WWDC: Rosetta to ease transition
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jun 6, 2005 at 11:42am
The move from PowerPC chips to Intel processors will involve Rosetta, a dynamic binary translater, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in his Worldwide Developer Conference keynote. It’s designed to ease the transition as software moves from Mac OS X on the PowerPC platform to Mac OS X on Intel.
Rosetta, a “lightweight” technology, runs existing PowerPC applications on the Intel platform, but is “nothing” like the Classic environment for running Mac OS 9 (and earlier) software on Mac OS X, Jobs said.
He demoed Rosetta by running PowerPC versions of Adobe Photoshop CS 2, Microsoft Office and Quicken on an Intel machine. With Rosetta, PowerPC software “just runs,” he said.
“That’s what we’re going to have for our users, because every app isn’t going to be there for them on day one,” Jobs said.
Jobs said that Apple had been working with Intel for a while now. He and Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel, promoted the “Apple loves Intel now” and “We’re buddies” angles. And evidently the head of Intel doesn’t hold a grudge over the 1996 “toasted Intel” bunny man ad.
Dave Stephens Says:
Nobody “runs” a chip - we ALL run an OS.
All I care about is, will this technology make the OS run FASTER?
If the answer is yes, sign me up!
Posted on June 06, 2005
airron Says:
Onar,
I think that the new developer tools will produce fat binaries (i.e. PPC + x86 code). So, if developers follow these directions and compile for both, we who own PPC _should_ be OK. I.e. new apps from here on out should be “fat”.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Of course, there may be devils in the details, and sales of macs will likely slide until the switch. My concern: if Rosetta is so great, then why not release some Intel macs now?
Posted on June 06, 2005
deepkid Says:
Apple is likely unable to offer Intel-based macs for a variety of good reasons including contract terms with IBM, number of PPC cpus in inventory and then having manufacturing make all necessary changes.
If published reports are correct, negotiating with Intel only concluded recently.
Posted on June 07, 2005
Ted Says:
I was really surprised by this outcome, pricipally because I can’t see where the Cell processor fits into the scheme of things. Surely Sony and its allies didn’t just put this PPC based processor together as a technology demonstrator?
Posted on June 07, 2005
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Onar Says:
Question is, will Apple make something similar to run Intel-compiled applications on PowerPC? 2-3 years down the road that might be very important for todays customers…
Posted on June 06, 2005