[Carlton Mills]

Even if our favorite application still uses Power PC code and is being emulated it doesn’t automatically mean that the app will be slow on the new Intel based Macs. Most of our CPU cycles are expended in things like Quicktime, the Quartz windowing system, H.264 codecs, Core Audio, Core Image and OSX functions like file I/O. These functions will run faster on the new Intel CPUs. So apps that have to be emulated will provide satisfactory performance. There are of course exceptions, a matrix arithmetic package in PPC code will be very very slow when emulated.

It looks like the transition is well conceived, all Apple apps and OSX have been developed and tested on both CPUs. There is much experience with code files that include code for more that one kind of CPU. This means that most of the bugs that lurk in C++ libraries and classes have already been fixed. The transition should not be too painful for the software vendors (it probably will be hurtful to our bank accounts).

What will be interesting to watch is the Intel Apple relationship; up till now Intel has dealt with grown ups – now they have to work with Apple. The next couple of years should be fun.