New Universal Software

Question

I was reading about the new Universal software and it said that many software companies will be changing to the universal formant, does this mean that i will need to buy all the software i have agian? And if not will the older verions take full advantage of the duo's power?

Answer 1

Hi, Killer45.
Those articles are discussing Universal Binaries. Applications that are written as Universal Binaries will run on either PowerPC-based (PPC-based) Macs or Intel-based Macs.
Many third-party applications available today, especially widely-used apps like MS Office and the products in the Adobe Creative Suite, were written for PPC-based Macs. They use code that depends on the PPC chip architecture.
Most applications that were written for PPC-based Macs will run on Intel-based Macs under Rosetta. Rosetta is a feature of the version of Mac OS X on Intel-based Macs that enables PPC-based apps to run on Intel-based Macs. It uses a technology called transcoding that essentially substitutes Intel-based instructions for PPC-based instructions when needed and in real time.
The upside of Rosetta is that one can use their PPC-based, Mac OS X applications on new Intel-based Macs.
The downsides of Rosetta are
1, Apps running under Rosetta generally perform slower on Intel-based Macs than PPC-based Macs.
2. Some PPC-based apps cannot run under Rosetta. The specific requirements for a PPC-based application to run under Rosetta are detailed in "Appendix A: Rosetta" of the Universal Binary Programming Guidelines.
Applications that are Universal Binaries run natively on Intel-based Macs, i.e. they do not need help from Rosetta.
Note that Classic, aka Mac OS 9, applications will not run on Intel-based Macs.
Hence, if you have, or are planning to buy, an Intel-based Mac, most, if not all, of your PPC-based Mac OS X applications will run. However, some may not perform up to your expectations due to the performance penalty that Rosetta can incur. In such cases, to get the best performance you'd need to upgrade to the Universal Binary versions of your third-party Mac OS X applications when such are published by their developers.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X