Hi
So, though this is a little off topic, I have a further question.
When a new universal Mac binary is compiled, does the development
tools--Xcode, most likely--simply cross-compile for the processor
that it isn't running on? That is, if you're running on a PowerPC and
you build a program, does Xcode cross-compile an Intel version as
well? That's the only way I could think of doing it without having to
have both a ppc and an Intel based Mac to develop on.
I'll have to try to embed the zip and gif files together, never
thought of trying that. Maybe I'll play around and see what other
file types this works for. Is that how they get the song lyrics
embeded into an mp3 file sometimes? This'll be fun to play around
with, should entertain me for at least a few hours--grin.
On Mar 5, 2006, at 8:04 PM, Travis Siegel wrote:
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
