Filed under: Hardware, iBook, iMac
Estimating a Mac's lifespan
I'm pretty sure we've all experience the same hesitation when buying new Mac: snap one up now, or wait until a new model arrives? And when will that new model arrive?Mactactic tires to eliminate some of the guesswork by estimating a model's shelf life. For instance, right now the Airport Extreme is rated a "buy," as it's brand new, and the Mac Pro is rated "Caution: May be updated."
It's all based on guessing, of course, but still fun.
Thanks, Brady!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Raymond Brigleb said 5:42PM on 2-16-2007
Hasn't MacRumors been doing that forever now?
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
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Brady J. Frey said 5:46PM on 2-16-2007
You're welcome:) Tom Hesser at http://maccentricsolutions.com/ gave me the tip off first!
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Dave Barnes said 6:04PM on 2-16-2007
And, MacRumors has a lot more data to help you make a more informed decsion.
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mactactic said 7:52PM on 2-16-2007
I've posted about macrumours vs mactactic on the blog at mactactic:
http://mactactic.com/blog/2007/feb/16/mactactic-vs-macrumors/
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Brady J. Frey said 8:23PM on 2-16-2007
I like MacRumors as much as the next, but you have to admit it's almost sinfully ugly to look at - Mactactic atleast is more appealing a read, and that's worth a lot from print to web reading... especially in a mac world. About all that macrumors has is, well, linking to rumors - Mactactic could do that by publishing the recent RSS feeds of every major news site right under the device if they wanted too (hint):)
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mactactic said 8:29PM on 2-16-2007
Heh - thanks for the advice Brady :)
When I've found an article that pertains directly to a model, I'll link it. If you click on the 5th gen ipod at the bottom of the homepage, there's a link to an Ars article.
I could always pull an RSS feed with some filters though. I only actually finished the site about 5 days ago, so there's still a lot of scope for change and development.
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proton said 11:20PM on 2-16-2007
Pity they haven't even verified their data:
The Mac Pro was not released July 8th, 2006 as they claim, but on August 7th, 2006.
Messing up US-style and rest-of-the-world-style dates can be a problem.
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wim said 6:21AM on 2-17-2007
That is shelf-life span. What about a real life span estimate? Would Leopard support G3 macs, many of which still being very useful and relyable computers?
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ncc said 2:44PM on 2-18-2007
Well, it's french, but consomac.fr has been doing this for ages, and has usually been pretty accurrate - thanks to this site, I've postponed my Mac Book Pro purchase until sept 2006 and got a Core2Duo for the price of a CoreDuo !
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Macintologist said 1:21PM on 2-18-2007
Yes, Macrumors has done the same thing, but this new website is much prettier.
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