomes unsupported, as there won’t be any Applecare eligible machines that can still run Classic.)

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Debated Explained

Leveling The New Apple Portables

I had three subsequent requests from friends to weigh in on the best value for Apple’s newly released laptops. Twitter ate my short thoughts, so I might as well lengthen it a bit.

Before I continue, I should note that a great place to always go is the Compare Models page on the Apple Store. It’s the best way to get a side by side comparison.

# Generally Speaking

Ever since the iBook and Powerbook were retired in favor of the MacBook and the MacBookPro, I’ve held the belief that unless you’re in the specialty niches that require a specific feature on the MBP (the ExpressCard/34 slot for mobile broadband, for instance), 90% of consumers will be fine with the MacBook.

Nothing released today has changed that base level assertion. Not even the multi-touch track pads on the MBPs.

# MacBook

First things first: the BlackBook remains a $200 uptick for a different colored case and a 90GB increase on the hard drive. (You can get the hard drive upgrade separately on a white MB for $100.) The BlackBook’s market remains people who explicitly *want* a black notebook. If you’re looking to extend your dollars, there’s no reason to buy it.

Thus, we’re left looking at the other two models. I will call these “Low-End White” and “High-End White”.

If you take Low-End White and add the hard drive bump and the RAM bump found in High-End White, you come in $50 less than the list for the High-End White. So in that $50 you’re getting a decent clock bump (300 MHz) and a Superdrive – which makes High-End White the smarter choice here.

# MacBook Pro

I am frequently baffled by Apple’s pricing, and here’s one of those instances.

Like the BlackBook, the 17″ MBP is for a certain breed of people who just *have* to have a 17″ display. People who merely want *a laptop* and not a *17″ bohemoth* – there’s no need. And frankly, I question their commitment to Sparklemotion.

So again, we’re looking at the two options, thus dubbed “2K” and “2.5K” solely based on price.

What does the $500 jump get you in this case? Er, well…

* A rather meager 100MHz bump on the CPU
* 3MB more of L3 cache
* 50GB more disk space
* Double the VRAM in the video card

The hard drive bump can be duplicated for $50, so you’re looking at $450 for a tenth of a GHz, a bit of cache, and a significant bump on the VRAM. But keep in mind that the VRAM bump doesn’t provide higher resolutions on the display – it will likely only be useful if you’re playing Crysis under Boot Camp or doing some high end media work.

Thus, I must strongly recommend that if you need a MBP, the 2K model is more than good enough.

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Found

Mark Anbinder on the MacBook Air

Mark has penned an excellent post addressing concerns about the lack of Ethernet on the MacBook Air, specifically to how it relates to the environment on the main Cornell campus.

Here’s the crux:

> It’s worth noting that most laptop users EVEN NOW aren’t bothering to plug into wired Ethernet, even when they HAVE the requisite port on their laptops. I strongly suspect we’ve already seen a large chunk of the hit on Red Rover’s capacity from the shift to wireless, and Apple is just giving in to reality by leaving out a port no one is using.