Mac OS X 10.6 to Drop PowerPC Support?

[mkrishnan]

More than enough time to warrant dropping PPC support, IMHO.

At the consumer / desktop level, sure... but OS X also runs on XServes and Power Macs used in server / networked computing environments. Four years is a long life on the desktop, but you can't expect an XGrid owner to replace a thousand XServes every four years....

 

[NYmacAttack]

Not really. By 2009/10 PPC's will be totally out of date.

Its a smart move on their part, not only will the PPC computers be out of date but they probably wouldn't be able to run 10.6 well. Although its really tough to speculate about these things two years down the line......

 

[Markleshark]

At the consumer / desktop level, sure... but OS X also runs on XServes and Power Macs used in server / networked computing environments. Four years is a long life on the desktop, but you can't expect an XGrid owner to replace a thousand XServes every four years....

Well they could keep it [PPC Support] in the server version. Will someone who owns 'a thousand' xServes also be upgrading each one with the newest version of OS X? Sounds expensive also.

 

[decimortis]

Fair? Not really.

Surprising? Not really.

 

[4God]

10.5 drop G3
10.6 drop G4
10.7 drop G5

This would make more sense?

Yup. Seems much more likely to me. It gives G5'ers plenty of time to
consider upgrading.

 

[Cloudsurfer]

I'd say 10.6 would at least support the G5 systems, and then drop the PowerPC altogether for 10.7

 

[zombitronic]

That's fine. I've been wanting a reason to transcend beyond my G4 for awhile. Maybe I'll buy a Mac Pro when 10.6 comes out. I can't wait till the rumors of this start to ramp up.

 

[psingh01]

10.5 drop G3
10.6 drop G4
10.7 drop G5

This would make more sense?

I agree, this makes the most sense. Maybe even slower than that. Apple has kept classic support for quite some time.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

Yeah, I'm with the people who say that this isn't all that surprising. Seems about right to me.

 

[guzhogi]

I agree w/ those that say by the time 10.6 rolls out (2009 (?)), all PowerPCs (G4, and G5) would be really old. And to those that say 10.6 should drop G4s and keep the G5 until 10.7, that'll probably be 2011 by the earliest, meaning they'd be at least 6 years old. In computer terms, that's ancient. Plus, if Apple goes w/ just the G5, what about laptops? No Apple laptops ship w/ G5s, and laptops are a big percentage of the Mac market. So Apple would be really stupid to take out G4 support and not G5.

And before anyone says it, Powerbook G5 on Tuesday!

 

[Data]

Both ?

Why not keep developing both versions, as they did starting from os X , in that way , if ibm would come out with something spectacular and new that Intel missed , the switch back wil be very easy. Only if it's really ,really expensive then it would be considerable, to stop the universal versions in my opinion.
But i'm not a programmer so it's basicly a big wild gues ;-) .

 

[savar]

Makes sense to me as well! Intel is the newest and greatest, Power PC is in the past. So sorry if you can't upgrade. What's 10.6 going to be called? Lion?

Still it seems a little premature. I mean there are G5s out there only a few years old that would probably like to move to 10.6.

Seems like a strange time to change too, seeing as how they've gone through all the trouble to develop the multiple architecture support in the first place, and as somebody pointed out are apparently using it in some form to support iphone/ipod.

Maybe this just means they won't be tuning for PPC anymore?

Edit: oops, I was thinking 10.6 is coming out this year. If 10.6 comes out 18 to 24 months after 10.5 (reasonable schedule), then that will be the right time to phase out PPC support. I doubt it even has as much to do with the PPC itself as it does supporting all the old chipsets in legacy macs.

 

[Kwill]

PPC users would be able to use Leopard a couple more years beyond the next cat's release. With an older Mac, it is not always necessary to run the latest OS and software. However, eventually software upgrades will stop supporting prior OS versions and people with 10-15 year old Macs will need to replace their dearly beloved. May she rest in environmentally-friendly pieces.

 

[guzhogi]

Well they could keep it [PPC Support] in the server version. Will someone who owns 'a thousand' xServes also be upgrading each one with the newest version of OS X? Sounds expensive also.

I agree, even just upgrading the OS on 1000 servers is expensive & time consuming. While I feel you shouldn't just break support just to break support, sometimes it's necessary to do that so you can move forward.

 

[samh004]

it will happen sooner or later, no?

True.

10.5 drop G3
10.6 drop G4
10.7 drop G5

This would make more sense?

Nothing from Apple ever makes sense

Well, I guess the (few) who bought the quad G5s maybe expected them to last longer than 4 years...

Sad for them.

They will last longer than four years, just with 10.5 only according to this speculation.

 

[Spock]

This is not that big of a deal, Apple needs to drop the PowerPC it will be time by 2009. Apple dropped support for 68k Macs after what, OS 8.1?

 

[mkrishnan]

Well they could keep it [PPC Support] in the server version. Will someone who owns 'a thousand' xServes also be upgrading each one with the newest version of OS X? Sounds expensive also.

When I mentioned the thousand XServes, I meant computers like the supercomputer at VTech... but to be honest, I have no idea how this works... it's not like a supercomputer needs to run the latest version of iLife. On the other hand, though, the level of support that Apple offers legacy OSes wouldn't seem to be enough.

I dunno... I guess my broad point was just that there might be a lot of corporate applications where G5s are still very much in use in 2009 or 2010, and there would be a reasonable expectation of continued OS support. I guess it could just be PPC OS X Server, but then considering that OS X Server is mostly a superset of OS X, it seems like it would just be crippleware to not make the workstation/client OS X available in PPC as well....

 

[Eidorian]

It was a nice run for PowerPC then.

 

[yzp]

Makes sense...

even if...

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

However,

OSX will have to be multi processor to keep support for the upcoming iPods and iPhones which run (quite well) on Samsung ARM processors

but

it will happen sooner or later, no?

 

[SirOmega]

I really dont expect 10.6 until MWSF 2010. And even then, PPC owners can still run 10.5.

 

[kainjow]

If they ever do drop PPC support, they will still maintain compatibility internally like they've done with Intel since 10.0. What if IBM releases a killer CPU in 10 years and Intel is the one behind?

 

[pohl]

does not make sense

I can't believe how many people are saying that it would "make sense".

It would not make sense, and Apple is not going to do it. Think about it, kids: the bulk of the Apple Insider article is about a mere 67Mhz increase in the minimum requirements for Leopard...and why? Because they discovered that it simply wouldn't be performant on lesser machines -- and that's a reasonable expectation, since threading things (like the network stack) does have some overhead associated with it and the older, slower machines are going to be the ones bit by that tradeoff.

But WTF...you think a quad, or dual, or even single G5 at 2.0 Ghz is not going to run 10.6 adequately for some reason? As if. The trend in OSX from release to release is that, on most machines with adequate memory, it gets faster -- not slower. The machines that get slower are the edge cases.

It costs Apple almost nothing to maintain the PPC port of this software (which, you should recall, ran on 040, SPARC, and HP PA-RISC, and now runs on PPC, x86, and ARM and who knows what else in the lab) and they're not going to anger anybody with even a dual G4 tower for a long, long time.

I'd put money on it.

 

[p0intblank]

I think 10.6 should at least support the G5 and follow tradition (dropping support for each one as we go). I'm still on a PowerBook G4, but I am sure I will have an Intel Mac by the time 10.6 rolls around.

 

[kbrain2929]

I really dont expect 10.6 until MWSF 2010. And even then, PPC owners can still run 10.5.

Yep, but I was thinking WWDC 2009. You know, kinda in between MWSF 09' and MWSF 10'. I just don't think they will wait that long. It would seem to be too M$ like,

 

[sblasl]

Obviously this balloon is being floated now with the intent to give the market the heads up that it will need to make some decisions about how & when it wants to go about transitioning to the intel platform.

Apple will need to move on to be able to focus on the current technology it will be dealing with. The updates that would be forthcoming in 10.6 would have no benefit to the PPC platform.

They are not announcing that 10.5 will cease to run on the PPC platform, those machines will continue to operate just fine & dandy.