OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' Seeded to WWDC Developers

[Eric S.]

why are people still clinging to the thought that snow leopard will support power pc?

In my opinion, nobody who has been closely following the story does think that.

When leopard came out apple did not go back and add models that would support leopard after the previews came out. apple removed computers that would not run it well.

Not really - lots of people used one of the workarounds to install Leopard on lower-speed G4 machines, and it runs quite well. These are marketing-driven decisions to gradually eliminate older systems. Then when PPC is dropped entirely Apple has some cover to make it look more reasonable.

 

[No4mk2]

In agreement

These are marketing-driven decisions to gradually eliminate older systems.

Apples attitude and behavior over the past few years leaves me no option but to believe this wholeheartedly. And who really benefitted when they dropped Classic support from Leopard and their new Macintels. I bet Apples best buddy in the publishing field, Adobe, had a rise in their stock prices after that.

If I sound bitter it's because in the late 80s I became a full fledged Mac Addict. It was a totally different corporation back then, a totally different company in the American landscape. They treated their customers like gold and the higher prices for their products were easily justified by their quality. My earliest Macs up to my last G4 still run fine. Now, however, I'm on my third G5.

Macs were, and still are, edgy and cool. That was the club I joined back then and I thought it said something about me personally. But the way I've been treated recently, being a member of the religion "Mac", has left me with the feeling that being cool is negated by the feeling of being a fool.

 

[t0mat0]

Apples attitude and behavior over the past few years leaves me no option but to believe this wholeheartedly. And who really benefitted when they dropped Classic support from Leopard and their new Macintels. I bet Apples best buddy in the publishing field, Adobe, had a rise in their stock prices after that.

If I sound bitter it's because in the late 80s I became a full fledged Mac Addict. It was a totally different corporation back then, a totally different company in the American landscape. They treated their customers like gold and the higher prices for their products were easily justified by their quality. My earliest Macs up to my last G4 still run fine. Now, however, I'm on my third G5.

Macs were, and still are, edgy and cool. That was the club I joined back then and I thought it said something about me personally. But the way I've been treated recently, being a member of the religion "Mac", has left me with the feeling that being cool is negated by the feeling of being a fool.

What exactly would Power PCs gain from Snow Leopard support folks? No need to be too bitter is there?

Would most PowerPCs be needing multi-core support? Advanced software to help increase power from dual, quad and hex cores? Multiple CPU support? Grand Central?
It's not like Leopard is old or anything, or that it's not going to get updates...

4 years after WWDC's 2005 Intel transition information, and they go Intel only - is that too long?

If you're wanting the performance benefits from Snow Leopard, then to be frank, that's crazy to do so on a Mac that's >=4 years old.

Having one platform simplifies the job for Apple too, so more time ironing out issues for the machines that can take it.

Bottom line - PowerPCs won't get a similar performance advantage, to paraphrase a comment in the RD Myths of Snow Leopard article series.

You know what, here's a hurrah for Apple for developing Snow Leopard. I'd imagine customers will feel like gold for having a decent fully 64 bit OS, giving them enhancements for their multi-core and potentially multi-CPU machine?

Apple could be seemingly brutal in it's decisions in the PowerPC regard. 3 years, going on 4 years people will have bought Intel Macs presumably. Apple can pass down benefits to Leopard updates, and developers can work to satisfy both markets. It's called Snow LEOPARD - kind of a potential hint. This can be seen as Leopard 64 bit with benefits, or a separate OS. No need for high horses. Having decently controlled range of machines to support is actually a blessing in some ways.

Isn't anyone happy about the potentially huge benefits Apple will bring to Intel based Macs?

 

[CWallace]

Isn't anyone happy about the potentially huge benefits Apple will bring to Intel based Macs?

I would be, but I just can't forgive Apple the treason they visited upon the Mac user community when they moved from the Motorola 68000-series CPU to PowerPC.

I know I am coming across as flippant, No4mk2, but Apple has not exactly abandoned PPC users these past few years. Tiger brought 64-bit to the OS and applications and Leopard has only improved that.

Frankly, I am glad Apple didn't release a 64-bit version of Carbon. Having lived the disaster that was the Win16 and Win32 APIs in Windows, I'd hate to have lived through it again on OS X. By forcing application writers to re-code in 64-bit Cocoa, it means we have to wait longer for 64-bit applications, but when they do come, they are written properly and will play nice not only with other applications, but with the OS as well.

And the Appleinsider article already notes that "there would be no real advantage in recompiling Snow Leopard and its apps for 64-bit PowerPC G5s, as the G5 is not currently constrained by the register problem of 32-bit x86; the 64-bit G5 has the same number of registers as the G4, because the G4 already had plenty.".

So it is not like PPC G5 users are losing anything from not being able to run Snow Leopard. For their systems, it would be no different then just staying with Leopard.

 

[t0mat0]

I would be, but I just can't forgive Apple the treason they visited upon the Mac user community when they moved from the Motorola 68000-series CPU to PowerPC.

Oh, I know what you mean I think. Those were some dark days. They were going so well, having had the product transition from the Motorola 6809E, and the fast updates from Apple, giving 3 whole MHz speed bumps, and they went and doubled the RAM too... Oh, those were the days... Heck, you could expand your RAM 4 fold yourself (with a bit of soldering)... Then they went all press conferencey in the fall of 1983, and was all about the adverts, and superbowls... For the love of John Sculley's guiding carbonated sugar drink selling hand. He'd have kept PowerPC compatability in...

 

[Eric S.]

4 years after WWDC's 2005 Intel transition information, and they go Intel only - is that too long?

If you're wanting the performance benefits from Snow Leopard, then to be frank, that's crazy to do so on a Mac that's >=4 years old.

Well this has been hashed and rehashed several times, but for the record the Mac Pro debuted in August 2006, and G5s were still being sold less than two years ago, because there were major applications that were still unavailable on the Intel platform.

As to your other points, yes, PPC machines probably would not see much benefit from Snow Leopard, although I'm certain that by the time it's released SL will contain at least some bells and whistles that Leopard lacks. But there's an expectation that your top-of-line platform will be kept current with the latest OS for longer than a couple years, especially when Steve Jobs states that both architectures will be supported "for a long time" (in that transition message you referred to).

The real downside for PPC users is that application developers will quickly follow Apple's lead and drop further development on PPC versions. It's easier for them to support one platform just like it is for Apple, and they'll just say that since Apple dropped PPC there's no reason for them to support it. So you end up with the rationale that PPC doesn't benefit from Snow Leopard, but the effect is that PPC will be completely dead, in the sense that it will not go forward from here.

I'm not bitter, as you put it. I don't even have a G5; I have a G4 that I've used for about eight years, longer than it's reasonable to expect a computer to last. (And I would upgrade it to an Intel box if Apple only made a mid-range desktop, but that's another debate. ) My regret is seeing Apple move away from giving priority to the concerns of its customers to being just another company driven by the bottom line. For example, Apple's commitment to backward compatibility was such that on my G4 up until Leopard I could run, under the latest OS, applications that went back over 20 years. Then in Leopard they killed Classic mode for no discernible technical reason. When that happened I knew that PPC would be dropped in Snow Leopard, even before the "no benefit" rationale.

Isn't anyone happy about the potentially huge benefits Apple will bring to Intel based Macs?

Not if the benefits are mostly for Apple's bottom line. Snow Leopard will not bring big improvement to existing Intel Macs either; these are intended for future Macs, and you will soon see Apple obsoleting the early Intel Macs too. "The price of progress," maybe, but Apple used to lead the industry in making a commitment to its existing products, a commitment that is no longer evident.

 

[t0mat0]

Stand corrected on the dates for Mac Pro/G5, my bad. It's not like Leopard is suddenly going to go up in a ball of smoke come WWDC 09.
I guess definition of "current" can vary from place to place - "Top of the line" is by definition something that lasts for only ~6 months or so. If you got in just before a major change, then the "making less powerful in comparison" of your kit through the newest update to a line can be bigger.
If Jobs says the architecture will be supported, he doesn't have to mean supported by the latest OS. As previously stated - If Snow Leopard is Leopard at the core, with improvements in certain areas benefiting the recent models and upcoming models, this doesn't stop the updates and bug fixes and improvements from filtering to Leopard.

For PPC users - if it's easy for app developers to quickly make PPC versions, then why not? If there is an actual market (there certainly is now) then they'll cater for it if it's profitable. Yes, supporting one platform is easier, but that's not to say we don't see applications on more than platform these days, is it?

I don't think you can logically move through rationalisation all the way to saying PPC won't benefit from Snow Leopard (the implicit meaning being that it won't benefit at all). If PPCs are on Leopard, and Leopard gets benefits from improvements in Snow Leopard, then PPCs get indirect benefits.

Mythical mid tower - yup, another debate! Know the feelings about wanting something they haven't/are not/may not make.

Apple's kept the priority to concerns of it's customers. I think just by sheer Mac sales, they might actually be prioritising a big chunk of Mac owners through Snow Leopard, by the time it's out. Those future Macs exist between now and WWDC, and beyond. Some of the tech they're pushing - it's only in it's infancy/not been seen outside of a few press releases. Some is more open, but we don't know what Apple's doing with it. It's Apple's first big 64-bit consumer OS go at addressing parallelism - addressing getting the OS to do the work in sorting out how to most efficiently/powerfully handle multi-core, multi-processor Macs.

I don't think I've seen much arguments on this thread as to why any PPC machine should actually benefit grandly from Snow Leopard - is it more a case of "I paid for this when it was top of the line, which wasn't that long ago, and it should still be at the forefront, so I should by right to be able to run the most recent Mac OS" ?
(Cartman saying "respect mah authoritay springs to mind).

We've got a way to go yet. You can't really roll back or reverse a product becoming inferior to it's updated version. It can be a smooth feeling, and it can be a stochastic feeling. Processor bumps on a certain line can show a smooth upgrading - you had a 2.0, now there's 2.5, oh look there's 2.8, 3.0, 3.2 and so on, month by month. I'd imagine Nehalem is going to be quite a large shift towards making everything quite a bit more inferior power wise.

It's the sharp side of "Software sells systems". It also may bring GPGPU, multi-core multi-processor benefits, Grand Central, OpenCL, and coming alongside seeing javascript getting enough speed to be a much bigger player, HTML 5 at some point, all sorts.

When you say giving priority to the concerns of its customers - define when those were customers? Just today? yesterday? Last month, week, year? 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago? It is brutal. You can see many upgrades making your Apple product in your hand, at your desk, just that little more obsolete every product launch. The latest Touch now having Nike+. The latest nano now having accelerometer. The latest laptop having a multi-touch trackpad, the latest laptop/desktop soon to be shifting to different mainboards, Nehalem based CPUs, possibly having other hardware as well.

If people really want to be at the cutting edge, there are options - you can sell old kit, buy new kit/refurb new kit. PPC owners seem to be going to feel the brunt of a quite big Apple leap forward. Is the main part of the chagrin due to the fact that if they really wanted, they could bring Snow Leopard to PPCs? it's a painful thing second guessing Apple sometimes. Also painful if you think of what they could do, versus what they do in reality. Not raising expectations overly so. MMS. Bluetooth. Disk access on iPhone. Accessible batteries, CPU, Memory. Swappable/upgradable components. Apple does wield this as a way to get you to buy new hardware.

All of this isn't to in any way demean a PPC user's position - I and anyone else can feel for them. Most people have had a similar feeling about their older Apple hardware. The price of progress, deemed by Apple.

But has Apple really suddenly lost making a commitment to its existing products? Your level to which you can upgrade your software/OS is bound in part by your hardware, which is to an extent fixed at the time you bought it. Apple i'd imagine will have commitment to Leopard - why wouldn't it? It's currently it's most recent OS, a version is on it's iPhone, the Touch, a significant chunk of its users are using it, and chunk of those won't be able to shift up to Snow Leopard.
Depends what you mean by "making a commitment to its existing products".
It doesn't seem Apple wants to shackle itself to making a commitment saying - existing products should forward compatible. Back compatible yes, forward, not so much.

Hope it doesn't come across as a rant Apple would I imagine be working it's behinds off to get this coming through. It'll filter improvements to those on Leopard, Snow Leopard, those with iPhones, those with Touchs. And if you're lucky enough to be looking to buy in a couple of months, you'll get the benefits of some big jumps in hardware, that'll (eventually!) get incorporated into Macs to a degree. Heck - if we're looking far enough ahead to Snow Leopard, anyone with a 3G iPhone should be thinking about what the 3rd generation/v3 iPhone will be like. Because it's likely to be impressive enough to "make obsolete" (which is usually used to mean make inferior, rather than strictly mean "no longer in use". Heck - With Apple being selective about both the areas it works in, and the features it provides, it always gives them lots of scope to inferiorise through making superior next generation kit. In the current iPhones case - GPS, camera, video, VoIP, headset, Nike +, the graphics chip, the CPU, the memory size... they could all get bumped, and prove Stephen Fry's prediction right.


Edit: Having a look at a link in another thread with respect to delays for Nehalem - how'll that pan out for Apple? Will they keep working on SL and release it later?

 

[Superman07]

I'm not a super technical coding person, but would current Dual Core Intel based computers exepct a (somewhat?) second lease on life from SL? Obviously they won't run as well as the current crop that comes out with SL, but if it's coded to support multiple cores I would expect they will handle it better than OSX. Or am I way off base on this?

 

[Eric S.]

I don't think I've seen much arguments on this thread as to why any PPC machine should actually benefit grandly from Snow Leopard - is it more a case of "I paid for this when it was top of the line, which wasn't that long ago, and it should still be at the forefront, so I should by right to be able to run the most recent Mac OS" ?
(Cartman saying "respect mah authoritay springs to mind).

I think that's right. The people who truly seem upset (or bitter) about this are the ones who bought G5s a couple years back and believe their machines ought to be able to run the latest OS for longer than three years (and I knd of agree with that, in general). I believe that most of those would be happy if only obsolescence was put off until 10.7, which would make it closer to five years, which seems more reasonable. Now, it's true that they knew the Intel switch was coming (although no one knew for sure when the Mac Pro would be released, given Apple's CIA-like secrecy on release dates), but still if you need to buy for professional reasons then you have to buy. And I personally believe one should avoid the very first release of new architecture in any case.

Then there are people like me, whose PPC machines are older and have been able to run the latest OS for longer than that already. We are likely to be disappointed but accepting that this day was coming sooner or later. I wish I had an equivalently-placed Intel desktop to switch to, but my choices are the underpowered ugly stepchild Mac mini or the grossly overpowered (for my needs) Mac Pro. And I don't consider the all-in-one iMac to be an option.

When you say giving priority to the concerns of its customers - define when those were customers? Just today? yesterday? Last month, week, year? 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago? It is brutal. You can see many upgrades making your Apple product in your hand, at your desk, just that little more obsolete every product launch.

True. But what I mean is, Apple used to promote systems that were expandable and upgradeable (although that has never been a priority for Jobs). In doing so they created an aftermarket for CPU upgrades and a third-party business in IO technologies like video and other add-on cards that were specific to the Mac platform. This enabled users to keep their systems productive for three, four, five years or even longer. By doing this I believe they created a loyal community that was steeped in the Apple paradigm and guaranteed to continue to stick with Apple base systems. Customers felt like they were making a long-term commitment to Apple's technology.

But now Apple's philosophy seems to have changed - they want people to turn their hardware over in two to three years maximum. To do this they are taking steps to guarantee obsolescence and at the same time severely limit the upgradeability of their products. They want to sell essentially throwaway consumer products. But how many posts have I read recently that go like "I was thinking of getting a MacBook Pro but I really can't wait for the new ones so I'm buying a Sony Vaio instead; it does everything I need." That's not an attitude that many Apple customers would have had once upon a time.

All of this isn't to in any way demean a PPC user's position - I and anyone else can feel for them. Most people have had a similar feeling about their older Apple hardware. The price of progress, deemed by Apple.

That's an enlightened attitude that I don't see reflected in the vast majority of Intel systems owners here on MacRumors.

But has Apple really suddenly lost making a commitment to its existing products? Your level to which you can upgrade your software/OS is bound in part by your hardware, which is to an extent fixed at the time you bought it. Apple i'd imagine will have commitment to Leopard - why wouldn't it?

Based on past patterns, updates to Leopard (except for "security" updates, which have legal implications) will stop when Snow Leopard is released. And once 10.7 is out, Apple will probably stop updating applications for Leopard (look at how much of the current stuff now won't run on Panther, for example). It's like we could all continue to speak Latin, but nobody does.

Hope it doesn't come across as a rant

On the contrary, it's nice to have a reasonable conversation about it, in contrast to the standard MacRumors slugfest which looks like this:

1. PPC owner: "But I just bought my system <n> years ago and it's still capable of running OS X just fine, not to mention rocking the socks off those first 32-bit Intel toys. Besides, Steve Jobs promised to go to the prom with me, he really did, so how could he dump me like this?"

2. Intel fanboy: "Nyah nyah nyah. We have the coolest systems ever. Stop whining. You knew this day was coming. Get over it. You can't live in the past forever. You should have been saving up for a new system anyway."

3. Go to 1.

 

[CWallace]

The people who truly seem upset (or bitter) about this are the ones who bought G5s a couple years back and believe their machines ought to be able to run the latest OS for longer than three years (and I knd of agree with that, in general).

The best I can tell from reading the technical reviews, Snow Leopard wouldn't bring anything to PowerPC that Leopard already doesn't include. Snow Leopard seems to be designed to bring to the Intel microarchitecture the benefits PowerPC microarchitecture machines currently enjoy with Leopard. In fact, it appears that actually moving to a 64-bit driver model and kernel would reduce PowerPC performance, not enhance it. So putting Snow Leopard on your PPC machine would make it slower.

I really recommend folks read the "Road to Snow Leopard" series at AppleInsider. Snow Leopard does not appear to be about taking away from PowerPC to give to Intel. It seems to be about giving to Intel on 64-bits what PowerPC enjoys right now on 32-bits.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Snow Leopard wouldn't bring anything to PowerPC that Leopard already doesn't include.

This isn't true.

 

[CWallace]

This isn't true.

Fair enough. I'm just going by what AppleInsider's four-part technical review of Snow Leopard stated.

 

[Eric S.]

Fair enough. I'm just going by what AppleInsider's four-part technical review of Snow Leopard stated.

Even if it does turn out to be true that 10.6 won't benefit PPC (I don't think we'll know the details for sure until closer to Snow Leopard's release), it is still being used as a rationale for dropping PPC support. It's for darn sure they won't put PPC support back in the next go-around, even if it contains something that would be of definite benefit to PPC. And you may argue that 10.7 would be another 18 months or so further down the road, but after all my G4 right now still runs the latest OS nine years after its introduction, so it wouldn't be unprecedented by any means.

Apple probably isn't going to explicitly state that as a rationale, but I have to believe it's part of their marketing strategy.

 

[Cromulent]

Bottom line - PowerPCs won't get a similar performance advantage, to paraphrase a comment in the RD Myths of Snow Leopard article series.

Then that article isn't worth paying attention too. There is no reason that the dual and quad core CPUs would not gain the same advantage as the Intel processors in terms of multitasking and effective distribution of load across all cores that Snow Leopard is meant to introduce and refine.

 

[Eric S.]

Then that article isn't worth paying attention too. There is no reason that the dual and quad core CPUs would not gain the same advantage as the Intel processors in terms of multitasking and effective distribution of load across all cores that Snow Leopard is meant to introduce and refine.

I looked at the article. They give no justification for their position, only "Anyone trying to stay on the bleeding edge of processing power shouldn’t be trying to use Macs that will be four or more years old at the release of Snow Leopard." This sounds like something Apple marketing might have planted. First of all, who said anything about "bleeding edge"? Will 32-bit Core Duo systems be on the bleeding edge? They have less power than the G5s. Secondly it's flat out wrong. There will be multiprocessor G5s less than three years old if SL is introduced next June.

 

[No4mk2]

Last rant

I would be, but I just can't forgive Apple the treason they visited upon the Mac user community when they moved from the Motorola 68000-series CPU to PowerPC.

I know I am coming across as flippant, No4mk2, but Apple has not exactly abandoned PPC users these past few years. Tiger brought 64-bit to the OS and applications and Leopard has only improved that.

Sorry, the move to PPC was a leap. Apple only went intel because it wasn't profitable for Motorola to keep churning out new and better chips for such a small market and because the Motorola chips Apple used for the G5's were burning up the machines. On other forums you'll hear of the dreaded "three year mark" when peoples G5s die. Though one's mileage may vary.
Intel may be the future, like Walmart, but so far there has been no "leap" in productivity from the higher end G5s. Of course thats what Apple is working to change, even if only to make their new systems the "only" productive systems Apple will support.
So as it looks now I can look forward to my machine going at any time and any significant OS changes as well, all in a space of about three years. Hmm, where in the American Corporate landscape have we seen something similar? What's that term the American Auto industry coined? "Planned Obsolescence" wasn't it? Well, congratulations Steve Jobs. You've finally brought the company up to date. Granted Apple used to produce Toyotas as opposed to PC Fords, but I'm sure this new strategy will produce great profits, in the short term.

I'm not as concerned about a new OS that I will not be able to use as I am at the signs that Apple will not support the old ones I can. I'm sorry, but aside from a few cool features Leopard has been a disappointment. It has not enhanced the speed or performance of my machine, on the contrary my system seems to drag a bit now, and it's still buggy as hell. If Macintel users want to see a streamlined OS free of extraneous Power PC weight, how about Apple coming out with a version of Leopard optimized for PPC only. There's still a lot of untapped potential in these older machines. But again, where's the profit in it for Apple to do that, aside from self respect and the admiration of those who were once their most loyal customers and actually helped keep that company going during its lean years.
Yeah, I think betrayed is a better word for what I'm feeling rather than bitter. I really bought into the idea that Apple was something different. There actually was a "Golden" era when it produced "insanely great" products, and stood behind them 100%. But all that seems to be going, all for a quick buck.
Will it again take another nation to show us what we should really expect from the merchants we purchase from? Would a takeover by Sony or Toyota make Apple what it used to be?

 

[Cromulent]

I looked at the article. They give no justification for their position, only "Anyone trying to stay on the bleeding edge of processing power shouldn’t be trying to use Macs that will be four or more years old at the release of Snow Leopard." This sounds like something Apple marketing might have planted. First of all, who said anything about "bleeding edge"? Will 32-bit Core Duo systems be on the bleeding edge? They have less power than the G5s. Secondly it's flat out wrong. There will be multiprocessor G5s less than three years old if SL is introduced next June.

Yep. There is an awful lot of misinformation about which is only exacerbated by decent looking articles which in fact turn out to be completely wrong. I suggest for those of you who are really interested in things like this that you invest in a decent computer science book on operating systems such as this (although a new edition is coming out in December).

 

[sighlent]

I completely understand the people using G5's being upset. I actually own one myself (2x2.0), but it's four years old now. I can't expect Apple to continually support machines forever. If it means that OS X is moving to a more well developed path by being Intel only, so be it, I knew that would be the case as soon as they came out with the first MacBook Pro. I personally believe it is a huge overhead for the Mac OS X team to still have to worry about including PPC libraries, and ensuring everything works just as well between Intel and non Intel machines. If they have to remove PPC support to ensure a higher quality package of OS, then I'm all for it.

Once the new Mac Pro gets released I'm going to be all over it like spots on a snow leopard.

 

[gonenutsbrb]

I completely understand the people using G5's being upset. I actually own one myself (2x2.0), but it's four years old now. I can't expect Apple to continually support machines forever. If it means that OS X is moving to a more well developed path by being Intel only, so be it, I knew that would be the case as soon as they came out with the first MacBook Pro. I personally believe it is a huge overhead for the Mac OS X team to still have to worry about including PPC libraries, and ensuring everything works just as well between Intel and non Intel machines. If they have to remove PPC support to ensure a higher quality package of OS, then I'm all for it.

Once the new Mac Pro gets released I'm going to be all over it like spots on a snow leopard.

Well said my friend. I'm actually in the exact same boat with G5, but you know what? I'm jumping for joy that Snow Leopard's coming out because of the enormous benefits that it will bring to the computing world as a whole.

You're right on about the overhead as well, it does not make sense to have all the extra libraries. Those of you complaining about Apple not "being loyal to it's customers," hate to tell you guys, but if a company can't keep it's bottom line in check, it's really hard to be loyal to anyone when you're out of business. OS X and the computers are not what's keeping Apple alive. It's the iPod/iPhone music device part of the company. The last thing it needs is for the computing end of the company to start costing them more with increasing overhead.

For those who still persist on complaining that they're being gypped, get over it. You knew what you were getting into when you bought a computer period. A computer becomes outdated the day after you buy it, welcome to technology.

I have my complaints about Apple, but as I look at everyone elses' computers that I'm fixing with problems at the hardware level (*cough*dell*cough*hp*cough) and at the OS level (Vista, and XP every now and then), I really can't complain.

Keep up the good work Apple.

 

[No4mk2]

From everymac.com.

Introduction Date: October 19, 2005 Discontinued Date: August 7, 2006*
Details: The "Introduction Date" refers to the date a model was introduced via press release. Usually, the "Discontinued Date" refers to the date a model was replaced by a subsequent system, but in this case Apple continued to sell the Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5) for roughly a month after the introduction of the Mac Pro on August 7, 2006.

Well, I hope Apple will support your stuff as long as they supported mine and that you'll be just as overjoyed in the future as you are now.

 

[ra noodle]

so many of you are so acknowledgable and adept with computers that i take your opinions seriously.... that said, hoping all of you accept the compliment....i bought Leopard and did an erase and install, having put my insides on an external drive (Seagate). i have to admit that i do not have the computer skill level to cope with Leopard and have done another erase and installed Tiger back.
I AM TOTALLY DISAPPOINTED IN WHAT LEOPARD IS AND AM DISGUSTED WITH WHAT "HIM" HAS MADE AS THE "SECURITY WALL"....for someone like me, again saying i don't have that great a computer skill level, this LEOPARD is crap, i don't need have of the eye candy crap "HIM" has put in it putting 4 folders on the desktop and making a big deal over that and this stacks crap....no its my own personnel opinion that "HIM" is intentionally downgrading Mac OSX systems that they will end up as crappy as Microsoft junk and at that point there will be a merger done. So I really wonder about this "Snow Leopard" will it be better and have Tigers security and better or will it be a handfull of slush? If you guys have the skill level, all power to you but otherwise i no longer believe "HIM" i feel he has become a deceptive money hungry snake!

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

so many of you are so acknowledgable and adept with computers that i take your opinions seriously.... that said, hoping all of you accept the compliment....i bought Leopard and did an erase and install, having put my insides on an external drive (Seagate). i have to admit that i do not have the computer skill level to cope with Leopard and have done another erase and installed Tiger back.
I AM TOTALLY DISAPPOINTED IN WHAT LEOPARD IS AND AM DISGUSTED WITH WHAT "HIM" HAS MADE AS THE "SECURITY WALL"....for someone like me, again saying i don't have that great a computer skill level, this LEOPARD is crap, i don't need have of the eye candy crap "HIM" has put in it putting 4 folders on the desktop and making a big deal over that and this stacks crap....no its my own personnel opinion that "HIM" is intentionally downgrading Mac OSX systems that they will end up as crappy as Microsoft junk and at that point there will be a merger done. So I really wonder about this "Snow Leopard" will it be better and have Tigers security and better or will it be a handfull of slush? If you guys have the skill level, all power to you but otherwise i no longer believe "HIM" i feel he has become a deceptive money hungry snake!

Well for the most part that post made no sense, but I guess I'll just ignore that and assume english is not your first language.

Leopard has no more securities flaws than Tiger (it is much more stable and more secure). I don't understand your statement about the four folders on the desktop, but I'll attribute that to ESL. Who is "HIM?" why is it always capitolized? and why don't you say 'he?'
As for "HIM" making a big deal over stacks I think you're being a little ridiculous. He barely mentioned stacks, showed it off once or twice, then he quickly moved onto the security, Time Machine, Spaces, the new finder, quicklook, rebuilt spotlight, mail templates, screensharing in iChat, web clips, boot camp, translucent menu bar, parental controls, more powerful automator, dashcode, springloaded dock, new icons, dictionary integration with Wikipedia, new DVD player, back to my mac, front row, revamped ical, slew of new ichat features, photo booth (redone), and for security more robust sandboxing.

So...... looks like you didn't even try Leopard.

 

[a456]

did apple say anywhere that snow leopard actually will be 10.6?

Since there has already been a 10.5.5 security update there is really nothing else it can be but 10.6 or perhaps 10.snow - now that would be great to see at Christmas and would also solve the problem of what happens when we get past 10.9

 

[Eric S.]

Since there has already been a 10.5.5 security update there is really nothing else it can be but 10.6 or perhaps 10.snow - now that would be great to see at Christmas and would also solve the problem of what happens when we get past 10.9

When we get past 10.9 it will be 10.10, that's all. These aren't points on a number line. Of course Apple probably will have run out of big cats before then.

 

[Jim Campbell]

When we get past 10.9 it will be 10.10, that's all. These aren't points on a number line. Of course Apple probably will have run out of big cats before then.

OS 10.9 Tiddles?

Cheers

Jim