Mac transition to Intel processors: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:49, 4 October 2005

Revision as of 16:50, 4 October 2005

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The announcement of the switch came as a shock to many in the Mac community; many Apple users have enjoyed the ready availability of a consumer desktop that was completely separated from the "[[Wintel]]" alliance, and ads claiming the PowerPC architecture as superior have been a key part of Apple advertising for many years. With that separation gone, many longtime Mac users have expressed fear about Apple's future, and whether Apple's [[brand identity]] will be preserved. Some of the fears expressed include

* concerns about [[Rosetta]] the PowerPC emulator, which does not support/run [[PowerPC G4|G4]] [[AltiVec]] code and only emulates a [[PowerPC G3|G3]] at 60-80% of a likesimilar power CPU's clock speed;

* [[Classic (Mac OS X)|Classic]] will not be supported on the x86 architecture. This means that pre-Mac OS X software will not be able to run, to which some users running older "Legacy" applications (such as [[QuarkXPress]] 4 and 5) have objected as the new x86 machines force upgrades or purchases of new versions those software titles;

* concerns about the quality and performance of Intel's [[chipset]]s;