It has been a week for time travel. Looking in more detail at the Universal Binaries we’re just starting to see for the next processor transition, I’ve been taken back to 2006, when Macs moved to Intel. Then along came Felix Rieseberg’s amazing virtualisation of a Mac Quadra running System 8, and I found myself in 1997 again, when we were in the throes of the first processor transition to PowerPC.
I stole a little time to go back through some of my archives from 2006-07, and was reminded what had happened. At that time, I was writing for the former UK magazine MacUser, and one of my tasks was to prepare a list of significant software updates. I noticed some old friends among them, such as the text editor BBEdit, when it first went Universal. That’s a lot of versions before 13.1.2 which I still use daily.
We’ll get used to this again over the coming few years. Although I’m sure that Rosetta 2 will do an impressive job of translating Intel binaries to run on Apple Silicon, the big milestone for each app we use today will be its first release as a Universal App, as that’s when you’ll really be able to see how Apple’s new hardware is doing.
With around forty apps and command tools to port, I’m making an early start, with the aim of releasing full-functional Universal versions which are compatible with Big Sur, whether it’s running on existing Intel Macs or the new generation of Apple Silicon Macs.
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