It's true, it's true. It is my main browser nowadays. Safari is good and fast but Camino is much snappier on PPC... despite the fact that it is a gecko not a webkit...
Anyone still interested in PowerPC development on Mac simply just needs to use a slightly older Xcode. Since any apps made now for PowerPC are going to run on older hardware and pre-10.6 OS it wouldn't matter at all that it's outdated. Only if you wanted to make it universal and work in 10.6/10.7 also.
But again, optimizations made available to apps would not be available under the old Xcode. Recent releases of 4 have introduced new compilers which can produce faster code.
Given that Safari is speed focused, they are likely planning on adopting these optimizations, which would permanently break PowerPC builds, as these optimizations are not available on PowerPC.
Try TenFourFox. It's based on later codebases than Camino, although less stable. It even has support for WebM and Ogg Vorbis video direct in the browser, fully G4-optimized.
I find the Camino 7450 build running on my G4 1.8GHz 7448 is noticeably faster than TFF and just as compatible. I actually kept TFF around for a month or so and tried it every so often just to see if I could get all the fuss. I deleted it weeks ago.
I have no blind faith to Camino at all but the truth is it's faster and just better in general. I think the differences in opinion can only be explained by some either using the standard build from the Camino site or a different perception of time.
You're forgetting that you can only run up to OS 10.5.8 on PowerPC Macs. What optimizations would there ever currently be for a 4 year old OS and it's apps?
I'm pretty sure this is exactly my point. The optimizations Apple is likely planning to take advantage of support neither 10.5 or PPC.
As soon as the Safari team adopts LLVM 2 or LLVM 3, or the latest version of Obj-C, PowerPC support is permanently broken, and Safari won't compile with a PowerPC compiler.
This is likely why Apple disabled PowerPC compiles now. They're going to break permanently sometime in the near future.
You may be right about Apple being able to stop PowerPC development on Safari but certainly not in general.
Anyone with an older xcode that still compiles PowerPC code can still code their own 3rd party apps and there is nothing Apple would ever be able to stop about that.
Only if the code in question is supported by older Xcode.
A lot of advancements introduced in Xcode 4 and 4.1 are not compatible with older XCodes. Even a lot of nice stuff that reduces the amount of code you have to write. If you take advantage of them, you can no longer compile your code in an older version of Xcode. The older compilers simply aren't compatible with the new advancements.
If people adopt these advancements, the existence of an older version of Xcode won't matter.
Once again.. those new advancements wouldn't run on anything PowerPC in the first place anyway. You're looking at writing PowerPC apps like they need to work with new code advancements.
Old xcode, old mac, old OS. It's very simple to understand you don't need to be currently compatible in that situation. Not sure what you're missing here.
I'm not sure what you're missing here...
If I write an app with the latest version of Obj-C, which runs faster than the older versions, it won't work in Xcode 3, and won't compile for PowerPC.
In order to write code that would compile on PowerPC, I'd have to use an old version of Obj-C.
This isn't just "I'll leave out optimizations for PowerPC." Newer versions of Xcode have you write entirely different code that won't work on PowerPC and doesn't back port. These aren't optional nicities.
This whole line of thinking is hilarious. Optimized code? Where? Since...(snip)
And whose fault is it that PowerPC isn't supported in the latest Xcode? It's Apple's fault and therefore Apple sucks since they won't support their own computers half as well as they support Microsoft's computers. Case closed.