The Irish Web site FinFacts referenced a New York Times report quoting Apple boss Steve Jobs as saying that Rosetta, Apple's "dynamic software translation" tool, would allow existing programs to run unmodified on Apple's new Intel-based computers. The tool is partly based on technology developed by Transitive (Manchester, England).

Apple's first computers were based on 68000 processors from Motorola. Apple later shifted to PowerPC chips after Motorola and IBM joined forces. Now, Apple has said it intends to offer computers based on Intel processors, although the use of software from Transitive could help make the processor type less significant than in the past.

Transitive announced that a "big computer OEM customer" had plans to ship computers with the Transitive emulation shell back in September 2004. Transitive first demonstrated its technology in 2001 showing off x86-to-MIPS emulation. The company was expected to launch products in 2003, which made its announcement of the QuickTransit product in 2004 appear tardy.

"The product launch was intended to be coincident with that of our first big computer OEM customer. We had hoped the computer OEM would deploy before the end of 2003," Bob Wiederhold, president and chief executive officer of Transitive, said at the time. Wiederhold then added that Transitive had been shipping products to customers since November 2003 and expected its computer OEM to be shipping before the end of 2004.

"We now expect our first computer OEM customer to ship before the end of the year," said Wiederhold at the time. He would not name of the computer maker, but confirmed that computers would ship with QuickTransit installed.

Transitive was included in the first and second iteration of the EE Times' 60 emerging startups list.