well.. i dont think it is particularly hard to write programs that would take advantage of a quad processor system, especially if the system supports it...
I find it hard to believe that a modern operating system like OS X does not support more than 2 processors. It is different to say that current applications will have to be re-written, but I would hate to think OS X will not support more than 2 processors. I am not an expert, so I hope someone else will explain why OS X will not support more than 2 processors, not that current applications can.
well, os x could support 4 processors -- its just a matter of doing the work, but what is the point of creating a system that supports 4 procsessors if apple hasnt made 4 processor systems yet....
also, if the system supported 4 processors you would still have an advantage with programs that dont have mp (multi-processort) acceleration -- it would allow you yto run more programs at one more quickly because there is a total of more cpu power available.
for instance, the way that a program that doesnt support multi processors today works like this:
so apps take up a certain amount of cpu time based on the how complicated the task is. lets say that you are running serveral intense program that require more resources than what is available on one processor -- then the porgrams have to cycle the processor -- they take turns at using the processor for some amount of time, which makes the syustem run quite slowly. However with a second processor, you can cut down on this "cycling" process by just doing that extra work on the second processor, saving precous cpu time.
however, apps that take advantage of both cpus can do the same amount of work in half the time because it can split apart one job so that both prcessors can process it -- as opposed to puttiung the entire job on one cpu and haveing to wait for the current calculation to finish until the next one can start, while two calculations can be going on at the same time on both processors, instead.