So "it was true." Apple is shifting toward Intel from PowerPC.

Everyone is talking about it and debating how good or bad Apple's decision can be. The pessimists list all the possible hazards and cry. But as always, I am on the optimistic camp.

I believe the most important message from Apple was not the "transition to Intel" but rather the "transition to Xcode."

Now those developers who's coding on CodeWarrior don't have much choice left. They have to move to Xcode. And if they made the move. Something wondeful will happen.

The Xcode development layer provides a great flexibility and abstraction for the entire Mac ecosystem including those ISVs that already made the move to Xcode.

Two years later, when most of the developers made this shift to Xcode. The Mac ecosystem itself would be processor independent. Intel is merely an option among many other processors to choose from. Of course, Apple wouldn't unnecessarily increase the target CPUs for the sake of Quality Assurance. But if Intel doesn't keep up to Apple's expectation, Apple will have varieties of other options to choose from.

"Transition to Intel" was kind of a threat toward those developers who didn't make the move yet.

To prove that, Apple's WWDC 2005 doesn't have many sessions focusing on Intel development; and in most of the sessions, they are discussing how to design a better elegant software but not about what the developers should do to prepare for Intel.

Apple will do all the plumbing and hard work. So the developers can concentrate on perfecting what they do best.

BTW. for those of you who read Japanese, I have snet a photo report of the WWDC keynote for mac24. Each pictures here are a link for in-depth photo reports:

http://mac.ascii24.com/mac/news/misc/2005/06/07/656292-000.html