I just checked and I guess my PowerBook G4 is four years old. When I bought it, it was full price (not a closeout, sadly), and there was no Intel PowerBook option, though one was promised someday. My previous notebook was broken and I had work to do, so I wasn't going to wait for a vaporware computer. Don't get me wrong, it was worth it, I just want to get another couple of years of good use out of it.

Yeah, I understand WHY they're doing it--regression testing of however many million bugs they have against a whole second platform was no doubt getting expensive, especially when they want to focus on performance on the Intel platform. But if they could compile and test on PPC for Tiger and Leopard, why not Snow Leopard? Up until now, OS and compiler support for my PPC has been great. Apple leaving the platform doesn't hurt yet, but it will when the freeware and shareware developers stop compiling for PPC (as many already have for 10.4). I know I could just use Linux full time, but then I wouldn't be using a Mac, would I?

Another Apple tradition gone by the wayside: Apple has long supported their older hardware better than most PC makers. (I still visit classrooms quite happily running Mac OS 8 on old PowerPC hardware, for example.) But the new Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will be the first that will not run on PowerPC Macs. That makes my barely-out-of warranty PowerBook G4 end of line as far as Apple is concerned. I'm not alone in this--I don't know how many million PPC Macs are still running, but Apple was selling them new three years ago. I'm more than a little annoyed. No doubt soon I won't be able to get Apple OS security patches, updates to iLife and iTunes, etc. It's almost like running Windows XP. Fortunately, it's still Mach *nix based, and as long as FOSS developers check their code against the PPC compilers, I can still get current versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

Many posters above assume that computers are no longer necessary for the original purpose (giving students shared access to tools they can't afford to own). That's still the case outside of most universities. At the community college where I teach, almost none of the students have laptops, and many don't have PCs at home. If these students don't get access to computers at school, they don't get access to computers at all. Every semester I meet students who don't have email accounts, who don't know how to retrieve assignments from the web, who can't use a word processor. Even when students with limited income transfer to university, they may lack the resources to purchase their own computers. For many students, a $180 Calculus book is a burden, even with financial aid; few colleges will subsidize purchase of a personal computer. Thus, it would be a mistake to close the labs.

...I can't remember the URL of my website. (It's faster to type my name and hit return than type a long string of semi-meaningless codes.)