From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are very few "universal" (x86 and ppc) binaries available at this point. I see the number of freeware and shareware x86 builds growing daily. But the commercialware is a slow trickle at best.
From the Big Ten makers, maybe -- but clearly you're not reading much Mac News, commercial product makers announcing Universal Binaries are all over the place. Check PR Newswire if you don't believe me.
Anything that uses altivec or certain G4- or G5-specific instructions has to be rewritten.
Your info is mostly out of date. When Steve first announced Rosetta, it was true that G4-specific or Altivec-specific programs weren't fully compatible. That is no longer the case.
While it remains true that G5-specific instructions aren't supported, I'm not aware of ANY software programs to which this applies.
Ditto for things that talk to the system preference panes,
Incorrect.
and kernel extensions, as well as the kernel extensions themselves.
This part is accurate, but not very common among software devs.
That means a LOT of work for 3rd party hardware companies.
Not really. Most of the "third party hardware companies" out there make printers and scanners -- a simple driver recompile should be all that's needed.
Some very specific hardware drivers will need more complicated updating, but it's nothing that wasn't par for the course when, for example, we went from 9 to X. This really isn't as big a deal as you're making it out to be. By the end of this year I'd expect nearly every major software and "third-party hardware" maker should be compatible.
We're discovering that it's not enough to just do a universal compilation, as Apple's PR says. You cannot trust the code that works fine on PPC to work on x86.
Given that Apple has NO INTENTION OF EVER RELEASING A MAC ON X86, perhaps I've identified where your trouble lies.
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