From: "Doug" <dwd3m@virginia.edu>

Date: June 28, 2007 3:23:43 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Astro IIDC 4 Feature List

Hi Milton,

I fully understand - your explanation makes perfect sense to me.  My plans are to keep 

using Astro IIDC regardless so I'm content either way....

Doug

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Milton Aupperle <milton@...> wrote:

Hi Doug;

Just to clarify what is on our web site with regards to x86 MacIntel  

port.

It's not that we don't want to do it - it's just that given how few  

MacIntel systems were out there 18 months ago that it made no  

economic sense to re-write it, especially since it does work under  

Rosetta as is.

At that time there were around 25 million PowerPC Macs capable of  

running OSX and maybe 3 million x86 Macs. Now it's better with around  

8 million x86 Mac sold and the x86 Mac market has grown enough that  

we now feel it's worth re-writing 700,000+ lines of code specifically  

for x86. I'd much rather add new features than simply sit here day  

after day boringly re-writing code for an old ( or new) chip  

architecture.

As a real example of where sales numbers are, our PowerPC only DFG  

driver still sells 3 times as many copies as the x86 Universal DFG  

version of the driver, which is in line with the the existing PowerPC  

VS x86 Macintel ratio (25  / 8 ~ 3). I expect that it will still be  

another 18 months before x86 Macintel begins to be the dominant sales  

for Mac software, and within 4 years no one will be writing PowerPC  

software at all - just like it happened with the transition from OS 9  

to OSX or 68K to PowerPC.

HTH..

Milton J. Aupperle

On 28-Jun-07, at 2:20 PM, Doug wrote:

I'll look forward to the upgrade Milton - especially since I just  

upgraded to a MacBook Pro

with the Santa Rosa chip-set.   I'm glad to hear it because I  

thought I read previously that

you had no plans to rewrite for x86 MacIntels?  Lots of great  

sounding additions too -

thanks!!

Doug