Universal binaries are files that physically have two copies of the
program in them. The ppc and the intel progrram are both present in
the executable file. When you click on the program to execute it,
the os determins which processor you have, and selects the
appropriate image of the binary, loads it, and executes that copy.
It's actually quite a slick little solution.
Very similar to the way some folks imbed zip files into gif files (or
vice versa) since zip files have the signature info at the beginning,
and the gif files have it at the end. Go ahead and try it, append a
gif picture to a small zip file. You'll be able to unzip the file,
or load it into a gif viewer, and it will work as it should (assuming
your gif viewer behaves of course)
On Mar 5, 2006, at 8:25 PM, Jacob Schmude wrote:
I doubt that PowerPC will be unsupported very soon--think of all
the Macs out there that're still running that processor and most of
the average joe Mac users don't care what proessor's in it. Apple
is certainly smart enough to realize this--and actually the Apple
stores still sell PowerPC-based machines--so I doubt they're going
to drop support. If they were, why did they not just start creating
Intel-specific development tools rather than their Universal
binaries which run natively on both processors? Still not sure how
they pulled that one off effectively. Anyway, I've got an iBook G4
as my notebook and it gets about 5 and a half hours of battery life
with the wireless turned on--I've gotten up to 8 with it turned
off. And currently, if you want to run Virtual PC a PowerPC system
is your only option--though I believe there are other PC emulators
that do work on the new Intel Macs. Regardless of what processor
you get in it, if you're going to be doing PC emulation, you'll
want to max out the ram and I'm not kidding about that--the iBook
G4 has a max of 1.5 gb and I believe the Powerbook G4 has a max of
2 gigs. I'm not sure what the max on the new Macbook Pro is.
On Mar 5, 2006, at 3:18 PM, Justin Harford wrote:
I am still in the market for a mac. I want a note book that would
have around 5 hours of battery life, play music and DVDs. I was
also thinking that I might like to run some sort of PC simulator
on it later on too. Of course using office type programs like
Mariner Write and Calc later on are also wanted.
So, what do you guys recomend that I do. I was originally
thinking about a mac book pro, but I have been hearing all this
stuff about the intels and it's duel processors sucking up battery
life. Is there an alternative that would better suit me, to the
intel, mac book, or both?
Justin Harford
