Intel Macs: Not a Panacea
This [article in the NY Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/business/yourmoney/04techno.html) about “thinking tools” for the Mac contains the following misperception:
Others may follow next year, when Apple Computer begins producing Macs based on Intel processing chips like those that PC’s use. That change will make it easier for software vendors to create both Mac and PC versions of their programs…
Intel-based Macs will do no such thing (although I’m sure Apple doesn’t mind this kind of press). The truth is that the CPU inside the Mac doesn’t matter one bit because software developers must write their programs to two different OS APIs (that’s Operating System Application Programming Interfaces for my less technical readers). In other words, you need to write different code for Windows and Mac OS no matter what kind of chip they are running on. And, for most software, the type of chip doesn’t affect the code at all.
This mistake doesn’t affect the main point of the article, but it misleads the reader to think their favourite applications will soon find their way to Mac or Windows. Uh uh.