Apple Sticks with PowerPC for Now

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Apple Sticks with PowerPC for Now

anyone workin on Xcode spits out binaries for both CPUs....so, not a real big deal.

if you're programming on the Mac then it doesn't matter what CPU you're developing for because XCode handles it more or less transparently.

Xcode 2.1 creates universal binaries that run natively on Intel and PPC CPUs, but it requires OS X 10.4. The used G4 system that I bought has only 10.3.9, so I'm limited to Xcode 1.5, meaning native binaries for PPC only.

I guess if I get enough Mac game sales - which should start in early 2006 - to justify the ~$120 upgrade to 10.4, I'll get it (assuming that a BlitzMax update is released that allows universal binary compilation). However, by that point, 10.5 "Leopard" (possibly coming out in late 2006) might be worth waiting for.

However, that's a year or more in the future. By that point, my Mac will be so outdated that the slowest "Macintels" might run my PPC executables faster under Rosetta emulation than they run natively on mine, so I won't have to worry about it <g>.

Right now, Mac development is a much lower priority for me than Windows development. It was worth $250 to get a Mac to play around with, but sufficient sales will be required to justify expense beyond that. I'll be in "wait and see" mode for a while....