How long will PowerPC based Macs be first class citizens? That is, how long will the OS be released for both platforms, and how long before Applications start to be Intel only.
Facts and Factors:
- Apple has said their entire line-up will be Intel based by the end of 2006.
- Mac OS X 10.5 is due near the end of 2006 beginning of 2007 (I’m predicting will be released November 24, 2006) Apple has stated that both Intel and PPC will be supported. If you look at the most recent release cycle, 10.5 will likely be the “current” release for about a year and a half. That means PPC will be supported until somewhere around June 2008.
- The first PowerPC based mac was released on March 14, 1994. The first version of Mac OS that did NOT support the older 68K macs was Mac OS 8.5 which was released on October 17, 1998. That means 4 years 7 months and 3 days elapsed while 68K macs were officially supported.
- Despite grumbling from consumers, Apple has managed to only add new features to the very latest iPod generation without making the feature work on older generations… even though in most cases there is no technial reason to do so. (They could use a similar approach to their computers.)
Unknowns:
- Once an App cleanly works as a Universal Application, what future modifications will developers have to make for it to continue to be a Universal Application?
- How much additional work is it for Apple to maintain PPC support for the OS, their Applications, and their Development tools?
I don’t think Apple will support PPC as long as they supported 68K macs, but the real event that will make the PPC based Macs second class citizens won’t be Apple. Rather it will be a third party that creates a whiz-bang peripheral that lots of people will want, but the company won’t bother writing PPC drivers for it becuase they don’t think it will make financial sense.
Taking everything into consideration, and then disregarding most of it, I think it won’t make sense to own a PPC based Mac for just about everyone once Mac OS X 10.6 is released. I predicted that to be around June 2008 which is almost two and a half years from today. So if you are in the market for a new Mac and plan to use it productively for more than 2.5 years, buy an Intel based one. And if you want a consumer laptop (iBook or whatever it will be called), that means waiting… probably until Spring.
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