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10.6 Snow Leopard running on PPC

I

InkMaster

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 30, 2007
522
1
Nagoya, Japan
As all of you know, according to Apple, Snow Leopard runs only on Intel chips. Also, as a lot of you know, PPC and Intel versions of OS X report themselves as such, ie PPC 10.5, Intel 10.5 and so on...

Yesterday, as I was looking over my traffic logs, I found something quite interesting...

"PPC 10.6"

I got one visit right after the day of WWDC, and another visit just 2 days ago...

Someone just spoofing what their machine reports? Or someone running an an early internal build of SL during which time maybe they had multiple versions?

Think of that what you will...

screenshoton20090703at6.png
 
Do we know if there are PowerPC binaries or not? The installer might just not officially support PowerPC machines. I doubt that though.
 
The early builds did not support the PPC chip. What that traffic log shows is a PPC binary browser running under Rosetta on an Intel build of 10.6 or a spoof.
 
Cassie said:
I believe the early builds did support PPC...but it was phased out fairly quickly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, from what I remember over a year ago, there were some reports that supposedly there was some PPC support, but if I'm not mistaken, none of those early builds ever made it out to the public. And I highly doubt that anyone would would be still using year old builds, given that early versions aren't exactly known for their quality and stability...
 
Could easily be someone running something in Rosetta for testing. I haven't checked, but I imagine that would be reported as a PPC machine.
 
Catfish_Man said:
Could easily be someone running something in Rosetta for testing. I haven't checked, but I imagine that would be reported as a PPC machine.
Click to expand...

Hmm... Could any web dev here verify that? Or even find a browser which would be old enough to be both, PPC only AND able to run on 10.6 :/
 
InkMaster said:
Yeah, from what I remember over a year ago, there were some reports that supposedly there was some PPC support, but if I'm not mistaken, none of those early builds ever made it out to the public. And I highly doubt that anyone would would be still using year old builds, given that early versions aren't exactly known for their quality and stability...
Click to expand...

Actually, early versions are almost exactly like the operating system they're built off. For example, I have a build of Windows Longhorn somewhere which is Server 2003 with a different build number.

Systems are different everywhere, but I believe at Apple, technologies are developed by individual teams, merging in to their own repositories until certain milestones where all the changes made by all the teams are merged in to a central build (reversed integration). Therefore, the core location team would have Leopard + CL, but would not see the changes to Safari or the Finder until a milestone build. The CL team would not be responsible for the time preference panel, even though it uses CL. Teams whose work depends on other teams (e.g. the Finder team) would have their copies synced each night, so they can access that work. The team being referenced would not see the Finder team's work.

The result of all this is that each build, depending on where it comes from, contains very little. Unless its a milestone build or one of the builds shortly before (where inevitable breakages are fixed). The in-between builds include new features, but these features are rarely exposed in any significant way except if the build is from a key node (e.g. the Finder team)
 
I tested, and Rosetta-on-Intel on would cause a PPC machine to be reported. That is the most likely cause of this reading. Somebody probably forgot to turn it off, or it is on for testing purposes.

Notwithstanding that, early builds of SL were full Universal Binaries (and might be still?), including the kernel. The only problem is that the PPC-side of the kernel would crash on my machine. So I can't say I've seen it run beyond initial bootstrap. But considering OSX is and continues to be multi-platform and already runs on PPC, I'm sure Apple has it running on PPCs in Cupertino, and there is a slim chance this web string is real. All you've got to do is "check one box, and you're done." Excepting the VERY limited parts of the kernel that are done in assembly, which again, are already written for PPC.
 
Amdahl said:
I tested, and Rosetta-on-Intel on would cause a PPC machine to be reported. That is the most likely cause of this reading. Somebody probably forgot to turn it off, or it is on for testing purposes.

Notwithstanding that, early builds of SL were full Universal Binaries (and might be still?), including the kernel. The only problem is that the PPC-side of the kernel would crash on my machine. So I can't say I've seen it run beyond initial bootstrap. But considering OSX is and continues to be multi-platform and already runs on PPC, I'm sure Apple has it running on PPCs in Cupertino, and there is a slim chance this web string is real. All you've got to do is "check one box, and you're done." Excepting the VERY limited parts of the kernel that are done in assembly, which again, are already written for PPC.
Click to expand...

There are only a some frameworks and libraries are are powerpc/x86 universal for backwards compatibility, the rest are x86. Finder.app for example has no powerpc support in 10.6.
 
macintoshtoffy said:
There are only a some frameworks and libraries are are powerpc/x86 universal for backwards compatibility, the rest are x86. Finder.app for example has no powerpc support in 10.6.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about today, or a year ago? A year ago, they all appeared to be universal. I doubt you're suggesting Finder, as either a Carbon or Cocoa app, can't be run on PPC, except for Apple deciding not to "check the box."
 
is it possible that someone did an about:config or such in their browser and set it to say the os used was 10.6 PPC as a Joke?

EDIT: looking around firefox's about:config, i dont see anything about os, just Version number/user agent etc.
 
IIRC, all versions of OS X are able to run on Intel and a building in Cupertino had OS X running on Intel for quite some time before the transition "just in case." Even Steve's demo machine for the keynotes was Intel (when he revealed it, it was a 3.6 GHz P4).

Maybe this is another "just in case?"
 
techfreak85 said:
is it possible that someone did an about:config or such in their browser and set it to say the os used was 10.6 PPC as a Joke?

EDIT: looking around firefox's about:config, i dont see anything about os, just Version number/user agent etc.
Click to expand...

I was thinking that too. I mean, if safari can pretend to be IE to spoof websites, why can't it say it's on 10.6 PPC if it wants to?
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
IIRC, all versions of OS X are able to run on Intel and a building in Cupertino had OS X running on Intel for quite some time before the transition "just in case." Even Steve's demo machine for the keynotes was Intel (when he revealed it, it was a 3.6 GHz P4).

Maybe this is another "just in case?"
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was just in case they decided not to screw the PPC owners. I know, I know, when would something like that ever happen?
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
IIRC, all versions of OS X are able to run on Intel and a building in Cupertino had OS X running on Intel for quite some time before the transition "just in case." Even Steve's demo machine for the keynotes was Intel (when he revealed it, it was a 3.6 GHz P4).

Maybe this is another "just in case?"
Click to expand...

No chance - they wouldn't do that. They are done with the PPC chip and it is all Intel now. Or if there is a PPC version of 10.6, it'll be internal and will probably never see light.
 
Kilamite said:
No chance - they wouldn't do that. They are done with the PPC chip and it is all Intel now. Or if there is a PPC version of 10.6, it'll be internal and will probably never see light.
Click to expand...
I'd bet my life that they have 10.6 on PPC somewhere. I think they've learned to keep their options open after two processor transistions, even if that means going back at some point. (It's not likely, but again, options.)
 
Cassie said:
I'd bet my life that they have 10.6 on PPC somewhere. I think they've learned to keep their options open after two processor transistions, even if that means going back at some point. (It's not likely, but again, options.)
Click to expand...

Plus, they are still on ARM (for iPhone OSX) and they bought that company that made PPC chips. PPC continues to be a high volume platform, serving as the CPU in Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 and all kinds of embedded systems. You can be sure that OS X continues to be built on PPC.

The Intel transition wasn't made because PPC was an obsolete architecture; it was made because Apple wanted Windows compatibility, faster(yet still cool) portable chips, and to stop competing directly against Intel+Dell. Now, Apple benefits from Windows, Intel, and the economy of scale in system components.
 
Cassie said:
I'd bet my life that they have 10.6 on PPC somewhere. I think they've learned to keep their options open after two processor transistions, even if that means going back at some point. (It's not likely, but again, options.)
Click to expand...

I agree... I am sure that Apple has 10.6 running on PPC to hedge against future changes in technology. However, for the OP's situation, I bet it is just Rosetta browsers... unless someone in Apple's OS development group has bookmarked the OP's site:p
 
Catfish_Man said:
Obsolete implementation, rather than ISA, I suppose.
Click to expand...

A valid position.

In the long run, I do wonder: Will x86 or AMD64 survive?

The Atom CPU has dropped out-of-order execution(in favor of hyper-threading), and the CISC nature of x86 requires a complex decoder. People say that CISC inefficiency is irrelevant in regard to speed with the use of micro-ops (or trace cache in P4). But it is NOT irrelevant in regard to heat and power. And as CPUs go increasingly multicore, the CISC decoder has to be duplicated in each core.

At some point, will x86 be insustainable, and PPC, ARM, or SPARC (or even Itanium?) crush x86? MMX/SSE was a first step. Using GPUs as CPU is another huge step. At some point, does x86 get the axe entirely?

ARM is mighty in the super-low power realm (iPhone), while PPC is mighty in servers and high-end embedded (IBM servers and Xbox360/PS3/Wii). SPARC has 8 cores on one chip, and each one of those cores can run 8 threads at a time. So that's 64 threads with only 95W power consumption(123 peak).

Prediction: x86 dies as Windows becomes less important in your day-to-day use and the Web replaces it.
 
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