Has hellhole frozen over ?

That was the question many the great unwashed were inquire this week as Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs invited his counterpart at Intel to take the microscope stage at Apple ’s Worldwide Developers Conference . Jobs took much of his shorter - than - usual one 60 minutes keynote explaining to the 3,800 developers that the transition would n’t be as unmanageable as they might consider — in this regard he seems to have come through .

For the most part developers are not that interested about the transition . Apple has set up a strategy that will countenance most of the coating to be ported to the new Intel chip fairly simply . That was the central exit — if Apple left the developer behind , any success the Mac has seen over the past couple of years would have been drop off .

Key developers like Adobe and Microsoft have already pledge their support to render native software on the Apple / Intel architecture . This is another huge profits for the transition — smaller developers need to know that Jobs has the support of the expectant gun for hire , and evidently he does .

With the developer inquiry out of the way , I then thought about what I , as a Mac substance abuser , want from Apple . I must admit that I ’m growing tired of hear to the reasons why a PowerPC buffalo chip is good , technically , than Intel or AMD .

When it comes right down to it , as a user of a Macintosh computer , I want the fastest data processor I can possibly get . If that system uses a PowerPC chip , fine . If it uses Intel , fine . I do n’t really care if Jobs and Jon Rubinstein rewire their toaster oven constituent and make a fast calculator — if that ’s what works , fine .

So , back to the original interrogative — has hell frozen over ? I think not . For twelvemonth , Mac users have been conditioned to hate Intel — much of the backlash we see from user is in all probability due to this deep seated whim that Intel is the uncollectible hombre .

I suppose if we take a step back and listen to what Steve suppose about the PowerPC and Intel roadmaps , we have to conclude that he made the good move — or at the very least he is score the move for the effective interest of the ship’s company and its substance abuser . After all , Jobs did assure a 3GHz G5 within a class … two years ago .

There are still a lot of unanswered query about the Apple / Intel relationship . All of us atMacworldwill be digging to find out the answer to help educate you and ourselves .