Official: Mac OS X Snow Leopard doesn't support PowerPC Macs - Page 2

Actually I will be disappointed if Snow Leopard doesn't support that handful of Macs because Apple has made a big deal about the portability of OS X! Quite frankly it doesn't look like Snow Leopard will pay off with any 2 core or less machines except perhaps as a Intel machine bug fix.

The fact that apple care only last for three years tells ya that apple could give a fiddlers fart about your computer after that. So why is this so shocking or surprising? By the time 10.6 comes out, the last G5's will be about three years old, and in computer years that's about six years.

I'm putting my money on Apple not releasing 10.6 until September 2009. This way, anyone who bought a G5 in August of 2006 will have run out of support and Apple wont have to deal with you. This will also exclude first gen macbooks running 32bit only.

I love Apple, but I think they would have no problem treating you and your three year old computer pretty poorly. They are the cutting edge of technology, so I'm never surprised at the decisions they make regrading it.

Steve, I wish you happy milking the Macintosh for all it's worth. You are th true Pied Piper of Hamelin. The rats will follow you.

Tiger running on an eeePC.

Greetings and byebye.
Yours "next big thing"

With all this cutting back why is Snow Leopard a 8gb install?

Agreed. There must be a very substantial installed base of PowerPC's that are still humming along quite nicely. At first glance, it doesn't make a whole lotta sense for Apple to forego all those upgrade dollars. But perhaps their decision is related to memory requirements, as Snow Leopard is said to support unheard-of amounts of RAM, which opens the door for all kinds of things that today's older Macs would be completely incapable of taking advantage of anyway.

This is the right move at the right time. Well done Apple!

The other question is whether or not Snow Leopard will run on 32bit Intel Macs. I think it would be a good time to drop support for them too.

...and since 2012 marks the end of the world as we know it why even stress? Save your cash for a kegger.

Just because 10.6 may be Intel only, it doesn't mean Apple will quit "supporting" PPC. I'm sure there will be security updates, etc. There just won't be a new optimized Snow Leopard for it. I hope the software developers continue to support PPC for those who rely on it. But supporting PPC is different than actually developing new software (or a new OS) to run on PPC.

I'm in favor of this direction (assuming it happens as we believe). Snow Leopard is for the future - an optimized, lean and mean, secure OS that can use more RAM, is better with multicore processors, etc. People writing new software for it should be able to really make improvements. Adding support for PPC would only slow down the process of developing an incredibly efficient OS. If you have a newer Intel Mac, Snow Leopard may be a good improvement, but the real improvement will be with new computers that are built with Snow Leopard in mind.

I'm a PPC user and I am NOT bitter about the death of PowerPC (and, thus, am not clinging to my guns or my religion.) My main machine, a Dual 2GHz PowerMac, is about to celebrate its 5th birthday and it can't even match the benchmarks of today's Mac mini. I need a good excuse to upgrade to a current Intel-based machine. The boss doesn't care if I could be enjoying my computing experience more, but may be convinced by obsolescence!

Also, if Snow Leopard just improves the speed and stability of Intel-based Macs, then I won't be missing out on the whizz-bang features that usually drives OS updates. Of course, as software starts to require Intel chips, then my purchase of a new machine may be hastened.

PowerPC had its day. It solved problems that x86 had inherently and apparently seemed to have a permanent advantage provided the clock speeds could stay within earshot of the x86 chips. Well, Motorola failed miserably to keep up (the Megahertz Myth could be sold as long as the PPC chip maintained a minimum fraction of MHz (now GHz) as the competing Intel offering.) IBM gave us hope for a while, but they fell behind as well. In 2003, my PowerMac was an impressive machine, but the future versions became less and less impressive.

PowerPC only belonged in part to Apple (it was part of the AIM, Apple-IBM-Motorola consortium) so we Apple users have two laggard partners to blame for its demise. If you want to be bitter about a technology that was exclusively Apple's, but became surpassed by inferior technology by Apple's failure to maintain its lead, consider FireWire. . . or HyperCard.

Making the OS hardware-agnostic is so Apple can move the OS to another platform, with minimal disruption for developers, not run the OS on many platforms. How much sense does it make for Apple to spend the time and energy making 10.6 support PowerPC and then drop it for 10.7?

It is bloody annoying how people compare 10.6 to an SP. Service packs are patches on patches on patches. It's all bloatware. In contrast, Windows users would any windows OS for a more secure and leaner OS without the bloody bloat.

Ahh, glad that's out of my system .

You seem to be making the typical all-or-nothing assumption that to support a new OS means that you aren't supporting an older OS. There is no reason that Apple can't keep updating Leopard with point releases for a year or two after Snow Leopard is released.

Sure, it's unprecedented but so is a major release that offers no new bells and whistles or contains the same codename as a previous major release.

I also agree. There shouldn't be any whining and crying about it though. Snow Leopard only offers better optimization and is really not much of a new OS over Leopard. Big deal. PPC users shouldn't expect to get support for the next decade or so.

It's time to save up those pennies and get a new Mac. Beside that, PPC users can use 10.5 for at least 4 more years. I have a new MacBook but after considering the pain involved in upgrading to a new OS, I've decided against 10.6 even though I'll probably just purchase the box to own a part of Apple history.

It's official: Steve Jobs, go fuck yourself.

I agree that from a technical standpoint Apple had to draw the line at some point and drop PPC. I don't think 2009 is the right time because quad G5s were still being sold in August 2006, but we can agree to disagree on that matter.

I have two big problems with 10.5.x as the last PPC OS:

1. According to the people at rixstep.com Leopard sucks. Apple made serious under-the-hood mistakes that affect the very foundation of the OS and I know that 10.5.5 or even 10.5.65 won't fix that. Those in the PowerPC camp are going to be left with crappy OS for the rest of time.

2. Apple is making big steps toward market share in enterprise with the iPhone, Exchange support and push technology. Telling the business world that 3 year old computers are obsolete is an insane move that will further convince CIOs and their IT departments not to take Apple seriously. Real enterprises use 6 year old hardware and it runs the same OS as their 6 day old hardware. Apple's game of abandoning older hardware, something they've been doing their entire history, is going to hold them back big time.

While they might not support PPC with consumers I think they will support it internally. As we know from the Intel "surprise", Apple always keeps another processor platform handy in case a switch is needed.

I'm not surprised at this development at all. I have a maxed-out Dual-1GHz G4, and since installing Leopard, my machine's response has become appallingly sluggish. Running iTunes, Mail, Safari and iPhoto will slow the machine to a crawl, especially when changing apps. In addition, my 2GB of RAM is almost always running about 1200-1300MB used. Pre-Leopard OS X didn't every use this much RAM, even with a dozen apps running simultaneously.

Leopard appears to be quite disk-intensive on the PPC platform; maybe the code to run Leopard on PPC is not at all efficient, not to mention the processors simply don't have the firepower of the Intel chips. I suspected that Leopard would be the last gasp for the PPC. Guess I'll pass my current machine to my Dad, and I'll be looking for an iMac and/or MacBook Pro.

I predict they aren't doing that this time. If Intel drops the ball, then they have AMD to fall back on.

Isn't that exactly the reason why Snow Leopard should support at least the quad G5s?

Don't pay attention to rixstep. It has never been considered a reputable source of Mac information, in fact, they are known to rip off reputable sources of information. Why do you care what rixstep says anyway? Don't you have your own opinion? For me, Leopard has been great and it's an improvement over Tiger, Jaguar, Panther, etc.


People in the enterprise who surf the web, check e-mail and use MS Office can get away with using 6-year-old hardware, but anyone who does anything more computationally intense needs much newer hardware. I find it funny that you criticize Apple for making 3-year-old hardware "obsolete" (and hardware doesn't become obsolete until a critical app won't run on it anymore), but you apparently give Microsoft a pass for releasing an OS (Vista) that makes one-year-old hardware really obsolete.

Steve Jobs is smarter than to rely on AMD and you can bet there will at least be an internal build running on some Power PC machine.

My trio of June 2004 G5 towers "humming along quite nicely" can heat my 1300 sq.ft. basement, and make the shiny little wheel in my electricity meter spin like a shuriken in mid-flight. I'd complain about fan noise, but I went deaf years ago.

No one is being forced in any way, you are being offered enhanced OS's and software if you choose to upgrade your equipment.

Chevy does not force you to upgrade to the new model year, but you don't get the latest improvements unless you do. Again, a choice.

Why are they people who is hoping Mac OS X to be on PCs? Cant you see that Apple wants to be in control of the hardware spec of their product.

They acquire PA to develop processor for the iPhone and iPod.

Anyway, I know some PPC users will be hurt with Apple move but hey, maybe the reason Apple is not really going to introduce any new big feature for Snow Leopard is cause they want to let the public know that they are moving towards Intel only support so asking the users to get ready to buy a new Mac the following year (Im talking after SL, Mac OS X 10.7 (Or Mac OS 11))

Then prepare to be disappointed!

Nice article on what to do with your aging PPC... maybe NASA can use them? The article is about the programming team on the Mars Phoenix project who had to write code for an 11-year old PPC chip in the latest interplanetary scientific lander. Obviously, Phoenix will not be able to run Snow Leopard.

BTW, my JPL amigo mentioned in the article uses a MacBook Pro for his duties; excellent fodder for the next time your boss or IT "guru" tells you "nobody uses a Mac except for artsy stuff..."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...ticleId=319748

That's not much insurance, What if some better, unpredicted platform shows up? In any case, iPhone doesn't use the Intel architecture (as with iPods, it uses ARM) so they have to maintain portability for that and Darwin allows the option of hobbyists to port to other platforms.

I have an old G3 iMac running 10.3.9 which has had many security updates (I stoped short of 10.4 because it's slow enough already) and my G5 iMac is a bit sluggish on 10.5.x.

Still, if only for the reason of showing better appreciation of the installed base, I hope Apple does include PPC in at least one more major release. And it would be nice if 10.6 as finally released is not the resource hog some are claiming it will be. Otherwise why has Apple put all that investment into performance tools? Surely not only for the benefit of app developers?

Aw, heck. I would've donated a G3 and a G4 to JPL if I knew it would end up on Mars!

That's fine for professional users where an investment in a new Mac is an investment your business. But what about all the families with multiple Macs? I have a new MBP, but with the purchase, the PPC PowerBook went to the grandparents. A PPC mini is serving as a file server for iTunes, Time Machine, and FrontRow files. Kids have the old iBook, and a neice as the old PPC minitower. For us, all those "old platforms" are perfectly serviceable because "speed and performance" are not critical. The household budget is critical!

If there are truly no new features and Leopard is compatible with Snow Leopard, then it's really not an issue. But what if a Time Machine backup from a Snow Leopard machine can only be done if the target disk is hosted by another Snow Leopard machine? Then I'd have to buy a new file server, too. Or what if a MobileMe or iChatAV feature become dependent on having 10.6? All those other machines would need to be upgraded, too. You could simply say to not upgrade any machine to 10.6. But then if I need to get a new Mac a year from now, and 10.6 is the only option, what then?

I really don't think it'll be a big issue (but if the Time Machine senario comes true I'll be upset about having to replace a perfectly capable server). I expect that Apple would continue service upgrades and support for 10.5 users. But if some compatibility issue does come up, it's not as simple as just buying a single new computer if you are a family or small business.

I guess leaving PPC behind is the reason Snow Leopard will not have new features.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, while this isn't a good sign for PPC, it still isn't offical, and it's irresponsible to report it that way.

Initial Leopard dev builds were intel only. People assumed Leopard was dumping PPC, but it didn't in the end.

I want to know why apple just doesn't come out and announce that they're dropping PPC support, if that's what they plan. Hasn't anyone at the dev conference just asked apple if 10.6 will run on PPC or not?

Because it's not that old a platform, and the increase in speed isn't all that much yet. The quad G5s are still faster than most intel models.

Not to mention that there are still some apps and plugins that aren't universal yet. It's bad enough to have to dump a perfectly good machine to get the latest OS, but it's worse to have some things run worse if at all.

I'm sure they have, but all non-keynote information at WWDC is under NDA.

I work at JPL. (Disclaimer: I speak for myself, not for JPL or NASA in general) While I don't work on Phoenix (not directly, anyway) nor do I know what flight hardware it uses, I think I can safely say that from previous experience we're talking about a rad-hardened PowerPC chip, and given how little calling there is for those things, it's not really all that surprising that it's an 11-year-old chip. Also, remember that Phoenix is essentially a revised derivative mission, and the original mission was from back at the start of the decade. Phoenix is actually a revised/updated Mars Surveyor, which was the sister ship of Mars Polar Lander, which failed in 1999. So the fact that it uses a 1997-era PowerPC derivative is not at all surprising.


There are loads and loads of Macs at JPL. Most of the people in my group use one. Once upon a time, back in the early 90's, I think JPL was the 3rd largest site in terms of installed base of Macs among large corporations/government installations. Unfortunately that level has slipped drastically since then, but there are still a lot of Mac users at the Lab.

Of course, my office Mac is a dual-2.5 GHz G5, which Apple is about to drop support for.

And to the other poster who earlier said Apple should drop Core Duo Intel support as well, I could say incredibly rude things but given that I have now said in this post that I work for JPL, I will refrain.

At home I tend to be an early adopter, hardware wise. My two Macs are an original 17" PowerBook G4 1 GHz, and an original 17" MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.16 GHz (which is only 2 years old).

If 10.6 drops support for all 3 of my work/home Macs, I will NOT be a happy camper. We're not all made of money - especially when you work as a Government contractor

It may not have any new features on the face of it, but there will almost certainly be new features for the developers to use and the APIs will also be updated. Any new applications being developed by third parties which make use of these new "under-the-hood" features (for want of a better phrase), will be 10.6 only.

Well I guess it is now safe to say that there will be no PowerBook G5.

Don't forget : you read it here first !

...and that is exactly the key issue here. Money. Why should we keep throwing money at a company which, more and more frequently, is screwing over its customer base? There's only so many times you'll feed a dog which keeps biting you.

Apple used to be (relatively) loyal to its customers, and in return, we were extremely loyal to Apple, however, tit-for-tat works both ways.

Sky falling much? Apple has made no statement that are dropping support for PPC. We only have evidence that the current release of Snow Leopard does not support PPC. Even if Apple creates no more PPC supported major release of OS X, that does not mean that are dropping support for PPC. Leopard is still new and has plenty of time to grow. If 10.5.4 is all of a sudden incompatible with PPC Macs then Apple would have dropped support for it and you and the other "hyperbolers" will have a soapbox to stand on, but building an Intel version-only of an OS while maintaining a current OS is not dropping support.

Apple will continue to "support" PPC Machines for many years to come. That is completely different than "build new OS's for all PPC machines" I can't believe that some people think supported means that they will get all the new features... I have an old G4 that doesn't work with my Apple remote. It also doesn't work with PhotoBooth... This is normal and it still works fine with everything it came with!

LOL. What a loser.