| | <<Graham Barlow, editor of MacFormat magazine, said some people may not buy a new Apple machine knowing that a new processor was coming out next year.
"That must be the worry for Apple retailers. I think it's highly likely there will be some price drops to tempt people to buy the final stocks of PowerPC equipped Macs," he told the BBC News website.>>
It is hard to say what will happen to sales but if I needed a new machine, I wouldn't be worrying about what apple would or would not be putting out in a year or two. Also, if you don't like to buy the first of a new line of machines, then potentially you are waiting for another 6 months to a year. Any machine might be dated by that time anyway, whether apple went to a new chip or not. Well, maybe not since IBM has been so slow about getting the G5 ready for a portable. Maybe the new mactel portable will have been ready before IBM was going to have the G5 ready for a portable. I know I have been holding off waiting for the G5 to go into a portable so for those that have been waiting, you may see some get off the pot and buy. Still difficult to say what will happen. Too many variables. But I think that many that are moaning about this right now might feel differently once some more details come out and they get a chance to think about this thing less emotionally.
Apple will introduce the new machines before Longhorn is available, another positive. I don't think it will affect students buying computers for school, since it usually is a necessity so it shouldn't really affect the school buying season. The holiday season will be interesting and I am guessing we will see some nice deals in order to entice people to buy. I am going to guess that there might be many people who buy the lower price machines to get a look and feel of an apple machine for the possibility of buying a mactel when it comes out.
One last point is that we may possibly see the new machine earlier than what was proposed. Apple already has things working on Intel chips. It all depend on how quickly developers get things going. I think that is the reason why this wwdc forum was tabbed for this announcement. If apple can get its iLife suite ported(or if it is already ported) over sooner rather than later as well as its video software, we may see a limited rollout earlier than expected. I think it might depend on what apple sees happening to sales and again, how the developers have responded to getting things worked out.
Neal |
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