Apple's move to Intel to lure developers to Mac OS X?

Like using the same processor will make the Mac APIs magically like those in other platforms. Of course, Cocoa is better because it _isn't_ like the windows APIs...

"what Apple does best: new capabilities that you never knew you wanted but can't wait to get once you see them in action."

This is an excellent definition of innovation...

the author talks about "arcane" difference of PPC and x86, then points out it's big endian vs little endian. He better go easy on the adjectives. That's the least of the differences. I will be interested to see if buffer overflow vulnerability will make it easier for viruses when macs switch to x86. PPC requires things to be aligned to 4 byte multiples, but x86 doesn't care...easier for evil code to be executed through a buffer overflow...although Linux on x86 doesn't have nearly the viruses of M$...stay tuned.

Oh, So it is the processor that causes viruses? Gee I thought it was the software..

You can have buffer overflow vulnerabilities on PowerPC chips. Take a look at some of the security updates sometime, to see what they fix.

Ah, but an overrun in of itself is not a virus or security lapse waiting to happen. It only becomes serious if the buffer that's being overrun runs into runnable code, which could be overwritten with other executable code to call a properly coded function to perform nasty deeds.

From the way I read the details, the PPC stores variables and functions on two different stacks/heaps, thus overrrunning a buffer isn't going to as easily affect actual code and cause malicious programs to run, because of the difficulties to get the code in the right place. On windows/intel, this is easy, since they're together.

Oh, and most security fixes on this are done because (a) people expect them to be problems, so they list them out, regardless of whether they actually are a threat, (b) they are a bug (they'll cause a crash or corrupt your data) and need to be fixed, and (c) most are fixed in the *nix world, and brought into OS X.

As for this: Oh, So it is the processor that causes viruses? Gee I thought it was the software..

Software causes viruses. But buffer overrun exploits aren't necessarily viruses (depending on how they're spread and used). They may be just exploits. Sit at a computer, run a simple program, boom, you've got admin privileges. But the processor plays a part (hell, buffer overflow exploits are all written in machine-language as it is).

I count five major product revisions?

-Apple II to Macintosh -System 6 to System 7 (barely any software made this transistion) -CISC to Power PC RISC -Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X -Power PC to Intel

Don't forget the ill-fated Apple III and Lisa...

He says, "the intel line with its economy of scale, low power and integrated digital rights management"... wow can't wait for Intel's DRM to tell me I can't use my video digitizer to capture a tv show, or can't play something back out the firewire interface to the tv. I wonder if Apple will be under more pressure to enable that stuff once they switch? I use my 3 macs as media centers, digitizing or converting dvd's that I own of old movies and tv shows, (no I don't share them, other people can buy their own), storing them on a big raid array to watch around the house. I just don't think "Intel DRM" is a big selling point to consumers. It probably is to hollywood, but that isn't why I bought my macs.

The Macintosh and Apple (I, II, and III) lines should not be lumped together when counting Mac transitions. For one thing, the Apple line had at least three major transitions of its own. The Apple line coexisted with the Macintosh line. That said, Steve Jobs's count of three Macintosh transitions was marketing speak. I count at least seven significant transitions in the Macintosh line.