When to buy a powerbook

I am a high school senior looking to buy a powerbook to use at college for webdesign. I code by hand and would probably use macromedia fireworks for graphic design. I have been looking at the 12 inch model and with a education discount i good get the superdrive for $1500. When would be the next major upgrades on the hardware. Should I wait till next summer to buy it or buy it when I see a good deel.

 

I'd wait till next year, the new Intel chips are coming out then. They might be a lot faster and some newer programs may not work with the present processors only with the intels.

 

The PPC hardware will still be long supported for the coming years (5+.) No company in their right mind would make their software only compatible with the Intel processors in that time period, because most people will still have their PPC machines running for another good 5-8 years. On the contrary, I *WOULD* be concerned about older software for PPC not running on the Intel processors, if development for that application has ceased.

The Intel chips might be faster, but you would have to wait 1-2 years (he said some models will switch to Macintel in 2006, others in 2007.)

 

I thouhgt the logic of business is to make you to buy new things instead of supporting old ones. How I can be made to believe Apple is different?

 

For starters, most software is made by 3rd party companies, who just want to sell or get you to use their software, so they will make both PPC and x86 versions so that they can maximize profit.

Furthermore, Apple doesn't want to alienate PPC Mac users more than they already have by switching to Intel CPUs, future versions of Mac OS for a long time to come, and other programs like iTunes, iLife, Quicktime, etc. will again, be supported for years to come on the PPC platform.