Not that I know of. Apple is infamous for releasing minor software improvements while screwing over people who just got a new machine a year ago.
That's because they make their BIG money off selling you the HARDWARE not the software. So they have every incentive to try and force you to buy as much hardware as often as they can possibly get you to do it, not to try and make your life more pleasant by making OS X faster and more efficient and support older computers (e.g. say like the G5 machines, some of which are only around 3 years old and faster than many lower-end Intels). Your G5 Quad isn't supported anymore? We have this nice Mac Mini we could sell you....
Apple was right about one thing. Snow Leopard isn't a huge step forward. But it's not just an efficiency update either. It's actually a huge step backward...in terms of market share. Some estimates still put anywhere from 35-50% of the Mac market share as being older PPC machines. So with one stroke of the keyboard, Apple has reduced their market share from 9% to around 4.5%-6%. And that's supposed to be a good thing? That's right. They don't care about market share, just how much profit they're raking in from one quarter to the next.
The problem with that attitude is the same as that from GM and Chrysler, really. Sooner or later, your market share drying up equates to bankruptcy. Apple used to have near 20% of the market share in the late '80s. Along came Windows 95 and reduced that to less than 4% in less than 5 years. Right now OS X is riding high from the clunky disaster that is Vista plus the cachet of the hit iPhone. But for ever hit like the iPhone or iPod, Apple has had at least twice as many failures (Newton, Pippin, Lisa, etc.) So if it took less than 5 years for Apple to lose 15% of the 20% of the market share it once had, how much faster is it going to fall from 5% of the market share it will have once Snow Leopard comes out? 5% could disappear in less than two years if Windows7 is a big hit or within 5 if it's "just OK" (i.e. as good as or somewhat better than XP). Apple had the chance to increase it's market share much faster than it did during this time, but instead chose short-term profits over long term market share. Windows can afford to have a "flop" like Vista and people will still buy it because they HAVE TO and because it take a much longer time to lose share when you have 90% of the market.
For those that think PPC will live on while regular Leopard gets a few more updates and that software will continue to be made for awhile for them as Universal Binaries, this isn't going to be the case. Universal Binaries worked because developers basically got the PPC version for free. But supporting new features of Snow Leopard will mean branches in the development tree and who wants to BOTHER supporting Leopard a year or two from now, let alone release PPC binaries that can suck up twice the disk space and have to alter their development tree to do so? The answer is NOT MANY. For all intensive purposes, I would estimate over 80% of the commercial software being newly released for the "Mac" will not support PPC period within 1 year of Snow Leopard's release. Yes, Apple will release updates to iTunes and some security updates for a couple of years and I'm sure Firefox will support Leopard for years to come, but your G5 Quad has seen its last days and you won't be able to sell it for squat now because it's now designated to be unsupported.
I'm sure if there were competitors to Apple in the HARDWARE department (I mean machines that can run OS X, not Windows which IRRELEVANT to this discussion) that Apple wouldn't so quick to ditch support and/or not bother to support slightly old hardware with new features. It's BECAUSE they have an incentive to make you buy hardware all the time that they do these things. It would make a lot more sense for a "small update" like "Snow Leopard" to support PPC for one last update (that would then shove G5 Quads into the 5 year cycle range for the next OS X version) and the mere fact that Snow Leopard is FASTER and MORE EFFICIENT would plainly mean that even G4s would run better with it than they do with the current Leopard. But none of that logic matters (and no taking up a little bit more disk space is not a good reason when you can get a 1.5TB drive for $120 or less so spare me the 'it saves disk space BS arguments'). The ONLY thing that matters is that Apple pushes its fanatics into buying ever more hardware. What they should be doing is trying to attract a lot more switchers, but Apple knows that its most ardent supporters won't touch Windows no matter how good Windows7 or 8 might be. It's more of a religion. And what do you do with religious zealots? You SOAK THEM FOR ALL THEY'RE WORTH. Watch any TV evangelist to see what I mean. Half of them end up in jail for their greed. Apple is no different. It didn't get $30 billion in petty cash by being generous or by caring about its customers. It got there by soaking their customers regularly and by thwarting and litigating its way out of all competition for hardware for its core OS X market.
Welcome to the real world. Apple is not your friend. They are your addiction dealer. Quitting Apple to go back to Windows is about the same as quitting smoking cigarettes. Only about 8-10% of the truly addicted will succeed. But recent switchers will find it much easier, especially since to go back to Windows all they need to do is reboot into it. The ardent faithful hate Windows too much to do that. But even half of them will boot into it in order to play a game (since Apple doesn't care about providing gaming support in OS X or selling hardware that is really suited for it; too bad if anyone else wants to sell you that hardware, though. Apple won't allow it).
