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Latest Mac OS X 10.5.6 Seed; Rosetta Becomes Optional in Snow Leopard?

PeterQVenkman said:
Just reformatted my brand new MacBook. By eliminating all the unneeded extras like fonts, languages, and printer drivers (3.1 GB of printer drivers! No wonder things "just work" in Mac OSX!), X11, and iDVD/Garage band extra content, you can cut the 15 GB Mac os X install down to 6 GB.

That's a lot of stuff to clear out! :)
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Has anyone checked to see exactly how much space one could save by axing Rosetta? If we're talking several gigs here, I can easily see this being a good option (especially for MB/MBP/MBA users - I'm always running out of space and having to shuttle things to an external drive, so every gig counts).
 
??

Mal said:
Why should there be? PPC owners aren't affected by anything going on in 10.6 because it won't run on their machines; that's been known for several months. There's nothing more for them to complain about.

jW
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That is irrelevant.

Why shouldn't Intel Mac owners complain about losing Rosetta?
 
From the 10.5.6 release notes:

Fixed issue with AirPort Drivers and “off” setting
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Oh thank GOD! Please let this finally be the end to horrible wireless dropouts/slow connections in Leopard.
 
Screw em!!!

La Porta said:
Everyone brace for the PPC owner backlash in this thread...
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Really I just wish all the whinney PPC users would just roll over and drop out of the Mac sceen. Apple should have dropped PPC support years ago after intel hardware doubled real world performance. That doesn't mean not to support PPC on a stable version of OS/X but to simple not to support development for future revisions.

Frankly continued PPC support is a waste of good money!



Dave
 
MrZebra said:
Exactly.
"Rosetta dynamically translates most of your PowerPC-based applications to work with your Intel-based Mac. There’s no emulation." (from apple website)
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thats a fancy way of saying emulator. if it wasnt an emulator it would require hardware to power it, not software "emulation" and since x86-64 has no PPC or RISC components Rosseta emulates it via software. thats right software.

technicaly thats right and wrong. Rosseta is based on Quick Trasnsit technology provided by Transitive ( http://www.transitive.com/support/faq ). so its almost like a combo of emulation and virtualization. its really hard to explain.
 
I'm glad Apple is abandoning PowerPC and making Rosetta an optional install. At some point, you have say "We're moving on." otherwise you wind up like Vista where everything from Windows 95 back is supported (with special compatibility modes, etc).

Backward compatibility should be maintained for a reasonable time frame. For example, 10.6 shouldn't abandon Macs with Core Duo processors just because they don't support 64-bit. However, if its support somehow prevents your product from moving forward — cut it.

I think around three and a half years (Jan 2006 to August 2009*) of post-PowerPC support is reasonable.

* Obviously, 10.6 doesn't have a ship date but I'm personally expecting it to ship in August around the same time as 10.2 Jaguar shipped.

By the way, I'm sympathetic to PowerPC owners. I have two great machines, an iMac G4 and PowerMac G3 B/W, myself. It's been six great years with the iMac and I don't know how many with the G3. It's time to retire them. :)
 
Jon the Heretic said:
That is irrelevant.

Why shouldn't Intel Mac owners complain about losing Rosetta?
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who said they are loosing it? have you heard about optional components? X11 for example is an optional OSX install. same with other things. even MS has been doing it with windows for years like IIS is with XP/Vista and other features. its not all or nothing peoples there are chades of grey in this world ;)
 
ravenvii said:
Fast? Macs has gone completely Intel in 2005. By the time Snow Leopard comes out, it will have been 4 years since PPC disappeared from the Mac lineup.
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Um... removing support after 4 years? Maybe that works in Windowsland. But lots of folks use their Mac for more than 4 years. What happens to creative professionals who bought the last round of towers?
 
wizard said:
Frankly continued PPC support is a waste of good money!
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I would see it as an ugly precedent that Apple can't be trusted. One of the biggest complaints about Microsoft Vista is that it doesn't work (satisfactory) on existing hardware. That is not where I would want Apple to go. If they cut off support for PowerPC machines that are no three years old, what will they stop supporting in three years time?

Now lets say a small company has six quad core G5s and four quad core MacPros. And Snow Leopard doesn't run on the G5. Do they

1. Not upgrade
2. Only upgrade the Intel machines
3. Throw out six perfectly fine machines and replace them with MacPros
4. Say "**** Apple", run these machines until they break down, and switch to Dell PCs?

Mal said:
Why should there be? PPC owners aren't affected by anything going on in 10.6 because it won't run on their machines; that's been known for several months. There's nothing more for them to complain about.
Click to expand...
Your definition of "known" is different from mine. Sure, I have seen threads with hundreds of posts full of irrational arguments why PowerPC support is evil, but nothing so far from Apple.
 
wizard said:
Really I just wish all the whinney PPC users would just roll over and drop out of the Mac sceen. Apple should have dropped PPC support years ago after intel hardware doubled real world performance. That doesn't mean not to support PPC on a stable version of OS/X but to simple not to support development for future revisions.

Frankly continued PPC support is a waste of good money!



Dave
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It's not that we don't want to abandon our PPC Macs for new Intel ones, it's just that in most of our cases, we don't have thousands to throw around for a new decent-specced Mac whenever we want.

Example: I'm a 19-year-old (almost 20) unemployed soon-to-be college student living in an area where it's tough to even get hired at McDonalds. Money isn't exactly easy to come by.
 
I second that!!

Stridder44 said:
From the 10.5.6 release notes:




Oh thank GOD! Please let this finally be the end to horrible wireless dropouts/slow connections in Leopard.
Click to expand...

When it comes right down to it WiFi is the only bad component of my experience with my early 2008 MBP. Sadly the last WiFi update actually made the machine worst on a number of networks I use. I do hope they get this corrected and reliable.

Dave
 
iindigo said:
It's not that we don't want to abandon our PPC Macs for new Intel ones, it's just that in most of our cases, we don't have thousands to throw around for a new decent-specced Mac whenever we want.

Example: I'm a 19-year-old (almost 20) unemployed soon-to-be college student living in an area where it's tough to even get hired at McDonalds. Money isn't exactly easy to come by.
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Now if you weren't 19 year old and unemployed, but the filthy rich owner of a company using 1000 quad core PowerPC MacPro's, would you want to spend two million to replace them with Intel machines, when the old machines do their job perfectly well?
 
infernohellion said:
I agree. My MBP is 2.5 years old and it's started to fall apart. I am waiting for the 17" Unibody MBP. Once its out... ;)
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2.5 years and falling apart? Yikes. My 2003 PowerBook is hummin' along and solid. Albeit slower than the new line. I'm probably going to wait till 10.7 to upgrade to new hardware.
 
Stephen123 said:
What happens to creative professionals who bought the last round of towers?
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A lot of people and studios bought up the last G5s because Adobe dragged their heels in releasing a universal binary of Creative Suite. CS and CS2 didn't run well at all through Rosetta. The people bitching about those pesky PPC owners don't understand the need for smooth and reliable hardware and software transitions in a production environment.

However, these machines will still run Leopard. It will be at least another 18 months — if not longer — before most mainstream apps make Leopard a minimum system requirement. Adobe CS4, for instance, will still run with Tiger.
 
gnasher729 said:
I would see it as an ugly precedent that Apple can't be trusted. One of the biggest complaints about Microsoft Vista is that it doesn't work (satisfactory) on existing hardware. That is not where I would want Apple to go. If they cut off support for PowerPC machines that are no three years old, what will they stop supporting in three years time?

Now lets say a small company has six quad core G5s and four quad core MacPros. And Snow Leopard doesn't run on the G5. Do they

1. Not upgrade
2. Only upgrade the Intel machines
3. Throw out six perfectly fine machines and replace them with MacPros
4. Say "**** Apple", run these machines until they break down, and switch to Dell PCs?

Your definition of "known" is different from mine. Sure, I have seen threads with hundreds of posts full of irrational arguments why PowerPC support is evil, but nothing so far from Apple.
Click to expand...

I agree with your mixed systems argument... why should the mac pros be held back at the G5s' expense? however, microsoft vista is so bloated and doesnt work on current machines because, ironically enough, it was designed to work on some pretty old machines (hence the basic versions)... there's a lot of legacy code in there bogging it down.

also, to iindigo and gnasher729:

apple isnt cutting off support of PPC macs. they will continue to get security and quicktime updates (via 10.5 Leopard). they will also service your machine just like they would an older Intel machine. I dont understand what PPC users are upset about. the optimizations that are being put in place for snow leopard are for MULTI-CORE chips, which except for the G5, PPC doesnt have. there are no new features PPC users are missing out on. they cant make the OS any faster for PPC... this is optimization for intel... without this chip transition, there wouldnt be a snow leopard.

I do feel bad for quad G5 owners though, but they make up a very small percentage of the established market share...
 
Jon the Heretic said:
That is irrelevant.

Why shouldn't Intel Mac owners complain about losing Rosetta?
Click to expand...

Did you read the post you were replying to? I said nothing about Intel Mac owners, and they're not losing Rosetta anyways. I said that PPC owners shouldn't come in here and whine.

jW
 
Office 2000 receives security patches until mid-2009. Windows 2000 receives security patches until some time in 2010. Windows XP gets ~3 more years on top of this. All these products were released in the same year, or earlier, than OS X 10.0.

How's that OS X 10.0 support doing, Apple? 10.1? 10.2? 10.3? But why invest in making the enterprise take you seriously when you could just.. erm.. keep the money in the bank?

*glances over at the OpenVMS-powered VAX in the corner... it might weigh as much as an upgrade treadmill, but it certainly doesn't need to be bought with one*
 
twoodcc said:
interesting. so i wonder if this means that once snow leopard is out, all those old PowerPC apps won't work at all anymore?
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If you don't select installing Rosetta at setup, you're right.
But the Rosetta install-option is on by default, so old PPC apps will work like they do running on Leopard.
 
Jon the Heretic said:
Terrible user experience.
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No, that's a good user experience. On by default, removable by those who know what they're doing. Sheesh, you'd think you were reading something else and then posting here with how much sense your posts in this thread are making.

jW
 
One obvious reason to make Rosetta optional is their stated goal of making all versions of OS X use the same code base. iPhone would be a good example of where you might want to remove Rosetta.
 
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