Mac OS X Snow Leopard Drops PowerPC Support

[atszyman]

It's not about the speed of PPC at all. It's about having to make a single code stream compile successfully on two platforms and remain optimized. I'm sure that there are extra developers required to maintain both code streams (even if some code is common and just compiled in place). Once you eliminate PPC, you can further optimize the Intel builds because you can make changes that would be otherwise detrimental in a PPC environment. You can also drop support for hardware that never shipped in an Intel Platform.

And this is exactly why I would have thought it would have been a much bigger announcement. Why have developers keep working on the dual optimized streams to create universal binaries when the OS will only support Intel? Surely you can create apps that will be compatible with previous OSX incarnations on Intel. I mean if Apple thinks that PPC computers are to old and few to develop an OS update for why should new developers work on PPC code? And by not telling them that PPC is being dropped they're effectively wasting developers' time and money as they work on universal binaries.

For that matter any PPC only app will be at least 4-5 years old at the point Snow Leopard is released. If they haven't updated to Intel by now they probably never will so let's just drop Rosetta as well. If my 5 year old computer is that obsolete so is my 5 year old software.

Why would they take PPC support out of a developer preview and then re-add it later on? That wouldn't happen.
1. You don't take out a huge thing like that and add it back in later, it takes time and money.
2. Adding something that big later would have a ton of bugs.
3. It would just be stupid.

PPC is dead.

Did you miss this one?

The Dev Builds of Leopard were Intel only at the start.

Just because it's not currently supported does not mean it's not there or being worked on or has to be "added" later. In theory the PPC code doesn't ever run on an Intel box so if they are still working on it but wanted to get it to developers the Intel only build would get developers started while they worked out the PPC kinks and the PPC code would still be there.

 

[ungraphic]

I really dont understand why people, PPC people, are bitching. They're not losing any features by not getting Snow Leopard. They're not getting Leopard taken away and erased off of their machines. No one is saying you cant have any new features, this is just an intel optimized version of Leopard. Why is that such a friggin big deal? Leopard will still run on your machines. There are no new features in Snow Leopard. If Leopard runs fine now, then why bother complaining? You arent LOSING anything.

Because the general public is stupid. Mac users are not excluded.

 

[Anuba]

It's a good thing for Snow Leopard to be Intel only (and I'm a Dual 2.5/G5 owner). It will be very bad for innovation if Apple makes a go at the enterprise market. Then Apple WILL be just another Dell/Microsoft

That's more of a when than an if. That climbing market share curve will eventually run into a brick wall, you can only get so far with consumers and creative pros, the hardcore gamers are out of reach, so... enterprises it must be. If you look at what they're doing with MobileMe and the iPhone, it's just one giant enterprise kiss-up campaign. Lowly consumers don't need MS Exchange support...

 

[Kuska]

why named snow?

Because there'snow longer PPC support !

 

[atszyman]

Exactly what zioxide's point is. So why would they put it in later on?

I think you missed the point.

Leopard supports both PPC and Intel, yet the early development builds were "Intel Only."

This does not mean it was added in later, it just means that the Intel code was more stable for development earlier while the PPC code was tweaked. This is probably a strong indication that the PPC code is a lower priority and that any performance increase is tied more to Intel than anything else.

The fact that this developer's release does not currently support PPC does not mean that the code is not there.

 

[iJed]

"Universal" apps, probably copied over from Leopard and not modified much yet.. they've been working on the core of the OS first

No many of these apps are newer versions than on 10.5.3 and are still universal. Therefore we can safely assume that Apple has in fact recompiled them for the 10.6 DP. The fact that they have not disabled building for PPC indicates that they are still wanting to support PPC.

Why would they take PPC support out of a developer preview and then re-add it later on? That wouldn't happen.
1. You don't take out a huge thing like that and add it back in later, it takes time and money.
2. Adding something that big later would have a ton of bugs.
3. It would just be stupid.

PPC is dead.

Who said anything about PPC support being taken out? This is in no way implied by it just being an Intel preview. It is more likely that PPC support is either broken or very unstable. It could have any range of problems including something as fundamental as kernel changes not being ported over to PPC yet. Or (as I said previously) be related to platform specific changes to the GCC compiler which are not yet implemented on PPC. OpenCL, from what I understand, uses a modified version of the C programming language so that alone could be the issue. Supporting two very different CPU architectures is a big job and you would not develop a feature like this concurrently for both.

I agree that removing PPC support would be stupid but why would they do that? In no way did any of my comments state or imply that this was the case.

 

[Anuba]

The issue here that the apple apologists keep either missing or ignoring is that the G5s are plenty capable of running the latest OS and apps, but they are getting shut out prematurely before they have lost their usefulness

No, they are getting shut out because they're already money in the bank. Now they want more money in the bank by peddling Intel machines to PPC users, and they need a strong incentive. Looks aren't that incentive because MPs and MBPs are identical to PMG5s and PBG4s on the outside, those cases are now 5 years old... but perhaps they can tempt with a new, stable and lightning fast OS exclusive to the Intel platform?

 

[Masquerade]

sorry PPC is dead.

 

[ckurowic]

Thank heaven's for yours and the other posters who have made it clear that Apple has done a great job supporting older versions of the OSes. If, in 2 years, users of the PPC platform are as up-to-date as they can be with applications that are the latest versions, then they get years and years worth of further use out of the "old stuff."

People are still using OS9!!!!!!!

I am always amazed at the complete idiots who post on here using the term "obsolete." That word does not equate to crippled and nonfunctional as is so often inferred.

Apple will benefit from not having to include PPC in lowered development costs and less distraction which should result in more, better and frequent apps.

Thank you! The USER defines obsolete. If the computer still does the task it was originally implemented to accomplish, it is not obsolete.

 

[milo]

Except for one thing - all the talk of a "smaller footprint" is in part due to Apple increasingly going to SSD devices on laptops. Look at the maximum capacity of those and their cost. Saving 9 or 10 GB on the installed system would be a definite win. Unfortunately part of the trade-off may be angering some of their high-end PPC customers, but apparently they are expendable.

Except that they don't need to drop PPC to do it, they just need a smarter OS installer that only includes the necessary code. Far more space is wasted on foreign languages than on PPC/intel code.

The point I was trying to make though, is that Apple is still going to support PPC Macs that are running Leopard, and Tiger. So I don't see why people are complaning. They stopped using the PPC technology over three years ago, I think it is time for you to move on...

Because without the latest OS, it won't be possible to run the latest apps. Is that so hard to understand. And again, "time to move on" means "time to throw away a $3000 machine that works perfectly well just because Apple wants more money now". Do you realize how idiotic that sounds?

Third party developers will continue to write PPC until Steve Jobs says to abandon the PPC platform. This will most likely not occur until 2010/2011

If apple is abandoning PPC, they are sending the message to devs to do it too. You really think if apple dumps it in 2009, there will still be many PPC apps in 2011?

Plus, do people seriously think that the release of snow Leopard is going to instantly brick all their PowerPC machines?

This straw man keeps getting posted over and over. It's a load of crap. Can we please let it die?

It had to happen at some point, PPC based computers aren't getting any faster.

So I guess 1.6Ghz core solo mac minis are?

This decision has zero to do with speed. Quit pretending it does.

 

[ckurowic]

Well... it's Mac. They should've seen it coming. Anyone who is concerned about legacy support should stick to Windows, where surprises are few and minor. When you take the Mac route you volunteer to replace your machine at frequent intervals, or be cut off with no advance warning.

They've been doing this for ages now. I still remember the puzzled look on a colleague's face as he unboxed his new Mac and went about pluggin in his $500 MIDI interface, only to find that the 9-pin serial port had somehow magically disappeared. Those unlucky souls had to have holes drilled in their Macs to install something called a "stealth port". Couple of years later, another colleague unboxed his new Mac and was about to connect his two Apple CRT monitors with VGA cables, but all he found on the back of the Mac was this wide white thingamabob now known as a DVI port. My first Mac was a Mini G4, I woke up one morning shortly after buying it and discovered that Apple had switched to Intel.

Apple wants to stay on the cutting edge, and if you wanna make an omelet you gotta break some eggs. Now the turn has come to G4 and G5 owners to be the eggs.

Thats their fault for being stupid enough not to do their homework and find out what these computers had or did not have. Don't give us your sob story.

 

[EagerDragon]

I have 3 PPC systems and zero Intel systems. I have no issue with 10.6 being Intel only.

Leopard is fine right now and there is nothing in Snow Leopard that I would need anyway. All the enhancements with the exception of ZFS are Intel only.

Apple will continue supporting us all the way to 10.5.12 so I am fine.

It will be a year or so before 10.6 comes out.

When my budget lets me buy, I will be getting one or two Intel systems.

 

[THX1139]

I have an Intel Mac, but I still feel that it's too early to drop support for PPC. They only stopped selling them 2/3 years ago. If Windows XP can run on computers with a 233MHz processor (which is what I had until last year), then Apple can run Snow Leopard on 2 year old computers.

ESPECIALLY G5s. That would be plain STUPID if they cut off support for G5s.

Since it's not shipping for another year you need to add that to your 2/3 year time frame. 3/4 years is enough time especially since the current Leopard is going to get a few more updates. This gives you an effective 5-7 years life span from when the LAST PPC was sold. If your machine is older than that you have no business running a current OS. Do you know anyone who is "effectively" running leopard on a computer older than 6/7 years?

 

[jabooth]

Dunno If this has already cropped up in this ridiculously long thread but...

It seems logical to me that 10.6 will be intel only and will set a precident for future software to be written for x86 exclusively - it is inevitablely the direction OS X is headed in.

I don't expect to see Rosetta included either - after all Snow Leopard is a foundation of what is to come for OS X - its a forward thinking release.

Perhaps Apple will instead develop a 'reverse Rosetta' if you will - an emulator for 10.5 (the final PPC release of OS X) that allows the trimmed down 'intel only' code to be run on the powerPC architecture...

Then Apple gets to remain cutting edge and up to date, yet is at least supporting PPC users who can't afford the jump to intel over the next few years. This to me makes more sense - the focus remains on where OS X is headed, yet this will appease PPC users (who will have to except that PPC is no longer the prefered platform for OS X).

Any programmers want to comment of the feasibility of this?

 

[aLoC]

The comment about "Apple-supplied video card" seems odd to me. Is it more evidence that OS X will be made available for PC?

 

[milo]

No, they are getting shut out because they're already money in the bank. Now they want more money in the bank by peddling Intel machines to PPC users, and they need a strong incentive. Looks aren't that incentive because MPs and MBPs are identical to PMG5s and PBG4s on the outside, those cases are now 5 years old... but perhaps they can tempt with a new, stable and lightning fast OS exclusive to the Intel platform?

Well, I certainly agree that this move looks like greed on apple's part.

 

[weitzner]

The Dev Builds of Leopard were Intel only at the start.

No they weren't. I was at WWDC '06 where they distributed the first Leopard dev build. And I installed it on my PowerBook G4.

 

[kabunaru]

The comment about "Apple-supplied video card" seems odd to me. Is it more evidence that OS X will be made available for PC?

Maybe... Anything is possible in this world of ours.
If they are going to release OS X for PCs, they could release it to a single PC manufacturer like Sony or HP.

 

[iJed]

I don't expect to see Rosetta included either - after all Snow Leopard is a foundation of what is to come for OS X - its a forward thinking release.

The Rosetta emulator will be included. Backward compatibility of less than 3 to 4 years would turn Apple into a joke.

Perhaps Apple will instead develop a 'reverse Rosetta' if you will - an emulator for 10.5 (the final PPC release of OS X) that allows the trimmed down 'intel only' code to be run on the powerPC architecture...

Then Apple gets to remain cutting edge and up to date, yet is at least supporting PPC users who can't afford the jump to intel over the next few years. This to me makes more sense - the focus remains on where OS X is headed, yet this will appease PPC users (who will have to except that PPC is no longer the prefered platform for OS X).

Any programmers want to comment of the feasibility of this?

While this is technically possible it is probably not economically as it is a massive task. They are far more likely just to release 10.6 for PPC.

There is, as of yet, no evidence to suggest that there will not be PPC support in 10.6.

 

[Anuba]

Thats their fault for being stupid enough not to do their homework and find out what these computers had or did not have. Don't give us your sob story.

No sobbing here, I laughed an evil belly laugh inside every time Mac users were pulling their hair out over Apple's latest whimsical decision.

Can't really fault them for not doing their homework though. At the time (late 90's) it wasn't really on anyone's map that those ports would just disappear. When you ordered your latest Mac, did you really double-check that the USB ports would still be there?

 

[THX1139]

Perhaps Apple will instead develop a 'reverse Rosetta' if you will - an emulator for 10.5 (the final PPC release of OS X) that allows the trimmed down 'intel only' code to be run on the powerPC architecture...

It will cost too much money develop for outdated equipment. Apple wants people to buy new machines... not encourage them to continue using their old ones. The way is forward... not backward.

 

[gehrbox]

But not updates to those apps, if the devs start using the new features. Is that really so hard to understand?

Not hard to understand at all. They have a tool they use right now. It does the job. When some genius manages to do something better or faster, people with the old stuff will complain that they can't use the new stuff on their old stuff. This has not kept old stuff from working as they originally intended.

The G5 quad is plenty fast and productive. The issue here that the apple apologists keep either missing or ignoring is that the G5s are plenty capable of running the latest OS and apps, but they are getting shut out prematurely before they have lost their usefulness - their inability to run 10.6 will be completely unrelated to their speed. That whole "loss of productivity" thing is BS considering that apple will be supporting many machines SLOWER than the ones they are dumping.

If the G5 is faster then use it, but don't complain when Apple moves on to stuff that works better.

 

[EagerDragon]

Except that they don't need to drop PPC to do it, they just need a smarter OS installer that only includes the necessary code. Far more space is wasted on foreign languages than on PPC/intel code.



Because without the latest OS, it won't be possible to run the latest apps. Is that so hard to understand. And again, "time to move on" means "time to throw away a $3000 machine that works perfectly well just because Apple wants more money now". Do you realize how idiotic that sounds?



If apple is abandoning PPC, they are sending the message to devs to do it too. You really think if apple dumps it in 2009, there will still be many PPC apps in 2011?



This straw man keeps getting posted over and over. It's a load of crap. Can we please let it die?



So I guess 1.6Ghz core solo mac minis are?

This decision has zero to do with speed. Quit pretending it does.

It has been about 2 or 3 years that Apple abandoned the PPC, you and everyone else knew it. For about a year now more and more software is Intel only.

You sound like they should be supporting G3 systems in 10.6. We have to realize that we will be stuck in 10.4 and 10.5 until we get an Intel system, also we will need to stick with the current version of a lot of Apple and 3rd Party software. If you want to stay current you need to stay current in the hardware also.

I have 3 PPC systems and no Intel systems and I am not complaining, It would be nice if they could give us ZFS in the Leopard and Tiger build, but that is not likely.

When I am ready, I will just buy the most powerful system I can afford and wait a few years until I have to do that again.

 

[THX1139]

No sobbing here, I laughed an evil belly laugh inside every time Mac users were pulling their hair out over Apple's latest whimsical decision.

Can't really fault them for not doing their homework though. At the time (late 90's) it wasn't really on anyone's map that those ports would just disappear. When you ordered your last Mac, did you really double-check that the USB ports would still be there?

Looks like we have troll that sneaked onto the forum. I don't get why people do that. As a Mac user, I have never felt the urge to hangout on PC forums and stir up trouble. I suppose some folks have nothing better to do with their lonely desperate lives.

 

[gnasher729]

It's not about the speed of PPC at all. It's about having to make a single code stream compile successfully on two platforms and remain optimized. I'm sure that there are extra developers required to maintain both code streams (even if some code is common and just compiled in place). Once you eliminate PPC, you can further optimize the Intel builds because you can make changes that would be otherwise detrimental in a PPC environment. You can also drop support for hardware that never shipped in an Intel Platform.

And all that is nonsense. There is no code out there that is optimised for this processor or that processor. No company has the money to waste on that kind of micro-optimisation. Optimisations are done on a much, much higher level, and the same optimisations will benefit any platform. To amplify the point: How many people do you think are capable of optimising code for an ARM processor?

And why would you want to drop support for some hardware? The drivers are there, they are working fine as they are. The hardware isn't going to change, is it? Apple has done substantial changes to the driver model from 10.3 to 10.4. That is done. Drivers can stay the way they are for a long, long time.