Mac OS X 10.6 to Drop PowerPC Support?

[milo]

An idiotic, speculative article based on nothing other than a desire to drum up website traffic to sell ads.

Well, AppleInsider, I guess now that your rumor sources have dried up, you are forced to republish analyst articles and make stuff up yourselves. (Not that the analysts don't do the very same thing.)

Totally pathetic. Why Macrumors is sinking to this level is beyond me. Oh wait, they need to the traffic and views too...

Um...if you actually read the AI article, it's mostly about a completely different subject. The comment about dropping support is a tiny mention at the end.

If you want to be pissed, it should be at MR for blowing a throwaway comment out of proportion. Seriously, if you're going to rant like this, at least take a look at the article you're ranting about.

This happened with Jaguar, or Panther, when Apple didn't support the G3 initially. Someone was unhappy about it and Apple continued to support the G3 for X updates.

That's not quite right. It wasn't just someone being unhappy, it was that apple made promises that the beige machines would be fully supported by OSX, then when OSX shipped, it only had partial support for those machines.

Have they made any specific promises of future support for PPC macs?

And the result of that lawsuit was NOT support for those beige G3's, it was just a refund of the cost of OSX. All a lawsuit would get would be a refund of 10.6 for PPC owners who bought it, and even that is a huge stretch.

The 12" Powerbook 1.5 and Mac Mini G4 1.5 Silent Upgrade, both last gen. PowerPC machines, were both bought brand NEW (not refurbs) at local Apple shops about one year ago in Aug and Sep 06.

They may have been new, but they had been discontinued for months. A tiny bit of research on your part would have told you that the platform had switched to a new architecture.

You completely ignored my question about your old 145c powerbook, which you insisted was supported for seven years. Unless you hacked it and ran an unsupported OS, you were stuck on 7.6 while 8, 9 and 10.0 were released. Did you just forget about all that?

 

[Wayfarer]

Just the mention of "Mac OS X 10.6" sends shrills of excitement down my spine.

 

[MacsRgr8]

If you don't know what a 68000 processor is, you're not a true Mac fan and should be dragged out into the street and shot.

LOL!!

 

[zioxide]

Considering that in 2009, a quad core G5 will still beat some brand new Macs

lol, not going to happen.. you're going to have quad-core nehalem (32nm) laptops by then. they're going to **** on G5s.

 

[p33]

or cougar?

lion? cougar? ***** cat! long shades, transparency, all that eye catching crap...

 

[jhu]

well, there's always linux and *bsd

 

[shawnce]

lol, not going to happen.. you're going to have quad-core nehalem (32nm) laptops by then. they're going to **** on G5s.

Heck SSE4 in the Penryn (with additions in Nehalem) has a good chance to erase aspects of the only real remaining advantage that the G5 (AltiVec).

 

[p33]

well, there's always linux and *bsd

Well, there is always better and cheaper hardware to run linux and bsd, isn't it?

 

[pohl]

listen to the voice of reason

MacOS X is portable. You don't write code for Intel or for PowerPC, you write portable code. Once your developers know how to do it (and all Apple developers would know by now), it is no problem at all to write code that runs equally well on each processor. Supporting two processors doesn't add any significant amount of code at all. You have more testing effort, but certain bugs are easier to find if you run with two different processors, using two different compilers.

And supporting two architectures has real advantages. One is, you never know what will happen in ten years time. Quite likely x86 will be dead. Instead of continuing with the old brain-damaged x86 architecture, Intel could come up with something completely new. If that happens, Apple is laughing; they have no problem whatsoever running on a different platform. How do you think did Apple manage to get OS X running on an ARM processor? Because it is portable. And it is portable because it runs on two different processors. Nobody has a chance to add any code that is not portable, because it will get noticed.

+1...Thank you for being the voice of reason.

 

[winterspan]

they'll have to keep G5 support for 10.6, then drop PPC altogether by 10.7, seriously are PPC machines that crap that after 4 years they become obsolete...

I know apple always loves you to go out and buy their latest machines but still, this is pretty much saying you'll never get a long term investment in macs...

jeeeeeeeeesus people. why does everyone here think that if your old computer can't run the latest OS update it instantaneously becomes obsolete overnight?

 

[volfreak]

Specs are at least an 867Mhz G4

From everything I've read on other sites, the release requires at least an 867Mhz G4 so the release does not drop PPC support.

 

[-hh]

As a Mac mini G4 owner, I know I'm buying a Mac mini Core 2 Duo as soon as Leopard launches.

Let me know if you'll be selling your G4 mini...I've been looking for one...at the right price...to replace an old 8600.

If so many people want to keep the PowerPC, why doesn't Apple bring back support for the 68000 processor? That was a great processor! </sarcasm>.

Why do you think I'm looking for a G4 mini? Many old 68K games run fine on it

-hh

 

[flopticalcube]

From everything I've read on other sites, the release requires at least an 867Mhz G4 so the release does not drop PPC support.

That's 10.5, we are talking about 10.6

 

[volfreak]

Ooopsss....

That's 10.5, we are talking about 10.6

You are correct. I thought it was the upcoming release people were complaining about instead of some major release a year or two in the future. Silly me....

 

[TigerShark]

That sucks. There's a lot of life left in the PPC Macs.

Very true.

 

[Muzzway]

Probably not, I think... but definitely by 10.7.

 

[flopticalcube]

You are correct. I thought it was the upcoming release people were complaining about instead of some major release a year or two in the future. Silly me....

No, silly us for discussing a rumor that is at least 2 years from being validated.

 

[winterspan]

Windows legacy support is it's achilles tendon

Umm no it doesn't. Not in any way shape or form. This is what I find laughable about Apple and the Mac platform and is one of the core reasons why the IT industry will most likely never standardize on the Mac. If MS did this, and they have tried, you would have a mass riot from CIO's world wide. As it stand they tried killing support for windows 98....still have it. They've talked about scaling back support for XP....oops sorry. We're bad. MS's OS support vs. Apple isn't even comparable. I mean realistically we should see support for the PPC until 2010-1012 AFAIC.

HA .. PPC until 2012??? you are so dreaming. Yes, MICROSOFT supports many generations of legacy operating systems! And THAT IS PRECISELY THE PROBLEM! Is it any wonder why Vista took 6 **** YEARS TO COME OUT?! And it did so without a huge percentage of the original intended feature set because they had to spend SO MUCH TIME working out the bugs of and developing new features around the legacy support.
This has been the PRIMARY cause of the lackluster products they have come out with.

Think about, Microsoft has THE BIGGEST DEVELOPER TEAMS of ANY software company and it took them FOREVER to get Vista out the door. They didn't even offer any real update to XP after service pack 2 in 2004!

Is it any surprise then that Microsoft has already made known that they intend to completely cut off legacy support in their next major OS release.

 

[winterspan]

lol

I hear from a good source that 'Liger' (aka 'Tigon') the new hybrid AI interface OS from Apple due in 2012 will only run on post Intel Macs and not support any Intel chips as they will not be able support the thought transference beam required to operate the 4 dimensional space / time interface.

hahhaha great

 

[MacAddict1978]

Let's get 10.5 on store shelves before we even start pretending rumors about 10.6 are relevant to our lives.

here here!

 

[p33]

jeeeeeeeeesus people. why does everyone here think that if your old computer can't run the latest OS update it instantaneously becomes obsolete overnight?

How do you mean everyone? If you read through posts you'll quite possibly find a couple of reasonable ones. They are too few, I agree, though

 

[monke]

One side of me says yes, the other says no.
Then again, I could see them keeping PowerPC support but leaving out some of the features as an incentive to upgrade.

 

[winterspan]

Core 2 Duo WAY FASTER than P4 clock for clock

You're being a little disingenuous, or skimming. Who says? Plenty of kids on the first few pages were implying that all Intel Macs were much faster than all those crusty old PPC dinosaurs. Take another look...

Plus, "fast" doesn't get "slow" as fast as it used to. Look at CPU clock speeds from 2001-2004, and from 2004 to 2007. Draw your own conclusions about what 2007-2010 may look like.

someone beat me to the reply to this earlier in thread...

 

[Lyra]

IN all fairness, once we GET to MacOS X 10.6, it will be so long ago that the last PPC was sold that it would be justifiable to take this move.

Further more, if we see MacOS X 10.5.11 or 12, we don't really have to concern our selves with the PPC users.

For ONE simple reason, and that's the advanced evolution of the OS by that time, that most of the features we'll see in 10.6 will not work on a PPC at all, not to mention simple apps that won't run on the PPC anymore.

See, we'll be in a situation where speed will have to be the selling point... That can't be guaranteed on a PPC...

So, I don't really see a problem here at all...

The problem is never the OS, but the Applications from companies such as Adobe and other giants, who'll make features exclusive to the new OS. Leaving the old users in a corner with an old version.

But then, what's new on the Mac today and runs well on both PPC and Intel, shouldn't THAT be the OS to run for as long as the machine even works?

Sure new standards and technology push us towards buying a new computer more often than we'd like, but if you can work on a current Mac (PPC or Intel) it should last you for a long time, provided you work with something that doesn't require you to constantly update your software to meet new industry standards etc.

PPC users... there's the MacMini, or the time to upgrade by the time we get to MacOS X 10.6. And trust me, a lot of PPC users will pick that time to finally move, cause a lot of current PPC users have already done so...

So, it's goodbye to the PPC...

But not yet, so let's not get too worked up about it... The new Leopard is amazing. It will be great on your machines too...

 

[winterspan]

Intel Macs dominate already!

10.6 is too soon to drop support for the PPC. Even though it will be four years or so after they were no longer sold the total installed base will probably be larger than the installed base of Intel machines.

SO WRONG! If you read through this thread, you'll see that people are pointed out that Intel Macs are selling so quick that they already represent a majority of the macs out there. In FOUR YEARS with the quickly accelerating pace of windows converts I bet it'll be 90% AT LEAST.