PowerPC Support in Mac OS X 10.6 After All?

[MacRumors]

Contrary to claims that Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard" will drop PowerPC support, Gizmodo has heard that PowerPC support may indeed be living on.

The source, who claimed to get ahold of the 10.6 seed, indicated that work has been done on PowerPC drivers which indicates to them that support for the architecture is unlikely to be dropped this time around.

While this rumor may inspire a bit of hope to those who have late-model PowerPC Macs (including this editor), it should be noted that it runs contrary to running consensus that OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard" would only support Intel chips.

Apple is expected to introduce 10.6 at WWDC, for which we will be providing live keynote coverage at MacRumorsLive.com as well as SMS, Twitter and iPhone updates.

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[TuffLuffJimmy]

hmmmn I'd much rather have a more stable leopard than PPC support, I don't think any of my PPC machines would be able to handle 10.6 as they can barely handle 10.5

[ert3]

most of my PPC machines can handle leopard and I would rather they not drop support just yet.

[rendezvouscp]

Originally Posted by tuffluffjimmy

hmmmn I'd much rather have a more stable leopard than PPC support, I don't think any of my PPC machines would be able to handle 10.6 as they can barely handle 10.5

Those G5s available less than two years ago are really having a tough time with Leopard.

[Sky Blue]

oh noes, does that destroy this crazy Windows speculation?

[messedkid]

IMO, it would have been a smart move to drop PPC support.

Intel is the new way to go. Either upgrade if you want a new OS, or stick with Tiger or Leopard. It's called progress people.





Vote NO on PPC support for 10.6!!!

[seashellz]

extra baggage

[syklee26]

just buy a new Mac damn it....

[longofest]

I'd like to see them release one more PPC OS, especially if its one that focuses on stability and performance.

My Quad G5 (the only PPC Mac that I have left... i also have MacBook C2D and the latest MacBook Pro) feels sluggish sometimes, which is crazy because I know it's not the hardware.

[flopticalcube]

Loads of great PPC machines still around. Most G5 PMs can easily handle Leopard so 10.6 should be no problem. This will make lots of PPC owners happy.

[kflook]

Yeah...let me go find $2,000 to replace my barley over 2 year old G4....

[longofest]

Originally Posted by syklee26

just buy a new Mac damn it....

As I said, I have 2 intel macs and 1 PowerPC mac. However, I don't have the funds or the will to want to replace my QuadG5 right now with a Mac Pro. The Quad is a powerful machine and when I need the power of a desktop, I still go to it for use. I want the "stability and performance" refinements that we're hearing about to be applied.

[Sam Yikin]

Hmm.... this rumor in particular doesn't really matter to me, but more talk of 10.6 is always good.

[mogzieee]

Won't there just be an uproar if they didn't put PowerPC compatibility in 10.6? I reckon it will still be built for Intel, and PPC.

[Eric S.]

Originally Posted by rendezvouscp

Those G5s available less than two years ago are really having a tough time with Leopard.

Based on what? My Power Mac G4, which is a lot more than two years old, runs Leopard just fine.

Originally Posted by messedkid

IMO, it would have been a smart move to drop PPC support.

Intel is the new way to go. Either upgrade if you want a new OS, or stick with Tiger or Leopard. It's called progress people.

Vote NO on PPC support for 10.6!!!

Spoken, no doubt, by someone who does not own a PPC system. Why should you be so quick to advocate that other users, most of whom have been loyal Apple customers for years, should be denied the benefits the latest OS? Why do you even care?

[kwfl]

There is nothing wrong with dropping PPC support, unless apple want to go back to PPC.

Current PPC owners can run Leopard forever and i think the professional application they are running will be provided with updates. What is the timeline for your upgrade? 2 years? leopard will be great till that time.

[rendezvouscp]

Originally Posted by Eric S.

Based on what? My Power Mac G4, which is a lot more than two years old, runs Leopard just fine.

My apologies Eric. The face is for sarcasm. I have an original Dual 2 G5 that runs Leopard just fine.

[pkoch1]

Originally Posted by Eric S.

Based on what? My Power Mac G4, which is a lot more than two years old, runs Leopard just fine.

As far as I can tell, based on sarcasm mostly

[DTphonehome]

My Early-2006 iMac G5 (last PPC version) could certainly handle 10.6 assuming no major new features. If this is just a stability and performance update, PPC should be included. Those G5s are some pretty capable chips.

[Goldfinger]

I don't see why they should drop PPC support. Sure they can stop optimizing for PPC/AltiVec but they have the universal binary thing in place to make the support of two architectures easy.
There are lots of capable PowerPC Macs left. It's way too soon to drop PowerPC support. Maybe in 10.7 or 10.8

[Rocketman]

It is probably more accurate to say 10.6 will be released exclusively to developers under NDA, and the public face of OSX is 10.5.3 and iPhone OSX 2.0. Two bridges leading to Cupertino.

There may be behind the scenes and under the hood adjustments to 10.6 and beyond to "simplify" it or make a simplified version (snow leapord, snow lynx, snow felix the cat). It is more likely that simplification is an outgrowth of iPhone OSX being brought up to full capacity, than OSX 10.5 being crippled. At some point you need a swiss army knife OS out there to provide end user backward support for legacy hardware (OSX 10.5/10.4/9.2.2/8.6 path), and also a high performance, low overhead OS (OSX iPhone 2.0/server path).

iPhones are the ultimate thin client for client server systems. X-serves are the ultimate thick server for client server systems (within the Apple universe). Both OS requirements are power efficient, hardware maxers, throughput focused, and have narrow application API bases.

Client server is back.

Rocketman

[bluebomberman]

G5s run Leopard just fine, and in some ways outperforms G5s on Tiger (most noticeably at startup).

As I've complained before, I am under no illusion that PPC will someday be retired into the chip heaven in the sky, but early 2009 is a bit too soon. (I was guessing mid-2010.)

All the people sniping at others to buy a new Intel Mac need to zip up - we're not all made of money, and the four-digit sum I'd expend to replace my iMac G5 isn't trivial.

[Eric Lewis]

im thinking that 10.6 will need like a 1.33ghz/1gb ram or better

[darwinian]

I agree that they should drop PPC support soon. To whatever degree they have to maintain currently 2 codebases, dropping PPC support would make sense.

As everyone's aware, the thing about PPC machines, irrespective of age, is that the transition from PPC to Intel was major. It's not like changing wireless cards or memory specifications, where the amount of the code affected is considerably smaller, even in the worst case scenario.

And no one needs further reminder also that a new OS doesn't somehow automatically break old OSes running FINE on older hardware.

[pgwalsh]

While I understand how many people have completely given up on PPC since Apple isn't producing products with PowerPC processors in it, there's still a plethora of PowerPC users that want to keep their legacy machines. I have two intel and two PowerPC machines, I don't plan on just getting rid of the PPC machines. I can use them for other purposes or give them to someone needy.

Isn't Xcode supposed to make development of both processors much easier? I think it would be pretty bad if Apple expected other software vendors to support both platforms, but they dropped it themselves.

I think Apple should support both PPC and X86 as long as the machines can run the OS. Xserve machines don't need all the bells and whistles (eye candy), but I'm sure they'll benefit in other areas, including performance enhancements. So while from a home user prospective, it may make sense to move on it doesn't from the server market.

Also, I can recall a ton of people on these forums bashing Vista for it's hardware support or lack-there-of, but now you want Apple do ditch PPC. C'mon, I think it's cool if a 866Mhz G4 can run Leopard or Snow Leopard. It just makes OS X that much better considering it's still more advanced than Vista. It's a good selling point.