by , 3:30 PM EST, March 8th, 2006

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor and Systems Conference on Tuesday, said that 1,000 applications can now run natively on the new Intel Macs, but challenges remain, particularly with regard to professional users.

Edward Moltzen, reporting on Oppenheimer's comments for CRN, said that Mr. Oppenheimer pointed to Adobe Photoshop's lack of a Universal Binary as an example of that. "For power users, they are going to notice a difference [in performance]," Mr. Oppenheimer noted. "They may or may not find that acceptable." However, he noted that Adobe, Quark and Microsoft have all pledged to release Universal versions of their software.

Mr. Oppenheimer also addressed the recent specter of security problems in Mac OS X, characterizing them as "harmless, proof-of-concept threats" that have had "negligible impact."