Apple`s Intels, Changing Macs Forever
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The news that Apple’s Mac computers would be switching from their traditional PowerPC processors to Intel shook the Apple world to its very foundations. The announcement affected everyone differently. That was way back in June last year. Over a month ago we saw the first batch of the new machines on sale, so has Apple delivered?
Initially, some of the prevalent fears were that existing applications would either run badly on the new systems or not at all. Of course, it was a big shock to most that Intel was coming out of Microsoft’s pocket to cater not just for another computer manufacturer, but for a traditional rival of Microsoft.
The question of whether existing software would need to be replaced on the new Intel platform had very little in the way of answers in the immediate period following the announcement. The Apple Mac website is now attempting to clarify the situation with information on two things. New software that is written to run on both the PowerPC and Intel platforms is going to be clearly marked with a new “Universal” logo to denote that the application will run natively on either Mac system.
There’s also Rosetta, an additional software layer that translates software instructions meant for PowerPC processors into instructions understood by the x86 Intel chips, making many applications written for regular Macs run on the new Intel systems. There is also talk of Rosetta being used to run software written specifically for the Intel Macs on the older Macs, although this would make the Universal software initiative seem a bit of a waste of time.
Unfortunately for some, Rosetta is not going to be compatible with all existing software, and for these applications it seems a ‘crossgrade’ to an updated version is going to be required. Final Cut Studio is one such application, with the crossgrade fee’s ranging from $99 for an updated Final Cut Pro 5, all the way up to $699 for an upgrade from versions one, two or three. Additionally, Rosetta is going to impact slightly upon performance, with extra resources being consumed by the emulation layer. While this additional load won’t slow down a word-processing application too much, media-intensive applications are going to feel it.
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