Are Mac's too expensive?

[WoodPeckr]

Redmond is very happy with upcoming Snow Leopard

....Lastly, you also get Snow Leopard for only $29 more in the Fall when it's released. An OS that will take advantage of true 64 bit processing, which has been completely rewritten and will improve performance by up to 50% over the current spectacularly performing Leopard.

Came across this tidbit on upcoming Snow Leopard.
Seems Apple did something rather peculiar here that WILL SEVERELY limit you. In case you weren't aware here it is.....

Snow Leopard is Intel-only

It's inevitable that an operating system will drop support for older machines at some point - try running Apple's System 6.0.2 on a Mac Pro. But limiting Snow Leopard to Intel machines means that the oldest Macs able to run it are the original MacBook Pro and Intel iMac announced in January 2006. The last PowerPC G5-based Power Mac sold in August 2006 - less than three years ago.

There may be quite reasonable technical explanations as to why Snow Leopard requires an Intel processor. Perhaps OpenCL requires Intel's SSE SIMD scheme and can't hack the PowerPC's AltiVec. Perhaps GCD understands Intel's threading but not Freescale's. Perhaps the reasons were discussed behind closed doors at WWDC. But one thing's certain: it's a marketing bonanza for Redmond.

 

[danibbler]

Snow Leopard is Intel-only

It's inevitable that an operating system will drop support for older machines at some point - try running Apple's System 6.0.2 on a Mac Pro. But limiting Snow Leopard to Intel machines means that the oldest Macs able to run it are the original MacBook Pro and Intel iMac announced in January 2006. The last PowerPC G5-based Power Mac sold in August 2006 - less than three years ago.

So what? First off, a Mac user can happily use 10.4 and 10.5 for quite a while yet. It was only in the last year that I myself decided to buy a new MBP because some of the newer software (not from Apple) needed 10.4. I probably won't bother going to Snow Leopard myself.

Second, how big of a market group is the Mac Pro G5? Frankly, it's not that big. The shift to Intel processors was long foretold by the other lines such as MBPs, iMacs, etc. moving over. It was only a matter of time (and soon) that the Mac Pro was going to go Intel.

As an FYI, the market share for Linux has finally hit 1%.

 

[Goomer]

Came across this tidbit on upcoming Snow Leopard.
Seems Apple did something rather peculiar here that WILL SEVERELY limit you. In case you weren't aware here it is.....

Snow Leopard is Intel-only

It's inevitable that an operating system will drop support for older machines at some point - try running Apple's System 6.0.2 on a Mac Pro. But limiting Snow Leopard to Intel machines means that the oldest Macs able to run it are the original MacBook Pro and Intel iMac announced in January 2006. The last PowerPC G5-based Power Mac sold in August 2006 - less than three years ago.

There may be quite reasonable technical explanations as to why Snow Leopard requires an Intel processor. Perhaps OpenCL requires Intel's SSE SIMD scheme and can't hack the PowerPC's AltiVec. Perhaps GCD understands Intel's threading but not Freescale's. Perhaps the reasons were discussed behind closed doors at WWDC. But one thing's certain: it's a marketing bonanza for Redmond.

Yes, the switch from the G4 and G5 processors to Intel was a huge transitionary time for Apple. It was a massive undertaking in rewriting their operating system to be able to run on Intel, as well as PowerPC processors at the same time.

With Snow Leopard, Apple decided to do a complete rewrite of the OS and make it lean and mean. This forced them to make a decision on whether to continue moving forward with legacy hardware support, or to cut it loose and make it a full 64 bit running OS with legacy code removed. They decided to do this, and as a G5 owner running a 4 year old iMac, I support the decision. My computer is running Leopard and is humming along nicely on it, and Snow Leopard is not going to have a host of new features that will make me want to dump my iMac and get a new one. it's all about speed and efficiency, and true 64 bit processing.

I will want to move forward with it on my Macbook, and next year, when my machine will be 5 years old, I'll be shopping for a new Mac. In the meantime, as I mentioned in a previous posting, I know that I'll be able to get a decent sale price on it due to the strong Mac resale market and the fact that Macs hold their price pretty well over the years.

If this is the best that Redmond is going to be able to attack Apple on, then I think they're in a world of hurt! By the way, how many older computers run Vista very well? Not too many from what I hear. Not because of lack of legacy hardware support, but rather because it is a bloated pig that needs 4 gigs of RAM to run properly, and anything older than a year or two will make the Vista experience sheer hell!

 

[WoodPeckr]

If this is the best that Redmond is going to be able to attack Apple on, then I think they're in a world of hurt! By the way, how many older computers run Vista very well? Not too many from what I hear. Not because of lack of legacy hardware support, but rather because it is a bloated pig that needs 4 gigs of RAM to run properly, and anything older than a year or two will make the Vista experience sheer hell!

LOL!
Who's saying they are attacking Apple?
Point is Redmond and Intel are overjoyed at this marketing bonanza Apple handed them. This merely points out Mac has finally seen the light and it is Intel....welcome aboard Mac!.....

FWIW, yeah Vista is a resource hog but after SP1 it runs fine with 2GB RAM.
I've had little, if any, problem with Vista and it flies with 4GB RAM, however x86 64 bit Ubuntu 9.04, flies noticeably faster on that same laptop.....