Transitive Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system pairs, today announced that founder and Chief Technical Officer Alasdair Rawsthorne has been named an InfoWorld Innovator for 2005. The annual InfoWorld awards recognize individuals whose vision and expertise drive the future of enterprise technology. InfoWorld, a leading provider of technology information, announced the recipients of its 2005 Innovators Awards in the August 1st, 2005 edition of InfoWorld magazine. The article can be found online at http://www.infoworld.com/reports/31SRinnovators2005.html

“Transitive is grateful for this prestigious recognition by InfoWorld,” said Bob Wiederhold, President and CEO of Transitive in a release. “The award signifies that both our innovative technology and business model are well-aligned with a genuine market need for a new class of technology to drive transitions in the computing market.”

“By abandoning business as usual, these honorees are striking new paths to efficiency and reliability across the board …” said Richard Gincel, InfoWorld associate editor. “In turn, we are pleased to honor those who are leading the way with their ingenuity.”

According to the InfoWorld article on Rawsthorne, “Now his biggest challenge is convincing skeptical customers the technology really works: ‘Everyone’s first reaction is that it’s clearly too good to be true.’

“One true believer is Steve Jobs, who plans to use Transitive technology to run existing Mac apps on Intel CPUs. Rawsthorne foresees QuickTransit running on cell phones, PDAs, or any other hardware that evolves more rapidly than the apps that run on them.”

Transitive’s software technology allows other application software that has been compiled for one processor/operating system to be run on another processor/operating system without any source code or binary changes. Transitive announced its QuickTransit software product line in 2005 and has confirmed customer engagements including Silicon Graphics and Apple, with more announcements expected this year.

MacDailyNews Take: While impressive, Rosetta is really the backup plan in Apple’s transition from PowerPC to Intel-based Macs. Apple’s main thrust to developers are “Universal Binaries” or two versions of a program that work natively on PPC or Intel-based Macs. We don’t think many people will ever really use Rosetta very much – if you depend on a piece of software, you’ll update it and get a Universal Binary in the process – but it’s a good backup.

Related MacDailyNews articles:
Transitive lies at heart of Apple’s Rosetta translation tech for upcoming Intel-based Apple Macs – June 08, 2005