Mac OS X Snow Leopard Drops PowerPC Support

[Der Alte]

It was bound to happen.

Leopard will get me by on my G5 iMac until the Nehalem iMac with USB 3 comes out....and cross our fingers maybe a blue ray DVD drive with it too. Then it will be time to upgrade!

 

[Eraserhead]

*Supporting multiple CPU architectures is very costly in both designing and testing. This also applies to 3rd party developers. For some apps its not that much work, but for others it involves keeping two separate code bases.

If your application requires separate code bases for PPC and Intel its shockingly badly coded. The only difference should be the high performance code which runs on SSE or Altivec.

*The biggest advantage of snow leopard is its ability to work with multiple CPU cores.

Right now programs can work with multiple cores, and I doubt the improvements in multi-core technology will be a silver bullet.

I'm still not convinced. The Snow Leopard screen shots published a few days ago showcasing the improved file sizes also showed the Application file types as "Universal": which by definition includes PPC.

Good point, if they were really dropping PPC why wouldn't they build the applications as Intel-only...

 

[nagromme]

Makes sense to me--all those under-the-hood speed enhancements (and the reduction of app size from not being Universal, which I do believe) are Intel-specific. They would never work the same for two different architectures, and it would never make sense for Apple to try to bring them to PPC, which will be even older in a year. Some (not all) of those optimizations COULD be done in a PPC-specific version, but the cost/time to do so would not be worth it.

PPC owners can be happy: even Intel Macs won't get this stuff for a year, and SOME things, like Safari 4, seem to be coming to PPC anyway. Meanwhile, major new FEATURES won't be coming until long after Snow Leopard. So it will be a very long time before PPC owners miss out on user-exposed OS features.

 

[HailToTheVictor]

Three years without shipping a PPC Mac by the time Snow Leopard comes out seems about fair.

 

[iJed]

I don't see them dropping support for PPC in this release. As has been said before the screenshots clearly show an applications directory full of Universal Binaries. So either Apple has started supporting another architecture (that is not x86 or x64) or they are continuing to develop a PPC version of 10.6. It would be a relatively pointless act to bother to compile everything for PPC (as a UB) when you were not supporting these chips.

I think the only reason the developer preview is Intel only is because some of the new technologies are not functioning on PPC yet. A good example of this is OpenCL: I believe this is an enhanced version of the C programming language to support concurrent programming. This would require modification of the GCC compiler and support may be architecture specific for many tasks.

In short I believe that PPC support is just not ready for this developer preview. It would be very premature for Apple to drop it this quickly.

 

[atszyman]

Sure, but can you quit yer bitching until after Apple actually announces that its dropping PPC support? The fact that the Developers Preview doesn't support PPC doesn't mean the final product won't.

Likewise those who are saying that it's definitively gone and saying good riddance should also be waiting for the official announcement. It was a Developer's conference, don't you think they would have told developers that the new OS features would not be available on PPC machines? Why have them waste money working on getting universal binaries to compile?

Look, I know that everyone's machine will still work the exact same way it did before Snow Leopard's release but it sets a bad example for developers and denys Apple a significant amount of money (assuming that Snow Leopard isn't free).

Why should developers bother with performance enhancements on PPC applications anymore? Will they start ignoring bug-fixes as well? Will you start getting, "our latest version fixes that bug, but is only available on Intel based Macs." as an answer for a 3 year old Computer?

PPC users are not an insignificant install base yet, so it makes no sense for Apple to ignore them on a non-free upgrade.

I'd put money on them still having PPC support in Snow Leopard, it's just not quite to the point of being ready for developers to play with yet.

 

[Gosh]

I can see the coffin now for PowerPC at MacWorld 09. Smoke, funeral choir, Steve Jobs trying not to laugh, a'la OS 9!

 

[tny]

Yes and no. New applications will likely all be Intel only, so you won't be able to upgrade a lot of your existing applications or buy a lot of new ones. For those of us with G5 PowerMacs, that's annoying. Catastrophic? No. But annoying.

Complainers: please try to remember that your PPC computer will continue to work as it always has. This is for the benefit of all and the advancement of the OS.

I tried.

 

[JayMan8081]

I would agree that this is an inevitable change since it's been a while (I think at least 2 years??) since the PowerPC proc was dropped from production. It's still a big change though and we all know how ppl are resistant to change. 🙂

 

[leekohler]

Yeah, because your G5 is going to just completely stop working and never turn on again as soon as Snow Leopard DVDs are on the shelf of the Apple Store. 🙄

Apple's not "dropping support" on PPC. Leopard and Tiger will still be able to run on them, and they'll keep getting updates. Hell, QuickTime 7.5 that came out the other day was still an update for PANTHER.

Say what you will, but my old G4 tower started out using OS 9 and went all the way to Tiger before I sold it. I used it for six years. The guy I sold it too has been using it for the last two and runs Leopard on it (I upgraded the processor). So there's a tower that's been able to run every OS that's come out for 8 years now. I didn't expect my G5 to be unable to run a new OS in only 3 years' time.

 

[TheNorthWaves]

keep in mind that windows vista dropped support for virtually every PC that had been built up until the point they released it. Ok, true, vista will RUN on a handful of PCs made in the year previous to vista's release - but badly. Don't ask me how I know. With that in mind, having converted to Apple last year, I see things like Snow Leopard dropping PPC support and think "yeah, they still gave PPC a good run so far" - and I agree, they are probably trying to streamline the code. Microsoft's code sucks AND won't run on last year's computer.

 

[Eraserhead]

keep in mind that windows vista dropped support for virtually every PC that had been built up until the point they released it.

Thats not true, it'll run on a much older machine if it has a proper graphics card and enough memory. For a start it ran fine on my Core Duo MacBook which was out before Vista.

 

[Bigdaddyguido]

Obviously

Anyone who didn't see this coming was just being naive. Apple said when releasing 10.5 that they believed many people would be sticking with leopard far longer than until they released an updated OS. If the whole goal of the OS is to be super light and highly optimized for multiple cores, its logical that it would be exceedingly more effective to substantially limit the hardware you support. It totally flies in the face of stripping down the size of the OS as well as using it as a stepping stone for 10.7 which will certainly not support 4-6 year old PPC computers.

The only people with a small right to complain are the dual-core G5 owners, a very very small demographic of mac users who, while clearly desirous of a very powerful pc, aren't desperate enough for more power to be updating on the average 2-3 year cycle. Remember, it will have been 3 years since the dual G5 days when this OS ships. Since it would be a ton more work to try and optimize multi-core tech for vastly different architectures, and the fruits of such labor would benefit so few, why is apple expected to do this?

Finally, the assumption at 10.5 support will stop when 10.6 releases is absurd. There is every reason to believe that 10.5 will continue to see incremental updates after 10.6 is released, especially since Apple seems to be viewing 10.6 as a professional\developer only upgrade.

 

[TheNorthWaves]

Thats not true, it'll run on a much older machine if it has a proper graphics card and enough memory.

Like I said, it won't run very well though - I ran vista on a variety of non-dual-core machines with "adequate" ram, etc... total *****.

 

[BigPrince]

Well there would of been an uproar no matter when they decided to drop it.

 

[age234]

As someone who still uses a G5 in a professional environment, I'd say fine, if this was a normal release. But if 10.6 ends up being the glorified service pack it appears it will be, I'm disappointed.

 

[KindredMAC]

Well, all I can say now is that you KNOW that Apple is testing Snow Leopard on a PPC based code so that when Intel and AMD destroy themselves, Apple will be like, "Oh hi there IBM and Motorola.... fancy seeing YOU here. Say how about we talk about getting PPC back into our line up. IBM, your Power 6 and Power7 chips smoke the living daylights off out of the X86 chips."

Simple as this.... Kill PPC support, you kill Universal Binaries that Apple pushed so hard during the Intel switch.

Is there a reason why Apple can't trim down the OS into a true Universal Binary that only has one set of instructions on it for whatever chip is in the mac? That way the door is always open to go back to PPC.

And for those who say we'll never go back to PPC.... Just remember how many of us said we would NEVER go to an Intel chip. Universal Binary is the key to the door that opens to a multi chip world.

 

[Small White Car]

I have an Intel Mac, but I still feel that it's too early to drop support for PPC.

Who said anything about dropping support?

I'm serious. By next year intel Macs will be running 10.6 and PPC Macs will run 10.5, but so what?

What's the MAIN feature for Snow Leopard? That's right: "Runs Faster." Well, newer Macs will run faster than older Macs. Shocker!

They're not adding new consumer-type features like Time Machine or Spotlight, so what are PPC Macs missing out on? Well, they don't get "faster." Well, they're older machines anway. Who really expects a 2 or 3 year old machine to "get faster?"

As long as they keep updating and supporting 10.5 (which I believe they will) then I see no problem here. Saying that they're "dropping support" for PPC Macs isn't just innacurate, it borders on being an outright lie. This ammounts to "Apple Makes New Macs Faster" which isn't news at all. You'll have to wait until 10.7 before Intel Macs get actual FEATURES that PPC Macs are missing. That's news, but that will probably be 2011, which is certainly not too soon to be dropping PPC support!

 

[Dimwhit]

I'm probably really care about this if I had a PPC. But I have Intel at home, and only 1 (out of 6) machines at work are PPC. So I'm a little excited about it.

 

[Eric S.]

If true, it's regrettable but predictable, given Apple's accelerated pace of abandoning backward compatibility lately.

Bummer 🙂 Guess you can't live in the past forever 😛

Don't celebrate too much, Intel elitists, someday Apple will screw you^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdrop your systems too. For those who bought the early 32-bit versions, that day may not be far off.

 

[Shin3r]

Everyone here is cracking me up. I have an iMac G5 and I am not upset that they are possibly dropping PPC support. By the time this new system comes out, the G5's will be about 4 years old which lies in the range of four to five years that most of you are bitching about. This is the life of computers, you have to move forward for things to work efficiently.

If you decide to keep your G5, guess what? Your computers won't stop working!!! Get over yourselves. So you won't have the newest or greatest, oh well.

Some of you are also making comparisons that Vista will still work on older computers, but you must be forgetting about how we all bitch about how bad their OS is. Part of the reason they can't fix their S@#T is because it's legacy!!!

 

[smartalic34]

as mentioned above, apple will always have OS X on PPC chips... for the "just in case" day where they ditch Intel. they may keep labeling everything as "universal binary" because it is just that- but now that they have un-obfuscated the dual nature of OS X, no reason to go back.

so basically what I'm saying is that there will still be a PPC 10.6, but apple will only publicly release and support an Intel version (opposite of the PPC days)

 

[Lancetx]

This is great news if it's true. They're doing the polar opposite that Microsoft has been doing with Windows, and they will avoid any potential for a future Vista-like disaster by being proactive like this.

The PPC's time has come and gone, and even the newest PPC based Macs will be at least 3 years old by the time 10.6 is released. And it's not like Apple will kill support for 10.5 right away either, so those older PPC Macs will still be supported for some time to come.

 

[jasonleigh]

You're damn right it has. I have the last rev dual core G5 that's a little over two years old. Support should NOT be dropped on a machine that young.

Just about right with Applecare coverage. 3 Years. Is apple going to plan to service all of these PPC machines 5 years from now ? Nope.

Are they going to come out with a big promotion that says NOT FOR PPC ! Nope.

You will still have a nice machine. But as good as it is, it is old technology in the vision of apple. Enjoy it or sell it. Time to move along.

Someday you can put it on the shelf next to your betamax, CRT TV, minidisc player, HD-DVD player and 4gb iphone. (which all still work quite well.)

 

[mr.fancypants]

While I understand that for simplifying and speeding up the OS, intel support only could streamline the whole thing, I can't help but feel like a number of G5 owners who had gotten tired of waiting for CS3 will feel ... a small tinge of outrage?

I'm not quite sure why... I feel like CS3 works fine on my G5, at least as fast as my Intel MacBook Pro.

As far as dropping PPC support too quickly, everyone's computers will be at least one year older when it happens, so it won't sting as much as if it happened right now.

If you have a G5, keep non-Snow Leopard on it, no big deal. You don't have a bijillion cores on your machine, so Snow Leopard wouldn't help you too much anyway.