Arm-Intel-PowerPC Universal Binaries Are Possible

Spock said:
This transition to ARM is really making people nostalgic for the PowerPC days. I think that Apple is going to have more control of the Mac again and not be limited to Intels update cycle or have to compromise designs with Intel engineers. I hope that we see exciting, fun devices again where Apple takes a risk and goes with something other than grey or black aluminum. I want a new machine that’s as fun to look at as it is to use. Like my G4 Cube or my Blue Dalmatian iMac and especially my iMac G4.
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I wish colors would come back instead of the dystopian black, white, and grey. Sure it looks as cool as a 007 laptop, but I guess we need a color in our lives. Those colored iBooks still look beautiful!
 
now i see it said:
a curiosity at best.
Really.... Who's still using a PPC Mac? Sure, there's lots of people with old PPC macs stuffed somewhere in a basement under that pile of ZIP drives- but actually using one?
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Until about a year ago I still ran a G5 Xserve 24/7. But you’re right, it was just for curiosity’s sake. A few times a month I’d remote in and putz around when bored but that was it.
 
Neberheim said:
I don’t want to sound like I’m picking your message apart. “What use is there for old PPC Macs anymore” that the poster asked is very different than “what use is there for RISC anymore” that you seemed to be answering. Are you suggesting that there is or could be a use case for PPC Macs because of the developments in RISC? If so, I’d be curious to hear more as I also have a basement full of G4s and G5s (and a pile of Zip and Jaz drives 😛)
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I apologize if I created a little bit of confusion. The poster may be suggesting a use case for the older PPC Macs, I was merely suggesting with ARM and RISC-V becoming so popular, PPC could slip into the RISC wave with some manufacturer.

I would be interested to know as well. My old iMac DV SE from 1999 is sitting in my closest, just needs a new PRAM battery and it still as good as it was all those years ago. IBM technology was fantastic.
 
Grrrrr..... where is my 68030 'fat' binary in this mix? It was bad enough they had to put PowerPC code into my Photoshop 2.0 executable... am I being ignored now that people are using PowerPC/Intel/ARM binaries? Next, you'll tell me that Apple is abandoning my ResEdit application!
 
Wowfunhappy said:
Switching to AMD would have required basically no work—nothing like this ARM transition at all. Hackintosh'ers already have OS X working on AMD systems. There are some stability issues, but they would be trivial for an actual Apple engineer to resolve.
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Maybe, but long-term they would still be supporting two different CPU architectures instead of a unified one across all devices. A single architecture makes more sense on many levels. I have misgivings about losing Intel compatibility, but big picture, I think they are making the right decision.
 
Spock said:
Wish I could say the same. My ti PowerBook is still functional but it lost it’s backlight and replacements are hard to find.
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Better then my 500Mhz TiBook, its screen cable is fried, its firmware is locked, and it fails to boot into OS X.
 
Wowfunhappy said:
...and yet now everyone just uses Electron instead, which is much, much more of a bloated mess.

I think Java was just a bit ahead of its time, unfortunately. Now Oracle has gobbled them up, so it's too late.
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I thought so too, but it would take a lot of work to save it now. Oracle couldn't give a turd about it and it shows.

Same with Sun's hardware. Some acquisitions make sense, and some you can't even think of a good reason. They should have give/sold the hardware division to Apple, or *someone*.
 
Macbookprodude said:
I think this will happen ! I am typing this on a G4 Ti powerbook 1ghz with still plenty of life left.
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Can I have some of what you're smoking? 🤣
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Spock said:
Wish I could say the same. My ti PowerBook is still functional but it lost it’s backlight and replacements are hard to find.
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Yep I've got an 867 Ti with a dead backlight. Changing the panel would inevitably result in a damaged top case as Apple in their infinite wisdom epoxied it together! 🤦‍♂️
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MacBH928 said:
I wish colors would come back instead of the dystopian black, white, and grey. Sure it looks as cool as a 007 laptop, but I guess we need a color in our lives. Those colored iBooks still look beautiful!
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*Cough*
keyboard_dim__bneegleqdrjm_large[1].png

*Cough*
 
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Emanuel Rodriguez said:
It's quite easy to join multiple independently compiled binaries into one. The `otool` command does it. Once each binary is compiled, a dev should only have to glue them together for it all to work, assuming there aren't any differences such as resource incompatibilities. With that said, I highly doubt most devs would bother. Certainly something one could do on their own if they wished, though.
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Joining everything into one fat binary isn't the problem. Creating a working PowerPC version today is one problem, and creating a working PowerPC and ARM version from the same codebase is basically impossible. I currently have to convince my management to keep on supporting iOS 10, so PowerPC is so ancient, no business will do it.
 
gnasher729 said:
Joining everything into one fat binary isn't the problem. Creating a working PowerPC version today is one problem, and creating a working PowerPC and ARM version from the same codebase is basically impossible. I currently have to convince my management to keep on supporting iOS 10, so PowerPC is so ancient, no business will do it.
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It does pose quite a challenge. It's mostly an academic capability anyway, considering how few people actually use PowerPC-based computers today.
Wowfunhappy said:
No it's not. Tons of Unix tools can be compiled for arm, ppc, and Intel targets. Ffmpeg is one, and that's a huge codebase with tons of libraries.
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Compiling for an architecture isn't the issue. The issue is that to compile macOS code for PowerPC, the latest OS target you can use is Mac OS X 10.5, while the earliest OS target that you can use for ARM will be macOS 10.16. Most codebases today will almost certainly depend on APIs which have been released since 10.5, meaning that to actually release a working binary with PowerPC support, you'd likely have to do a major rework of your codebase.

Of course, your code also has to have been written in Objective-C. If your code is written in Swift, forget it.

Not at all worth it, in almost all cases.
 
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Wowfunhappy said:
Actually, fun fact, you use Swift to build apps for Mac OS 9, thanks to the work of one former Apple employee! https://belkadan.com/blog/2020/04/Swift-on-Mac-OS-9/ :D

Will most people ever want to do this? As with arm-intel-ppc binaries, probably not, but I still think it's cool!
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Wow, that's pretty impressive! It definitely shows how well-designed Swift is in general. The fact that such a thing was even possible, means it isn't too tightly integrated with any specific operating system (classic Mac OS being entirely non-POSIX). Always a good design principle, but takes discipline and experience to achieve.
 
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progx said:
I apologize if I created a little bit of confusion. The poster may be suggesting a use case for the older PPC Macs, I was merely suggesting with ARM and RISC-V becoming so popular, PPC could slip into the RISC wave with some manufacturer.

I would be interested to know as well. My old iMac DV SE from 1999 is sitting in my closest, just needs a new PRAM battery and it still as good as it was all those years ago. IBM technology was fantastic.
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There is no compatibility between different RISC architectures, any more than there is between a RISC and CISC architecture. PPC is in no better position with ARM and RISC-V's increased popularity than it was before it. The popularity is largely due to RISC's proven ability to operate at much lower power than CISC processors are capable of. Even Intel's processors are essentially RISC with some CISC legacy overhead (pure CISC is a proven failure). That overhead is why pure-RISC designs are in the process of dethroning Intel.
 
TheFluffyDuck said:
If anybody can get the Dosbox app Boxer running (or know of an alternative) on the new macs I will be happy. Messaged the developer no luck :( Why couldn't apple just do a 32-bit translation layer for legacy apps?

Boxer: The DOS game emulator that’s fit for your Mac.

Boxer is the DOS game emulator that’s fit for your Mac. Playing your old games just got easy.
boxerapp.com boxerapp.com
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I and StuartCarnie (an OpenEmu developer) are working on making Boxer 64-bit and Apple Silicon. It mostly works, but there are some perf issues that he's not happy with.

Vin Aggarwal said:
So you can tar 5 binaries to make a "universal binary"... genius!
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That's basically what universal binaries are. And just the binary blobs: none of the assets.
throAU said:
That would have probably been in the binaries since the Next days when they had next for both intel and 68k. If not at least when they did the PPC/Intel swap.
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They also supported SPARC and PA-RISC in NeXTStep/OpenStep.
 
now i see it said:
a curiosity at best.
Really.... Who's still using a PPC Mac? Sure, there's lots of people with old PPC macs stuffed somewhere in a basement under that pile of ZIP drives- but actually using one?
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Here I am. I own 3 Powermac MDD G4, various speed, all with macos 9. I also have a full Protools system, that's why I have them.
 
I remember Rosetta, the first Rosetta (first Apple Rosetta). People were carping about the 'weight' of it, and how slow everything ran, and I was one of many that was fine with the way it ran. People were banging their pots and pans over crashes, stalls, latency, lockups, and I was working right along. I think I had one piece of software that bombed, it was a database, as I remember. One that I didn't use much, and was not big deal. People were cranked over having to use it. *shrug* It just worked...

Rosetta 2 will likely be the same thing. Virtualization has gotten so much better since then. (But I'm not likely to have an Apple Silicon based anything for a few years. I tried to sell my soul for a new new new new Mac Pro, and all I got was enough for a Starbucks Venti PSL. And my mom thought I was living a 'bad life'. Apparently not bad enough...
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
I remember Rosetta, the first Rosetta (first Apple Rosetta). People were carping about the 'weight' of it, and how slow everything ran, and I was one of many that was fine with the way it ran. People were banging their pots and pans over crashes, stalls, latency, lockups, and I was working right along. I think I had one piece of software that bombed, it was a database, as I remember. One that I didn't use much, and was not big deal. People were cranked over having to use it. *shrug* It just worked...

Rosetta 2 will likely be the same thing. Virtualization has gotten so much better since then. (But I'm not likely to have an Apple Silicon based anything for a few years. I tried to sell my soul for a new new new new Mac Pro, and all I got was enough for a Starbucks Venti PSL. And my mom thought I was living a 'bad life'. Apparently not bad enough...
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Oh, I also had no issues with MobileMe either. Hearing steve rip it, and seeing so many people complain, I was astounded. The only issues I had were when Apple dumped it. I lost some emails, and still, to this day, have an email every couple of months show up in notifications, and yet I can't find it anywhere. I was told to check my filters, and none of them, that I could find, would have anything to do with the disappearing emails. *shrug* Maybe it's 'quality control'?:oops::p
 
The bottom line: we are entering shortly, 2021 - unless I am mistaken, why bother doing this with PPC ? Theoretically, how much longer will PPC survive ? I am sure tenfourfox won't last forever, though I maybe mistaken. Kaiser is still very young and i hope he will continue the flame to keep PPC alive.
 
Westside guy said:
Yawn. Wake me when they decide to include a 6502 binary in the mix.
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LOL. I bet even a "hello world" compiled for every Apple CPU architecture at once would be bigger than the 160 kB floppy disk of an Apple II. (6502, 65C816, 68k, PowerPC 32-bit, PowerPC 64-bit, Intel 32-bit, Intel 64-bit, ARM.)

Although, sadly, in order to make a combo PPC+Intel app (much less 64-bit Intel or ARM) it has to be a Mac OS X-only "Cocoa" app, not a MacOS 9-compatible "Carbon"; and of course even a Carbon app can't be compiled to run on 68k, since the oldest OS capable of running a proper Carbon app is MacOS 8.5, which won't run on a 68k.

So you can have a 68k+32-bit PPC "Classic Mac OS" app; a 32-bit PPC-only "Classic Mac OS or Mac OS X" app; or a 32-/64-bit PPC+32-/64-bit Intel+ARM Mac OS X only app. (The last does mark the first time a single app can run across "multiple transitions", though.)
 
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