Talking to some knowledgeable folk this week about exactly how universal Mac OS X is going to be. Some theories were that it would just be the applications, but in truth their aim is to make a truly universal operating system: to wit, you will be able to take your hard disk out of a PPC-based Mac, slot it into an Intel based Mac and the machine will boot.
mongoose:~ mj$ lipo -info /bin/cp
Non-fat file: /bin/cp is architecture: ppc
mongoose:~ mj$ lipo -info /Applications/iTunes.app/
Contents/MacOS/iTunes
Architectures in the fat file: /Applications/iTunes.app/
Contents/MacOS/iTunes are: ppc i386
mongoose:~ mj$ lipo -info /usr/bin/acid
Architectures in the fat file: /usr/bin/acid are: i386 ppc
On an intel-based Machine running 10.4.4:
$ file /bin/ls /bin/ls: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures /bin/ls (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386 /bin/ls (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc
It’s going to be universal all the way. Isn’t that nice? And if you’re using XCode (duh!) then it’s going to be simple enough to get your app running. Put another way: if Quark can get a product out there, anyone can.