Okay, from the headline I thought this was saying that Apple had bought Freescale, which would have been big news. Since freescale doesn't make G5s, I guess this means that G4 CPUs will be with us all the way until the end of 2008?

That Apple will buy Freescale processors ? Great news. and totally unexpected …
That Apple will stop buying Freescale processors in 2008 ? Zzzzz …
That Apple HAS TO buy G4s until 2008 ? I hope not …
That Freescale is coming up with a "souped up" G4 ? THAT would be news, maybe excellent news, but might need some clarification …
Altogether a bit of very confusing news, as the move to Intel was supposed to apply first to the Mac mini and the notebooks, which are the only ones equipped with G4s …
Maybe the current lines will still be available, along with their Intel counterparts, until 2008 … meaning we might get to have a choice between 6 or 7 different models of laptops and 2 distinct lines of minis … Doubtful, but intriguing …

Just guessing, but this doesn't feel like news. Apple's just locking in prices for CPUs that they *might* need to use to support current ( and future ) service contracts and such. Assume ( think worst case ) that they don't switch the entire low-end and portable line to Intel before the end of 2007. They still want to be able to sell extended AppleCare with those last few machines, don't they? Somewhere in some factory there'll be a single line which retains the ability to punch out a new motherboard, for that service-contract-covered machine. Apple will need a chip to go in it. Not a new kind. The old kind. Not much by the way of news. Typical business stuff. No need to read anything special into this, is there?

Makes since. Since processors go bad and Apple will still have to honor warranty obligations from powerbooks purchased in 2005.

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Guest wrote:
Makes since. Since processors go bad and Apple will still have to honor warranty obligations from powerbooks purchased in 2005.

Maybe they could be developing that ihome thingy we heard so much about a year ago. Tivo doesnt support the macintosh platform anymore. I think the home media option would be another cash cow like the ipod is if apple plays there cards right like they did with the ipod.

Apple said they would complete the transition in 2007. So they shouldn't be shipping any Freescale-equipped Macs in 2008. The warranty theory seems right.

That said, Freescale is working on a souped-up G4 with multiple cores. It's quite possible we'll see this in PowerBooks early next year, and maybe even some other lines. But it doesn't seem like this deal really has much, if anything, to do with that.

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jacrav wrote:
as the move to Intel was supposed to apply first to the Mac mini and the notebooks

dhp

Those assertions are educated guesses. What is clear from SJ keynote is Xserve and PowerMac will be last to transition. iMac G5 should be second last.

Since key reason for transition is performance per watt, an educated guess would be notebooks to transit first. And since it is prudent for Apple to recoup development cost as early as possible, higher price and margin to transit PowerBook first seems logical. Moreover, PowerBook needs an upgrade badly.

There may be good reasons to guess that Apple will transition the low end first, but it seems to have become the conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs stood up on the stage and announced something to that effect. I'm just reminding everyone that he didn't.

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Guest wrote:
Maybe they could be developing that ihome thingy we heard so much about a year ago. Tivo doesnt support the macintosh platform anymore. I think the home media option would be another cash cow like the ipod is if apple plays there cards right like they did with the ipod.

The Pismo Powerbook 2000 was the last and best of the black Powerbook G3's produced by Apple, so I'm looking forward to the last and best of the Powerbook G4's that will be produced by Apple, hopefully a dual-core G4 model. My Pismo has lasted for 5 years, gone through RAM, hard drive and processor upgrades to a 550 Mhz G4 and is still going strong, so I'm hoping the last G4 Powerbook model will be just as durable and become a classic.