Problem is Apple failed to provide any warning on how long it would provide Rosetta. Apple should of also stated end of support for it that was a minimum 5 years out and an exact date for it to be phased out.
Apple doesn't like road-maps and they certainly don't like announcing
any future plans what-so-ever about their products. It's all paranoid super privacy (of course when it comes to
your privacy, most big companies don't give a flying rat's hind quarter about it[/quote]. Just look at Google and Facebook right now. Welcome Big Brother!) The problem is that without road maps, businesses can't plan on or count on any support and many of them don't or can't afford to update their software times thousands upon thousands every other month. For example, many industrial level companies expect a life-span of their factory machinery in the decades-level of operational use and they don't need newer computers in many cases to function exactly the same as they were designed to. They need their software to be scaled up and easily move up to newer OS versions, etc. in many cases and that just wouldn't fly with Apple because they purposely seem to break (or at least don't care if they break) software AND hardware all the time. If a piece of machinery I bought in 2001 uses XP, it still works fine today even with newer hardware and no changes needed in software. If OS9 had been used back in 2001 or even early OSX, it wouldn't work at all and both hardware and software would have had to been replaced several times over by now (or else a large stock of computers and software would have to be kept in reserve to replace them).
Thus, the difference between Apple and Microsoft is that XP is still well supported while OS9, PPC and older versions of OSX are a complete JOKE today and deader than the dinosaurs as far as Apple itself is concerned. Apple doesn't support its hardware for more than a few years and regularly breaks software as well as hardware. They simply cannot be taken seriously by many industries and as far as I can tell, that will never change. They are a consumer grade company. That's where the money is for things like smart phones and laptops for the kiddies going to college, but it's not good for industrial level and other businesses that need their hardware to function for decade-long lengths of time, not just a couple of years. Not everything needs the latest hardware and/or software to do its job.
As time goes on, there are a LOT of cool games made that are still fun to play many years later (e.g. I still like playing many C64 games on an emulator), but just try playing certain games for the Mac that were made for OS9. If you have the PC versions, you're golden. Most still work over ten years later on the latest OS versions. You can argue the software developers should update their software, but that's not how gaming works. That's like telling the Eagles to go back and re-record Hotel California so that it can be sold on MP3 or AAC format or something. It's not necessary nor should it be necessary. Backwards compatibility modes make sense and Microsoft understands that while Apple just couldn't give a crap. So as much as I may like Apple products, there's a point where it makes more sense to buy the PC version of something (like games) because I know it will likely still work ten years from now and some games I will still want to play once in a while ten years from now. Thus, as well as Apple is doing business wise, it's never been and never will be a threat to Microsoft because they cater to completely different markets in many cases (with obvious overlap at the consumer level in some areas).
