Apple Mac mini purchase claimed to ship with Snow Leopard disc - Page 4

Originally Posted by hillstones

This is called a RUMOR site. Their main goal is to post bullshit stories, along with a mix of some real ones. They enjoy seeing how gullible people are to believe this stuff, and then comment on it. If you are looking for journalistic integrity, this is not the place for you.

Originally Posted by nvidia2008

I predict, at the upgrade price and the rate of new Macs sold (which would be high despite the economy), by the end of 2010 the adoption of Snow Leopard will be probably "the best ever rate of adoption" or something like that.

Originally Posted by Carmissimo

This is not your typical rumor site. There is integrity in the fact that this particular site does make a point of detailing the source of what it posts, leaving it up to its audience, i.e. us, to consider the validity of what is being presented.

I find that of all the sites covering Apple this one is at the top of the heap as far as "rumor" sites go. A lot of what is posted here proves to pan out and the stuff that is highly speculative is not misrepresented. You do Appleinsider a great disservice by taking a cheap shot by grouping it in with a lot of weaker sites working in a similar vein.

Originally Posted by hillstones

No they don't. Most of their stories are from "an anonymous source that claims to work for X company". Half the stuff they post is bullshit.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

It's not just about cross compiling. You still have to test the new code on the old platform. The code still needs to be continually tested, and maintaining that testing on a platform that's over the hill and only represents a small portion of your user base doesn't make sense. The big under the hood changes such as OpenCL won't work on video cards sold with or available for the G5. Grand Central almost certainly requires a fair amount of optimization that I'm betting is architecture specific and really only benefits the G5 quad, and the reports are that the people that bring in a G5 quad for repairs get a Mac Pro in return.

There's no point in adding all those optimizations for a platform that's been discontinued three years ago. Without those two under the hood optimizations, you're missing out on the biggest benefits from Snow Leopard anyway. The hardware is perfectly capable of most of the other changes, but there are still expenses in development that make it a less viable target.

Originally Posted by jpellino

The PPC server base is likely much more than 15%. There is a lot of PPC iron still cranking as xserves.

Originally Posted by hillstones

Wrong. Apple announced the move to Intel during WWDC 2005, 6 months before they released the first Intel Mac (and that Intel Mac was released 6 months ahead of the original plan). Apple even offered an Intel Development Mac (A Pentium 4 living in a Power Mac G5 tower) to software developers so they can start writing for Intel before the new Intel Macs even arrived.

Originally Posted by jpellino

Problem is, there are plenty of xServes running like crazy in many places, as reliable as they were three years ago, many of those educational, who will now have to re-purchase a lot of very expensive server hardware to be up to date. As recently as this year's Ed update meetings, Apple reps claimed there was no decision yet to make Server an Intel-only app. So now a (larger than you might think) number of IT need to tell our bosses that we need to spend $2700 to get a $500 (retail) update.

Originally Posted by Logisticaldron

Those are very different things. Rosetta allow for legacy apps to be supported on the modern OS by using an app for emulation. MS is maintaining more native support for legacy apps with legacy OS underpinnings. In MS defense, legacy apps will run natively, but since the HW has increased so much since the PPC days and Rosetta is well done one is not likely to see much, if any slow down.

Originally Posted by DocNo42

Actually, Rosetta is a transparent layer of the OS rather then a separate application.

Not all legacy applications will run natively in Windows 7. Windows 7 offers XP emulation by actually running a hidden XP virtual machine (think parallels). It's technology they acquired when they purchased a company called Kidaro and then baked Kidaro's seamless application publishing into Windows 7. If you have an Enterprise Agreement with Software Assurance and you subscribe to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Feature Pack (MDOP), with the full version of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) you can also expose the XP desktop (if you want) . MED-V is what they renamed Kidaro to (I really wish they would stop picking lame names for cool technology they acquire).

BTW - for whoever said they still needed IE6 for enterprise applications at work, you can get that through the XP emulation baked into some version of Windows 7. Well, as long as your CPU supports virtualization extensions \

So see, Apple isn't the only one that has OS/hardware restrictions

Originally Posted by Carmissimo

There is a much greater probability of Snow Leopard succeeding than Windows 7 mainly because of what has gone on before. Considering how expensive Windows 7 will be to upgrade to and considering that its predecessor Vista has been an unqualified disaster, how long will the line-ups be to scoop up copies of Windows 7 when it comes to market? Certainly if you spent a couple of hundred to buy a cheap PC, you would be rather reluctant to spend nearly as much to update your OS.

It's an embarrassment for Microsoft that right now a lot of people are running XP because of how unstable, expensive and power-hungry Vista has proven to be. In comparison Leopard has been an unqualified success, likely running today on the vast majority of Macs.

Even if the adoption rate is slowed somewhat because a few PPC owners out there cannot migrate to SL, at $29, Snow Leopard will seem far more successful than WIndows 7 which, you can be sure, will cause a three-OS mess on the PC side. By that I mean soon enough we'll have XP, Vista and Windows 7 out in the wild at the same time whereas on the Mac side, I predict that by early next year there will be Snow Leopard running on the vast majority of Macs. Certainly the perception will be that the state of Mac's OS is that there is Snow Leopard and nothing else of consequence.

Kudos to Apple for getting it right and total puzzlement over how a company with the resources of a Microsoft could mess up so thoroughly. Microsoft is one of the worst monopolistic giants in business history. Thank God there is an Apple, otherwise the state of personal computing today would be outrageously bleak.

Originally Posted by DocNo42

Why can't they just keep running what they have? It's not like their servers will turn into pumpkins on Friday when SL ships...

Originally Posted by Logisticaldron

I agree that one reason why I like OS X is that they arent supporting nearly as much legacy code as Windows does. However, most businesses need that legacy support and MS Windows business oriented OS means that they they have to support legacy HW and code. Apple will never be able to get a substantial foothold in the business sector as long as they are quick to drop legacy support and dont allow 3rd-party PC makers to license their OS. Its obvious that we have our Mac preference and I wish that all the Carbon was removed from Snow Leopard (which it hasnt) but we also need to realize that these different business models both suit their customers needs.

PS: Why did you reply to yourself?

Originally Posted by JeffDM

The big under the hood changes such as OpenCL won't work on video cards sold with or available for the G5.

Originally Posted by Maximara

Heck OpenGL won't run on some IntelMacs so why the groaning?

Originally Posted by JeffDM

You meant OpenCL, right?

Originally Posted by John the Geek

Actually, he probably meant OpenGL, or more precisely hardware-accelerated features that are needed for things like Photoshop's new rotate feature, which doesn't work on many early Intel machines that don't have the video hardware powerful enough to enable it.

More here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405745.html