As anyone who even peripherally follows Apple knows, new Macs are being introduced with Intel chips rather than the PowerPC processors that have been used in the past. When I saw the enhancements made to iLife ‘06, I immediately began wondering when I could afford a new iMac.
That is, until I saw that a new version of Firefox needed to be developed for the Mac-Intel platform. How many other Mac applications are now going to need to be revised for the Intel platform? Are we going to start seeing two versions of every piece of Mac software for a while?
Apple’s website doesn’t give a whole lot of info, other than claiming that you’ll never see Rosetta, a program that allows Mac-PowerPC applications run on the Mac-Intel platform. Just remember to look for the Universal logo when shopping for your new Mac software.
Is anyone else starting to get a little confused? If, like me, you only saw Apple’s marketing info about the new iMac and MacBook Pro, this little detail escaped your attention because you’d have to specifically look for this information to find it.
I think I’ll just hold off thinking about getting an iMac for a while and let others sort out the little mess.
Well, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about the Rosetta thing, but I did write about the PowerPC-to-Intel switch back in June. At that time, I thought everybody was getting antsy in the pantsy prematurely. I still think so.
Comment by Amber — January 16, 2006 @ 11:53 am
Joe - after reading the two Apple pages to which you linked, I wonder what you’re worried about..? Thanks to Rosetta there won’t be compatibility issues to worry about - existing programs will run on the Intel architecture.
Explain your worry, please..?
Comment by Amber — January 16, 2006 @ 11:58 am
Joe,
An entire platform switch is a major deal (this is only the third switch during the company’s entire existence), with some expected speed bumps along the way. Hopefully I can explain this without it being confusing.
Rosetta is a technology that allows programs compiled for PowerPC Macs to run seamlessly on Intel-based Macs (it’s very much like an emulator). The upside is you can run most existing programs on an Intel-based Mac, with the cost being speed. It’s meant as an interim solution until software authors have had a chance to compile their programs for the new Intel platform. Starting in the next couple of months, Mac applications will be released as “universal binaries” (i.e. - compiled for both types of Macs) which will let either a Power PC Mac or an Intel Mac run them.
So, even if there’s no universal binary for Firefox yet, an Intel Mac can still run the Power PC version, it will just be a little slower.
The only programs that won’t make the jump easily are those like Virtual PC that are deeply intertwined with the hardware. Adobe also may be slow to release a universal binary of Photoshop and its other apps.
If you’re doing heavy-duty multimedia authoring, it’d be a good idea to wait a while to buy a new Mac. But if you’re mostly just surfing the web, writing papers, and using iLife, making the jump now should be fine as long as you don’t need to use Virtual PC.
Comment by Rusty — January 16, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
This is very similar to what happened with the switch from Motorola 680×0 processors to PowerPC processors in the mid-90s. Built-in OS extensions (then System 7 and OS
such as CFM-68 allowed programs written for 68k Macs to run on PowerPC Macs. I never noticed a speed issue in any of the apps I used. If there was one, it was negligible.
Like Rusty said, the bigger apps is where you might notice some lag - Photoshop, Quark, etc. And that’s exactly what happened ~12 years ago. Many graphic design companies waited to switch to PowerPCs until after the apps had been ported to native. Similarly, many graphic design companies waited longer than a lot of people/places to switch to OS X - in fact, some still haven’t. There are speed issues that come with Carbon software (which will run natively on either OS 9 or OS X) in contrast to Cocoa software (OS X native only).
These things are common in the industry and typically not a big deal. Just part of business as usual.
Comment by Amber — January 16, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
Delaying the purchase also makes a nice excuse for me to delay spending the money I would need to save up anyway
Comment by Joe — January 16, 2006 @ 4:39 pm
Problems with ProTools software, the company states that thier software WILL NOT work on the intel chiped Macs. I wonder what other apps rosettsa can’t handle???
Comment by Stony — February 19, 2006 @ 1:15 am