[ero2]

it may not work at all, or be slow as heck, or serve no function after apple uses the intel processors? I am having some speed issues on my Pbook, and am sick of doing fresh installs (only way that seems to clear up everything) so I was going to purchase diskwarrior online, and then I thought, what good will it do me when macs have intel processors? Are you guys still actively buying software? Are you worried about it now working, or having to be run in a virtual environment which would be super slow?


(I don't know what happened to the other thread, I posted but nothing showed up)

[CanadaRAM]

Ummm... What makes you think the future brand of processor will have anything to do with the applications you have now working?

[ero2]

That is what I have been led to believe, from reading here. I could be very wrong, but most people, and an article I read here, said that program developers will have a lot of work on their hands to get the native OSX software to work, once macs have intel processors. Also, some have alluded to having to run these programs in a virtual pc like environment. I am not super tecnho savvy, so I have no clue if this is true or not, but it's what I have been reading and hearing.

[Since EBCDIC]

To answer your question: yes, I (at least) am still buying software. DiskWarrior is a good example of something that every Mac user ought to have and use.

About current software running under Macintel, it seems that it will work just fine under the new emulation demonstrated by Steve Jobs at WWSF, and rather quickly too. Enjoy.

[I was David B.]

Originally Posted by ero2

That is what I have been led to believe, from reading here. I could be very wrong, but most people, and an article I read here, said that program developers will have a lot of work on their hands to get the native OSX software to work, once macs have intel processors. Also, some have alluded to having to run these programs in a virtual pc like environment. I am not super tecnho savvy, so I have no clue if this is true or not, but it's what I have been reading and hearing.

It is true what you have heard. New program versions have to be adapted for intel processors and recompiled. Old programs will run in emulated mode with rosetta. This will be much slower than adapted intel versions. But it makes your old programs usable.

Rosetta will be different than classic. Old classic applications run great and very fast because classic is a real operating system that runs natively on the G3/G4. Rosetta is an emulator. Thats usually slow (like virtual pc for example - although it will not be THAT bad).

If it is worth to buy new programs is a good question. That depends on the upgrade politics of the software company. Most shareware programs are paid once and all subsequent updates are free. That is no risk at all.
Others, who are more professional, ask for upgrade payment for every major update. Barebones, Panic and our beloved friends from M$ belong to this type. Intel versions will be a major update (i bet they are), and so you will pay.

[angelmb]

Some developers like The Omni Group are going to provide free upgrades.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by I was David B.

It is true what you have heard. New program versions have to be adapted for intel processors and recompiled. Old programs will run in emulated mode with rosetta. This will be much slower than adapted intel versions. But it makes your old programs usable.

This will probably be a moot point considering that the new machines will be, for the most part, much, much faster than what we have now.

So the software *would* run faster if it weren't emulated, but it will probably *still* run as fast or faster as/than what we have now.

In the case of laptops, where the speed upgrade to Intel machines will be most drastic, I'd expect there to be a notable performance *increase*, even under Rosetta's emulation.

But that is all speculation at this point.

[ero2]

so diskwarrior would still be a good investment then? it would still serve a purpose with a mactel processor?

[Chuckit]

Diskwarrior is one of the few programs I'm not so sure about. Low-level programs like that often require kernel extensions, and those will not work, because Rosetta can't emulate a kernel extension. If anyone who has Diskwarrior can clarify whether it installs kernel extensions, it would be easier to say for sure.

Oh, and I'm not worried about programs breaking. Even if all my programs broke (which ain't gonna happen), it wouldn't affect me since I would still be using the computer on which they work just fine. I tend to use my computers for a good, long time, so by the time I'd have to worry about compatibility, my programs will be old enough to deserve upgrading anyway.

[Old Toad]

Chuckit:

I don't believe DiskWarrior install any secondary files. All you need to install it is to drag it from its CD to your Application folder and launch it. Of course it won't rebuild the boot drive. I've copied it to my external backup boot drive and am able to boot from it and rebuild the internal boot drive. So it doesn't look like any additional files are installed.

[Since EBCDIC]

You can't tell whether a program installs secondary files based on how you install it, but I believe that DiskWarrior doesn't seem to install annoying sub-programs (like the Norton Utils used to do), nor is it seem to use a kernel extension.

I'm pretty sure DiskWarrior will work just fine under Rosetta.

Rosetta seems to be pretty darned fast, much, much faster than Virtual PC ever was, which is nice to see.

Unless you're going to jump on the very first release of the Macintel machines, a year or so down the road, I would strongly suggest that you not worry about buying software. Buy what you need for today, and deal with the incremental cost later on. You still have a lot of time of productive work between now and then, and it seems that none of your current purchases will stop working on Macintel, it just won't be so fast.