I've had a number of friends, aquaintences and co-workers tap me on the shoulder and ask the dreaded question: "I've been thinking about buying a new Mac, but I'm worried about buying a machine that will be obsolete within a year. Should I buy or wait?"

Of course, everyone's situation is different and, unlike cheap mesh-front baseball caps, one size does not fit all, but I'll give you my take on the question.

I think the notion that PPC-based Macs will become obsolete when Intel-based Macs hit the market is pure and utter tripe. A machine's obsolence is measured on its ability to perform the jobs that you wish for it to perform for you. The release of the new Intel-based Macs will have no effect or bearing on whether a machine currently on your desktop is still able to do what it is you want it to do.

As far as I've been able to determine, the Intel-based Macs will not emit a sub-space signal that causes all existing PPC Macs to stop functioning, so I'm not sure why there's all the hand-wringing about PPC machines becoming "obsolete" overnight just because something newer is available.

If you subscribe to that criteria — where a machine becomes obsolete as soon as the next model or speed-bump comes out — well, that makes almost every machine on the planet "obsolete".

Rather, to me, it's not about the hardware becoming obsolete, it's all about the software.

To anyone, like myself, with a fairly heavy investment in current (PPC-compiled) software, the worry shouldn't be about whether a machine you currently (or are about to) own is "obsoleted" simply because newer machines are available, it's whether the software you spent a lot of cash on is going to be obsoleted by the newer systems.

Yes, I know Rosetta is supposed to take care of a lot of that, but it's become clear that Rosetta has limitations (e.g. lack of Altivec support) that could hamper or prevent operation of a lot of the software that I rely upon — particularly in the area of image processing and video editing.

So I'm much less worried about whether PPC boxes will magically become obsolete once Intel boxes ship than I'm worried about whether the software I currently own will run on the new boxes efficiently, or at all.

Therefore, one tactic to protect a hefty PPC-compiled software investment might just be to buy a current PPC-based machine now, or even wait until the last minute (or even see if they drop in price once the Intel-based boxes are available). That way, you have a machine that is guarenteed to run your current software library for the longest period going forth.

Oh, and new software coming out? I'm not too worried about that either. It will take a long time for the Intel boxes to significantly make in-roads into the installed base of PPC boxes. Any developer who doesn't invest the 30 milliseconds it takes to click the little checky-box that compiles a universal binary will be making a large mistake indeed. So I don't see Intel-only software appearing for a long long time.