The real reason behind this rant, is the new $799 iMac. Back when a new low-level Mac was over $2000, his emulation product made sense for some people. When the iMac was introduced in 1998, the price was $1300 each, still high to run one or two old programs. In a few months, MacMall will probably sell the new iMac/350 with an extra 64Mb of RAM for $800. Older iMac models (and even used G4s) are well under $1000 each. A Macintosh that can run MacOS 9 or OS X on a real G3/G4 chip for that price, kills his market. A used iMac/233 $500 all-in-one machine can take up little space to run the few Mac applications a PC-only company or school needs. Connect it to an ethernet PC network (with its 10/100 port) and give it an IP address. It can run MacOS 8.6 or 9 and older/current Mac titles. Add in 64MB of RAM ($70 now), and it should run MacOS X (1.0) and all the newest software. Why buy a slow emulation program? I believe his SoftMac product costs $300 and requires a $100 ROM ISA card. Apple has priced many of their new hardware products (and at the same time their older products in the used market) into the sub-$1000 range. Some of the original iBooks are even breaking this barrier. Can his SoftMac emulation software run on a notebook? Not quite.
The use of USB, IDE hard drives, VGA ports, PC100 RAM, Firewire (on some models) and so on makes many pieces of hardware cross-platform. No need to throw out that PC monitor or hard drive. A used $900 G4/350 in a PC company or school can use PC parts to run Mac titles or OS X at speeds a 900Mhz Pentium running Mac emulation would dream of. Especially if it is Photoshop - even the Windows version.
A low cost Mac puts him out of business. Why would he put the effort into PowerPC emulation if all PowerPC hardware is so cheap?
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The real reason behind this rant, is the new $799 iMac. Back when a new low-level Mac was over $2000, his emulation product made sense for some people. When the iMac was introduced in 1998, the price was $1300 each, still high to run one or two old programs. In a few months, MacMall will probably sell the new iMac/350 with an extra 64Mb of RAM for $800. Older iMac models (and even used G4s) are well under $1000 each. A Macintosh that can run MacOS 9 or OS X on a real G3/G4 chip for that price, kills his market. A used iMac/233 $500 all-in-one machine can take up little space to run the few Mac applications a PC-only company or school needs. Connect it to an ethernet PC network (with its 10/100 port) and give it an IP address. It can run MacOS 8.6 or 9 and older/current Mac titles. Add in 64MB of RAM ($70 now), and it should run MacOS X (1.0) and all the newest software. Why buy a slow emulation program? I believe his SoftMac product costs $300 and requires a $100 ROM ISA card. Apple has priced many of their new hardware products (and at the same time their older products in the used market) into the sub-$1000 range. Some of the original iBooks are even breaking this barrier. Can his SoftMac emulation software run on a notebook? Not quite. The use of USB, IDE hard drives, VGA ports, PC100 RAM, Firewire (on some models) and so on makes many pieces of hardware cross-platform. No need to throw out that PC monitor or hard drive. A used $900 G4/350 in a PC company or school can use PC parts to run Mac titles or OS X at speeds a 900Mhz Pentium running Mac emulation would dream of. Especially if it is Photoshop - even the Windows version. A low cost Mac puts him out of business. Why would he put the effort into PowerPC emulation if all PowerPC hardware is so cheap?