If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Yes, it is working... but in a limited fashion. However, recompiling OSX native code is extremely simple. The publisher of a new vertical application for Dental Offices announced this week that they recompiled their entire package for OSX.4-86 in under two hours... and have found no differences in operation.
Apparently Rosetta will be needed only for apps that are unecenomical to recompile... or are orphaned.
Rosetta (software)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Rosetta is a lightweight dynamic translating emulator for Mac OS X developed by Apple to enable applications compiled specifically for the PowerPC family of processors to run on Apple systems based on Intel processors. It is based on Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit technology. It is a key part of Apple's strategy for the transition of their Macintosh line from PowerPC to Intel processors, in that it enables existing Mac OS X software to run on the new platform without modification. (The name is presumably a reference to the Rosetta stone, whose discovery made it possible to comprehend and translate Egyptian hieroglyphs.)Rosetta can only translate G3 instructions, so software that requires the G4, G5, or AltiVec features of later Apple systems can not be emulated, and will have to be modified by its developers to work on Intel-based Macintoshes. However, applications that take advantage of these features are usually coded to fall back to the less efficient G3 instruction set when they are unavailable, so most application software available for OS X will at least be functional without modification. According to Apple, applications with heavy user interaction but low computational needs (such as word processors) are well suited to translation via Rosetta, and applications with high computational needs (such as raytracers) are not.
Rosetta does not run the following:
Applications built for Mac OS 9 or below
Code written specifically for AltiVec processors
Code that inserts preferences into the System Preferences pane
Applications that require a G4 or G5 processor
Kernel extensions and applications that depend on them
Bundled Java applications or Java applications with JNI libraries that can’t be translated
Java applets in applications that Rosetta can translate. That means a web browser that Rosetta can run translated will not be able to load Java applets.
Shiver me timbers. May have to learn more about Unix/Linux/OS X.
The biggest bonus to the proliferation of the OS X Intel demo is that UNIX Info Tech people who have ridiculed the Mac OS for their entire professional careers will be among those installing the kit on their PC's... and discovering to their delight that as a UNIX, OS X is good... very good.