Macworld Forums: WWDC: Developers unfazed by Intel switch - Macworld Forums

Monday morning’s announcement that Apple was switching to Intel processors had all the makings of a rude awakening for Mac developers. But the developers we’ve talked to have taken the news in stride, with many predicting a smooth transition. more

Okay, so in the immediate wake of the Intel announcement developers SAY they don't really foresee any problems in making the transition -- at least none to speak of. Fine. But let's talk to these same developers in a year and see what they say then. I don't think their initial reaction is really very instructive.
Also, I'm sure the developer of CodeWarrior is not thrilled with this transition to Intel because it effectively kills its products outright. And the developers who make extensive use of Altivec essentially have to rewrite all their code -- either that, or they must use an additional "interpreting" layer (called Accelerate) which will slow down the performance. (And the whole point of using Altivec is to speed up performance in the first place -- otherwise they might as well have stuck with integer math.)
In addition, the developers are now thinking strictly in technical terms regarding this transition. Just wait until their companies form policies regarding licensing and the process of moving from the PPC version to the Intel version of the product. When customers scream bloody murder about this process and hit the help desks and phone banks hard with complaints, we will see how happy they are with this transition. More is involved in the migration to Intel than merely the technical.
Then of course there is Rosetta. Nothing like slowing down performance on a platform that has already (years ago) hit a performance ceiling -- for indeed this is why Apple is moving to Intel to begin with. Customers are not going to be thrilled to be using Rosetta for any length of time -- except as the stop gap measure it is intended to be. If a company relies on Rosetta for too long, it can cause shifts in the Mac software community -- such as from AccountEdge to Quickbooks (or vice-versa) or from MS-Office to OpenOffice or from Filemaker under OS X to Filemaker under Windows, etc.
Edit: Very interesting article all the same. It's good to hear from developers at different stages along the way, and a strong negative reaction from developers at this time would have been a most undesirable thing (obviously) -- in respect to developer relations, Apple's stock, consumer confidence, etc.

That would be awesome to see. Have every company who wants to participate time their conversion efforts and then have those times posted on a page hosted on apple.com. It would be a good motivational tool, if the times were low enough.

That certainly echoes my thoughts on the matter. PPC is the better architecture by far, but with the lack of resources being put into desktop-class chips, Apple was hitting a brick wall as far as getting faster processors.

Same as above. Intel has a vested interest in boosting chip performance/quality/etc. I used to think that IBM had the same interest in keeping the 970 and its successors cutting-edge, but apparently they're more worried about the server PPC's and console chips. I'm sad that we have to switch, but as far as getting faster systems, this was the right choice to make. If I can get a quad-processor bleeding-edge-speed Pentium Power Mac for the same price as I paid for my first-gen dual-2GHz G5, then I'll be a VERY happy camper.
On the other hand, there are several programs that will need to be ported for me to be totally satisfied. Granted, there were a few that never even made it to OS X, so I'm still a little miffed there. But mostly my gripes are going to be with games. I'm tempted to contact Blizzard, Macsoft, etc, and see about starting petitions for the various games they publish to see if they're willing to put out MacTel ports. I'd be willing to pay an extra, say, $20 for some of them if they'll run native on MacTel once I make the switch. Anyone else with me on that?