I have recently switched, and I was wondering on Apple's concern with providing for "older" equiptment. With the advent of the fabled 970, would I be too high hoping that future OSes (past Panther) would be compatible with my 1Ghz TiBook? I know that OSX will run on a G3, but the 970 is clearly a big jump and an entirely different beast all together. Or are my thoughts overly premature?
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G4 Support
- Thread starter Schiffi
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Well, that's the $64 million question right now... Here's my interpretation of what's going on. The 970 should be a 64-bit processor, which can run 32-bit software, but that doesn't take advantage of speed much... So if 10.3 is meant for the 970, it could very well be optimized for the 64-bit processor, meaning it wouldn't work on our current 32 bit processors. So it's up in the air, personally i think by 10.4 it will be 970 only... and 10.3 will likely be.
i could be wrong on the above, processors aren't my forte...
pnw
i could be wrong on the above, processors aren't my forte...
pnw
so long as apple is selling systems with a G4 in it, the OS will have to support it. The 970 may well make its way soon into the powermacs and powerbooks, but the iBooks and iMacs and eMacs will probably all have G4's for sometime (the iBook currently uses the G3, but that will change in the future, one way or another). So I think panther and probably the next couple of releases at least will have to work in the G4. Its possible that apple may make a 64 bit version of the OS that's supported separately, but that seems like an awaful lot of work and isn't totally necessary either at this point in time. I personally don't think pather will be a 64 bit OS.
I think it'll be a 32-bit OS, with some 64-bit code and optimisations where it'll make the most difference. And I expect newer versions to gradually become more and more 64-bit. Let's hope they don't make a mess of it like Windows, I think they've finally got rid of all the 8-bit code with XP?
Panther will be a 32 bit and a 64 bit O.S. to support older and newer machines only the newer machines will be able to take care of the new software written to take advantage of this. I suspect it will run fine on older machines in a 32 bit mode. older meaning current g3& g4 machines.
i think that 10.3 will of course support g4's , but to take full advantage of it you need the 970, for example to take full advantage of jag you'd need a dual processor, QE capeable gpu, but jag still runs fine on 233 imacs, i think around 10.5ish we'll see g3 support dropped, and 10.5 will be g4 and 970 only
there's lots of talk of 10.3,10.4,10.5 here. Surely a major change to an OS (like the 32 to 64 bit jump) would be more of an OS11 scenario? When did mac go 32 bit? Was that an OS++? (sorry, programmer in me coming out; an "OS version increment"). My mac history is a little rough. As has been mentioned previously, i can't see an exclusive 64bit OS coming until 11, until then i expect we'll see features that are the equivalent of altivec optimised.
</offtopic>sounds stupid, but what actually is altivec and how does it make G4's so much faster?</offtopic>
</offtopic>sounds stupid, but what actually is altivec and how does it make G4's so much faster?</offtopic>
from the best of my knowledge (which isnt much) altivec or the velocity engine is the g4's ability to process dats in 128bit chunks (four simultaneous 32bit chunks) rather then just one chunk of 32bit date...etc, i belive thats what it is, and basicly everything apple makes is optimzied for altivec and the g4