"Take Control of Buying a Mac" Updated to Cover Intel Macs -- At Macworld Expo in San Francisco last month, Steve Jobs surprised everyone who was considering a new Macintosh purchase by announcing the release of the first Intel-based Macs: the iMac and the MacBook Pro. Until then, most people thought the transition would happen more slowly, but now it looks as though the entire Macintosh product line will have Intel CPUs by the end of 2006.

What does that do to your plans for buying a new Mac this year? For many people, it throws a monkey wrench into the works, since it's impossible to know exactly when Apple plans to release more Intel-based Macs and if those new Macs will have annoying quirks. Plus, there's a performance hit when running existing PowerPC-only applications with the Rosetta translation technology; it makes no sense to switch to Intel now if you need maximum performance from software that hasn't yet been released in universal binary form. But at the same time, the raw speed of the Intel-based iMac with universal binary code is very good, and it's now clear that we'll see new PowerPC-based Macs for only so much longer. What to do? Take a step back, breathe deeply, and pick up a copy of my just-updated "Take Control of Buying a Mac." There's an old saying that if you give a man a fish, you have fed him for today, whereas if you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime. That's my goal with "Take Control of Buying a Mac" - neither I nor anyone else outside Steve Jobs's office can tell you exactly what Apple will release next, but you can use the historical trends and release schedules outlined in the ebook to make an informed guess about what will happen next. The ebook also helps you think through the decisions about which Mac will best meet your needs, whether it's a PowerPC- or Intel-based Mac, laptop or desktop, PowerBook or iBook. So if the new Intel-based Macs have you confused about what to buy next, eliminate your confusion with "Take Control of Buying a Mac."

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