There
have been widespread rumors on the Internet about Apple possibly
introducing Intel-based PowerBooks and/or iBooks in January. It's
true that the iBooks and 12" PowerBook are getting tired, although
they're still competitive with PC offerings.
I recently recommended a 12"
PowerBook to a friend - not because I want to get more people
using a Mac, but because it simply offered him a better value than
most PC laptops in the same price range.
For instance, PowerBooks all have dedicated video memory,
whereas most inexpensive PC laptops share system memory for video.
The PowerBook is also lighter and smaller than just about all the
PC laptops he looked at.
He didn't want to purchase a Dell or IBM, because that would
involve waiting for the machine, and he needed it by a specific
date. That pretty much left HP and Toshiba, both of which can be
purchased in stores.
When compared to the PowerBooks - and even iBooks - none of
these machines can match them in terms of size, durability, and
features. Sure, some come with more RAM, but RAM can be added
easily. Others have bigger screens, but you lose the "small and
light" feature.
And then there's the software that comes with the Mac -
GarageBand, iPhoto, iCal, and more.
Transitions
The ultimate question is whether Intel-based PowerBooks would
they be more competitive with Windows laptops - or would transition
issues end up damaging Apple's reputation for making a quality
laptop?
Think about the issues with the release of Mac OS X in 2001. The
high-end machines at that time were 500 MHz dual processor G4 Power Macs, and
500 MHz G3 iMacs made up the
low-end of Apple's lineup.
At that time, Mac OS X 10.0 was slow on the G4s and positively
impossible on a G3. Version 10.1 was better but still very slow on
the hardware of the time - and on older hardware it was even more
painful without a ton of RAM and a fast hard drive.
OS X 10.2's Quartz Extreme helped things a bit, but that only
worked if you had a machine with 16 MB of video memory - basically
the Power Mac G4s, as the PowerBooks, iBooks, and iMacs weren't
supported.
The other problem was software: Most software in 2001 didn't
work natively with Mac OS X, and using Classic mode was slow
and quirky.
Apple decided to ship even the relatively underpowered G3-based
Macs with OS X 10.1, although they also booted into OS 9,
so using OS X was optional.
When they dropped support for OS 9 with the introduction of
the 12" and 17" PowerBooks in 2002, OS X still was fairly slow
and still had relatively few applications that ran natively - and
those that did were rarely compelling upgrades.
Both Photoshop and QuarkXpress were far behind, and Microsoft's
Office v. X was little different from Office 2001 aside from
it's OS X support. The slowness and lack of applications
combined to frustrate users, and I know a number of people's
negative attitude toward the Mac was based on the OS X transition
experience.
There were two main problems with the transition. The developers
didn't jump on board quickly enough with native software, and the
actual operating system was too far ahead of the hardware that it
had to run on.
Now that the hardware has caught up, that's no longer an issue.
OS X runs very quickly on my G5 - and even my two-year-old
12" PowerBook G4 runs it
reasonably speedily with enough RAM.
The Intel Transition
The developer issue is going to be a problem for the Intel
transition. It's all well and good if we've got Intel PowerBooks,
but if there's no native software to run on them, they're as good
as useless.
The problem that exists for developers is fairly obvious: If the
new software is made Intel-only and has compelling reasons to
upgrade, the people buying new hardware will buy it - but the
software companies will lose a lot of sales from people who just
bought PowerPC hardware.
Mac OS X already runs well on Intel processors, so speed
shouldn't be an issue. However, bugs probably will be. For those
who don't remember the first PowerPC version of the Mac OS, System
7.1.2, it was ridiculously buggy and pretty much existed only so
that the Power Macs could be launched before System 7.5 was ready
(it came out the following year).
It would probably serve Apple well to introduce the Intel 'Books
slowly. For instance, still sell G4-based PowerBooks and iBooks
while also offering an Intel version. Then slowly phase out the
PowerPC models as the popularity of Intel-Mac software grows and
the bugs get worked out.
This would help prevent Apple from accepting too much blame for
any issues that may come up and give consumers the option to choose
which platform they want to use - Intel for future compatibility or
PowerPC for compatibility with the past.
As for my friend, he hasn't chosen a laptop yet. Right now it's
the hard drive size issue that's holding him up - 60 GB in the
iBooks isn't enough, 80 GB in the PowerBooks is fairly small, and
he doesn't want to wait for a build-to-order 'Book. Perhaps there's
another issue that Apple could address in the Intel modelsÖ.
