[Rugby]

I do agree but sometimes the machine might become obsolote just because you can not find any peripherals for it:
change of new standards in the new machine (video card support, extensions)
remember SCSI, well I mamanged to buy a Mac jussst before they replaced that "standard"
also managed to have one NUBUS before replaced by PCI
ADB connection ah well there are adapters but...
that can sometimes hurt if you want to upgrade as a tower buyer

[b_baggins]

Firewire, USB 2.0 and DVI are going to be standards for quite a while. I wouldn't worry about it.

[roadwarrior]

FW400 will be around, anyway. FW800 looks to be DOA.
USB2.0 is important, but DVI less so. What I'd be more worried about is PCI-Express. As long as you have a good PCI-E setup in your box (Apple's is OK, with 1 16x, 1 8x, and 2 4x), your expandability options are good, and you can probably get cards to support most if not all older connectivity.
Plus, now that Apple is (almost?) entirely using standard hardware interfaces, general availability of peripherals shouldn't be a problem. How many computer stores still sell PS2 mouses/keyboards?
Software is still the key, though. As long as you can get software to do what you need it to do, your machine isn't obsolete. At this point, unless speed is the issue, any G4 will suffice for your needs. I'm typing this on a 900MHz G3 iBook, which IS obsolete for me, since I'm a 3D guy. But I'm choking along on old versions of Lightwave when I'm mobile, since I'm holding out for a Merom MacBook, hoping this thing stays alive, and that all the universal apps ship soon.

[HumanJHawkins]

Porting from PPC to Intel can cover a whole range of difficulty. I have no doubt that there are some apps that would literally just recompile and work great.
But depending on what development environment and/or framework was used, it might mean almost a complete rewrite. Also, programmers tend to write or buy utilities to help themselves program. In many cases, versions of these tools might not be compatible with the tools one must use to program for a different chip. So, it might also mean rewriting code while working around the lack of your usual environment.
I am guessing that the bigger a company is, and the longer it's product has been around, the more likely that all of these issues will come into play during porting.

[tallscot]

The software developers use "native" as a feature and save it for paid upgrades. They did that when we went to PowerPC. They did that when we went to OS X. They'll do that as we go to Intel. Don't expect any free updates from the major developers (um, Adobe and Microsoft).
The Intel PowerMacs aren't here yet and I'm guessing Adobe and other content creator-oriented companies are going to time their native applications to coincide with Intel PowerMacs.
I'm very interested to see what the speed of the Intel PowerMac will be compared to the current "quad" G5.

[minderbinder]

"still on a 450mHz G4"
If that's what you're on now, a new intel machine may be faster, even under rosetta.
"it is not the "flick of a switch" Jobs makes it out to be."
For some apps, it's pretty close to that. Besides the complexity of the app, it also depends on whether the app was developed using apple's development environment or a different one.
" I was unable to load iLife 06 "
If you look at their system requirements, it needs at least a G4.

[dreyfus]

All information in this article is either a) a 100% carbon copy of Adobe's initial statement when the Intel switch has been announced or b) identical to what the "Lightroom" beta page is stating since weeks. So... what's the news? No dates, no prices, nothing bankable at all. A freebie article for the advertising customer Adobe? Shameful, really.

[kenaustus]

Adobe appears to be in the group that is going to need a lot of time to move to universal binaries. I recall reading a while back that some parts of PhotoShop are very old - some of the filters I think - and if this is true then Adobe will have more work to do than the average company. MS faces the same challenge with Office and VPC. Lots of late hours for both companies.
Not all companies are in this group, however. Remember when Steve J announced the move to Intel the head of Mathmatica (sp?) came on stage and announced that their conversion took 2 hours? After the announcement there was a continual string of companies declaring they were ready, and the string has picked up since MWSF.

[minderbinder]

If that's the case, why hasn't Mathmateca released a universal yet?

[michaelb]

It is just me, or does Adobe appear to be really dragging their heels on this transition?
Apple announced the Intel move back in June of last year and made Intel machines available to any developer who could afford them, which presumably includes Adobe. Yet only now are they testing existing apps in Rosetta and sound like haven't even started on the process of making Universal Binaries for Photoshop and the CS2 suite.
LIke others, I believe they will not release Universal Binaries for CS2 and instead wait until CS3, which will appear after Vista, probably sometime in 2007.
I also feel we should somehow let Adobe know our displeasure with this.
But how? Sadly, they'll probably only listen to financial incentives, and don't really give a damn what their customers think of them. Here's a possibility:
I'm addicted to the CS suite so I can't threaten to not upgrade that, but If Apple's Aperture can fix it's RAW conversion, then Adobe has a hope in hell of getting my money for Lightroom unless they demonstrate a little more commitment to supporting their existing customers.

[minderbinder]

"Yet only now are they testing existing apps in Rosetta and sound like haven't even started on the process of making Universal Binaries for Photoshop and the CS2 suite."
Speculation on your part. We have no idea if they stalled on testing and porting or if they've been doing it since last summer, and it's just taking a long time.

[tmahoneyt]

In reply to:

---

It is just me, or does Adobe appear to be really dragging their heels on this transition?

---

It's just you. Adobe doesn't get any more warning than we do when it comes to releases of new hardware / software made by Apple. They were expecting not to have to have this out until June 2006.
As for not having CS3 released until 2007... I don't think that's entirely accurate. A new 64-bit operating system (Vista) means very little to the developers at Adobe. I am sure they have all the specifications they need supplied to them by Microsoft (just as Apple did for them regarding the intel chips). It may even be plausible that Adobe has copies of Vista Betas to test their new software. It isn't hard to come across such copies even as a mac user. A major company such as Adobe wouldn't have a problem getting licenced copies from Microsoft.
Adobe may end up releasing Lightroom and CS3 by June 2006 as allegedly planned. They can always release the Vista compatible versions when Vista becomes publically available.

[Lynn_Grillo]

Here's more info from adobe.com:
Support for Intel based Macs (PDF: 79k)
http://www.adobe.com...lmacsupport.pdf

[jdb8167]

In reply to:

---

...what [does] it take to create a universal version of existing software. ... I would imagine that the task gets much more complicated with something the size of Photoshop.

---

It isn't just the size but also the age. Photoshop has been updated constantly since 1990. That is a lot of history for an application hosted on a PC operating system. It is possible that some of the code is still from the original application.
To understand the problem that Adobe has you need to know some history of Macintosh software development. There have been two major transitions before the current switch to Intel. The first was to PPC from the 68k line and the second was to OS X.
The switch to PPC was facilitated by a new software development tool from Metrowerks called CodeWarrior. Without CodeWarrior it is likely that the PPC transition would have been deemed a failure. Just about all commercial software was developed using CodeWarrior after the PPC transition. Apple did have their own development suite called MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) but it was considered arcane and too difficult to use and it was late to the party compared to Metrowerks. CodeWarrior became the standard development tool for Mac development.
Then CodeWarrior got bought out by Motorola and the slide began. Recently, and unfortunately before the Intel announcement by Apple, Motorola announced the exclusive sale of their Intel x86 compiler making it impossible for CodeWarrior to be updated to support x86. The interest in CodeWarrior had waned and OS X developers were no longer exclusively using it. The OS X development environment called Cocoa (objective-C) wasn't supported by CodeWarrior (it may have been added late in the game.) But older applications were using a C/C environment called Carbon, not Cocoa. Those developers using Carbon mostly were sticking with their comfortable environment in CodeWarrior.
When Apple announced the Intel switch, it was a surprise to everyone and it meant that developers no longer had the choice to remain with the aging CodeWarrior. For some developers the switch to Apple's development environment Xcode is a difficult process. Years of best practices have to be replaced. For a company like Adobe, this probably includes years of legacy tools and development files. Adobe also has to worry about their plug-in architecture and needs to support third-party plug-in developers. The age of Photoshop and the years of development with CodeWarrior make this transition a slow one.
I'm sure that Adobe has quality requirements that are going to be difficult to maintain if they don't follow their normal development schedule as well. Even after they move their tools over to Apple's latest environment, the amount of testing required is probably daunting. They may already have everything ready to go in their development labs but still need months for testing and debugging.