Posted on Tuesday 16 August 2005 - Popularity: unranked
Now over two months since the announcement of Apple to make the transition to Intel based Macs, there are still a lot of questions and misinformation around. This doesnt have to be the case anymore. The MacRumors:Forums have written a great OS X x86 FAQ that answers a lot of the questions that still come up in the different Mac communities. Currently there are answers up for the following questions:
Will Macs switching to Intel processors mean viruses will be coming to Mac? Are my Power-based Macs all obsolete and useless now? Huh? Universal binaries? Can I copy apps from OS X PCC to OS X Intel and vice versa, and will they run on either machine? What about my older PPC apps? What if they’re not recompiled for new Intel Macs? Is this going to be a huge, painful transition? Speaking of which, what the heck are they going to call the PowerMacs and PowerBooks now that we’re moving from Power chips? Will new Macs require the “lawn mower” fans that PCs use? Will Macs continue to use OpenFirmware? Will I be able to run Mac OS X on my Dell? Will I be able to run Windows/Linux/other x86 OS on my Intel Mac? Will it make Windows to Mac ports easier? Will it make games faster? Will we be forced to re-buy software if we want to run x86 native? Will we be forced to run the app in emulation mode? What if the app is G4-G5 only? Why is Apple switching? Will this really be a seamless transition? Will there be an “Intel Inside” sticker on future Macs? What does this mean for Apple’s competition and other groups?
Personally I’m definitely looking forward to the new Macs. While I was never a big fan of Intel CPU’s in the past, even I have to agree that the current Intel roadmap looks really promising, especially for notebook CPU’s. And as long as there’s not an ugly “Intel Inside” sticker on my future Macs, I really don’t care for anything else than the performance and quality of the system as long as it runs OS X.
Fredi
