Benefits of The Move
Advocates of the transition point out the potential for the new Intel Mac systems to run four classes of software at near native speeds: Mac OS X binaries, Java/.NET applications, Unix applications, and Win32/x86 applications.
Originally, emulation software such as DOSBox or Microsoft Virtual PC was required to run x86 software on the Macintosh. Such software could now enjoy much more success with near-native performance through virtualization, such as is currently being done by Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion. For those customers wishing to achieve a more conventional environment, a dual boot solution is possible on an x86 Apple device using Boot Camp software (which includes Windows drivers for Mac hardware). Some third-party partitioning options can even provide triple, or even quadruple boot.
Although most games depend on the use of DirectX APIs not available on Mac OS X (on either processor type), it should be easier to port OS-independent code, such as OpenGL, now that developers no longer have to resolve endian, and other ISA dependency issues associated with moving from x86 to PowerPC.
Read more about this topic: Apple's Transition To Intel Processors
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