If you think buying a personal computer is tough now, just wait. Next month Apple Computer is expected to introduce the successor to the Macintosh. Eventually, choosing between the Mac and the PC should get easier -- but for a year or so the new wrinkle in the number of choices may add a wrinkle to buyers' brows.
Apple's new machine will almost certainly retain the Macintosh name and will use a version of the internal software that gives the Mac its on-screen personality. But it will no longer be built around the Motorola 68000 family of microprocessors that Macs have used for a decade. The "engine" will be a new chip called the PowerPC, jointly developed by Apple, Motorola -- and IBM, Apple's longtime nemesis.
Apart from moving to a speedier chip, Apple's larger strategy is to make the Macintosh more like a PC. The company is even considering licensing the Macintosh internal software, which would lead to Mac clones and PCs that could run Mac programs. Ultimately, the blurring of the lines between Macs and PCs would probably be good for all computer owners, because your choice of computer wouldn't forever dictate the programs you could and couldn't run as it does today. In the meantime, anyone in the market for a personal computer will have to sort out not just whether to buy a Mac or a PC but whether to buy an old Mac or to wait until the new ones become affordable, whether to think about a PC based on the 486 chip or on its high-octane successor, the Pentium.
For now, ordinary users can ignore both the PowerPC Mac and the Pentium machines. They simply aren't necessary, little software actually takes advantage of their extra muscle and they cost at least $1,000 more than the $2,000 486 PCs and Macs sufficient for most home and small-office users. Those who can profit from the Pentium chip (like computer network managers) or the PowerPC (like desktop publishing specialists) know what they need. The tough choices will be at the lower end, where people have always had a hard time picking a Mac or a PC.
Paring an advantage. The Mac may soon lose the "ease of use" ground it has always held. One reason Macs are easier to use is because the hardware is married to the software. As opposed to the laissez- faire IBM-type PC market, in which hundreds of manufacturers from tiny garage operations to Fortune 500 corporations assemble PCs from off-the-shelf parts, the Mac is made solely by Apple. That has let the company keep prices high and retain more control over how the Mac's internal software meshes with hardware, inside and outside the system. To add a CD-ROM drive to a Mac, you plug it into the back and load some software. With the PC, you also have to open up the machine, insert a circuit board and likely fiddle with tiny switches.
But PCs are fast catching up. Microsoft's Windows already gives them a similar look and feel. The next version of Windows, due later this year, will make them even more Mac-like and will recognize a wider range of hardware and software because of a set of built-in "rules," collectively called Plug and Play, that were developed by Compaq, Intel and Microsoft to make hardware work as smoothly with Windows as it does with the Macintosh. If you're interested in buying a PC, you'd be wise to hold off until fall, when Plug and Play hardware will be widely available and Pentium machines will cost closer to $2,000.
On the Apple side, however, this spring will be a season in which to harvest bargains. Apple has slowly been bringing its prices in line with PCs from major players like Compaq and IBM, and as the PowerPC comes into play, price cutting on current Macs will accelerate. Earlier this month, for example, the company cut another $200 to $300 off its mainstream Quadra Macs, which will be upgradeable to PowerPC Macs for $700 to $2,000. Another reason to consider a Mac now is that it will be able to run DOS and Windows programs well for the first time, thanks to a $500 486-powered board you can add to an existing Quadra 610 or Centris 610 or get with a new system starting next month. Now people who wanted to buy a Mac but were nervous about being shut out of the IBM world can rest easy.
Apple's PowerPC machine will straddle the Macintosh and the IBM worlds. It will come with new internal software to exploit programs designed around the PowerPC chip and a version of the internal software in existing Macs to run old Mac programs (which, because they weren't created with the PowerPC in mind, won't perform as impressively). The machine will also be able to run DOS and Windows programs (again without the performance advantage) if you buy Insignia Solutions' SoftWindows, an as-yet unpriced program that will mimic Windows on the new Macs.
If PCs become easier to use and can run Macintosh software, and Macs become cheaper and can run PC software, the two computer families will become more interrelated. Which cousin you prefer will become an irrelevancy. And life will become just a bit simpler.
