Slashdot Mirror
New Apples Next Week
Vicissidude writes "CNN/Money reports: 'Apple may be gearing up to unveil a new slate of mini-Macs and may also release updated versions of its popular iBook laptop computers as early as next Tuesday, according to unconfirmed reports on a Web site that tracks Apple.' The Web site Think Secret reported three new Mac mini and two new iBook part numbers have appeared in Apple's retail database, indicating that new models are imminent. Apple would neither confirm nor deny the reports. The new mini models will be priced at $499, $599 and $699, with new iBooks priced at $999 and $1,299, according to the original story at Think Secret."
Increased memory, check.
Slight CPU jump, check.
Updated graphics card, check.
Looking back at all the posts lamenting how everyone and their grandma would buy a Mini if only it had slightly higher specs, apple should be seeing a whole lot of purchases from the slashdot crowd.
I've got my money ready. Do you?
"to unveil a new slate of mini-Macs..."
They're called a "Mac mini" not a "mini-mac".
-Imidazole
Hilarious Office Prank!
Au Contraire...
The PPC platform isn't dying.
There are still some new PPC products in the pipeline, and when the intel based macs come out, there won't be a noticible difference for the end user, as all apps will include both X86 and PPC binary code.
I refuse to engage in a duel of wits with the unarmed.
I thought the same thing, but it does seem far to soon for that (I doubt they would go sooner than the 2006 estimation, besides the fact that they want ample time for software developers to adapt).
That being said, there was much speculation that the mini would be the first to change, and the ibook would also be a good candidate.
It's modern marketing miracle.
Apple updates it's retail databases, the news gets spread from one end of the web to the other.
Dell and MS marketing execs probably spend many a sleepless night trying to figure out how they can come up with something with nearly the same cost to value ratio.
If they're smart, they'll put eSATA ports on the new Mac Minis for attaching external storage. Yes, you can put attach external storage thru the usb2 and firewire ports but requiring usb and firewire bridgeboards on the external drives ups the cost of external storage considerably. What would be really cool is some kind of modular external storage device that the Mac Mini would connect directly to and get rid of the inboard disk drive and replace it with flash memory instead.
Is what Fox-style journalism has done to the news world? CNN no longer does its own reporting and relies on rumors posted on the web site of a university student? Granted, Think Secret has been amazing accurate, so much so that Apple has sued them, but it is after all a rumor site run by a university student. CNN pays reporters to investigate stories, they shouldn't be reporting them from rumor sites without additional facts to corroborate them.
Mac Mini not far behind
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
it doesn't matter what you believe
it only matters what actually happens. and in the same situation before. Mac 68k to mac PPC the dual binaries stayed in place for years. even until 2001 seven years after ppc first started to come in there were still many 68k ppc FAT apps made for 68k macs.
when next was multiple cpu too the binaries across many platforms stayed in place for years.
what, is a developer going to go "oh there are 7% of mac users using intel macs now it's a year after they were introduced, let us drop PPC support even though it is 93% of our market. yeeeeeeah thats smart.
intel macs wont even contain a majority of macs until maybe 4 years after the changeover.
How is the above flamebait?
Apple is unlike any other tech company in the way news of it's new products gets spread.
as all apps will include both X86 and PPC binary code.
The future will tell, but my bet is that it won't be true. PCC will be dropped like a hot stone.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
How long until the Intel machines come out? If it's over a year and someone is planning to buy a Mac for this year/school year, do you really expect them to wait for some revolutionary Intel processor? Chances are it won't be /that/ much faster anyways.
.. since $500 for an annual developer subscription just to get the right to buy a $1000 intel mac is a bit steep. I'll make it back in sales by reassuring people about my games' upgrade path, but i love my mini and would just like the same thing with an Intel.
Ball matching game for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/atlantis/
"PCC will be dropped like a hot stone. "
Will be?
All serious PPC development has ground to a complete halt. Anyone who says differently is either delusional or trying to keep people from leaving the platform.
Any work done on PPC code right now is throwing very expensive development money out the door. No one but the biggest developers are going to bother keeping two different types of Macs around just for testing.
If you are an Apple developer, you are looking at the earliest possible time to dump your PPC support - no matter what you are telling your customers.
that they won't buy a Mac now because next year Macs will have x86 CPU.
Ok, but the x86 Mac + Rosetta will be able to run PPC software smothly?
If no, the new Mac will have to wait a little to have their software base enlarged.
Obviously, if Rosetta works very well...
Since when is quoting rumor site reporting. It may well be true we'll see updates from Apple next week, since it has been a while since the last updates, but to call quoting Think Secret reporting shows how little CNN has to do with journalism. The other evidence of the death of journalism at CNN is seen in their cheeleading of Bush as he led America into the war crime that is the war in Iraq.
There are tens of millions of PPC users. It would be completely illogical for companies to suddenly dump all PPC code just to market to (virtually) nobody with x86 macs. PPC support is not going to just disappear anytime soon.
Unless these are Intel machines, I won't buy. Sorry, I don't want to invest in a dying platform. I'm no Intel fan (more an AMD fan, and I loved the PowerPC), but buying a Gx Mac now is thrown away money. Whatever Steve says, I don't believe that binaries will stay Intel/PowerPC for very long.
Well, let's assume they won't stay Intel/PowerPC for more than 5 years. So what? Your 2005 machine will have hard time running 2010 software anyway - Intel/PowerPC switch has nothing to do with it. You won't room "Doom III" or even MacOS 10.4 with all features on a '2000 iBook.
Why do I assume 5 years period? I estimate it from similar situation with 68k/PowerPC switch. The first PowerPC Macs were introduced in spring 1994. The last 68k Macs were discontinued in spring 1996. So it was two years of dual CPU hardware - and further two years when software ran on both CPUs (Apple dropped 68k support in MacOS in 1998). Mactels are not to be expected before 2006. This gives me this 1+2+2 formula. Of course, it's just a guess but the bottom line is that every platform is a dying platform - no matter what you buy now, it will be obsolete in 5 years, anyway...
"Whatever Steve says, I don't believe that binaries will stay Intel/PowerPC for very long."
Try thinking about it in the most practical terms possible.
1. PPC Macs are going to dominate the market for years . The Mac market is going to be 100% PPC-based for another year. After that, PPC Macs will greatly outnumber Intel Macs for 4 or 5 years; possibly longer. Mac owners tend to hold onto their machines for a long time. The hundreds of millions of existing PPC Macs aren't going anywhere.
2. Creating "fat" dual Intel/PPC binaries is easy. With XCode it's only a mouse click away in most scenarios. In fact, I think the latest version of XCode creates dual binaries by default. So it would actually require effort to not create dual binaries, if I'm not mistaken. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
So. What is your reasoning again? Why would Mac developers ignore the majority of their market when supporting them takes no effort? I'm no Apple loyalist; I haven't owned an Apple computer since my IIgs, so if anybody is wary about being burned by a lack of Apple support it's me. But I would have no problem buying a PPC Mac today... in fact, as soon as I have some money I hope to pick up a Mini for testing purposes.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
OK, so i'm an apple fanboi, but one with some perspective i'd like to think. But, I'm fed up with Apple advertising machines with too little RAM as standard, combo drives instead of SuperDrives as standard, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth as extras, etc. I know it reduces the sticker price for their advertising, but once you add on these extras, which lets face it are pretty much standard on most portables these days, the price is a hell of a lot higher - almost double when looking at the Mac mini.
Apple should be pushing the minimal spec upwards, not stripping everything off so that it can get it's headlines saying *Mac's are now affordable*
The kind of people who are prepared to put down the cash for a Mac are prepared to pay that bit extra, but walking into a store thinking you're going to spend £350 to get a machine that does everything you've heard about and find out that it's actually closer to £500 or £600 (can't be arsed to check the exact prices atm), is disappointing. It makes me think of Dell and other company's tactics. If you know from the start you're looking at almost double that then you can budget for it easier.
I took a friend and their kids to the Apple store and they came out wanting a Mac mini because they thought that it was under £350. Once I'd factored in the SuperDrive (for making DVD's), Airport (for using it in the bedroom upstairs) - because you can't fit it yourself and bluetooth because if you're having the Airport installed you might as well and all kids these days have Bluetooth capable phones and some extra RAM as 256 Mb just isn't enough, it was a *LOT* more. I opted for a good 3rd party TFT display from elsewhere (19" TFT for £179), as Apple seem to think that plonking down £550 for their entry level display is fine for everyone. I'm glad that they reduced the price of the keyboards after the mini came out. I had to buy one for my Powerbook for nearly £50, now they're about £20 i think.
So, to wrap up my rant, up the minimum spec and put the price up *a bit* to make up for it. removing the need for build to order for simple and very popular options should have some benefits of scale to reduce the need to gouge everyone for a bit a ram, a modern optical drive and some wireless comms, or at least make it easier for people to actally install or swap out these components like most PC vendors do.
I was told that my LCIII would run OS 8 and PowerPC upgrade cards would be made for it. I was also told that my Lime iMac would run OS X with graphics acceleration. Now I am told my iBook will be compatible with future Apple software. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me three times, damn that reality distortion field really works.
It's redundant because we've been seeing the same post over and over and over again on every Mac story!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There's no way I'd buy a G4, but I'm planning to get a G5 iMac very soon. And I'm looking forward to it not just because it's a great computer, but also because 10 years from now it'll be an interesting bit of computing history to have in my collection.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
from Aspyr:
Minimum System Requirements
Doom 3 runs on any iMac G5, or any Mac that meets the requirements below
# Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3.8 or later
# CPU Processor: PowerPC G4/G5 or later
# CPU Speed: 1.5GHz or faster
# Memory: 512 MB or higher
# Hard Disk Space: 2.0GB free disk space
# Video Card (ATI): Radeon 9600 or better
# Video Card (NVidia): GeForce FX5200 or better
# Video Memory (VRam): 64 MB
# Media Required: DVD Drive
Recommended System Requirements
Doom 3 runs best on a Power Mac G5 2.0 GHz or faster
# CPU Processor:PowerPC G5
# CPU Speed:2.0GHz or faster
# Video RAM:128MB
Don't think a mini will be there anytime soon...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I wouldn't buy one of the new Intel macs until they've been out for two years. Who wants a brand new platform that isn't entirely supported yet?
The first intel mac won't be out until next year. That means I wouldn't buy an intel mac until three years from now.... which is of course when I'd feel like buying a new computer anyway.
The last PPC machines Apple makes are going to be classics. Completely perfected machines, all the bugs worked out, run today's software for the next five to ten years.
But then, I'm a mac user. We actually use our computers to get work done. The theoretical value of the total market availability isn't as important to me as whether I turn out my work today. If it were, I wouldn't be on a Mac in the first place.
Apple's developer tools only allow a compile for PowerPC, or PowerPC+Intel.
I fully expect in 5-10 years time that applications will still be coming in fat binaries with PowerPC and Intel support.
Because Apple's libraries abstract things like SIMD and so on, the PowerPC part will probably still be reasonably optimised.
One thing that will drop quickly is extreme PowerPC optimisation though.
As far as I am concerned, buying one of these new iBooks or Mac Minis will be buying an extremely tried and tested platform that has been proven for years. I certainly wouldn't want to buy an Intel based Mac next year whilst it is at Revision A.
you realize the reason developers can get the intel based Mac today is so that when you, the consumer, gets one it will run your software. if Apple released it Tuesday there will be a lot of software not working. i think a lot of people would be pissed if they bought a new Mac and the only software it could run were most of the stock Apple apps and maybe firefox. granted that is all a lot of people use, but still. even the companies that are "ready" for the switch have not released the software to the public yet.
Hopefully these mac minis will be a step up from the current offering... i would be interested in an available dual layer dvd+-rw. a bit more proc power, another 256megs of ram, and bigger hard disk would be nice upgrades too, but to me the dual layer drive is key. if i can configure a mac mini w/ the drive for under $600, a new mac owner i will soon be...
No consumer computer hardware is 'future proof'.
In fact, it is the platform, not the hardware, that defines how future proof a bit of hardware is. In this case, Apple and Mac OS X and a lot of supported good software that will be PowerPC enabled for at least 5 years, and even if it ever went Intel-only (for Mac OS X, Applications, etc) the platform is still there.
Sounds pretty future proof to me. If you need a laptop running Mac OS X, then next week's iBooks are a great option regardless of the hardware.
"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me three times, damn that reality distortion field really works."
You must surely mean:
There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says: "Fool me once..."
[pause]
"... shame on...".
[pause]
"Shame on you..."
[pause]
"If fooled, you can't get fooled again."
- your friend, George W. Bush
Seriously. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Apple, but to have a /. article everytime Apple farts is pretty bad. Worse though is having a /. article everytime ThinkSecret thinks Apple is going to fart. (Followed of course by an article a day later confirming that yes Apple did infact fart.)
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
You guys don't really know your Apple history, do you? When Apple made the transition from 68k to PPC, every application imaginable was released in fat binaries for several years afterwards, meaning that people running both processors were fully supported throughout the transition. When Apple moved to OSX, OS9 users were given ample time to make the switch, with measures such as the Carbon libs and Classic mode easing the way.
Face it - Apple has a history of supporting their legacy customers for as long as is technically and financially feasable, and the developers have generally gone along with this. Your imagined examples of non-support notwithstanding, there's just no evidence to suggest that either Apple or its developers would just suddenly drop PPC support the moment the first Intel Mac rolls off the production line. As has been stated before, there's going to be a majority of PPC Macs in users' hands for at least the next five to six years. No software company in their right mind would just abandon that market for convenience sake.
Calm down. A PPC iBook purchased this year will suit you perfectly well for the next five years. That being said, you can always wait another year for the latest and greatest. Then you could wait another year for the latest and greatest. Then you could wait another year for the latest and greatest. Then you could wait another year for the latest and greatest. Then you could wait another year for the latest and greatest...
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
Apple has always, and apparently still is taken with selling hardware that will only last two years at most.
I guess all those people who get five years or more out of their Macs must be hallucinating, then?
I bought a Power Mac 7600 in 1996, and it was my primary machine until 2002. Over the years I added RAM and a USB card and threw a G3 upgrade into it, but it was still a viable machine when I replaced it, except from the standpoint of being able to run OS X-- I needed a more recent model to do that. I'm a consultant, so I wanted a machine that would run it as my clients would see it, not with some third-party hack to get it working.
The 7600 was replaced with a used G4/733 from 2001, and that one was just fine until I bought the G5 I'm using now (yes, I only got 2 years out of the G4 as my primary Mac, but it was only ever intended to tide me over until the G5s came out). The G4 is now in my office running Tiger like a champ, and I expect this G5 to last me until nearly 2010.
Apple already successfully managed a CPU transition back in the 90s, and they did it without instantly obsoleting anyone's computer. I have no doubt that this one will go just as well. Mac applications that are written for the Intel processors can be compiled for the PPC by clicking a checkbox, so there's no additional effort or expense required for developers to support both architectures-- and with 5 years worth of PPC-based Macs out in the world (not counting the PPC Macs that can't run the current incarnation of OS X), they'd be crazy to not do so for at least the next five years.
~Philly
1. You're right, PPC will dominate for a while, but I suspect that a larger number of people will be getting new Macs once the Intel Macs come out since they will be so afraid of their PPC Macs becoming quickly outdated. 2. The latest XCode still requires a little hunting to find the checkbox, which is not checked by default. In addition, there is often a bit more to making it cross-platform than checking a little checkbox, particularly when there is code which needs to be different for little endian and big endian. For a Cocoa application, that is minimal, but for Carbon, it takes quite a bit of effort.
Dell and MS marketing execs probably spend many a sleepless night trying to figure out how they can come up with something with nearly the same cost to value ratio.
How about they do something interesting? Apple's news is reported on /. because, rightly or wrongly, Apple is perceived as doing interesting new things, some of which fail and and some of which work. Dell doesn't do much new at all (and makes vast sums doing that, so I'm guessing they're happy in that position.)
--
$tar -xvf
Apple doesn't need to upgrade the iBook line half as much as they need more powerful PowerBooks.
this makes no sense.
the *entire* installed base is running PPC. Unless the very first day Apple ships more macintels than are already out there (i.e. their market share doubles!!), if you're going to ship Mac OS X apps, you're going to have to make damn well sure it runs on PPC, or else only the people adopting macintels are going to be able to run or buy your app.
note that well after win2k etc. was shipped, win95 support was still listed on the boxes of most shipping software (bar those that depended on NT/2k functionality).
Hmm I think you have it wrong there. You see, with Apple's Xcode development platform, all you need to do to compile of PPC and Intel is click both checkboxes. If your application ran in PPC at first, then the developer's guide will help you port to Intel. If you are developing an app right from the start, here is your chance to follow the porting guide and apple programmer guidelines and get your code right the first time. If you had been following apple's guidelines from the beginning then porting to intel is easy.
You don't want to alienate your customers... You want your app to run on both for a long while until PPC becomes obsolete. That's like, 8 years from now considering the higher resale value of macs
Xcode provides the magic to do the compilation twice and package up both programs into the same bundle. This is really just to simplify the user experience. You could just as well offer separate "Photoshop - Mac PPC" and "Photoshop - Mac Intel" products, but that gets annoying to keep track of.
How do you like them Apples?
Once I'd factored in the SuperDrive (for making DVD's), Airport (for using it in the bedroom upstairs) - because you can't fit it yourself and bluetooth because if you're having the Airport installed you might as well and all kids these days have Bluetooth capable phones and some extra RAM as 256 Mb just isn't enough, it was a *LOT* more.
I got an external DVD burner that was DL-capable for less than the superdrive upgrade. Wifi and Bluetooth are available USB, and you're still better off drilling a hole in the floor and running a cable upstairs than using Wifi. The only non-optional upgrade for the Mini, really, is the extra 256M of RAM. That should be in the base unit... but since it's about a 10% price difference that's no biggy.
Personally, I think Apple should bring back the slab. Something like the NeXT slab or the Performa 475, but bigger than the Mini. An eMac without the monitor. Big enough for a 3.5" drive and two RAM slots, and maybe one PCI-Express slot for video. Stick it in between the Mini and the iMac in price.
Will that drive work with iDVD though? Does it qualify as a 'SuperDrive'?
Apple seem to have that a bit nailed down, as another poster has pointed out. That's kind of annoying.
(I mean, if you think about it, having DVD authoring software that refuses to work unless you're using a particular model of DVD drive is a bit 1999, really, isn't it? I'm still not sure why they do this - do they subsidise iDVD development from the money they make selling SuperDrives?)
Yes and sort of.
.iso image in addition to burning straight to the DVD. You can then burn that .iso using disk copy, or even transfer it to another computer that might happen to have a DVD-R drive.
.iso feature shows that Apple is probably catching on to the fact that many people are unhappy with that solution.
Patch Burn is a tiny, simple app that will allow OS X to work with almost any non-supported DVD-R drive. It's free, just download it, run it once, and you're done.
Assuming you don't want to go with patch burn, the new version of iDVD supports outputting an
The only reason Apple really does this with iDVD is compatability issues. I'm not sure about the current revisions, but Superdrives have always been Pioneer DVR-XXX series drives with Apple-designed firmware. I guess Apple was just really keen on maintaining the "experience" by guaranteeing that a DVD drive WOULD work with iDVD. Patch burn has always been a simple way around it, but the introduction of the
NEVER buy a computer for what you think it will do. It probably won't. If the computer you're looking at won't do what you want right now, wait until it will before you buy it.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Isn't the "not checked by default" box the one that says to compile for x86? So by default it compiles for PowerPC, and you can turn on x86 compilation if you want?
PowerPC systems will work for a long, long time. At least as long as the usable life of anything you can buy in the next year.
Cheers.
I'm on a recent model G5 iMac and I bought 2gigs or RAM to slip into the poor beast because I never want to have a system that thrashes.
Nothing is more detrimental to the health of my machine than suddenly going from running at RAM speed to crawling at disk speed.
Seriously, Macs have always been under chipped in this respect.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
When your iBook died, did it make a sound like this: "Beep beep beep"?
Did you lose a paper that you were working on for school? Was it a really good paper, too?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
When NeXTStep went to multiple architectures, most binaries were provided in all architectures, even ones people didn't use (SPARC). My hope is that it will be the same this time around.
Isn't the "not checked by default" box the one that says to compile for x86? So by default it compiles for PowerPC, and you can turn on x86 compilation if you want?
Not quite. The default for builds in Xcode is to build for the architecture of the machine you're running on. So on PowerPC-based Macs, it defaults to PPC on and x86 off. On an Intel Mac, it would default to x86 on and PPC off.
Still, it's braindead simple to make most apps universal. Check the box and you're done, whether you're building on an Intel Mac or a PPC Mac.
I completely agree with you -- PowerPC systems will be actively supported for a long, long time. As a developer, it's incredibly trivial for me to support both platforms. And given the lifespan of the typical Mac, you have to support both platforms because a huge chunk of the potential customer base will on PPC for several years to come.
Actually, yes: for my next desktop I'm waiting for AMD64 dual-core.
Well, most people won't hold off a purchase of a computer because of what is coming down the path 12 months from now. If that were the case, nobody would ever buy a computer.
Most people I know that need to replace their notebook today are not keen on the idea of waiting a year to get a replacement.
If I NEED a replacement today, I'm not going to lose 12 months of productivity because of what might come down the road a year (or even 9 months) from now. There is always something better in the pipeline.
As for Mac OS X, once the initial Universal conversion is made -- I doubt users will even notice the difference. I expect Universals to be around for a long time (at least 5 years) which is longer than the useful life of most computers.
(Except when the Mac Intels finally comes out, I really need a replacement for my iBook)
If you can afford to wait, then do so -- but I think that the PPC-based Macs that come out will be very useful for most folks that need a new computer TODAY.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Fact is that no company, be it Apple or 3rd parties wants to support two different architectures.
Don't video game companies do this every day?
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I have a machine I purchased in early 2002. It replaced a machine I bought in 1997. That machine from 1997 continued to run until I sold it 3rd party in 2004, and I am sure it is still running today. If you wanted to you could run OS X on it, however it requires a 3rd party hack. But OS 9 for someone who hasn't had need to upgrade their software (much like you haven't had need of upgrading your OS) still works just fine. In fact I often wished that I still had that machine for a certain software that I still haven't found a real replacement for yet (and will not work in classic).
As a matter of fact I purchased one of the first PPC machines back in 1995, and it is still in use by the person I sold it to. That is definitely 10 years old, but no it does not run OS X, but the tools that person uses were not upgraded enough for X for it to make sense for him to upgrade.
The only reason I dream of upgrading today is simply for portability. I would love to have a laptop, and while newer machines can do tasks with a bit more spunk than my current machine, it certainly does handle what I need it to do.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Apple has a history of supporting their legacy customers for as long as is technically and financially feasable
No they don't.
Apple has abandoned SCSI and the floppy without any advance notice. Regardless of the merits of this decision, it wasn't very pleasant for those with an investment in SCSI hardware or floppies.
Prior to that was the clones/CHRP experiment. Apple pulled the plug on that one. Also not a lot of fun if you happened to have been following Apple on that.
Very recently, the iPod battery. Battery dead? Buy a new iPod. Great legacy support there as well.
As for software, here the examples of poor legacy support are almost too numerous to mention. QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, Copland, Rhapsody: all of these were unceremoniously dumped by Apple, after they spent years telling developers to invest in it.
So honestly, no, Apple doesn't have a history of "supporting their legacy customers" at all. They have a history of moving on to the Next Big Thing.
I can absolutely confirm this (dammit, I leave Slashdot one day & folks are already posting the answer *I* wanted to give).
As a Mac developer writing software that's in the hands of a not inconsequential number of people, I have on my desk one of the Intel-based Developer Transition Kits. The reason I have this is not because I'm now going to be building Intel-only applications from now on, but because in a year's time, when a client buys a new Mac an it's running on an Intel processor, they will still want to use my software.
As a result, I compile everything as a 'Universal Binary' -- which, to the uninitiated, is a new name for the 'Fat Binary' of yore; in other words, it's got the Intel and the PowerPC binary files concatenated together, with a little table of contents up front.
When I first fired it up, it took me one day to get a quite a few programs (components of one software product) to build & perform perfectly on Intel (one little problem - ntohl() modifying the source operand on Intel processors - caused 80% of the delay, due to it being a bitch to track down) and PowerPC. They even generate various files which can be passed between one another with nary a glitch.
And before people start whinging about applications doubling in size, take a look at the size of the actual program binary itself. Delicious Library is 908Kb. Final Cut Pro is 4.7Mb. Things like Photoshop will undoubtedly be larger, and will therefore be candidates for seperate Intel/PowerPC binaries (i.e. the installer detects what system is running, and installs the appropriate binary). It's worth noting, though, that applications which make heavy use of the OS X frameworks will be smaller, and much more palatable as universal binaries.
In short, as an Apple developer, whose software is installed on hundreds of thousands of Macs, it's actually more work for me to make my software work on intel only - after all, for that I would need to:
-Q