Which System Upgrade Map Will You Follow Down The MacIntel Transition Road?
by Charles W. Moore
An operative conundrum for Mac users over the next 12-24 months will be whether to:
(a) Stick with the system hardware they have, perhaps with some upgrade enhancements, and wait until the dust settles, so to speak.
(b) Buy a new Power PC Mac while they're still available in order to secure the best possible Power PC performance while retaining native support for existing software collections and Classic Mode.
(c) Wait and buy one of the new Intel-based Macs projected to be available beginning in June, 2006, with portable models expected to be among the first receiving the changeover.
All three roadmaps have their pros and cons, and the only "right" answer is the one that meets one's needs, tastes, and budget.
Keep Present Hardware/Upgrade Enhancements
If you have a system now that you like, and that is doing a good job for you, sticking with it for another couple years to ride out what will inevitably a turbulent epoch in Macintosh hardware evolution is not a bad idea at all, and if your hardware could use a bit of sprucing up to tide you over, I would say that things like processor, hard drive, and RAM upgrades have never made better sense than they do right now.
This is an option I am personally considering. Unfortunately, my current Macs are well short of the existing state-of-the-art, being a 700 MHz iBook G3, and a nearly five-year-old Pismo PowerBook. Upgrade options for the iBook are limited. The RAM is already maxed out at 640 MB, and processor upgrades are not supported.
On the other hand, the Pismo has already been comprehensively hotrodded, with a Daystar 550 MHz G4 processor upgrade, a 40 gigabyte, 5,400 RPM Toshiba hard drive, a FastMac 8x SuperDrive, and a Miglia FireWire 800 adapter. It has 640 megabytes of RAM, he so that leaves potential open to take it up to one gigabyte. There is also a rumor that a video upgrade for the Pismo is in the works. That would be very interesting if it comes to pass.
Right now, I think that the 550 MHz G4 chip offers the best all-round performance tradeoff for the Pismo. PowerLogix offers 900 MHz and 1 GHz G3 upgrades for Pismo, but there is controversy over whether lack of Altivec support in the G3 makes a slower G4 a better real-world choice. The fast G3 chips also reportedly run pretty hot.
However, last week IBM released a news G3 750GL chip that runs cooler and uses less power that the 750FX and 750GX CPUs that PowerLogix uses for their peers fall upgrades. The 750GL is otherwise quite similar to the 750GX, and has a one megabyte level 2 cache, the same as the Power PC 7410 G4 I have in my Pismo, and is initially offered in clock speeds 800 MHz and and 933 MHz. This could be a very attractive chip for PowerBook upgrades.
Another processor upgrade vendor, who shall remain nameless at this point, tells me that now it's certain that Apple won't be shipping a PowerBook G5, they are working on upgrade products that could take the aluminum PowerBooks to as much as 1.8 GHz or even 2.0 GHz. If these materialize in a timely fashion, they would make the Power PC AlBook a very nice vehicle with which to navigate through the turbulent waters of the next 24 months. I will be keeping my ear to the ground on this one, and will let you know all that I can pass on when I'm at liberty to say more.
Buy A New Power PC Mac
The second route is to buy a new Power PC machine sometime in the next twelve months or so. As noted, this is an attractive option for those of us who have a substantial investment in software and/or are not quite ready to give up on Classic Mode yet. Most OS X native software should run okay in emulation using Apple's Rosetta technology, but a performance hit should be anticipated, which may or may not be compensated for by faster processors on intel-based machines. However, applications that require Altivec support or G4/G5 processors will not be supported by Rosetta, and neither will Classic Mode. In short, most OS X native software that will run on a G3 should work.
Then there is the question of whether it makes more sense to buy an inexpensive Power PC Mac, or go for a higher end model. Again, there is no one correct answer to that.
If you're thinking of the new box as primarily a transitional stopgap, then go for an iBook (This is PowerBook Central, and I will not be addressing desktop Macs specifically in this article). They a great machine for a friendly price, and the performance deficit compared to PowerBooks not all that great in terms of the present specifications.
However if you want to exit the Power PC era in style, go with a PowerBook. The base 12" and 15" PowerBooks represent especially good values and with the specification updates that were announced in January, and a price cut on that 12-incher. Unlike the current iBooks, the PowerBooks all fully support Core Graphics in OS X 10.4 Tiger, and if you are planning to keep the machine for two years or more, you will likely be glad that you chose the PowerBook. While 1.5 GHz or 1.67 GHz are not really exciting news even by the standards of today, in practical terms, these machines will provide very satisfactory performance for most computing tasks for the foreseeable future.
And they are so cool.
Wait And Buy A MacIntel 'Book
This is the alternative for the adventurous, and for those who strive to stay as close to the bleeding edge as possible. As noted, portable users will be among the first to have an opportunity to buy a MacIntel hardware, based either on Intel's Pentium M or their new "Yonah" laptop CPU.
The upside of this option is obviously that you will be buying a machine that has a future, and getting a first hand leg up on the new MacIntel reality.
The downside is that you will be obliged to buy new software if you want to run native, and a revolutionary changeover like this is going to have some bugs. Count on it. The first MacIntel buyers will be essentially late beta testers.
However, both of these caveats should be manageable, and I expect that the new PowerBooks and iBooks Apple will design to showcase the MacIntel experience will be spectacular. Could be worth the wait.
Summary Observations
Timing is everything. If you think the keep present system/upgrade it mode is best for you, I suggest moving immediately, or as soon as the product you want becomes available, in order to get the longest use value from your investment.
On the other hand, timing the purchase of an end of line Power PC machine is more tricky. I don't think Apple will be able to soldier on for another year with no hardware upgrades at all on the portable machines, especially with the iBook, so you might want to wait and see what happens in that department. I would project that the last quarter of 2005 or Q1, 2006 is probably the optimum purchase window to consider. There may be some discounting toward the end next spring, but I wouldn't count on it. Apple's inventory control is pretty efficient these days. If you wait too long, you may not be able to get what you want.
As for the MacIntels, I am not personally inclined to buy the very first examples of any product, especially a completely new computer system architecture, but if you are a bleeding edge surfer, go for it. The more cautious among us may prefer to wait at least a few months after the initial release to see how things shape up before taking the plunge.
Whichever route you decide to travel, it promises to be an interesting ride and and you really can't go wrong with a portable Mac.