At last month’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, Apple announced plans to switch from its PowerPC chip to an Intel model, revealing that it had maintained a secret Intel version of its operating system, OSX, for the past five years.
The announcement set off speculation as to the ease of conversion from PowerPC-coded programs to Intel-friendly ones. Apple said that code-name “Carbon” programs, such as most of Microsoft’s and Adobe’s graphic-heavy applications for Macintosh, would be the most difficult to convert.
Apple plans to release its Intel server line in 2006 and its consumer models the following year. The reason for the early announcement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, is to give developers a head start.
Firefox developer Josh Aas said the Intel version of the browser is still buggy, but he has received help from Apple’s development team in isolating areas where problems might occur. Apple, which has its own open source-based browser, Safari, has provided “extremely valuable” assistance to the Mozilla group, Aas said.