Apple's solution is an emulator called Rosetta. Unfortunately, it is still in the early stages and, like many emulators, tends to run much slower than a native operating system would.ĭuring the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, Apple realized the need to incorporate a PowerPC emulator into OS X in order to protect its customers' investments in software designed to run on the PowerPC. The PearPC emulator is capable of emulating the PowerPC processors required by newer versions of the Mac OS (like OS X).

Despite the eventual excellent 68000-emulation technology available they proved never to be even a minor threat to real Macs due to their late arrival and immaturity even several years after the release of much more compelling PowerPC based Macs. Soon Apple was no longer selling 68000-based Macs and the existing installed base started to quickly evaporate. PowerPC Mac users who could technically run either obviously chose the faster PowerPC applications. Many application developers were also creating and releasing both 68000 Classic and PowerPC versions concurrently helping to negate the need for PowerPC emulation. This would later prove correct with the start of the PearPC project even years later despite the availability of 7th & 8th generation x86 processors employing similar architecture paradigms present in the PowerPC. At the time of 68000-emulator development, PowerPC support was difficult to justify not only due to the emulation code itself but also the anticipated wide performance overhead of an emulated PowerPC architecture vs.

Windows emulator for powerpc mac