Things that may have been missed at MacWorld

Obviously there was plenty of news at MacWorld yesterday, but here's a few things that didn't really get noticed that need picking up on:

• The Microsoft deal: the previous deal was for a new version of Office every year and a half. There was no mention of how many times Office would be updated over the next five years.
• Rosetta performance: if Photoshop only runs at an acceptable speed in Rosetta and Office needs a tune-up to make it run at an acceptable speed (no date mentioned when the tune-up will be), it's got to be a bit more of a dog than previously suggested.
• Office for Mactel: No mention of when Office was going Intel native and whether it would be a paid update, part of the next version or for free.
• Virtual PC: What's going to happen to Virtual PC? No the new iMac Dual Core won't be able to run Virtual PC at all until it's updated for Intel processors. There was no announcement that work was even happening on it.
• Chip specs: As pointed out in InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac blog, the specs used were completely inappropriate. Some more reasonable specs are needed to see if the switch to dual core Intel chips is as massive as suggested.
• Airport or Centrino: Is the wireless networking in the new Mactel's AirPort-based or does it use Intel's Centrino chipset? I'm betting it's the former, if only because of the speed at which the motherboard got put together, but it would be good to know.
• BIOS or EFI?: Do the Mactels use a standard PC BIOS or an EFI-based alternative? If the former, is FireWire booting still possible and will Windows run natively on the Mac?

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