He knocked a point off for Rosetta? How petty. What about the fact that the same price now gets you a dual-core machine, an in-built iSight, a remote control, and iLife '06?

Good lord, there's no pleasing some people.

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Tommo_UK wrote:
He knocked a point off for Rosetta? How petty. What about the fact that the same price now gets you a dual-core machine, an in-built iSight, a remote control, and iLife '06?

Good lord, there's no pleasing some people.

We're talking about a 1.3% drop in the rating. That's petty? It doesn't seem like much a change at all.

The fact is, if you're a Photoshop user you WILL get a slower system than the G5 machine. That's a valid point. It could be up to a year before that's resolved and is worth pointing out.

(And the last iMacs had an iSigt and Front Row with a remote, btw.)

I agree. If Apple did control the whole widget(tm), all software that ran on the Mac would be written by Apple.

Since the whole widget thing is a crock, other companies write s/w, and not all of them (partly because Apple appears to either have jumped the gun, or beaten out the competition, depending on your point of view) have yet created Intel versions of their apps.

It's to Apple's credit that they have created Rosetta, but it's not the perfect solution. And it does detract from the new Imac's desirability. But just by a hair, because the processor is quick enough to make the Rosetta apps usable. If not insanely great.

I'd give good odds that by the end of the year, with updated CPUs, the Intel Macs will be running all Rosetta emulated apps at same speed as today's G4 machines. Although largely because they stopped advancing the spec of the G4 based machines.

As observed, Rosetta is a marvel. Without it, switching to intel would be horrible. But it's not a miracle. So I think any reviewer from any side of the fence should take todays reality into account. I'm with PC World on this.

I'm not buying yet, despite rosetta, because waiting just a little longer will give so much more pleasure and performance, both from new configurations and more universal binaries.

And, um, we can spite those companies that haven't updated their software yet, but I'd rather marvel at those that already did. Unbelievable.

The first version of anything new is going to have teething pains, as any early adopter can attest.

Still, as with the PPC transition, Apple has made it pretty much painless, and it's only going to get better as the everyone else adapts. The second-generation Intel machines can only get better. Recall that the transitional PowerMac 61xx/71xx/81xx machines were good, but not great; basically holdovers until the PowerMac x500s took over.

And the best thing about Rosetta is that it's part of the OS and independent of the hardware. Apple can continue to improve it with each software update, instead of having to wait for the next ROM revision as with the old PMs. Without it, the switch wouldn't be possible at all, so I don't know how anyone who's realisitic can speak negatively about it.

The fact that PPC apps run at all, and with the speed that they do is remarkable. Is there another emulator out there of any kind that does better?

Narasu Rebbapragada used to be a senior editor for MacAddict magazine. Hmm, I wonder if PC World decided they needed to hire someone with some Mac expertise? I wonder why she jumped ship, though...

Keep in mind that Apple bought an entire company so that they'd have Rosetta.

It's stupid that people are complaining about Apple releasing the new Intel machines before all of the software is available in native code for them. If Apple waited for a company like Adobe (who owe their existence to Apple, but now treat Apple like dirt), to come out with universal binary versions of their apps, the Intel Macs would never see the light of day.

Apple just brought the price of the G5 iMac down, and I'm going to buy one rather than the Intel one because ALL of my software is PPC native, and I have no plans or need to upgrade any of my software in the near future, and even the G5 is faster than my current machine, so I win no matter what.

Substracting a couple of percent points in an otherwise very good evaluation is not dishing Apple or Rosetta, it's a fair judgment to advise people that yes, some apps will slow down noticeably.

If they hadn't done that, it'd be a pretty stupid review, more of an advertisement.

And if I might add: some apps don't run in Rosetta at all.

Now, without saying anything bad about Rosetta - it's almost magic, it's incredible - don't you think that could be a problem for some users? Don't you think that is something a reviewer should tell its audience? Don't you think that should be reflected in the overall appreciation of the product reviewed?

I do. Reviews are one of the things buyers take into account for making expensive decisions.