VLC dropping PPC Support

Macs and Mac OS X are not the best platform if you want longer support since it seems that even if you would have Intel -based machine you would need 10.6, an OS released in 2009 while PC users can still install it on Windows XP, released in 2001. PowerPC is of course in worse since it began dying (from home computers = Macs) in 2005-2006.

Yup, we're slowly but surely being left behind by all major developers. Nothing you can do, sadly.

Was inevitable, but a shame none the less. PowerPC had the last nail in its coffin when Apple ditched rosetta.

It was nice of them to stay with it until they got the AltiVec code working again. IMHO, they left us with a very nice final release.

To be honest I'm surprised that they stuck with PPC support for this long. I thought we would be out the window by 2011, but luckily we still had support. Sad to see it go, VLC is awesome and let me make a mini G4 into a awesome TV computer to watch movies and stuff on.

I wonder if someone is able to take the VLC 2.1 codebase and backport it to PowerPC and 10.5 like what was done with Firefox. I hope so, but then again I don't know much about that whole process.

Intell said:

I wonder if someone is able to take the VLC 2.1 codebase and backport it to PowerPC and 10.5 like what was done with Firefox. I hope so, but then again I don't know much about that whole process.

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TenFourVLC

gavinstubbs09 said:

TenFourVLC

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TenFiveVLC more likely then

They also dropped support for 32 bit Intel Macs too. It seems that early Intel machines are now sharing the same fate with PPC

honam1021 said:

They also dropped support for 32 bit Intel Macs too. It seems that early Intel machines are now sharing the same fate with PPC

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Yeah, I've noticed that too and luckily, some sellers of early Intel Macs understand the 32-bit limitation and are adjusting their selling prices accordingly.

Intell said:

I wonder if someone is able to take the VLC 2.1 codebase and backport it to PowerPC and 10.5 like what was done with Firefox. I hope so, but then again I don't know much about that whole process.

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It depends of the dependencies and few things. I still build QtCreator for PowerPC while only x86_64 is supported since 2.6... I just skip a part that I know I don't really need, although some plugins might fail. It could be the same thing with VLC. I think VLC 2.1 will still be available in Debian PPC and it's only the Mac port which is dropped. If it's true, should be easier to maintain.

I'll try to build on my G5, but don't expect anything.

From the Videolan forums:

Backporting VLC 2.1 to PPC is clearly feasible but it's not as simple as just compiling it. You need to tweak the ObjC 2.0 modern runtime optimizations we added for VLC's 2.1 release. I'd estimate a few days half time work to achieve this. Due to the small number of developers on Apple platforms (2 on iOS, 2 on Mac, while one of them doing both platforms), it isn't manageable for us anymore to support PowerPC Macs (as well as 32bit Intel).

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i know that it's no longer supported but is it still available?

Yeah the last version for PowerPC is 2.0.9, which can still be downloaded.

thanks. maybe i'd better hop on it while it's still available. (glad i've still got a working copy of pearlyrics)