[Satchmo]

Given the Universal code and that Apple will be supporting PowerPC based Macs for a long time, I'm sure they could. Although the roadmap for PowerPC is not there over the next few years...things could change. But would they be welcomed?

I got a sense from the keynote that Steve was being very careful as to not completely close the door with IBM. However, I do wonder if the relationship between Apple and IBM has soured to a point where it would be difficult to ever come back into the fold.

[Brad]

Absolutely, yes.

[Kickaha]

PowerPC, Xscale, AMD... you name it.

If gcc supports it, Apple could move to it.

[darshu]

Sure it's certainly possible to go to any of those architectures, but I would like a little bit more insistance on Apple's part to keep it this way. i.e. prodding to always compile in Universal Binary format and never just x86. Just to ensure people keep writing code that is endian-agnostic, has multiple paths for optimizations (fine, do an altivec and an SSE3), etc. Because for code which has made these assumptions or optimizations it can definitely be a pain --- once everyone has worked it out, best to keep them on the cross-architecture ship.

[Kickaha]

Absolutely. I think that's what we're going to see, moving forward.

Developers are cranky beeyatches though. Ya gotta move them in baby steps or they whine horribly.

[Brad]

And Kick and I have plenty of personal experience with said crankiness, don't we Kick?

[Kickaha]

Back off ya whippersnapper, or I'll take mah cane to ya!