Intel Pentium 4 Developer Kit for Apple Adored by Software Makers.
 

Software makers who produce popular applications seem to respect Apple’s decision to utilize Intel processors in the future Macintosh computers instead of IBM’s PowerPC chips. An executive from a software developer company at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, California, said porting software to a Mac OS X platform running on Intel processors is relatively easy.


According to a report from AppleInsider web-site, the Developer Transition Kit that Apple will sell to software makers seeking to remake their software to run on Intel processors running Mac OS X operating system includes Intel Pentium 4 processor that runs at 3.60GHz as well as OS X 10.4.1 for Intel (preview release). It is unclear whether this means that actual commercial Mac systems that utilize Intel processors will include Pentium 4-like chips, or more advanced central processing units from the company.

Meanwhile, at least some software developers seem to like the idea to use Intel processors in Apple Macintosh computers. AppleInsider reports that Bruce Chizen of Adobe and Stephen Wolfram, Mathematica creator and Wolfram Research CEO, both seemed to have positive attitude towards Apple’s move. Reportedly, porting of Mathematica 5 to Intel-based Macs only took two hours of time and required only two lines of code to be rewritten. Adobe is always committed to bring applications Intel-based Mac computers.

Even though Mac OS X has been developed to run on Intel Pentium-based as well as IBM PowerPC-based platforms, according to Mr. Jobs, it still requires a special translator to run programs developed for current Macs. During the conference Apple’s CEO showcased Rosetta, a dynamic binary translator which executes code written for PowerPC on Intel-based Macs, transparently to the users. During the conference Microsoft Excel, Word as well as Adobe Photoshop CS2 apps were demonstrated operating using Rosetta “without significant speed decrease”, according to the report. Still some software would need some redesign, according to Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs.

Earlier on Monday at its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007.

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