Playing for the other side?

Evil Phil

With the advent of the ipod (currently have a creative zen which is not as good imho) and from using mac's for testing purposes I've decided to spend some of my hard earned cash and invest in an ibook.

*gasp*

Thing is I don't want to go and spend 2 grand+ on something I've no real idea how to use, so I'm thinking of 1.42gz Power PC G4. I know Safari rocks, I'm already using iTunes and could use the Mac for lots of other things, photo editing etc.

Thing is I'm a windows/.Net developer. Considering how well Apple seem to design everything they do I'm dying to use Xcode 2 and I want to learn Objective-C. What I want to know is will the above machine run Xcode 2 reasonably well? I'm planning on getting 1gb of RAM. If not what machine would be good enough.

Oh yeah, VAT doesn't apply to me as I'm self-employed.

Oriel

Does it need to be portable?

Oriel

Actually, what am I thinking. Don't buy an iBook now! Apple are going to be updating the iBook with Intel chips in the near future (looking more like the late spring time). See what they come out with then.

If you don't need anything portable, then you're best going for a desktop machine, the Intel iMac are out now, or even the Mac Mini which you can carry from place to place quite easily.

Chardee MacDennis

i would say the ibooks (or MacBook) will be released on their april 1st announcement. hang on till at least then. also remember if you are going to buy an intel mac that not much software will run natively on them at the moment and you will have to use rosetta (an emulator that comes with the intel macs). Rosetta is a very memory hungry programme so if you plan on using a few mac programs that arent "Universal" you will need at least 1 gb of ram.

remember this is still the transition period so i am going to wait until at least late 2006/early 2007 to upgrade my powerbook. You may also pick a powerpc ibook up for cheap post april 1st. so dont decide anything until you've heard apple's announcement.

Evil Phil

Portable is handy, size is very convienent. All of the desktop space available at home is taken up with my pc. It was going to be the end of the month before I bought one anyway, reckon I'll hang on a couple of weeks more and see if the prices drop.

Oriel

Then think about the Mac mini - you can still carry it around with you, and you already have a keyboard and mouse.

CrowdedHouse

Call_me_al wrote:

i would say the ibooks (or MacBook) will be released on their april 1st announcement. hang on till at least then. also remember if you are going to buy an intel mac that not much software will run natively on them at the moment and you will have to use rosetta (an emulator that comes with the intel macs). Rosetta is a very memory hungry programme so if you plan on using a few mac programs that arent "Universal" you will need at least 1 gb of ram.

remember this is still the transition period so i am going to wait until at least late 2006/early 2007 to upgrade my powerbook. You may also pick a powerpc ibook up for cheap post april 1st. so dont decide anything until you've heard apple's announcement.

Thanks - I was wondering about this.I've been thinking of getting a Mac/ iBook as well,but I've heard that Photoshop CS2 crawls on the Intel Macs.

Is it likely that Apple will 'sell off' powerPC iBooks when the Intels are introduced ?

Chardee MacDennis

apple may do but look out in shops for cheap prices, also ebay (where i got my powerbook new saving 800 euro) but with the 1gig of ram it flies apparently and when a universal binary comes out it should be significantly faster. so in the long run intel will be the way to go but i then again adobe have said they will not be releasing a intel binary till their next verion (CS3 presumably). so its 6 of one and a half dozen of the other