I'm thinking of treating myself to a brand spanking new MacBook Pro, and Aperture to go with it.

But i'm a bit concerned by the recent change in processors (from PowerPC to Intel), apparently old software won't work on the new intel processors.

So if I get Aperture, will it work on the new intel laptops, or will I have bought a $499 dud?

Apple have released Aperture in a "Universal" version, so that it'll work on both processors.

And its a free upgrade too!

I think Apple have done this for most of their software now

oops, they WILL be releasing it in a Universal version when they shortly release the 1.1 update.

So i'd hold on till then

Bear in mind also Pickled that Adobe won't be making their software Universal until they release the next versions.

But apparently somehow you can still run Adobe products on new Intel machines. Dunno how that works though...

The Lightroom beta is Universal

IIRC there is some kind of emulation to allow older software to run on the new macs, but check that before buying! :)

The Intel Macs have a program called Rosetta that will allow you to run older software on them. But they will run a lot slower because of it.

Thanks Jon, thought it was something like that.

Seeing as the new macs are at least 4x faster, though (and i've heard independant views that confirm that) does anyone know how the overall performance compares when you're running things through Rosetta?

An article I was reading in Digit yesterday said the new Quark Xpress and similar non-Intel programs run 50% slower using the Rosetta emulator than Universal versions should.

This slowdown is Universal vs non-Universal, not Intel vs PowerPC. So if the new macs are faster, then the slowdown shouldnt be too noticeable - you just won't have the full advantage of the new hardware yet.