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I'm a luddite, so I'm certainly not happy about further loss of PPC support. That said, this has been Apple's MO for a long, long time. It's not even remotely surprising.
 
PowerPc support is not a high priority of apple. Snow Leopard was the first nail in the coffin for PPC macs. Safari most likely won't be supported.

Kind of has me pissed off though, that Microsoft still supports as far back as Pentium 3 (1999- 2003). Even though these machines are probably super- slow, it's nice to know that a company cares enough to support an old product.

I don't see any G3 tray loaders running Lion.
 
Personal View: Oh for petes sake, why are we arguing about Apple giving up on PowerPC, we've all been hanging on by a tiny little iTunes and Safari filled thread for months now. Although, Im sure as a community we'll pull together and bring WebKit Nightlies back to PowerPC. (ie Stuff Apple, us PPCUsers will keep G4s and G5s going for decades yet) - I mean if theres still homebrew software being written for the Newton and Mac OS 9, I think theres a good decade of homebrew stuff for OS X PPC at least - I mean I have no intention of abandoning Mac OS 9 just yet, and that has been unsupported and ignored by most of the world for a nearly a decade).

Also Note: G5s had more than 2 years, The last G5 you could buy new from Apple was in August 2006. Snow Leopard didnt arrive until Summer 2009, so thats 3 Years of support, and Leopard has had minor updates until now (Or about 5 Years). However, as Far as Apple was concerned, the date when you shouldve stopped buying PowerPC Macs was when they brought out the first Intel mac (ie January 2006) - And So Im sure they felt 4 years was justified (G3s were brilliant in terms of longevity of support, plenty of Beige Macs got ditched with OS X - Such as my PowerMac 7500 from 1995 (IIRC - Might be '96), which was obsolete in 2000 for the absolute current OS - Just 4/5 years - Every big transition in Apples History has shortchanged people who bought a few years before it).
 
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That is where the frustration of the OP came from. And in my opinion Apple should not be doing towards its loyal customers who doesn't want to upgrade.

Unfortunately, if you haven't upgraded in 5 years then Apple don't consider you to be a "loyal customer" - they want "loyal customers" who upgrade every year to the latest iPhone, iPad or iMac
 
PowerPC's are the best.

Apple are a bad company that makes good computers.
I have had endless problems with my macbook pro and it's hard to get apple to sort it out. I will never buy an apple computer again. I will buy the apple logic board and do the rest my self. When I get some money I'll buy an apple mac pro logic board and get all the other parts myself (Better ones) apple computers then selves are not that great it's just the OS that is great.
 
Let me chime in…I recently re-discovered PowerPC Macs (got a G5 really cheap, even though my primary Mac has been an Intel one for the past 3 years) and I've been starting to set it up as a secondary machine. I know Apple moved on (they need to sell computers to make money, right?), but it does come across as a little frustrating that every single PPC thread has someone saying, "It's dead, move on." As far as latest-and-greatest goes, that's totally right, but for a basic web browsing machine, I'd rather see someone have an old G4 or G5 than it thrown away (or some cheap desktop PC). It's almost as bad as everyone over on the iPhone forums trying to convince people to switch to Android…

Still, I think having a good web browser is important for any fairly modern (let's say last 7 years) computer…it keeps them useful for a number of tasks. Obviously, the way Apple sees it, ever person who uses a computer should have a very recent Mac running the latest OS or the newest iPad. While this is great (keeps everything uniform), I know plenty of people who might recycle an old G5 or Mac mini as a computer for aging parents, a media center, or something for their kids. In these cases, it may mean the difference of an old, but somewhat powerful computer, or no computer.

I have "upgraded" as seems to be the mantra here, but I also can appreciate old technology that has (or should have) a lot of functionality.
 
Let me chime in…I recently re-discovered PowerPC Macs (got a G5 really cheap, even though my primary Mac has been an Intel one for the past 3 years) and I've been starting to set it up as a secondary machine. I know Apple moved on (they need to sell computers to make money, right?), but it does come across as a little frustrating that every single PPC thread has someone saying, "It's dead, move on." As far as latest-and-greatest goes, that's totally right, but for a basic web browsing machine, I'd rather see someone have an old G4 or G5 than it thrown away (or some cheap desktop PC). It's almost as bad as everyone over on the iPhone forums trying to convince people to switch to Android…

Still, I think having a good web browser is important for any fairly modern (let's say last 7 years) computer…it keeps them useful for a number of tasks. Obviously, the way Apple sees it, ever person who uses a computer should have a very recent Mac running the latest OS or the newest iPad. While this is great (keeps everything uniform), I know plenty of people who might recycle an old G5 or Mac mini as a computer for aging parents, a media center, or something for their kids. In these cases, it may mean the difference of an old, but somewhat powerful computer, or no computer.

I have "upgraded" as seems to be the mantra here, but I also can appreciate old technology that has (or should have) a lot of functionality.

True but remember that old hardware doesn't need the latest and greatest in software to be useful. Yes PPC is a dead architecture (in terms of PC's) and I'm glad resources aren't wasted developing it anymore. That said, I have an iBook G4 that faithfully chugs along and does ALMOST everything it's asked. For hardware that is from 5-6 years ago, that's fine. Don't worry about the latest and greatest software on antiquated hardware.

Moore's Law basically shows us that in computer terms; the old PPC's in terms of age and asking for support, is kinda like going back to the 2006 and expecting a computer 10 years prior (1995-1996?) to be supported.
 
True but remember that old hardware doesn't need the latest and greatest in software to be useful. Yes PPC is a dead architecture (in terms of PC's) and I'm glad resources aren't wasted developing it anymore. That said, I have an iBook G4 that faithfully chugs along and does ALMOST everything it's asked. For hardware that is from 5-6 years ago, that's fine. Don't worry about the latest and greatest software on antiquated hardware.

Moore's Law basically shows us that in computer terms; the old PPC's in terms of age and asking for support, is kinda like going back to the 2006 and expecting a computer 10 years prior (1995-1996?) to be supported.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all…the "last" versions of software (iLife/iWork/Office 2008/etc.) work very well on a G4 or G5…it's really the browser thing that could be of concern. I remember when browser support for OS 9 vanished overnight, even though a lot of Carbon apps were still being written for both (and that's an entirely different operating system!)

I do think it's a little different than a 1995/1996 PC in a 2006-era world, since there is still a lot of support with universal binaries and only one OS difference (well, until Lion), as opposed to Mac OS 7.5.x/Windows 95 vs. Mac OS X 10.4/Windows XP…then again, Windows XP hung on way too long… :p
 
I'm not disagreeing with you at all…the "last" versions of software (iLife/iWork/Office 2008/etc.) work very well on a G4 or G5…it's really the browser thing that could be of concern. I remember when browser support for OS 9 vanished overnight, even though a lot of Carbon apps were still being written for both (and that's an entirely different operating system!)

I do think it's a little different than a 1995/1996 PC in a 2006-era world, since there is still a lot of support with universal binaries and only one OS difference (well, until Lion), as opposed to Mac OS 7.5.x/Windows 95 vs. Mac OS X 10.4/Windows XP…then again, Windows XP hung on way too long… :p

Yup, I think were mostly on the same page here. As far as the '95-'06 analogy, I understand that point of view... but I just see it as we're really pretty luck to have had mainstream support for PPC architecture for as long as we have. Used intel mac's can be had for as low as $200 (1.66 mac mini on craigslist) which can be purchased by the PPC users who haven't been able to afford an upgrade so low cost options for more modern software solutions are becoming quite available... but that's something else all together I guess.

/rant :p
 
These old macs still serve their purpose very well. And it has given me an exciting time, than the latest intels. Yes, the latest are fast and powerful, but it just do not possess the character to "be different".

I am unique as a person, I am different than any other. For me every PPC mac has a character, not a consumer device. That is what Apple is doing right now, every product that comes out of Foxconn is bound to be a consumer product. To me, it doesn't have that character anymore.

So yes, I can afford the latest and the greatest, but I don't have the urge and interest. I still don't have an iphone, don't have an ipad. Not many people have PPC macs, most people have intel products, most people have iphones, ipads. I have a classic for my ipod since I can see character in it. Not flashy compared to ipod touch, but with more grunt and storage.

But going back to the topic, I will be disappointed if there will be no more safari support for PPC macs, but hey that is life. I don't care if I stopped at 5.0.5, I will still use it.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

In microsofts defence they did try to drop xp and issued notice to discontinue support but then netbook boom happened so xp stuck around because vista was to put it simple... ****! But with win7 starter edition unit costs dropping most of the netbook manufactures have moved over so xp will die a nice death.

As for the whole ppc thing... It's old and there should be a point where you stop updating. Tech moves on!
 
These old macs still serve their purpose very well. And it has given me an exciting time, than the latest intels. Yes, the latest are fast and powerful, but it just do not possess the character to "be different".

I am unique as a person, I am different than any other. For me every PPC mac has a character, not a consumer device. That is what Apple is doing right now, every product that comes out of Foxconn is bound to be a consumer product. To me, it doesn't have that character anymore.

So yes, I can afford the latest and the greatest, but I don't have the urge and interest. I still don't have an iphone, don't have an ipad. Not many people have PPC macs, most people have intel products, most people have iphones, ipads. I have a classic for my ipod since I can see character in it. Not flashy compared to ipod touch, but with more grunt and storage.

But going back to the topic, I will be disappointed if there will be no more safari support for PPC macs, but hey that is life. I don't care if I stopped at 5.0.5, I will still use it.

Now this is good fun PPC spirit. :apple:
 
Aslo..there's always Linux too! Not as user-friendly necessarily, but there are the latest and greatest builds of some of the finest distros of Linux out there for the PPC architecture, I think Yellow Dog Linux is optimized FOR the G5's still, no?

It was THE Apple Linux distro and the only other OS Apple ever licensed to have installed on their machines and sold new as such.
 
Aslo..there's always Linux too! Not as user-friendly necessarily, but there are the latest and greatest builds of some of the finest distros of Linux out there for the PPC architecture, I think Yellow Dog Linux is optimized FOR the G5's still, no?

It was THE Apple Linux distro and the only other OS Apple ever licensed to have installed on their machines and sold new as such.

True — I started using Ubuntu on my PC at work just because they decided that it should run Windows 7 and it doesn't have the RAM or the resources to run it properly…thankfully I can bring my MacBook Pro in if I need to do any kind of heavy-lifting.
 
Yes and meanwhile Apple continues to support Windows XP but not Leopard?

Are you kidding me???

Apple is not your friend. They do what's best for their bottom line and XP still has millions and millions of users. Most Mac users just cave and upgrade like good little lemmings and so Apple figures it's a waste of their time and resources to bother. Plus Steve doesn't control Windows. He does control OSX and he HATES the past and he hates PPC.

And my usage of caps and bold was specifically to warn people they'll be downloading a useless update that won't work without warning since there is nothing on the website to tell you in advance.

Ignore the lemmings. Some people think there is no legitimate use for all caps since they complain every time they see it. There's a heck of a difference using it for effect versus using because you don't realize the caps lock key is on, but some people can't process that. They're too used to letting others think for them. It's the "me too" effect.

In any case, I would get TenFourFox. It's better than Safari anyway.
 
Yes I have just tested it, and I agree it is quicker than safari. The question is, is it more secure than safari?

It's running on PPC so I think that alone gives it a boost in security (AS IN, outdated/not the target share of Macs currently) but if for Java exploits and the like are still applicable to the PPC platform, then that would be a valid question I'd say.
 
Ignore the lemmings. Some people think there is no legitimate use for all caps since they complain every time they see it. There's a heck of a difference using it for effect versus using because you don't realize the caps lock key is on, but some people can't process that. They're too used to letting others think for them. It's the "me too" effect.
Boldface is the correct means of conveying emphasis in media that support it. Excessive or irregular capitalization is a hallmark of clinical paranoiacs, and will tend to erode your credibility in the eyes of your readers.
 
Why does it matter if the latest build of Safari is supported on PPC? We have WAY better alternatives for PPC browsing.

Seriously, why does it matter?! Tell us! It isn't going to affect your PPC browsing experience one bit. If iTunes support was getting dropped, that would be another story, because it would actually AFFECT PPC users that have iPads and iPhones that need to be synced.

If you have a G4, or even most of the G5s, you shouldn't be running Safari in the first place, let alone a version created in 2011.
 
PowerPc support is not a high priority of apple. Snow Leopard was the first nail in the coffin for PPC macs. Safari most likely won't be supported.

Kind of has me pissed off though, that Microsoft still supports as far back as Pentium 3 (1999- 2003). Even though these machines are probably super- slow, it's nice to know that a company cares enough to support an old product.

I don't see any G3 tray loaders running Lion.

how dare you to compare OSX with windows , windows too does not run on PPC natively so why should Apple still support PPC if Microsoft does not support it , if Microsoft would support PPC then Apple would continue to support PPC , but microsoft ditched support for PPC a long long time ago , so only a matter of time before Apple was ditching PPC too , but before Ap[ple ditched PPC first they had to convince everybody that PPC is the future and intel is only slow and unstable , and behind closed doors developed OSX to run on intel from the first day of OS 10.0

and it would be a economical disaster for Apple if people would continue to use Mac's older then 2 years , thats why Apple always comes with new ideas like thunderbold , to convince the customer base that a Mac without that new thunderbold port has just some use as museum piece , and it works people do buy new Mac's all the time even if their old one is still usable, but they need to upgrade otherwise they feel left behind by technology
 
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how dare you to compare OSX with windows , windows too does not run on PPC natively so why should Apple still support PPC if Microsoft does not support it , if Microsoft would support PPC then Apple would continue to support PPC , but microsoft ditched support for PPC a long long time ago , so only a matter of time before Apple was ditching PPC too , but before Ap[ple ditched PPC first they had to convince everybody that PPC is the future and intel is only slow and unstable , and behind closed doors developed OSX to run on intel from the first day of OS 10.0

and it would be a economical disaster for Apple if people would continue to use Mac's older then 2 years , thats why Apple always comes with new ideas like thunderbold , to convince the customer base that a Mac without that new thunderbold port has just some use as museum piece , and it works people do buy new Mac's all the time even if their old one is still usable, but they need to upgrade otherwise they feel left behind by technology

Haha…nice…

For those who didn't get the sarcasm, or are curious about some backstory, OS X on Intel probably came out of NeXTSTEP, which was Intel-based after NeXT got out of the hardware business…why not keep that insurance policy around if IBM/Motorola ever mess up and can't deliver? Seems to have paid off to me…
 
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