Well we can all see that thanks to Vista (henceforth know as Vi$ta or ME II) and Apple's awesome new OS X 10.5 (or Leopard) that Apple is having a banner year. Selling more Macs than ever (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/03/01/mac_sales_growth_up_over_100_percent_in_january_says_firm.html for one example). PC sales are "sluggish"(ex. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_31_46/ai_65023319) leaving many to believe that there is (finally) a paradigm shift in the market place, as people wake up to the fact the M$ is not the only answer and there are much better things in the world out there. While some are scrapping their Vi$ta installs for XP (some people of dubious intelligence call this a "downgrade") and more are ditching Windoze altogether for beautiful and refined new Linux OSes like Ubuntu 7.10. That is a subject for another article, however.
Users seem worried that Apple's nest OS iteration (10.6) will no longer run on PowerPC processors and only on the new Intel machines. I think they may be worrying for naught. First, Apple has invested a lot of time and money into Rosetta calling it, "The most mazing software you'll never see." Rosetta lets many (if not most) PowerPC native applications run on an Intel Mac without the user having to do anything. The technology is robust and powerful, but then again Apple knows processor transition. In March of 1994 Apple transitioned from the old Motorola 68k line of processors to its first PowerPC's. This meant, of course, that the 68k programs had to run on the new PowerPC's. As I recall there was no fancy name for the emulation mode and it worked quite well until "fat-binaries" (those that contained both 68k and PowerPC code) for programs were released (like the new "Universal" packages). Lastly there is living proof known as OS 8.1. OS 8.1 was the last OS to run on the 68k line and ran only on the top end 68040 ('040, Quadra, etc) processors. It also ran on many of the new PowerPC's right up until the G3's.
I suspect much like OS 8.1, 10.6 will run on G5 processors (with G4's already limited in support to 867 MHz I wouldn't look forward to anymore G4 support), and with G5's being sold right up until mid 2006, that means those who bought AppleCare will have support until 2009, so I suspect Apple won't leave G5's in the dust in 10.6. Remember it won't be ME II and they are not Micro$oft.
1 comment:
"I can do anything you can do better" since switching to a mac i have had no little to no issues with my computer that i could not fix myself easily or with a little advice from a seasoned mac user. i have been able to be more productive with my work and more creative with my computer related arts. with my old windows computer i was hard pressed to be able to keep up with my work while dealing with the many issues with windows. apple has a sound machine to use and a sound OS that is simple for the user to learn and use effectively. thank-you apple and thank-you to those who convinced me to make the switch, i don't regret it one bit.
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