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PowerPC Support in Mac OS X 10.6 After All?
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I have little doubt that 10.6 will support the PPC platform, especially if it turns out to be more a maintenance release than a feature release.
Clearly Apple's future is Intel, but a majority of their user base is still PPC (not just a few machines). It's easy to tell a consumer to go a buy a new machine but its' a bit different on the corporate side when you have several hundred thousand Dollars invested in server hardware.
The bottleneck (in our case Xserve's) is not PPC, Intel machines aren't really faster anyway (since we can't load up the machines through virtualization); it's the software and Leopard server is not even production ready. It's a POS software at best and I look at 10.6 as the working version of 10.5
Clearly Apple's future is Intel, but a majority of their user base is still PPC (not just a few machines). It's easy to tell a consumer to go a buy a new machine but its' a bit different on the corporate side when you have several hundred thousand Dollars invested in server hardware.
The bottleneck (in our case Xserve's) is not PPC, Intel machines aren't really faster anyway (since we can't load up the machines through virtualization); it's the software and Leopard server is not even production ready. It's a POS software at best and I look at 10.6 as the working version of 10.5
Regarding to weather apple should drop PowerPC support, I think they should keep it for a couple of years at least. PowerPC isn't worse or outdated technology and if everyone was fed up of PowerPC why do developers still write universal binaries? If it were time to switch fully to intel, you would see developers providing intel support only.
I doubt Apple will drop G4 in 10.6. I mean, there's a 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4, and the MBA low-end model is 1.6 GHz, am I not correct? I'm thinking 1.33 GHz would be the lowest, and that's just if they don't keep it at 867 MHz.
Face it guys, PPC is not going away, at least not for another year or two.
I don't even plan to get 10.6, it would run dog-slow on my 512 MB of RAM, but this is just way too early to drop PPC. Apple is not going to pull a Vista, it would be a huge mistake.
Face it guys, PPC is not going away, at least not for another year or two.
I don't even plan to get 10.6, it would run dog-slow on my 512 MB of RAM, but this is just way too early to drop PPC. Apple is not going to pull a Vista, it would be a huge mistake.
You're comparing 2 architectures just by the clock speed. This makes no sense at all.
It would run faster than 10.5, that's exactly what they're aiming for... and upgrading your RAM is a cheap and easy way to extend the life of your G4/G5 if that is what you wanna do.
I know it seems like a bad comparison, but all I'm saying is, it makes no sense to drop G4, at least not the higher end, because if one of the current offerings is 1.6 GHz, surely a 1.67 GHz machine, even of different architecture, wouldn't have trouble running the latest OS, if Apple had the decency to put in PPC code.
Although I have a shiny new Mac Pro, I'd really like to see them release another couple of OS X versions for the PowerPC's. My previous G5 (Dual 2.5ghz) is still very nippy for most things, including Leopard, and I get the impression that we're still only really just starting to get applications that actually take advantage of 64-bit. Heck, a lot of apps these days still aren't really 64-bit centric, sure they compile as 64-bit but they aren't really optimised for it.
And heck, why drop it at all? IBM isn't exactly lying quiet, they messed up big time IMO when they drove Apple away, but who's to say IBM won't pull something out that tops all of Intels offerings? Should we ever drop PPC support? If we keep it then it offers a way to switch hardware platforms again at a moment's notice =)
And heck, why drop it at all? IBM isn't exactly lying quiet, they messed up big time IMO when they drove Apple away, but who's to say IBM won't pull something out that tops all of Intels offerings? Should we ever drop PPC support? If we keep it then it offers a way to switch hardware platforms again at a moment's notice =)
Personally I think this is not as much of an issue now as it was last week, when the reports were that 10.6 would be out in January. Given that it's a year away, and that most of the changes will primarily benefit Intel and 64-bit, it's not going to make a big difference whether G4 is supported in 10.6 or not. (G5 users may have more of an argument, being 64-bit and all.) There will be numerous 10.5.x releases by then which should provide quite a stable OS platform for G4.
One thing we can be almost certain of with 10.6 not until mid-2009, 10.7 looks like it will be around 2011, and that for sure will be Intel-only.
As for the speculation that Apple might someday return to PPC, I don't think there's even a possibility of that. Apple is locked into Intel's future roadmap, and anyway there's a growing customer base that is dual-booting Windows on Macs, or running Parallels or Fusion.
I did not catch this.
I thought the dev. build pictures showed 10.6 running on a core duo Intel? Doesn't that mean 10.6 will support 32-bit? Or not really, because it is just a build? I don't really know how that works...
I have leopard on my Quad G5 and it handles it really well, Saying that it does have 8gigs of ram on board. Just add loads of ram.
There!
Please see:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2008-06-11/#8423
I'm limited by what I can say or post but here is Apple's info posted.
Where is that guy that was going to eat his socks?
Please see:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2008-06-11/#8423
I'm limited by what I can say or post but here is Apple's info posted.
Where is that guy that was going to eat his socks?
huh?
If you're referring to the "new features" comment and then referencing these two articles you, and Engaget, are confusing a "new feature" with a new "enabling technology".
Apple internal documents read "NO NEW FEATURES" and I rely on those.
If you're referring to the "new features" comment and then referencing these two articles you, and Engaget, are confusing a "new feature" with a new "enabling technology".
Apple internal documents read "NO NEW FEATURES" and I rely on those.
I did not catch this.
I thought the dev. build pictures showed 10.6 running on a core duo Intel? Doesn't that mean 10.6 will support 32-bit? Or not really, because it is just a build? I don't really know how that works...
What I said was that the changes would primarily benefit 64-bit systems; I did not mean to imply that 10.6 will be 64-bit only.
I wouldn't expect that until 10.7.
Issue resolved...
I said, some time back, that I would have a philosophical issue if Apple excluded from upgrade units that were still within their AppleCare Protection Plan (read: modern and serviceable) period.
Apple's estimate of "about a year" resolves any problems I have, even if 10.6 will exclude all of my equipment.
It's a well conceived plan and it builds Mac OS X for the future that very few of us could have predicted.
Bravo, Apple... even if it's an OS I won't get to use until my next upgrade cycle, probably four years from now...
Dan
I said, some time back, that I would have a philosophical issue if Apple excluded from upgrade units that were still within their AppleCare Protection Plan (read: modern and serviceable) period.
Apple's estimate of "about a year" resolves any problems I have, even if 10.6 will exclude all of my equipment.
It's a well conceived plan and it builds Mac OS X for the future that very few of us could have predicted.
Bravo, Apple... even if it's an OS I won't get to use until my next upgrade cycle, probably four years from now...
Dan
What I said was that the changes would primarily benefit 64-bit systems; I did not mean to imply that 10.6 will be 64-bit only.
I wouldn't expect that until 10.7.
Thanks! Guess I'll milk one more OS update outta my current machine!
I can't say for sure
I think considering the number of users still relying on PowerPC Macs it would be sensible for Apple to continue supporting G5's and late model DP G4's. If they optimise the code and make good use of the AltiVec units I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run smoothly. I mean there are Vista users still on Pentium 4 and Dual Pentium systems that run just fine. And the G5 is still way ahead of both those architechtures.
I think considering the number of users still relying on PowerPC Macs it would be sensible for Apple to continue supporting G5's and late model DP G4's. If they optimise the code and make good use of the AltiVec units I don't see any reason why it wouldn't run smoothly. I mean there are Vista users still on Pentium 4 and Dual Pentium systems that run just fine. And the G5 is still way ahead of both those architechtures.
Snow Leopard is supposed to be a performance and stability upgrade. In other words, your G4 PowerBook will run faster and more stable with Snow Leopard.
You don't know that....and since it looks like PPC won't be supported, I think that looks false.
Isn't the performance and stability coming from dropping PPC and optimising for Intel?
I keep seeing this fallacy bounced around this thread.
Optimizing for Intel does not require or mean dropping PPC to do it. The code for OS X outside the kernel is pretty heavily shared between PPC and x86. Even in the kernel, there is plenty of code shared between the two. Write once, compile multiple times. The majority of the optimizations one can make in C/C++ code and Objective-C code isn't specific to a particular platform.
There are some optimizations which would favor one platform over the other, and another small set of optimizations which would affect one platform and not the other.
Right now, there are two big reasons to drop PPC support:
- Reduce the amount of work required to get a version of OS X out the door. Exactly how much work this saves depends on the amount of platform-specific effort was spent on PPC in Leopard, in both development and testing.
- Increase the amount of time you can focus on the platform-specific optimizations, given the same amount of time in which to work.
It isn't a technical reason. The big technical hurdles were pretty much done when the Intel systems started shipping. The big reasons now are finding ways to efficiently use development time and money. Do they continue to spend a fair amount of money on testing that PPC still works? Do they continue to fund PPC-specific optimizations? Or do they take that money that would be saved by dropping PPC support now and put it towards more effective projects?
Dropping PPC doesn't make x86 faster, and it is completely possible to make x86-specific optimizations without dropping PPC support as well. They can't completely drop PPC maintenance as long as Rosetta sticks around either. However, by cutting PPC costs through dropping support for PPC machines themselves, they can get more time to focus on the harder x86-specific optimizations.