EETimes reports on comments by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor and Systems Conference.
Oppenheimer reports that there are 1000 Universal Applications today for the Intel Mac OS X. Older applications need to be recompiled to run at full speed on the latest Intel-based Macs. Previous Macs used the PowerPC processor. As Apple transitions to the an all Intel-based product line, native Intel applications may be one of major hurdles preventing many customers from upgrading.
At the Morgan Stanley conference, Oppenheimer sought to reassure the market that major Mac applications are on track to be optimized for the Intel-based Mac platform. "We have commitments from our major developers," he said. "They will release universal versions of their applications--not only Adobe, but also Quark and Microsoft."
Apple's list of Universal Binaries does indeed list over 1000 entries, though its hard to tell how many of them represent significant applications. Meanwhile, Mac Guides: List of Universal Binaries and Mac Guides: Universal Binary Games provide a more selective list of shipping Universal applications.
In a related story, ThinkSecret reports that Adobe is working hard to release Creative Suite 3 (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Acrobat) as a Universal Binary by the end of the year. While initially planned for 2007, Apple and Adobe are making a push to be complete by the end of 2006.
Oppenheimer also took this opportunity to restate that Apple "will do nothing to preclude Windows from running on Intel-based Macs" which is consistent with previous comments by Apple officials. As mentioned earlier today, some analysts feel that Apple could expand their marketshare significantly when easy booting into Windows becomes available on the new Intel Macs.
