I'm at a loss about this intel business.

Hi;

As some of you know, a few months ago I bought myself an iMac. It is a PowerPC G5, blah blah blah, and so forth, et cetera.

Now Apple is going into a big change by bringing in those Intel machines.

Now it comes.

1. Do I require to buy a new Mac in the nearby future or else the software for it won't run?

2. I've taken on a new BMax Project that will take years to complete. Will that mean that once it's finished nobody with a new Mac (which would be intel, I guess) will be able to run it? (And if not, what can I do about it?) (There will also be a Windows version, so it won't be completely for naught).

3. What of my older Mac applications. If I would ever consider buying an intel machine, will those applications be lost (I already saw that OpenOffice.org does NOT support Intel Machines, for example).

4. And what is this "Rosetta", I heard that name regulary in combination with intel Macs. It's my guess it's some kind of emulation software. Is that what I need to run Mac Software that's compiled for Intel, and if so, where can I get my hands on that?

5. I still can keep updating BMax, without any risks my apps won't work any more?

Sorry for these silly questions, but I need to know if I got everything straight in order not to take any needless effords or throw away needless money. And I wasn't exactly able to extract information from Apple.

http://appleintelfaq.com

http://www.apple.com/rosetta

Since Intel Macs now support XP, just make that a system requirement for your Intel Mac release and ship the Windows version. :)

I hope youre not serious.

1. Not in the near future, but eventually yes. Most software developers are porting their tools to the intel processors, but I doubt many of them will drop support for the G4/G5 soon...as there are lots of those machines still around.

2. This links into question 4. Rosetta is an emulator for running G4/G5 software on the intel processors. It's a lot slower than running it natively, so it's possible that your game will run too slow on the intel processors. On the other hand, you could always get one of those Mac Minis in a year and compile your game on that to get it working on both G4/G5 and intel (universal binaries I think they are calling it). Don't know if BMax has been ported yet, but I'm sure it will be in a year.

3. Older software should in theory run under Rosetta on the Intel Macs, although much slower than it does on your current machine. Of course, it's quite possible that some software have compatabillity issues.

4. See 2 and 3. Rosetta is an emulator to run G4/G5 software on the intel machines.

5. Not sure I understand the question. You can keep updating BMax, and I'm guessing in the not too far future BMax will support both G4/G5 and intel processors. I don't think you'll be able to compile your apps for the intel machines on a G5, though I'm not at all sure about that. But either way, your apps should keep working in Rosetta on intel.

Hope that's at least some help....just note that I'm no expert on this.

Ragnar

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but I already got an old Windows machine, and my GF has a brand new machine with Windows, so compiling a Windows version wasn't a problem anyway.

I hope I don't have to require Windows on my Mac Version. I came to use Mac since I hate Windows, so I'd hate to force Mac users to use Windows.

@Ragtag
Thanks a lot, for answering my questions. On Q5 I mean more that if everything goes to Intel, that I'm not stuck with my G5, unable to use BMax or the apps it creates. I'm short on money now, so I need to wait to get myself an Intel Mac.


No expert doesn't matter. Your answers do make a few things clear for me. Thank you ;)

I was half-kidding and half-serious with my "make XP a system requirement for Intel Macs." Because I had an opportunity several months back, I bought an inexpensive G4 to play around with and so that BMax could live happily cross-platform, making it possible to do releases for Mac as well as Windows.

Any Mac releases that I might do will be for PPC Mac with 10.3+ since I don't currently plan to buy 10.4 or an Intel Mac. But, now that Intel Macs with 10.4 can run XP, and Windows is my main platform, they get automatic support if they use Boot Camp/XP. I have little faith in Rosetta (emulation has never been worthwhile from what I've seen), though I cetainly wouldn't mind being surprised.

Intel Macs will probably become the new Mac standard (or maybe not - Apple is sometimes whacky with hardware standards), and the older PPC market will be going away over time. So eventually, future Mac releases will need to be primarily aimed at Intel Macs with 10.4+ and thus developed on the same hardware/OS. But for the near-term future, I view them as a small subset of the already small Mac market.

I'd be more concerned if I had a large software investment in my G4 and used it as my main PC, but my only real reason for having it is BMax. For folks with PPC Macs as their main/only PC, hopefully the big publishers of Mac software will offer something like inexpensive "side-grades" to let their customers make the switch from PPC to Intel Mac.

Apple's Xcode stuff supports creating Universal Binaries, which are programs that run natively on both PPC and Intel based Macs. Since BlitzMax is dependant on Xcode, I would expect that in a future version, BlitzMax would take advantage of that Xcode feature, and produce Universal Binaries. It shouldn't matter whether you're using a PPC or Intel Mac to compile, so I wouldn't run out and buy an Intel based Mac just for BlitzMax yet.

Great way not to sell a single copy. You really don't have a clue about mac users do you?

hint: we (I am one of them) actually like apple and OS X, care about design, aestethics and really (really) think windows is very (extremely) unattractive. there is a seious absence of good taste in that OS. Oh, and computer boxes do make a difference, good taste does make a difference, we do care about the packaging and a good user experience (i.e. what it feels like to use a computer... let me tell you that "anti-viruses-and-spyware" and windows "activation" have nothing to do with it).

PLS