Mac OS X on Intel
Optimism
- I’m inclined to believe Apple’s claims that creating a Universal Binary won’t be that hard—nothing like Carbonization. My applications already use the
NSSwap*
APIs in places where they care whether the processor is big- or little-endian. Of course, they also depend on some third-party libraries… - Using Intel’s mobile processors for laptops does seem to make sense.
- Existing native applications will be supported. Most of the rumors didn’t mention this, but it’s obviously a requirement.
Pessimism
- What’s Rosetta’s estimated performance? Will Classic be supported? Unbelievably, the keynote coverage I’ve read thus far indicates that Jobs did not answer these questions.
- What can Apple do about one of the problems that plagued OS/2: reluctance to develop native applications because Windows applications will be able to run at full speed?
- Most importantly: Apple depends on hardware revenue. How will they be able to compete with Dell, et. al., when they almost went bankrupt competing with Power Computing? Switching business models is much harder than switching processors, and there’s been no indication of how Apple will manage the former.
The ADC site is still down for maintenance, so I don’t know what the Developer Transition Kit contains.