Mac developers get access to Intel powered Macintosh

Apple developers have been given their first look at the Intel powered Macintosh computers. This is to enable them to check how much work would be required for them to convert their applications to run on the new setup. Apple has got their labs of Intel-based Macs up and is running these computers at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.

The company is expected to start selling these new systems powered by the Intel processors sometime next year and they are also now leasing the test machines to developers for US$999 starting this month. The software developers are happy to get this early chance to check how much work it would be to fix their applications to support the new platform.

Fetch Software president Jim Matthews said in a statement: “Apple is giving us plenty of time and hardware we can test on, which wasn’t the case the last time.” His company has already seen two major transitions with the Mac platform and is quite confident that this will not be messy at all. The least affected applications are the ones, which have been recently developed on the Apple’s Cocoa environment. These require the least complicated changes.

Companies like Delicious Monster Software have already done the required work to transform their applications to support Intel processors. With so much time available, it should not be a problem for the end consumer to switch over to the Macintoshes powered by Intel Processors next year. Apple would be completely switching over to Intel processors sometime in 2007.