The featured content section on Apple’s Developer Connection has some interesting articles. First, “Learn about universal binaries, and how to get your applications ready for Intel-based Macintoshes.” Secondly, “You need Xcode to build universal binaries. Read the latest on Apple’s IDE.” There are more articles, so feel free to look around.
Just as a wild thought, but could it be possible to create a translation layer to be able to execute osx runtimes in linux / bsd?
http://hcpnet.free.fr/applebsd.html
to avoid spending $$475 someone would do this? oh wait, there was no macMini back when that project stated, so they likely will never finish.
Just as a wild thought, but could it be possible to create a translation layer to be able to execute osx runtimes in linux / bsd?
It’s certainly possible, but it’s an awful lot of work.
Have a look at GNUStep. It attempts to implement the NextStep API, otherwise known as Cocoa in MacOS.
Does anyone know what software companies are ready yet? I mean is Photoshop, Maya, Lightwave, Combustion or any of the popular apps on the Mac ready with Intel Binaries or are they waiting for specific Intel tools to Optimise?
sp29
there was an interview on cnet a coupel days ago with the head of adobe and he was saying that they probably wonth ave their apps ready till late 2006.. which isn’t that bad considering there isn’t even an x86 mac for sale yet, and may not be for months to come
Does anyone know what software companies are ready yet? I mean is Photoshop, Maya, Lightwave, Combustion or any of the popular apps on the Mac ready with Intel Binaries or are they waiting for specific Intel tools to Optimise?
Adobe at first was happy about the Intel switch and shrugged off the change from CodeWarrior to Xcode, but lately they have been bitching and moaning.
M$ stuff is based on CodeWarrior as well, and we all know how fast M$ is (hahaha) so don’t expect anything they produce to work right the first time, but then I always expect that.
I say if one is in the market for Mac, buy a DP PowerMac PPC and sit on it for 5 years.
There is about two dozen versions of software ready to go x86 already that I know of, a lot are integrating feature updates so that takes time anyway.
I just don’t know how well these new dual core x86 chips are going to fare against our short pipeline dual PPC chips with it’s specific optimizations.
I kind of enjoyed the processor wars over the years.
I just don’t know how well these new dual core x86 chips are going to fare against our short pipeline dual PPC chips with it’s specific optimizations.
What short pipeline? The PPC970 (aka G5) has a 16-stage integer pipeline. That’s not much shorter than the 20-stage pipeline of the Pentium 4 (before Prescott with its 32 stages came along).
And it’s longer than the 10-stage pipeline of the P6 core (which the Pentium M is based on) and the 12-stage pipeline of the new Merom core that is expected to feature in the PowerMacs.
Maxon Cinema4d is ready.
Photoshop not, Maya not, Lightwave not, Combustion not..
There is an internal build of Modo (Luxology), Mathematica (Wolfram Research) and a few share/free/opensource apps. A long way until we can see/buy big apps with x86 universal binaries..
coolkamio
Stone Design Apps are recompiled, and any other pure Cocoa app like Apple’s own suite are ready, but that doesn’t mean they won’t see minor/major changes to any company application.
Delicious Monster’s app of course was done in a few hours at the conference.
The more Carbon cruft in your app the longer it will take to make Universal.
The more pre-Carbon cruft in your app you might as well embrace Cocoa and redesign.
They sound cooler if you call them UNIVERSAL, didnt they used to be called FAT last time Apple put us through a transition…
It seems the company that doesnt need .NET has it and the one that does, does not.
What are the plugin capabilities of Xcode?
There is something called source code which is by nature much more universal than binaries and you’d assume Apple would have heard about it by now… Oh, and there is something called compiler…
There is something called source code which is by nature much more universal than binaries and you’d assume Apple would have heard about it by now… Oh, and there is something called compiler…
LOL! +1 Funny.
You do realize that Universal Binaries are files that contain the binaries for both x86 OS X and ppc OS X, right?
And yes, those binaries are in-fact created by writing source code and then compiling it, just to let you know
Is is only PR? Or is there a reason why binaries are now called universal and not fat or “dual-architecture”. To me the term Universal really means that. It means that if you come up with some weird new CPU (intel?) Xcode will be able to compile it with very little changes. Is something bigger coming?
By using the same developmeent environment support for multiple architectures becomes much easier. Big companies like Adobe certainly use metrowerks or some other tools. If your app is purely cocoa, you really check a box and it’s done! Your same program works on X86. That is of course aside from Big-endian issues but not so many programs will face this problem. The more high-level they are, the easier it will be to port.
I did compile ChocoFlop (www.chocoflop.com) alpha release as an universal binary, without any changes and I was reported that it works fine on a supported X86 box. (works fine for an alpha release, I mean.)
Regarding XCode, from what I have heard, the reason so many have held back their porting of code to XCode was because the compiler was crap and XCode was lacking many features that they needed/required/wanted/fetished about, what were available for Meteroworks.
Intel have announced they’re going to release x86 compilers for MacOS X – I wonder with a bit of help, will they provide support for objective-C – if that is the case, companies will have a greater selection – am I happy with the GCC compiler, or am I willing to pay the extra for the Intel compiler.
Relating to GCC – one must remember that Tiger is still compiled with GCC 3.3 IIRC – you’ll probably see the big leap when Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard”, which will be inline with the completion of the SSA infrascture in GCC, and the move to x86, which will benefit both customers, the PowerPC and x86.
What I do hope is that Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” will be much finer grained, and import alot of the important changes that were made in FreeBSD 6.0 (being that the Mach source is compiled with BSD’s code (the parts that Mach don’t cover)).
As for Intel and CPU design; I think it is more a matter of getting developers to think independently of the CPU, so that if in 10 years time, there is another change, the move will not be as difficult. It is about planning for the immediate future and the long term.
Maybe they also have a view of new devices in the future – maybe even a hand held PDA running a stripped down version of MacOS X running on an XScale CPU – it would enable them to effectively enter one of the fastest growing markets out there; the age of the desk job is coming to an end in favour of mobility; Apple want to be part of that future, as both they, Intel and a number of other players see it.
Is is only PR? Or is there a reason why binaries are now called universal and not fat or “dual-architecture”.
Well, “universal” certainly sounds better than “fat”, but yes it can support more than two architectures in one binary bundle.
I don’t know whether fat binaries on classic MacOS could have supported more than 68k and PPC, but fat binaries on OSX’s predecessor NextStep certainly could, because it ran on 68k, x86, Sparc and HP’s PA-RISC.
It means that if you come up with some weird new CPU (intel?) Xcode will be able to compile it with very little changes.
Yes, as long as you provide a compiler and your CPU’s weirdness doesn’t extend to the data types it supports.
Is something bigger coming?
Not really, unless you mean 64 bits.
The universal binary format certainly leaves the door open for more platforms, e.g. Itanium or ARM. For the moment though, it looks like it’s just gonna be ugly old 32-bit x86, because the first IntelMacs are expected to be based on the 32-bit only Yonah core.
But universal binaries will also help smooth the next switch to x86-64.
If you’re one of the lucky ones who have used one of the dev macs or something else…
The emulation is pretty good for most things. At least Office 2k4 and a lot of other apps. But, they do need to get ones that have Altivec-intensive code ported over. Those aren’t as great as you have to run only G3 code. But given how fast the x86 ‘macs’ are now, I bet by sometime next year they’d scream even on PPC code.