SkaroffBlog

Via Blinq, another in the continuing saga of GoogleMaps mashups. Grabbing data from gasbuddy and superimposing it on a map, Ahding.com has the Cheap Gas finder. Cheapest gas right now in Philly is only $1.97 at the Hess on Lancaster Ave. I think I paid $2.11 at the Wawa on Aramingo Ave yesterday.

In tech news, it’s official, Apple is moving to Intel based processors. A few choice highlights from AppleInsider:

• INTEL RUMORS TRUE: Jobs says there have been two major transitions for Mac: 68K to PowerPC and then Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. Now it’s time for third transition to Intel-based Macs. Developers will begin to make the transition now. While users can begin to switch next year. Apple is making the move “because we want to make the best computers for our customers.”
• Mac OS X has been leading secret double life, Jobs proclaims. Every release of Mac OS X has been built for both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs over the last 5 years. Mac OS X is cross-platform by design. Jobs shows all Mac OS X Tiger running on Intel. All features are already compatible with Intel-based processors. It’s not done yet, but will be put into the developer hands for finishing.
• Jobs shows Rosetta: a dymanic binary translator. It runs PowerPC code on Intel-baesd Macs, transparently to the users. It’s pretty fast. Jobs demos Rosetta used to run PowerPC macs on Intel-based Macs –shows Microsoft Excel/Word running on Intel-based Mac (without any porting and/or recompiling). Jobs also shows Photoshop CS2 with all plugins that are translated and run on Intel-based Mac without significant speed decrease.
• Jobs introduces Wolfram’s CEO, who said they ported Mathematica 5 to Intel-based Macs in 2 hours. Only about 20 lines of code changed.

Pretty cool stuff. No word yet on whether these chips are definitely x86 based or PowerPC based as Daring Fireball hypothesized or whether or not OS X will run on non-Apple Intel hardware. Either way I’ll be very interested to see what direction Apple moves now with hardware prices, marketing, and potentially spreading the best consumer OS available to other platforms.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2005 at 3:09 pm and is tagged as Links, Maps, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.