why sad ??? come on wake up guys !

i'm a PPC lover as much as you are but let's face the situation for a minute...

The end of the PPC era for Apple is only a logical evolution. Apple don't really have a choice there. The G5 has sadly reached its limits, and the next gen PPC procs are not ready to be implemented in an personal computer yet. Why would they port MacOS X to the Cell proc when they already have a working X86 version working and ready ?
The next Macs will be x86 powered but won't be PCs (even if we'll be able to run Windows on it). They will benefit from much more CPU power, keep compatibility with PPC apps through Rosetta (JIT) and be ready for major X86 hardware evolutions (dual/quadri-core, PCI Express, DDR2, WiMax, etc..). So where's the problem ?
PPC macs will still be supported for years, apps will be available for both procs and the transition should go smoothly within a few years.

The only bad point i see here is for the future of the Pegasos as a PPC computer. As Genesi is relying on Linux PPC to sell its computers i think there will be an issue here. Why would the Linux PPC devs would keep on improving Linux PPC if the only target is the Pegasos ? Without the mac PPC machines Linux PPC has no reason to keep going on.

[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2005/6/7 8:56 ]

well the more important question is, will IBM/Freescale continue to produce PPC's after their biggest customer is gone ?

I was against this for a short time, but after sleeping on it and watching the keynote on video i tend to agree with soundsqare now. If in fact the machine being used is an Intel one then it wont be as bad as I thought. Now that is and only if the developers make universal binaries for a good few years. I say no less then to mid 2010. A lot of people have Macs now and if they run the apps like they did on that keynote, things are fine. The PPC to x86 Rosetta thing looks fantastic! Thats what I wanted to see, and thats what I got to see. I guess only time will tell.

@ Acill

This "rosetta" thingie is totally craped. It emulates a g3 only and has loads of other limitations.
Fat binaries are blown, incompatibities are unavoidable. Do you think all sofware companies offer a free upgrade of their soft to x86? I doubt that.

No, I don't like the x86 approach. And, tell me, who's gonna buy ppc macs now, when those are officially abandoned?
Has Apple the money to survive this?
The iPod sales will not continue forever. The future mobile entertainment devices are mobile phones. Do you beleive that Apple has the slightes chance against players like Nokia? I hardly doubt that.

According to IBM/Freescale officials, development of the PPC cpu-s will continue. They stated that apple market was too small anyway??? (IBM said that they sold to apple "only" 2million cpus/year and that they have their customers with or without apple.)

So, if they are not lying, it doesn't need to be so black...

http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch%2C+aligns+with+Intel/2100-7341_3-5733756.html?tag=nefd.top

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Who will? Well yesterday at the Apple store I say about 15 get sold, and I will be getting my new powerbook thursday. I think you are not looking at the big picture. There are a lot of PPC macs and the developers wont stop supporting them over night. I've talked to a few friends that were at the WWDC monday and they told me its just mind blowing. The support is all ready to go, they were shown applications that were universal and run perfectly on both systems without any noticable difference. They were shown source code get moved to x86 and compiled to intel only and then recompiled back again to PPC and then universal. Its very cool.

The only thing that pissed me off was all of them were told this was in the worls from the start of OS X. It upset me that Apple sold the idea of just how much better the G5 is then any Intel CPU to date, then they switch over at the peak of Mac sales. While now the Intel stuff isnt great, it will get better if you read about what they have in store for the end of 2006 and mid 2007. Another hint as to why Apple is waiting so long for the high end machine conversions.

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It is not always *that* simple. There are endianess issues when porting big endian Mac software to x86. There are assembler optimizations (Altivec) which must take into account. Not to mention you need that x86 machine as well... Maybe Apple can migrate their software overnight but 3rd party developers cant.