[olePigeon]

In the PC world, when we want to create disk images to use for Norton Ghost or Altiris, we have to create a separate image for each computer configuration. Windows won't run on different computers because it needs special drivers and all that crap. It won't run to the the point if two machines are nearly identical, it's not good enough. Windows Protection Fault or some bulls*t like that.

Right now Mac administrators can count their lucky stars that a single OS X image will deploy to 6 generations of Macintosh with a mishmash of whatever hardware you can think of.

Anyone else care to speculate on how Leopard will handle these new Intel based Macs? The last thing I would want is to have to make a unique ASR disk image for every Mac with a slightly different Intel chipset. Ugh.

[MaxPower2k3]

I'm sure the universality of OS X installations is due to extra effort apple has put in thus far to accommodate every supported mac in every installation, so I don't see why that can't continue with new macs... they'll just add a new set of drivers for Intel machines in addition to the old PowerPC ones, just as I'm sure they had to do when the G5 architecture first came out.

edit: I think the only people who would have problems are the people who try to run OS X on non-Apple hardware, since I'm sure it will only have drivers for hardware that Apple puts in their own machines.