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Pro software runs faster on my G5, but not by much; but it goes to show that the G5 is still a very capable chip when programmed correctly.
The last PowerMac G5s had lots of I/O capability too. Unless you're just running integer or floating point CPU crunching, I would imagine a PowerMac G5 with enough memory would beat most any of the Intel laptops for anything involving memory, disk or network access.
 
Well you're wrong. Faster software only gets faster by writing better, streamlined and optimized code for the target architecture. By doing this you are not going to suddenly melt the CPU down.

-mark

The point remains the same, if you can't afford the hardware required to run the new OS then buy new hardware or get over it, and live with (Oh, god no!!) a stable and fine OS.

If this rumor remains "true" I agree with Abstract that it will be an intel only upgrade, about about $50-$75.
 
I'm skeptical how true this actually is for Vista. Microsoft is getting sued in a class action lawsuit because Vista doesn't work right on computers sold in the winter of 2006. If Vista worked on hardware as old as people are claiming, I don't see how these suits aren't be dismissed out of hand.

The lawsuit is about new computers that had stickers saying 'Vista Capable' on them, and then turned out not to be able to run the new GUI. E-mail evidence shows MS knew this, and did it anyway to please Intel, whose older integrated chipsets can't run Aero. Vista still runs on those computers, just without the GUI effects.

OS X Leopard does the same thing with the transparent menu bar on older G4s, but they never sold those G4s as Leopard-Capable.
 
I think they should focus to make the OS Intel only as soon as possible. It will speed up and reduce size of everything. Can't really be optimal to build binaries that support several architectures.
 
These are the requirements for the preview version it's entirely possible that the intel version has had more work done at the moment and they can get developers/testers started on that while they work out the PPC kinks if there are any.

It hasn't even been 5 years since the Intel announcement. I would think they'd keep PPC support around at least that long.

I totally agree. One of the main arguments they presented users on their get-a-mac page was that a mac would not get obsolete in less than five years. I know that not running 10.6 does not necessarily mean being obsolete, but it goes towards being so. I really hope they give us PPC users one more OS before dropping support.
 
Handbrake may not be using Altivec on the PPC hardware...handbrake has always been slow on my G5 system.

Pro software runs faster on my G5, but not by much; but it goes to show that the G5 is still a very capable chip when programmed correctly.

-mark

I agree.

All my games are running smoother on my PowerMac G5 compared to my almost one year old iMac.
Doom 3 and same engine games => slower on the Intel iMac
Older games like UT2K4 or Halo (all universal) => slower on the Intel iMac

The G5 is a great CPU you know ;). And a dual (core or proc) PowerMac G5 with 8Gb (or more) of RAM, a 1.35Ghz Bus and a ATI X800XT AGP8x card is in real live at least as fast as my almost one year old Intel iMac C2D 2.16Ghz with a PCIe X1600 card.

It's like when Apple switched processors, the PPC G5 is a bad and old CPU. In fact it's still a very good, very fast, 64 bits RISC processor. It's still a prefered CPU for many research projects because of it's architecture. In fact many specialists would agree that the PPC architecture is far superior compared to the Intel architecture. If you use scientific programs well written for the G5 architecture, this CPU will outperforme many of todays competition... Not bad for a "dead" CPU.

And for all those who are saying or claiming the PPC is dead. It's alive and running leopard on the fly ;).
The Intel switch is not the first big switch from Apple ;). And it will also not be the last one ;). You can count on that :).
 
I think Apple will keep the X around for a long time to come (probably thru .9), OS 11 will be HUGE.
These suggestions that Apple will soon be going to OS XI are rather ridiculous. That would imply an entirely new OS base. In 2005, at the same time he announced the PPC->Intel transition, Steve Jobs said that OS X was set to be Apple's software platform for the next 20 years. And even if that was a bit of Jobsean hyperbole, it should mean 10 years from then at least.


That's correct in that today's platform is totally different from seven years ago. You might have got a hint from the build numbers and from XNU/Darwin's kernel numbering that there won't be a 'version 11' of MacOS. Today's MacOS X is an evolved NeXTSTEP, which officially topped at version 4.2. The internal builds reflect this operating system ancestry, in the same way that Vista is just MSOS/2/NT 6 and XP was just release 5.1 of Windows NT.
So Rhapsody/MacOS X Cheetah/Puma was NS5, Jaguar was NS6, Panther NS7, Tiger NS8, Leopard NS9, and Snow Leopard NS10.
The X stands for Unix. Yes, they pronounce it ten, but it's just for marketing purposes since it rolls off the tongue much better than ecs.
Those who remember the 90s also know that Mac OS 8 and 9 were just an up-to-date Macintosh System 7.5 with a marketing name and some of the minor under-the-hood and interface features that were part of the failed Copland/Gershwin development project.

The version of OS X after Snow Leopard might have an altogether different name, since they've just got to version 10 of NS and GrandCentral and OpenCL, plus ZFS in the server version, seem to point to major changes in the way the kernel works; though as well as it might not, and go to Mac OS X 10.9, which would be at the current rate of OS development 7-8 years ahead of now.

What's for sure is they've forked the user interface: they've got the kernel and core services and libraries and media layers shared by the OS X iPhone and Mac OS X, everything else is so different because it has different purposes and hardware (and architecture, since the iPhone has an ARM processor). Eventually, laptops as we now them today might disappear and be replaced by distributed devices with the touch features and frameworks of OS X iPhone.
 
another $129 thankyouverymuch. :eek::rolleyes::mad:

Where did you see a price posted? Oh, you made it up.

It's not a very big upgrade. There are no radical changes.

Wait... There ARE radical changes because they're basically rewriting OS X. The feature set is remaining the same.

Actually, there are quite a few radical changes. First, the new stuff - Exchange support, OpenCL, for example. Then the complete rewrite to be able to benefit from > 4 cores. Overall streamlining. Quicktime X. Overall, it's probably as time consuming an upgrade as Leopard, even if it doesn't look like it from the surface.

However, few of those are going to be of any benefit to PPC users (Exchange support, perhaps). So dropping PPC isn't really hurting them much.


According to the web archive you could still purchase a powerPC full line of Mac computer through the first quarter 2006.

Do you stop making a OS that works for machines that are 2.5 years old, especially for Mac hardware?

I find this lazy, and flawed.

If Snow Leopard were coming out today, that would be true. Instead, it's 'about a year' away - which means the newest PPC machines will be 3.5 years old - which is quite a few computer generations.

As for lazy and flawed, how many computer software projects of this size have you run?

Nope. Just Dual Cores and Quad Cores (2xDual Cores).
I have the 2.0GHz Dual Core PowerMac G5, the last gen of PowerMacs, and I have to say I think this is BS to drop PPC G5 support. If anything, drop G4 support. The Dual Core G5 PPC is a perfectly capable chip to run what ever Apple wants to throw at it.

It was 3 years ago. Not any more. The world moves on.

And dropping G4 without dropping G5 wouldn't save anything. Dropping PPC reduces the work required by 50%. Dropping G4 wouldn't save much at all.

Hm. I suppose it is good for some of us, but the people who bought Powermac G5s must be annoyed.
Quite soon for a new operating system, my mac mini shipped with tiger and leopard in november, any idea when this will be released? Macworld? Or this time next year?

Apple has been releasing new versions of OS X every 18-24 months. This one will be on schedule. And as a G5 user, I'm not annoyed at all. I'll just leave the G5 on Leopard and move the other machines to Snow Leopard.

complain about windows as much as you want but we had scientific instruments running on windows 95 working happily in a network with vista machines.

That's a silly argument. Macs running Mac OS 6 can work happily on a network with Leopard machines, as well. Why do you think that's going to change with Snow Leopard?

If apple can afford to dump the PPC users it can afford to dump the 32 bit Intel users (which are far less).

Except that supporting PPC doubles the workload. Supporting 32 bit in addition to 64 bit doesn't add much work at all. Plus, the 32 bit Intel machines are even newer than the PPC machines. Can you imagine the whining if Snow Leopard didn't run on a computer that will be 2 years old at the time?
 
I spent $3000 on my fully loaded final revision powerbook in late 2005 and this is the thanks I get; only 1 os upgrade before being ditched.

I don't have the kind of money on hand to buy another computer for some time, and why would I, this thing runs great. It would be nice to get the same upgrades as everyone else seeing as my system is more than capable of handling it...

how the hell do the rest of you afford to replace your systems so damn often? My applecare hasn't even ran out yet and I'm already being told my computer wont be supported much longer. :rolleyes:
 
Even though my only Mac is a G4 iBook, I think this is clearly the right direction for Apple to go.

Anyway, I think Tiger's still the best OS to come out of Apple.
 
If PPC gets dropped, I would have to assume Rosetta would also be out.

I'm really not understanding why people are thinking this. At this point Rosetta is for older applications that are not ported and won't be ported. Why do they need to continue PPC support in Mac OS X to keep Rosetta?
 
I would expect the developers preview to be Intel only. But this doesn't mean the final release will drop PowerPC support. Either way, it's fine with me.
 
I think they should focus to make the OS Intel only as soon as possible. It will speed up and reduce size of everything. Can't really be optimal to build binaries that support several architectures.

Your comment shows that you don't understand what universal binaries are or how they work. All you will get is reduced size.

The only downfall to supporting multiple architectures is the added development time. But in reality Apple is supporting three at the moment; PPC, Intel and ARM for the iPhone.

The sad part is Apple basically overnight has led people to believe that they have forgotten how to code for PPC. The future progresses; but I find it really hard to believe that the G5 is "slacking" as much as Apple would lead people to believe.

I've played on Mac Pros a lot in the stores; and although I know for heavy crunching it will lay waste to my G5, the overall fact is that for general purpose computing it isn't all that much faster; which in turn is probably what Apple is trying to fix with the announcement of Snow Leopard. But hey, multiple cores is multiple cores; and most G5 systems have more than one core. It isn't like Intel SMP is radically different than IBM SMP; SMP is SMP and those who own such systems should get the benefit of Apples endeavors in my opinion.

-mark
 
There seem to be a lot of people who think the G5 system architecture is somehow bad tech now...

My current dual 2Ghz G5 is still faster than my 2.33 Ghz Core2 machine (sure it is a laptop, but it should be faster right?)

If Apple drops support for G5 systems this soon, they will probably be looking at a class action suit...Apple promised a 64bit machine with the G5 systems.

Suddenly dropping PPC support in the OS is not going to magically make your Intel box run faster. The only thing that will make your box faster is better code. Having PPC binaries on your Intel machine does not make it run slower, it just eats HD space. Just as Intel binaries just eat space on my G5.

I say it is too soon to drop PPC support completely. The G5 machines still have a few years left in them.

Should be interesting. For a specialized pro-level machine though, 2-3 years of shelf life should be adequate. For all the people who invested in PCI-X cards for those specialized systems...you really ought to research it out more. All of my specialized video gear at work is external and FireWire based...just because I know Apple likes pulling **** like this all the time.

We could be doing this all again in 3 years when IBM puts the major spank on Intel.

-mark

Let's look at your arguments:
1. Why are you comparing a fast destkop system to a laptop? Even so, by most tests the Core2 is faster than the G5 ever was.
2. The G5 systems are 64 bit in all essential respects. How does failure to offer them 10.6 change that?
3. Dropping PPC support will not make Intel systems faster, true. But if they can allocate twice as many engineers to the Intel systems because they're not needed on PPC, it will certainly make a difference.
4. You state that 2-3 years of 'shelf life' should be OK for specialized pro level systems. What do you think the quad G5s were when they came out? You just wiped out your whole argument.
 
I spent $3000 on my fully loaded final revision powerbook in late 2005 and this is the thanks I get; only 1 os upgrade before being ditched.

I don't have the kind of money on hand to buy another computer for some time, and why would I, this thing runs great. It would be nice to get the same upgrades as everyone else seeing as my system is more than capable of handling it...

how the hell do the rest of you afford to replace your systems so damn often? My applecare hasn't even ran out yet and I'm already being told my computer wont be supported much longer. :rolleyes:

In late 2005 you should have been well aware of the Intel transition announced in the middle of the year. The "Intel PowerBook" was even announced in early November of 2005.
 
After reading some of these posts, you'd think it was the end of the world for some PPC users.

Just because 10.6 isn't going to support PPC, it doesn't mean your G5's and G4's are out of date!
 
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