Newsgroup: it.comp.macintosh
Titolo: Considerazioni di uno sviluppatore software (X-Plane)


Subject: OK JUST SINCE EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT...
OK JUST SINCE EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT, I WILL ADDRESS THIS ISSUE
SPECIFICALLY:
Uncle Steve from Apple (may it's glorious name shine on forever)
announced yesterday that Mac's would switch over to Intel chips. Then,
everyone started emailing me asking how this would impact X-Plane.
The answer is: Not at all now, and only a little bit later, and then,
only in a good way.
Why?
Well, for starters, I could not care les what sort of little piece of
silicon and plastic is buried inside the box we fly X-Plane on. The
CHIP does nothing but process 0's and 1's.. . the real Mac is the
RELIABLE, FUN-TO-USE, USER-FIRENDLY OPERATING SYSTEM AND HIGH-QUALITY,
STYLISH, BEAUTIFUL HARDWARE AND PERIPHERALS.. any chip that can add
numbers really fast is as good as any other... do you really care who
MAKES your calculator? Of course not... 1+1 is either 2, or it isn't...
the company that makes the chip to do the math makes no difference, so
what chip you use will have little impact on X-Plane (assuming
Motorolla, Intel, etc make chips that are the same speed, which is of
course not a totally valid assumption, but these guys are always
leap-frogging each other)
So, the chip Apple uses makes very little difference to us.
Now, there will still be some small benefits to us:
1: apparently, the intel chips are a bit faster than the chips apple
uses now, so I guess maybe the switch is good if Intel keeps it's lead.
2: when I switch over to Apple's compiler in a year or so, I wil lbe
able to make the windows, apple, and linux build of X-Plane all one one
computer, which will let me spit out new versions a bit easier, saving
me a few hours per releae, maybe, so that's pretty good.
So, there you have it! Apple switching to Intel will be a pretty nice
thing for us, though not that big a deal.
Maybe get you a few more frames per second, and save me a few hours per
release, after some "switch-over" pains, as I generate code for the new
chip.
Now, you want me to PRETEND that I know what I am talking about, like
some idiot that writes editorials? OK, I will PRETEND that I know what
I am talking about. here goes: "In the future, with both Apple and
Microsoft Operating Systems both being able to run on the same box,
Windows users that find pirated copies of the MacOS lying around on the
net that will actually run on their machines will quickly see that the
Mac OS is much more fun to use, and gradually switch over to that OS,
leaving the Microsoft OS behind. As well, price pressures will cause
many people to run the wonderful Mac OS in cheap windows-style boxes to
save money, so the equipment for the typical user will be the wonderful
Mac OS on cheap, fast, affordable, clone-style hardware. This will
happen because the MacOS will cost about the same as the Windows OS
(good software and bad software cost the same anmount of money) but the
cheap clone-style HARDWARE will draw in the masses. Some percentage of
the users that think like me will spring for the extra $$$ and get the
full Apple hardware though, in it glorious titanium and stylish
aluminum or unobtainium or whatever the style of the year is, just like
we always have."
So there you go. If I wrote for a newspaper I would say it with a
straight face, pretending I am some soprt of authority on the future,
but I give it to you here as my pontification, with no implication at
all that I am doing anything more than guessing wildly... though it
will be fun to see if I am right!
austin
-- 
Maurizio - Mac User since 1987
   - ktm lc8 "big orange" -
 
www.maurizio-marra.com
     God speed, Fabrizio

 Uncle Steve from Apple (may it's glorious name shine on forever)
:-D