“It was a ‘Hell-has-finally-frozen-over’ moment: In early June, Steve Jobs stood before the most devout of the Mac faithful, software developers for the Mac, and told them that Mac hardware will be based on Intel CPUs in the future. Even though rumors of the news had been circulating for a few weeks, the announcement still came as a shock, since Intel is so closely associated with Microsoft,” Rebecca Freed writes for PC World.
“It’s a testament to Jobs’s persuasive abilities that the news was accepted with relative equanimity by many Mac users and developers. Presumably, all those developers are now working to port their programs to the new Mac architecture,” Freed writes. “On the whole, I bought the story too, although I know that it won’t all go smoothly. Anyone who owns or is considering buying a Mac has to have questions; these are what I think the answers are.”
Freed asks and answers the following questions:
• Why Did Apple Do This, Anyway?
• When Will I Have to Worry About This?
• Will I Have to Buy a New Mac?
• Will My Old Software Work on the New Macs?
• Will My Old Peripherals Work on the New Macs?
• Will This Mean That Macs Get Cheaper?
• Will the Mac OS Run on a PC, and Windows on a Mac?
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Ars Technica: What the switch to Intel means for Apple – June 07, 2005
Apple’s Intel move not without issues – July 03, 2005
Wow – this chick’s only a full month behind in writing the same exact questions every other ePundit wrote on June 7th.
I don’t usually comment on the commentators, but this is amazing.
Freed asks and answers the following questions:
• Why Did Apple Do This, Anyway?
To have better computers, faster, more efficient.
• When Will I Have to Worry About This?
Never
• Will I Have to Buy a New Mac?
Nope
• Will My Old Software Work on the New Macs?
Yep
• Will My Old Peripherals Work on the New Macs?
Yep
• Will This Mean That Macs Get Cheaper?
Not nessisarily
• Will the Mac OS Run on a PC, and Windows on a Mac?
Maybe one day soon, and Yes
Considering that list of questions, the author has not read anything, either.
Mac Daddy –
While that’s a rousing line of cheers for the faithful, there are people who visit this forum for actual user perspectives, as they consider new purchases. Deluding them with “Yep” and “Nope” and “Never” is not good for them.
In reality, poor emulation by Rosetta is likely to be a reason NOT to go to the Intels until your favorite apps have been rewritten. Developers w/ access to the new systems have agreed across the board that there’s a noticeable slowdown.
what a stupid bitch!
PC Apologist:
There is a noticeable slowdown using Rosetta on a P4 developer system. The hope is that the new stuff coming from Intel will be fast enough that Rosetta runs older programs at a comperable speed to today’s systems.
MW: covered, as in “I think Apple will have you covered.”
I “upgraded” to Tiger and had no trouble at all. None at all. If I did an upgrade and noticed things running slower and everyone else was saying how FAST the upgrade was, I’d maybe consider reinstalling.
I’m disappointed that the author chose to spend half her article space going on about what a bad idea is was to upgrade until she was clued in. She probably just needed to fix her file permissions.
Dear Friends,
When I started using the internet in the late 1980’s, it was very common for people to “flame” each other online.
Responses like “What a stupid bitch!” were common. Afterall, the internet was heavily populated by immature college students in those days. No big surprise there.
But here we are, almost 20 years later, and it would seem that nothing has changed!!!
PC Apologist-
I feel no need to read this article because of that. However, in her defense she is writing for a monthly magazine. I’d bet you this is the first issue they’ve put out since this happened last month, so it really isn’t her fault that it’s just now appearing. I’m sure she wrote it weeks ago.
/still not gonna read it
you’re an idiot if you don’t think apple is constantly tweaking and improving rosetta for the launch of intel macs and leopard.
Late remarks.
I upgraded to Tiger fairly soon after its release, and did a fresh install on my lap top. Still has a slightly more sluggish response time on some things (like window openings.
My desktop computer is an upgraded G3/Blue and White with a 1 Ghz G4 in her. She runs fine, even though I did an upgrade not a fresh install. I should probably go back and go through the work of running a fresh install instead of sticking with just the upgrade. It will take longer to set up and such, but once its done it should work quite a bit better.
Has anyone noticed a weird fault on the right-hand slide bar in Safari?? It happens, usually, only when one first opens a Safari window.
The article is just fine. Those bashing it give Mac users a bad name.
guys, we need to cut this author some slack. it wouldn’t be the first time someone in the Windows press was “late to the party”, if you will. and shempzilla is right… it could have been written weeks ago and just made it to “press”. in any case, the article is now a non starter ’cause most of the questions she raises has either been answered or flogged to within an inch of their lives. it’s pretty much moot. just ignore it.
I say Rebecca needs to move on, old news old questions raised.
She has to FREED her mind and move it along, maybe later she’ll report that longhorn has been pushed to 2007.
Funny, my upgrade to Tiger made both my PowerMac and iBook noticably faster. Applications pop open and close quickly.
Not to say it’s been trouble free, but the only problems have been trivial annoyances:
— It takes a little longer for my PowerMac to go to sleep after clicking on the “Sleep” button on the login screen.
— The Weather Widget often crashes on first launch. Since it immediately relaunches, the only way I know this has happened is the crash message that appears.
God you guys are the “BIGGEST” whiney little bitches..Typical Mac Bigots…
Get lives
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/13/and_ninethly_thinkagain/
Tempus Fugit is right, She could have written this the day Apple announced it. Anyone familiar with the publishing world would know that the writer does not determine when or even how much of what we write gets printed; the editor does that
i just got the latest issue of macworld in the mail and it covers the same topic. so does macaddict’s latest issue. so she’s not behind the times in terms of apple centric publications.
PC World is a print magazine with a web site. If this article is intended for the current or next print issue, then it was written a month ago and just now posted (so as to not impact print sales).
Moreover, Macs and OS X are not perfect. Plenty of people out of the millions who installed Tiger had resulting troubles. Read MacFixit or Macintouch to find out about their problems. Moreover, 10.4.1 and the forthcoming 10.4.2 are essentially bug-fixing updates. So there were troubles there to be experienced. (I upgraded four machines and had troubles on one, a dual 2.0 GHz G5. Why? I haven’t a clue and ultimately had to reinstall as a clean installation.)
Macs are wonderful enough without Apple’s fans going off the deep end and being ultra sensitive.
Ironically (as usual), the MW hits the spot: respect.
SheepF**ker,
I’m weighing in my left hand the accomplishments and contributions of Steve Jobs (who is slammed in the article you’ve so generously posted) and the accomplishments and contributions of Otto Z. Stern (the author of the article you’ve so generously posted) in my right. My guess is you’d much prefer I knock you over the head with my right, as you’d likely only suffer the blow of my hand.
The Register is a joke. Stern makes his living writing about the achievements and/or blunders of others, not his own. A leech.
LOL…Okay justified, t.w.a.t.e.v.e.r you say bro…
Here are some question raising issues:
http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=690
read the article, a lot of information in there. The question it raises with me is “Is this the type of company(Intel) Apple really should be partnering with?”
I built a PC I used AMD, I have heard about Intel’s practices for sometime and refuse to buy product from such a company.
[B]Will My Old Peripherals Work on the New Macs?[/B]
This is a dodgier proposition. The manufacturers of peripherals will have to provide updated drivers, and peripheral support has been a weak spot in previous Mac OS releases, such as the early versions of OS X. It’s an extremely good bet that printers, scanners, and digital cameras that are more than a few years old will be difficult to connect to the new Macs.
wtf? This is the only problem I have with her article. I’ll bet $10,000 that all printers, scanners, and cameras that ‘work’ on a g5 running tiger will work on an intel based mac the day they come out.
I’ll go a step further and say that all usb and firewire devices will not have driver problems.
I would go into the reasons as to why, but the people who already understand don’t need me to and the people who don’t wouldn’t get it anyway.
From the article: “I predict that eventually, perhaps in June 2007, Apple will begin exerting pressure on users to upgrade to the newer technology, just as it did with OS X.”
I doubt this. With the switch from OS 9 to X, Apple wanted to push people into switching because supporting two completely different operating systems was expensive for them and developers. The sooner users switched to X, the sooner Apple could put all their resources into X (same with 3rd party developers).
This isn’t the same situation with the PowerPC/Intel switch. Essentially once the software is built with Universal Binaries the difficult part is over. Supporting two chips is no more expensive than one after that.