That Steve Jobs
Well, I must say that I’m disappointed with the announcements made at the Macworld Expo today. I was hoping that the rumours were true and that the first Intel Macs were the iBooks and Mac Minis so that we would see a price drop, expansion, or update of the iBook line, thus making it more affordable for me, and just in time for university.
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs managed to hoodwink everyone and announced instead a high end Powerbook replacement dubbed the MacBook Pro, starting at over $2000.
The theory was that the Universal Binaries that would run on both PowerPC and Intel processors would not be ready until summer or so. That would mean that current programs that are particularly CPU-intensive, such as Photoshop and the like, would be painful to run under emulation.
Now I’m no Apple analysing expert, but now that I look at it, introducing lower priced Intel Macs at the moment wouldn’t be such a good idea. If the predictions were correct and the lower end Intel Macs were going to drop the price on the lower end Macs, then more people will end up buying those Macs in favour of the G4s. The lower end Macs would attract more PC switchers at the expense of the G4s they already have.
However, because the Universal Binaries aren’t ready, everyone on an Intel Mac will be running on Rosetta emulation. But, many people won’t know this and there will be a perception that the Mac is performing poorly because of the emulation. And therein lies the problem.
By releasing a higher end Mac, Apple hasn’t attracted new customers, but has made all of their loyal ones drool all over it. Even though the programs aren’t ready yet, the old guard understands what the difference an Intel chip versus a G4 makes.
Hopefully, Apple will be updating its iBook line sometime over the summer so I can snag one for university. Since they said that Intels were coming out in the summer in the first place, I would expect them to roll out some lower end models then.
although not a recommendation from everyone, should you snatch one for university, consider takinga advantage of the university benefits (you can see which schools recieve it at the apple.com/ca/ education portion of the website.
course, if its discounted retail, forget the student discount
better option — many of my friends said routinely i think during teh summer Mac offers this nifty deal for students ipod + laptop for $800 something.
Simply keep the laptop, and sell the ipod on ebay — in USD & a hefty profitable shipping rate (atleast $275 USD ~ $300 CDN )and there you have it, you just got an apple laptop for $500 :P yummy!
Well, I’m planning on doing that. Except I’m going to keep the iPod, because I need an MP3 player that’s better than my current MD.
Mmm….i like the random quotes generator at bottom…
“I was marking the test, and well, the tests were quite sorrowful.”
I like the quotes!
QUOTES!!!!!!!
And yes, everything we already discussed at school…dual-Intel….blahblahblah…
you should read the article at Macworld.com about the “2x – 4x” claims of the macbook pro.