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Mac OS X Snow Leopard Does Require Intel Processors

sushi said:
the PPC platform, as of September when Snow Leopard is released, will not support the PPC platform.
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Uh... say what?

Morky said:
Leopard is basically on feature parity with Snow Leopard, at least in the UI.
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This. GrandCentralDispatch don't mean jack to a single-core G5. And Leopard is a pretty awesome OS, so it's not like you're being stuck with Tiger, Panther, Cheetah, or whatever.

Matek said:
Mac Pro and Intel Xserve were announced on August 7th 2006, the latter became available in November 2006, which means people can still have valid AppleCare 3-year warranty on their machines while Apple is already cutting off their support OS-wise.
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Cutting off their support? How? I've seen no indication that Apple is EOLing Leopard or Leopard Server, discontinuing availability of support for it, or even stopping selling it to those who want it. If there are PPC users out there who aren't ready to buy a new machine but are still running Tiger or earlier, I'm sure Apple will happily take their $129 for Leopard.

If you bought that last-rev Power Mac G5 in, say, September 2006, it either came with, or you immediately upgraded it to, 10.4.9. You then had the choice of sticking with 10.4 (last upgraded to 10.4.11 in late 2007) or, in October 2007 or later, going to 10.5, which is now on 10.5.7. So you've had an option for a major (paid) OS update, as well as about 9 incremental updates for fixes, security, improvements, etc.

And that's not even counting application upgrades. Yeah, Apple is making the new OS Intel-specific since they haven't sold anything non-Intel in 3 years, but they're still going to have to offer PPC builds of stuff for a LONG time - the G5's aren't exactly slow even by today's standards.

Matek said:
I don't know how all the obscure Linux distros can always cover 15 different architectures (stuff like IA-64 and SPARC included)
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As a long-time Linux user, I can tell you the "coverage" of those weird architectures varies greatly. A lot of stuff that's available in package form for x86 isn't available that way for less popular platforms, so you'll spend a lot of time compiling it if you want it. And there's no guarantee it'll compile without tweaks on your part. Just sayin'.
 
Matek said:
Check your facts. Mac Pro and Intel Xserve were announced on August 7th 2006, the latter became available in November 2006, which means people can still have valid AppleCare 3-year warranty on their machines while Apple is already cutting off their support OS-wise.
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I don't think anyone has suggested that Apple will cease support to Leopard.
 
Did anyone else notice that when Bertrand Serlet said Snow Leopard saves you 6GB it was "thanks to technologies like file system compression"? Not explicitly refinements in code.
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I did, I was only saying that removal of PPC binaries could be helpful in this area. But otherwise, I was quite taken aback by this statement. Filesystem compression is a very old concept that's entirely unnecessary nowadays, with todays prices the 6 GB improvement is worth about 50 cents. Unless they did something new with it (does anyone have any info?) it's an unrequired performance-hit.

snow leopard has been done to have an optimized OS for the intel architecture.
I'm 110% sure will exist any SL for old processor. The kernel has been stripped and reduced just to run on Intel.
Sorry guys....
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I'm not sure you're getting the whole concept. Supporting PPC and Intel doesn't mean you have to somehow support both architectures at the same time which makes them both slower, like you're trying to present it. It simply means you have to support some more hardware and compile and distribute PPC versions. As I said - the Linux developers seem to be doing this nicely.

As a long-time Linux user, I can tell you the "coverage" of those weird architectures varies greatly. A lot of stuff that's available in package form for x86 isn't available that way for less popular platforms, so you'll spend a lot of time compiling it if you want it. And there's no guarantee it'll compile without tweaks on your part. Just sayin'.
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Well, you're absolutely right. But still, if a bunch of people who don't get paid for it can keep doing this in an acceptable way for 15+ architectures, a multinational company could do it really really well for 2 architectures and for people who bought their products at quite a price.

Cutting off their support? How? I've seen no indication that Apple is EOLing Leopard or Leopard Server, discontinuing availability of support for it, or even stopping selling it to those who want it.

...

Yeah, Apple is making the new OS Intel-specific since they haven't sold anything non-Intel in 3 years, but they're still going to have to offer PPC builds of stuff for a LONG time - the G5's aren't exactly slow even by today's standards.
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Well, sorry, I was a bit hasty there, I didn't mean to say they will completely discontinue all support, I was just rephrasing the fact the new OS X won't support PPC.

I know i would be a bit pissed myself. The main reason a person buys an Apple personal computer is because he wants to use OS X. Like you said, the G5's aren't slow even by today's standards. Snow Leopard is supposed to be _faster_ than Leopard, which already runs on PPC, so not supporting it makes even less sense for me.

To put it another way - there is absolutely no way I can imagine buying a top-end non-Apple personal computer in November 2006 only to have the hardware company that makes it tell me "You see, we're afraid Windows 7 will not run on your computer, although it's more than capable of running it. We don't feel like writing drivers, but don't worry - we'll keep sending Vista patches your way."
 
BlizzardBomb said:
They can still run Leopard though. PPC had a good run, but dropping it allows further optimization on the Intel side.
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I agree! Leopard is still an advanced OS.

We heard Snow Leopard = Intel only a year ago, did some think they would just sneak PPC support in there?
 
Oh well...I heard this was going to be the case. Still bummed to hear it confirmed. Figures the dirt cheap $29 update is the one I can't take advantage of!

- Proud owner of final revision PPC iMac and PowerBook
 
no big deal for me, as all my family's macs and my work ones also are intel based. but i do know a bunch of people who a professionals who still have G5 towers. in music business, where people don't want to upgrade the OS because they don't want to break their plug in's for pro-tools.

but perhaps this is a good enough time as any to show OpenGL graphics power needs a intel based computer.

but... if they can do this... why can't Apple Support Blu-Ray properly. Hell at this point Apple won't even say if they would embrace BD finally by the fall. About 2 years late. its just sad how they won't allow for this vibrant format, which instead they call "a bag of hurt" BS it's just protectionism of the itunes digital download store. which has lower video/sound quality.
 
Matek said:
Well, it's not a smart move in terms of ticking off the customers. I don't know how all the obscure Linux distros can always cover 15 different architectures (stuff like IA-64 and SPARC included)
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They can do it by not really optimising very well for any of them. If you want top performance, at some point you really have to specialise.
 
m-dogg said:
Proud owner of final revision PPC iMac and PowerBook
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My 6 year old PowerBook G4 recently bit the dust after an unscheduled run in with the floor from a great height ;o(

Apart from the battery losing it's capacity it ran Leopard perfectly well!
 
Good choice

This makes sense - to truly push things forward, something has to go. And Leopard today is a fantastic operating system already, and will continue to be so for the PPC computers until they need replacement. No big issues here.

In fact, even Tiger - Version 10.4.11, makes an excellent server OS for our Intel XServe even today. We will get Snow Leopard Server for our NEW XServe early next year, but really, if something is running as fast, stable and secure as 10.4.11 is on a server, there is no need for us to change that machine right now whatsoever.
 
Matek said:
Check your facts. Mac Pro and Intel Xserve were announced on August 7th 2006, the latter became available in November 2006, which means people can still have valid AppleCare 3-year warranty on their machines while Apple is already cutting off their support OS-wise.

Well, it's not a smart move in terms of ticking off the customers. I don't know how all the obscure Linux distros can always cover 15 different architectures (stuff like IA-64 and SPARC included) while a company as big as Apple lets their customers down.
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It's a minority Apple is "ticking off", though it seems not all are unhappy about it. PPC users have the option of selling those high-resale value machines and putting the proceeds toward a current Intel, or better yet, a clearance-priced previous-gen Intel machine.

And Linux has nothing to do with Apple in terms of hardware support. Completely different goals. There is really no comparison in terms of installation and ease of use between OS X and the average Linux distro. In terms of the user experience, Linux is laughable. But it was never meant to be that kind of desktop OS, and it still shows, although in other ways it is technically excellent.

Leopard will not magically stop booting on PPC machines come september. And it will still be supported and updated same as Tiger has. At some point Apple needs to move forward. Leopard is perfectly fine, but whiny PPC users have simply seen something they like but can't have this time. Oh well.

I'm not let down by Apple. Intel users aren't let down by Apple. Plenty fo PPC users don't feel let down by Apple. Clarify "customers." You seem to be speaking in these really broad absolutes that don't reflect reality.
 
It's a minority Apple is "ticking off."

And Linux has nothing to do with Apple in terms of hardware support. Completely different goals. There is realyl no comparison in terms installation and ease of use between OS X and the average Linux distro.

I'm not let down by Apple. Intel users aren't let down by Apple. Clarify "customers."
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Minority? Clarify customers? You must be joking! I'm talking about the people who paid several thousand dollars for their multicore G5 PowerMacs. Just because they aren't a majority anymore doesn't mean anything. If I were to say "The USA government let their people down by discriminating against Asian people", would you argue and say "I'm white and I wasn't let down, it's a <5% minority they're ticking off"?

And as far as Linux hardware support is concerned - I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, an average Linux distro supports way more hardware than OS X.

scottishwildcat said:
They can do it by not really optimising very well for any of them. If you want top performance, at some point you really have to specialise.
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I can't completely agree with that, you know. Compilers are where the optimisation's at.
 
Matek said:
To put it another way - there is absolutely no way I can imagine buying a top-end non-Apple personal computer in November 2006 only to have the hardware company that makes it tell me "You see, we're afraid Windows 7 will not run on your computer, although it's more than capable of running it. We don't feel like writing drivers, but don't worry - we'll keep sending Vista patches your way."
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But no other manufacturer (I'm thinking of Dell, HP, Toshiba, Asus, Acer, etc) has changed the structure of their processors the way Apple did three years ago. A six years old Dell is basically the same computer than a current one, only slower and less capable.
I think it was a pain in the ass for Apple and other software manufacturers to have to write two versions of everything or make them run through Rosetta, with the reduced performance issues. It is the right decision for Apple to take.
And it is not that you don't have any support or OS to run. You have a very stable and powerful OS called Leopard that works fine in your system. Also, many of the new features oh SL, in particular the most interesting ones as the use of both the CPU and GPU to increase performance, won't be supported by dated GPUs as the one you probably have in a 4 year old computer. So the improvement from Leopard to SL would be close to nothing on PPC machines.
And that's talking about people with the most powerful PPC machines available, with G5 processors. If you go to G4 (laptops, iMac, etc), the difference could be even smaller).
 
A very noob-ish question.

I've never upgraded an OS, I've only format and install a fresh one so far. By having Leopard, I'd be able to upgrade it to Snow Leopard without losing any of my applications, preferences, dock items, dashboard items, terminal preferences, etc, right?

I was afraid that I may lose one of those because I rely so much on the terminal and my IDE for programming, and I have set them up such that it's all working very well now...
 
Matek said:
I can't completely agree with that, you know. Compilers are where the optimisation's at.
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Only up to a point... there are plenty of other optimizations to be made outside of compilation. And even then, Sun's own compilers do a better job of optimizing for SPARC than gcc does, for example, but how many SPARC Linux distros are built with anything other than gcc?
 
LOL, like it was any different when Apple moved to PPC architecture. This is the nature of the beast.
 
But no other manufacturer (I'm thinking of Dell, HP, Toshiba, Asus, Acer, etc) has changed the structure of their processors the way Apple did three years ago. A six years old Dell is basically the same computer than a current one, only slower and less capable.
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I'm sorry, but that's more of an excuse. The customers didn't ask for that, the customers don't need to know what's happening in the background. In fact, unlike Microsoft that clearly provides different types of Windows (64 and 32 bit), Apple has been working hard to make everything work seamlessly for users of PPC and Intel alike, with them very rarely ever having to know what they are using.

I think it was a pain in the ass for Apple and other software manufacturers to have to write two versions of everything or make them run through Rosetta, with the reduced performance issues. It is the right decision for Apple to take.
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That's incorrect. Rosetta was only used for old software that was released before the switch to Intel.

As far as newer software is concerned - software manufacturers sometimes need to provide a slight amount of work to provide compatibility with both architectures (also depends on the complexity of their software), but that's very far away from having to develop two seperate versions of everything. Mostly they write just one and compile it into a universal binary with Xcode and that magically makes it work everywhere.

Only up to a point... there are plenty of other optimizations to be made outside of compilation. And even then, Sun's own compilers do a better job of optimizing for SPARC than gcc does, for example, but how many SPARC Linux distros are built with anything other than gcc?
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What you're saying is true, but people are misunderstanding things, as if the PPC version:
  1. needs to be developed completely seperately,
  2. makes the Intel version worse somehow.
None of which is really true. Apple proved to the developers with Xcode that one can make universal binaries without _any_ efforts. I know it's a whole different ballpark with developing a whole OS, but it's not as hard as some people in this topic are trying to present it.

What does the compiler thing have to do with anything? Yeah, Sun knows their architecture and can provide better compiler optimisations, sure. I'm not aware of the background situation on what you're telling me, so I don't know whether they use gcc because Sun's compilers are propietary or out of some kind of open-source fundamentalism, but regardless - this doesn't change the fact they're clearly demonstrating a very modern OS can be released for a number of architectures.

Core Duo... As in Core 2 Duo? I didn't think that Intel made any Core Duo processors that were 32-bit only.
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No, Core Duo and Core 2 Duo are two different things. The first Intel machines from Apple were based on Core Duo, which is 32-bit. Later, they switched to Core 2 Duo, which is 64-bit.
 
Matek said:
Minority? Clarify customers? You must be joking! I'm talking about the people who paid several thousand dollars for their multicore G5 PowerMacs. Just because they aren't a majority anymore doesn't mean anything. If I were to say "The USA government let their people down by discriminating against Asian people", would you argue and say "I'm white and I wasn't let down, it's a <5% minority they're ticking off"?

And as far as Linux hardware support is concerned - I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, an average Linux distro supports way more hardware than OS X.

I can't completely agree with that, you know. Compilers are where the optimisation's at.
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Oh well.

Tech is not people. Racism and discrimination aren't equal to an OS refresh that drops support for discontinued, phased-out hardware.

Those multicore G5 Macs will still boot up and run Leopard, probably for years to come, and Apple wil still keep updating it. Where's the problem?

Linux supports way more hardware than OS X. So does Windows. There are pretty clear reasons Apple doesn't support a vast array of hardware. Are you new to Apple?
 
MacAndy74 said:
Core Duo... As in Core 2 Duo? I didn't think that Intel made any Core Duo processors that were 32-bit only.:eek:
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Nope, I've got one. I bought it autumn 2006 I think... Core2Duo came out shortly afterwards :(

Still it's a perfectly functional machine, although it may be time to upgrade for SL.
 
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