[X4U] Apple's move to Intel chips... It's all about DRM

[Eddie Hargreaves]

On 7/28/05 11:29 AM, Davy Brion <ralinx at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 28 Jul 2005, at 20:06, Eddie Hargreaves wrote:
>
>> Well, I have a 3-year-old Mac that is incompatible with Adobe's  Creative
>> Suite 2, which I would consider the latest software.
>> 
>> I guess the difference is between Apple Pro and Consumer lines. If you
>> purchase a Pro Mac (PowerMac, PowerBook) you can expect it to run  the latest
>> software for 4+ years(?) but if you're using a Consumer Mac (iMac,  eMac, Mac
>> mini, iBook) you will be stuck after about 3 years. You'll usually  be able
>> to use Apple's OS for 5 years, but many of the features won't be  supported
>> (iChat videoconferencing), won't work at all (CoreImage) or will be  too slow
>> to be real usable.
>> 
> so the current iMac (the 'slowest' one is a 1.8Ghz G5) won't be able
> to run the latest and greatest software in a few years which,
> following your logic, a current Powerbook (with a 1.67Ghz G4) will run?
> 
> wow, that's odd... ;)

Well, the iMac has jumped from G4 to G5 while the PowerBook hasn't. So the
G5 iMac kind of falls in-between Pro and Consumer, like the Cube. And
laptops are always less likely to last as long as desktop machines anyway
because it's much harder to upgrade them (CPU, Video Card, etc.)

We have a 1.8GHz G5 iMac, so I certainly hope it will last for 5 years. But
I don't expect to run the latest software after 4 years have gone by.