I am the proud owner of a PowerPC based Macintosh laptop, a PowerBook to be precise.
My powerbook is three and a half years old, and it is still kicking major ass when it comes to my computing needs. When Apple announced last year that they would be making Macs with Intel chips in them I was a very happy camper, because I knew that when it came time to replace my faithful workhorse I would be able to run other operating systems virtualized and gain many associated benefits.

I also knew, from previous experience, that it would take a while for application to: (1) be Intel only and (2) for PowerPC to be phased out completely. After all, I lived through both the m68k to PowerPC and OS9 to OSX transition periods. In both instances I was able to use everything I needed and I could experiment with applications that I wanted for quite some time after the change was announced. With the m68k transition period it was two or so years before I noticed (and cared!) that there were applications that I wanted to run, but they were PPC only. I kept my original m68k Mac for 5 years before it got to a point where I needed to replace it.

With the Classic to OS X transition, even though I had the 10.0 beta, and I had 10.0 and 10.1 on a partition, I did not feel the need to change until 10.2 came out, even then I took my time. Between release of the beta and my switching to 10.2, it was about two or so years.

Last fall, when I learned the news that Adobe would be making it's light-room software to be Intel only, I thought to myself 'big deal'! I wouldn't even use the software. Yesterday I got an invite for Joost, something I've been waiting for eagerly, but my testing ambitions were cut short when I realized that the Joost beta is Intel only. D'oh! It has only been a year! Should I be noticing applications that I want to use but cannot due to my computer's architecture? I really did not expect that applications would be dumping the PPC platform so fast.

It's a sad day for faithful mac users...