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Mac OS X Snow Leopard Does Require Intel Processors
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It remains to be seen how "tailored" Snow Leopard will be on Intel. Will it leverage Nehalem's SIMD and other features of the processors?
I don't have too much of a problem with 10.5.7 on my Mac but I haven't really pounded it with anything difficult.
It remains to be seen how "tailored" Snow Leopard will be on Intel. Will it leverage Nehalem's SIMD and other features of the processors?
I don't have too much of a problem with 10.5.7 on my Mac but I haven't really pounded it with anything difficult.
Didn't Steve Jobs say they would support PPC for 5 years after the Intel switch? The complete Apple line was transitioned at the end of 2006 when the Xserve went Intel. This means that support actually runs out about 3 years after the switch. Maybe "support" meant dual binary software, iLife, iWork, Pro Apps, not operating systems.
In a Troubled Economy...
In a troubled economy, the abandonment of PowerPC so soon (LESS than 3 years in some cases), will come back to haunt Apple. People are just not going out and buying tons of computers or anything right now and this will ultimately leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths for a long time to come. Just read the OpenCL thread next to this one and you'll see how many INTEL Mac owners are already re-considering purchases after learning their JUST PURCHASED Mac won't be fully supported in Snow Leopard either. Combine that with the people in this thread angry over the abandonment of PowerPC support and you have basically a perfect storm of outrage.
Few people will want Snow Leopard from reading these 2 threads and the combined outrage of the OpenCL and PowerPC people.
It appears that LESS than a THIRD of Mac users will even be fully supported by Snow Leopard, so what's the point of it? For the less than one third of Mac users that are fully supported, obviously you're all very happy and should be, but Snow Leopard will probably end up being the least sold version of MacOS since the pre-OSX days just because, in sheer numbers, so few people can even take advantage of all of its capabilities or even install it at all.
In a troubled economy, the abandonment of PowerPC so soon (LESS than 3 years in some cases), will come back to haunt Apple. People are just not going out and buying tons of computers or anything right now and this will ultimately leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths for a long time to come. Just read the OpenCL thread next to this one and you'll see how many INTEL Mac owners are already re-considering purchases after learning their JUST PURCHASED Mac won't be fully supported in Snow Leopard either. Combine that with the people in this thread angry over the abandonment of PowerPC support and you have basically a perfect storm of outrage.
No wonder its only $29
Few people will want Snow Leopard from reading these 2 threads and the combined outrage of the OpenCL and PowerPC people.
It appears that LESS than a THIRD of Mac users will even be fully supported by Snow Leopard, so what's the point of it? For the less than one third of Mac users that are fully supported, obviously you're all very happy and should be, but Snow Leopard will probably end up being the least sold version of MacOS since the pre-OSX days just because, in sheer numbers, so few people can even take advantage of all of its capabilities or even install it at all.
Nope
Intel mac owner here (along with PPC Macs)
I don't care that I can't use OpenCL because it has a CPU fallback feature anyways.
And computers that are 36 months and older not being supported is fine with me. Why should I be held back by your computer which is in its golden years and due up for replacement?
It's not like Leopard is total dog crap I'll run it on my G4 Cube just fine but my Intel Macs will be Snow Leopard.
Half the people yammering about OpenCL don't even know what it'll offer. Yeah....that's someone I'm going to listen to.
Intel mac owner here (along with PPC Macs)
I don't care that I can't use OpenCL because it has a CPU fallback feature anyways.
And computers that are 36 months and older not being supported is fine with me. Why should I be held back by your computer which is in its golden years and due up for replacement?
It's not like Leopard is total dog crap I'll run it on my G4 Cube just fine but my Intel Macs will be Snow Leopard.
Half the people yammering about OpenCL don't even know what it'll offer. Yeah....that's someone I'm going to listen to.
Where are you pulling these statistics out of? Thin air? I think so. Forum members are the minority, most people will NOT care!!!
I don't recall Steve Jobs saying anything about guaranteed support for PPC systems. All that I have gathered was that it was made public in 2005, started and completed by 2006. The last Intel Mac (the Xserve) was announced in August 6 2007 (I think that was at WWDC). Of course we should point out that the intel Xserves were not available until December. The first Intel Macs were released on January 10 2006. Thats 3 and a half years ago.
Theoretically one could have gotten an PPC mac new in November of 2006, but they would have purchased it knowing that there was a Intel version replacing it (The Mac Pro was announced in August). They might have a few months left of Apple Care - and that's just for support. There is no promise that software development is guaranteed. My best recollection that the first Intel Only Apps started with iLife '08 (iMovie was Intel Only).
I think that "support only may mean availability of Apple Care and hardware support. I have no doubt that Apple will still release fixes for Leopard after Snow Leopard comes out - that was the case with Tiger.
No, here we are 2.5 years later.
Your use of the word "instant gratification" is repugnant. These are not Ipods. Intel was not a viable option for people with actual work to do in late 2006. That is why Apple continued selling G5s long after the Mac Pro shipped. You think that because the world couldn't stop turning while Apple forced a transition, and developers were forced to transition, that is the fault of people who needed solutions immediately? And that now Apple can crap on those customers, and be cheered on by the likes of you?
I'm afraid not.
pdjudd said:
iMovie runs fine on PPC.
They crapped on customers by selling computers that still run great?
Your computer is suddenly unusable because it won't be able to use SL?
Seriously, you sound like a whiny brat.
Same with me. Frankly, I don't think I or most people are going to take much advantage of these features. The first thing is that most typical applications aren't going to utilize it much anyway. Its not a big "killer app" type of thing. Snow Leopard is not intended to have a "Killer App"
Agreed. People who are complaining are ones who bought right in the middle of the transition. "Transition complete" was announced in August of '06 when the last two upper tier macs were announced. The iMacs were all released in January of that year and all the laptops were out by May. We all knew the workstations were upcoming - Intel announced their Xeon 5100 workstation CPU's roughly 3 years ago from this month (actually it was the 26th of June 2006). The only other way that you would have had gotten a PPC mac was the refurb route - and you (general) had to have known that that was dead end route.
We also have to remember that Apple has done this before. Back in the late 90's they spent 2 years going from the Motorola 68K to the PPC.
Exactly. The differences between Leopard and Snow Leopard on the visual front are minor. It is still a good operating system that will run very well on older Macs for years to come.
The same people complain about 64 bit compatibility - they get caught up in the excitement without knowing what it means.
Not iMovie '08 (which I specifically talked about). That was Intel only. Apple had to offer iMovie '06 (HD) for free for people who bought iLife and had specific requirements. No biggie since iMovie HD was a UB.
iMovie HD and iMovie '08 and '09 are very different programs.
Why don't you go check the specs? iMovie 09 runs fine on G5. There are almost no Apple programs that won't run on G5 right now. Even the features that supposedly won't work on PPC, do work (GarageBand training, iPhone SDK for examples). SL is going to be the first big product that doesn't support PPC. Not because it can't, because Apple won't.
Is that like "Mission Accomplished?" Shipment of Mac Pro did not mean Intel Macs were ready for business. Software still had to be ported, otherwise those 4 Intel cores using Rosetta were getting creamed by native PPC quad cores.
PowerMacs were being sold new through the end of 2006. Not refurbs. NEW. Because Apple knew Intel was not yet ready for production use.
Please read the OpenCL thread
It has the list of supported graphics cards for OpenCL in Snow Leopard and there you'll see the # of people who will not have OpenCL support in Snow Leopard, some of which bought Macs in the LAST MONTH!
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to do the math, just add the 20% PPC people to the at LEAST 40% of INTEL users who won't have OpenCL support (and those are conservative #s, probably higher), and you have your numbers.
If you have some better sources to dispute those numbers, please share by all means.
By the way, in case no one noticed, we're in a deep recession where no one is buying computers.
Ditching that proportion of your user base who bought within the last 3 years during such a time is far beyond bad PR in my humble opinion. I guess we'll all find out when Snow Leopard is released. If it sells well & Apple's market share increases, then you can all continue to call me a whiner I guess.
We'll see. I tend to think the exact opposite is going to happen.
You're right. I misremembered. My thought process was that iMovie alone was a intel only app because it was built ground up well after PPC was not available. My statements regarding iMovie HD are officially retracted.
*Sigh* Mission accomplished sent a clear signal that you should not expect PPC support forever. Intel was for sale and already selling on all the other Macs. The availability of intel across the board pretty much put PPC in the Legacy camp. There is no way anybody could see long term future for the PPC. It doesn't matter if you could buy them and it the availability or lack thereof of software is irrelevant to the fact that the hardware was going to be supplanted. Buyers had to see this and should have purchased with the transition to intel as much as possible.
Remember, from Apple's point of view, PPC was yesterdays hardware. They couldn't just axe it right away and I am not saying they should have - some people needed PPC support - but they should have seen the inevitable. Look at Classic. Apple axed that for everybody with Leopard. Classic is an example of technology that was axed after 2 years. It was stable first in 2005 and axed in Leopard. Apple had to keep support for classic, but at some point, they had to call that quits eventually.
Okay, so if PowerPC support is dropped, then does that mean that PowerPC applications will not be supported under Snow Leopard. I have a macbook pro core 2 duo but I still run microsoft office 2004. I do not like the 2008 edition. Will Rosetta still work in Snow Leopard do you think?
OpenCL is a brand new open standard. Support has to start somewhere. My iMac's 7600GT isn't on the list. That doesn't mean I don't care about it. The next Mac I buy WILL be OpenCL compatible and hopefully by that time developers will have quite a bit of software out there that will take advantage of it.
Apple's respect for facts just keeps dropping....
Referring to the referral that you referred to (this link) - it's amazing the number of errors, lies and misleading statements in that one web page.
Oh really - twice as many instructions per cycle? I'm sure that Intel's engineers will want to know how Apple pulled that rabbit out of a hat.
Wow. I wonder if we should tell them that Windows XP introduced hardware execute disable support for 32-bit systems in SP2 - almost 5 years ago?
I really wonder how it manages to do that on Yonah (32-bit Core Duo and Core Solo) systems? Magic?
Or maybe there will be a silent update to the 10.6 web page to replace "Mac with Intel processor" with "Mac with Intel Core 2 or Xeon processor" and the early Yonah systems will be dropped?
Almost two-thirds of the systems in Sunday's Best Buy flyer were Vista x64 - so no need to update anything to run 64-bit or 32-bit programs.
And is Apple still harping about old 64-bit driver issues on Windows? I wonder if they'll have eggs-on-their-faces after people find out that 10.6 needs all new 64-bit drivers - since Apple has finally adopted the Windows approach of a true 64-bit OS.
Referring to the referral that you referred to (this link) - it's amazing the number of errors, lies and misleading statements in that one web page.
Oh really - twice as many instructions per cycle? I'm sure that Intel's engineers will want to know how Apple pulled that rabbit out of a hat.
Wow. I wonder if we should tell them that Windows XP introduced hardware execute disable support for 32-bit systems in SP2 - almost 5 years ago?
I really wonder how it manages to do that on Yonah (32-bit Core Duo and Core Solo) systems? Magic?
Or maybe there will be a silent update to the 10.6 web page to replace "Mac with Intel processor" with "Mac with Intel Core 2 or Xeon processor" and the early Yonah systems will be dropped?
Almost two-thirds of the systems in Sunday's Best Buy flyer were Vista x64 - so no need to update anything to run 64-bit or 32-bit programs.
And is Apple still harping about old 64-bit driver issues on Windows? I wonder if they'll have eggs-on-their-faces after people find out that 10.6 needs all new 64-bit drivers - since Apple has finally adopted the Windows approach of a true 64-bit OS.
I believe that Rosetta emulation is available - though I have heard via an optional install. No confirmation official word as been announced. The rumor builds say its optional. Since Rosetta is just hardware emulation via software, it was built expressly for Intel and only works on that platform architecture - I can't picture it not working. I would see if a UB of your app exists of course.
I think my point was and the points being made in the OpenCL thread are that Apple deliberately chose NOT to support many graphics cards that could be OpenCL compatible by CHOICE!, not because they could not be compatible, just as Apple has chosen to deliberately not support PowerPC in Snow Leopard, even though many of its features also could be PowerPC compatible as many of them are bug fixes and optimizations of the the current Leopard.
Why else would it still be called "Leopard"?
To many people who paid $129 for Leopard, obviously this is going to tick them off, hence all the negative posts you're seeing in these 2 Macrumors threads.
By the way, if you add up the Ratings on the Snow Leopard OpenCL thread + this PowerPC thread, you'll see they are running more than 50% NEGATIVE. Not a good sign for Snow Leopard on a site that is mostly fanboys in my opinion.
Beta
Snow Leopard is still in beta folks. It's not shipping until an estimated March.
relax chicken littles.
On Core 2 Duo and Xeon systems.
Core Duo and Core Solo systems have a 32-bit kernel, system and applications - since the processor is 32-bit only.
Maybe, or perhaps it could mean any Fat Binary application.
A true "universal" binary would need 4 streams inside - PPC 32-bit, PPC 64-bit, x86 and x64. A "universal" binary for 10.6 would only need two streams - x86 and x64.
"Universal Binary" will mean whatever Apple wants it to mean at the moment, of course.
Living in a cave??
. Apple officially announced the shipping date as September and attendees at WWDC got a near finished version of Snow Leopard.
Oh shiza
I swore I typed September
Sorry fellas. Seems part of the "crazy" has rubbed off on me. PPC Flu
hhahahaha
I swore I typed September
Sorry fellas. Seems part of the "crazy" has rubbed off on me. PPC Flu
hhahahaha