Brilliant! Spot on!
People are worry about something at least 2 years away?? Geesh, you may be dead by then so why worry about this... so funny.
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Mac OS X 10.6 to Drop PowerPC Support?
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Brilliant! Spot on!
People are worry about something at least 2 years away?? Geesh, you may be dead by then so why worry about this... so funny.
A few weeks ago I would have disagreed but having just moved from a six year old PowerBook to a 20" iMac, I realize how much strain I was putting my old friend through. I had come to accept that though MS Office 2004 was better than Office v.X that it still crashed and that was just Microsoft - something you had to put up with. But having used Office 2004 on the latest base model iMac for a few weeks and not having had a crash in the whole time - even though it has to do the whole Rosetta thing - I can honestly say that it was time to upgrade.
There is of course the argument that those with expensive PowerMac setups will not have planned to change kit this quickly, but the Pros tend to upgrade less hastily. So, even though the OS comes out in 2009 they wouldn't upgrade until 2010 at the earliest. Anyway the clever ones will sell up their kit on eBay before others get wind of this and buy themselves MacPros with the proceeds.
I think she/he meant multi-processor as in compilable on different architectures, not as in multiple processors inside one computer. I.E. even though Apple has stopped manufacturing PPC Macs, they manufacture iPhones and iPods that run OS X variants on processors that are not binary compatible with the Intel Core architecture. So OS X has to be something that can be compiled on at least Intel + mobile device CPUs.... (with the presumable implication being that, by this point, the additional work to keep PPCs in the mix is really not that substantial).
Weird. People complain when Microsoft drops support 7 years after their OS is released, but oh mighty apple users say, "we praise what apple tells. we have been bad and must switch to intel based macs within two years....."
Yeah, something like THAT happening again really has apple quaking in their boots. All that happened was apple ended up giving refunds to those who bought OSX, which was zero help to all the G3 owners who were still screwed because they couldn't run OSX.
Yes it does. If we assume the iPhone versoin of Mac OS X shares a common code base with the Mac version then someone is taking great care to keep the code portable. In my experience, once you put in the effort to make it portable, it is portable to many platforms. Portability is almost but not quite an all or nothing feature.
An example: Not portable code might just assume a "pointer" is 32 bits or 4 bytes long and embed the number "4" in the source code. But portable code might use a construct like "sizeof()" that evaluates to different values on different platforms.
Apple isn't really dropping "support" on the PPC machines. Even the latest G5 machine that someone bought will still do exactly what it did the first day they bought it. Just like the iPods, there is not much money in supporting legacy hardware in your upgrades. Additionally, nobody has really considered that OS X 10.6 may be in such a new direction that it isn't possible to even consider running on a PPC. Even still, 2009 is the earliest I could imagine 10.6, I'd bet late 2010. I'll run it on my 16 core MacBook.
Negative.
But only because it is a stupid rumor. 10.5 isn't even out yet, don't start with the rumors about 10.6! Of course Apple will one day stop support PPC. It will be either for 10.6 or 10.7 at the latest. Don't act like it won't or it isn't a good idea.
The Stig
But only because it is a stupid rumor. 10.5 isn't even out yet, don't start with the rumors about 10.6! Of course Apple will one day stop support PPC. It will be either for 10.6 or 10.7 at the latest. Don't act like it won't or it isn't a good idea.
The Stig
Older versions of Mac OS Just don't die when a new version is released. Normally when you get new versions of the OS by the time you get the 3rd or fourth version, it really starts slowing down your system and you are better off with older versions. on My old Power Book Spotlight and Dashboard really killed performance on my system. If Apple keeps backwards comparability for too long they won't be able to add new features to the OS which makes people buy it, and keep OS X ahead of what Microsoft has to offer. Keeping PowerPC and Intel Version of their applications takes a lot of extra space and you can get different problems. Apple has done a stellar job of hiding this from the users but I bet it is killing them. We had Intel Hardware for over a year now by 2009 (or 10) the Intel System would be 3 years old now. And the PowerPC will be over 4. Most of the people who got the G5 for there power would most likely be ready for an upgrade because they normally need top performance. and by then a Mac Mini will outperform a old G5 Power Mac.
Yeah but how much of a computer do you need to run Vista. A lot of the computers being released today can barely run it. While you can install Tiger on Macs going back as far as the Blue & White G3. What year were those released? Like 1999.
Did you even read the thread, O Straw Man?
It has already been almost two years since intel macs shipped (and intel was announced six months before that). It will probably be 4+ by the time 10.6 ships.
It's not a great thing that support is going away someday, but it's not the end of the world. I wish my G3 could support beyond 10.2, but that doesn't stop me from still using it.
If this happens than this would be ok with me. I do not want to apple turn into Microsoft where it spends more time working on compatibility with older platforms then it does on improving current and new platforms.
This doesn't mean that G4 or G5 machine's will stop working, only that they can update to 10.6 or whatever release apple chooses to drop powerpc support.
This doesn't mean that G4 or G5 machine's will stop working, only that they can update to 10.6 or whatever release apple chooses to drop powerpc support.
Is this really such a big deal?
I understand some of us are attached to our old PowerPC Macs. However, by the time Mac OS X 10.6 comes out, the oldest Intel macs (which are significantly faster than the fastest PPC Macs) will be quite inexpensive on the used market.
It really won't cost you that much to upgrade and you'll get a performance boost out of it.
By that time, even the fastest Quad G5s ever released will seem slow compared to *second hand* Intel Macs. Are you that sentimentally attached to your old PPC hardware?
Let it go. I'm glad Leopard supports PPC. But really, by the time 10.6 comes out these machines will be ancient.
I understand some of us are attached to our old PowerPC Macs. However, by the time Mac OS X 10.6 comes out, the oldest Intel macs (which are significantly faster than the fastest PPC Macs) will be quite inexpensive on the used market.
It really won't cost you that much to upgrade and you'll get a performance boost out of it.
By that time, even the fastest Quad G5s ever released will seem slow compared to *second hand* Intel Macs. Are you that sentimentally attached to your old PPC hardware?
Let it go. I'm glad Leopard supports PPC. But really, by the time 10.6 comes out these machines will be ancient.
Brilliant! Spot on!
People are worry about something at least 2 years away?? Geesh, you may be dead by then so why worry about this... so funny.
It's short-termism like this that makes companies fail.
Bring on OS XI.
True, but it was a quad-core G5 monster. Apple should support these for a few more years.
Yep, no doubt. Supporting three processor platforms (ARM, PPC, and Intel) is a drain on resources. Time to shift those software engineers to other neat'o projects.
Is anybody seriously suggesting that there'll be anything in 10.6 that a Core Solo Mac Mini will handle just fine, but will be "too much" for a G5 Quad?
There are some very fast (and expensive) Power PCs being made, just not by Apple.
Apple went to Intel for performance per dollar and the ability to run Windows inside a VM.
How many people actually upgrade the OS when a new version comes out. I'd bet it's at most half. I think a lot of user run with whatever OS version was on their system when they bought it. A lot of people still use Panther. So, when 10.6 is released in 2009 or 2010 all those G3 and G4 users, many of them will still be using 10.3 or 10.4
Not being able to upgrade the OSdoes not mean you have to stop using the computer. It will still work just as well as before.
Well put. Why start getting concerned over something this little more than wild speculation?
Personally, I think 2009 is going to be ambitious.
Onwards and upwards.
Universal binaries add so much bloat. And run slower than optimised binaries.
Don't believe me? Download xSlimmer and tell it to look at your /applications folder. You'll save Gb's
the program strips out the unecessary code (for your machine) and give you a intel ot PPC only app. iTunes for example went from 90Mb to 30Mb, and launches much faster.
Universal binaries add so much bloat. And run slower than optimised binaries.
Don't believe me? Download xSlimmer and tell it to look at your /applications folder. You'll save Gb's
the program strips out the unecessary code (for your machine) and give you a intel ot PPC only app. iTunes for example went from 90Mb to 30Mb, and launches much faster.