On Tue, 03 Jan 2006 18:41:26 GMT, Pete C. wrote:

The move away from proprietary hardware is pretty unstoppable. We're
largely past the point where people worry about not being able to run
their old apps on the new OS / hardware version. That worry largely
abated after we got past the NT compatibility worries years ago. Now,
both due to the new market where people are more willing to drop the old
apps, and due to much faster CPUs where the old stuff can be emulated as
fast as it ever ran before, it is possible to introduce significant
architectural changes to improve performance.

Well, I'm not sure. I think that, among the many other reasons, the
fact that Apple hardware is predictable is one reason why Mac's are so
stable. Now, throw a 5 dollar video card in with a cheapo hard drive,
next to a no-name motherboard, and yeah, you might have problems.
Hopefully this move to Intel will be done well. I have no reason to
doubt that it will, but if it starts meaning that developer's effort is
diverted from making good software, to making it work on crufty
hardware, I don't see that as a net-positive.

Then again, I'm not in charge of Apple, and ignroed them completely
until they went to Unix.