I'm not going to sit here and say nothing will be new in userland as frankly I don't think that will be the case. What I will say though is that many people in this thread seem to be misjudgeing just how big of a change this will be. SL is not at all comparable to a MS service pack. To deliver some of what has been described we will see a major rewrite of parts of the kernel.
I also expect that part of the reason to limit userland and this the draw is that Apple doesn't want to make this an update that attracks users with no idea what is going on. I see it as a transitional update that will allow people running Leopard to stay on that platform for a good long while. This does two things it gives Apple time to stabilize the new OS after tons of users get their hands on it. Second is the issue of third party software and hardware. It will take time to get software and drivers up to speed and stable. Apple will want people to be interested in SL the just don't want them to think it is mandatory nor maybe well supported out of the box.
Since there is a lot of new tech going into SL the rate at which third party developers will be able to take advantage of those features will be highly variable. In other words some apps will launch with SL and take advantage of much of the new tech. Other apps might be a long time coming if at all. Which is a final point not all apps will benefit directly from all the new goodness in SL.
Or to put it sweetly the tech in SL is very interesting from the standpoint of a person with that sort of bent. However I'm not to sure the majority of the apps I currently use will see great benefit. Of course part of that is related to my already running WebKit which may or may not release with SL.
If they *are* dropping PPC support, then it makes sense not to add too many user-facing features so PPC people don't feel they are missing out on much by having to stick with 10.5.
Apple don't care about PPC users' feelings. They are primarily a hardware company. If anything, they will do the opposite so that PPC users will finally make the jump to Intel hardware and their profits will go up. On top of that, people will be buying Intel-compatible software upgrades. There may have to be a lot of software upgrades to take advantage of Snow Leopard even for people who already have an Intel Mac.
I think the answer here is that part of the tech here would go into a tablet and be immediately useful. Otherthings like OpenCL are another story as Apple MIGHT NOT have access to a GPU or other hardware to accelerate an OpenCL app on these rumored devices.
I say rumored but do realize I'm also very interested in tablet like devices in the slightly larger than iPhone size. As always the question is how much electronics can you cram into the bag. Don't get me wrong it would be great to see a GPU in a tablet device that can support OpenCL but I just don't see it happening with a tablet this year or next. Dual or maybe even quad core processors yes.
So in a sense yeah SL is likely a dependency for a tablet. That more for it being slimed down than anything along with better SMP support. On the otherhand I don't expect that a tablet will come with a 64 bit CPU or some of the other hardware SL would need maxed out. SO would be used for it's leanness more than anything.
Of course there is always the unknown stuff that could form the engine of a tablet. I'm currently under the assumption that an ARM device would be the only likely core. On the otherhand Apple is about the only company that could get Intel to build a completely custom Atom that could drive the machine.
... but perhaps Apple NEEDS to make sure people don't see this version as a big thing.
Let me go to an extreme (which is likely to be wrong)... to illustrate what I mean.
Lets say Apple is looking at a fundamental underlying change to how the OS works, and knows that the unavoidable side effect is that it is going to break many applications, cause driver issues, and cause discontent - but it's GREAT for the future. The answer is to release an OS that people don't really care about... that they don't feel a burning desire to upgrade to. Give the app developers and driver developers time to make sure everything is smooth (hell.. give APPLE time to make sure everything is smooth). Then release 10.7 with the new underlying system and new bells and whistles (right around the release time of Windows 7).
(Of course if they add Exchange integration to Mail on 10.6, they'll need to release the same integration to Mail on 10.5.)
They did this with the Intel transition.... they made it seamless, they made it look like nothing was changing. I have no idea what degree of underlying changes is required for it to be something they'd rather HIDE from us. I assume to some degree we'd be talking about something similar to all the driver & app issues Vista had - but Apple won't market 10.6 as the answer to everyone's prayers and get user backlash from the incompatibilities.
A lot of what you say is true, but many, millions, will upgrade to it anyway. Apple will be promoting this. They already have during Steve's address.
Also, every new machine will come with 10.6 installed. If Apple sells 25 million machines in the possibly two years before 10.7 arrives, they will likely have at least 30 million machines on 10.6.
There's no way this won't be a very public thing. It's GOT to work, and not break too much.
Does it? That would wipe my theory. What are the changes? (by major, I assume you mean significant enough that people other than 'the faithful' will want to change OSes to get the changes?)
We're assuming a lot. One thing likely to make it this time is resolution independence. That would be a very big thing. And it's here now, just for developers only. Gives them time to program for it.
Apple don't care about PPC users' feelings. They are primarily a hardware company. If anything, they will do the opposite so that PPC users will finally make the jump to Intel hardware and their profits will go up. On top of that, people will be buying Intel-compatible software upgrades. There may have to be a lot of software upgrades to take advantage of Snow Leopard even for people who already have an Intel Mac.
Apple hasn't cared about any users' feelings for a long time. However, there is a dark side to rapid obsolescence, one that's particularly poignant at a time when most people are too busy worrying about making ends meet to consider major discretionary purchases.
If you show your buyers that their products will be rendered obsolete in a time frame that is shorter than customer expectations then you alienate then. Alienated customers tend to look around for alternatives rather than buying on the supplier's schedule. Worst case scenario: customer moves to a competitor and takes their entire family/company with them. Apple is fairly lucky there because popular belief is Windows PCs have a very short lifespan, but if the hardware doesn't break down a PC can actually last a long time because most software today doesn't require anything newer than Windows 2000, an operating system that's older than Mac OS X 10.0.
I'm still on PPC mostly because I'm struggling to pay the bills every month. In addition my G5 tower is still fast enough for everything I do and has plenty of RAM and storage capacity so I really don't need anything new. I'm now thinking my jump to Intel will take place when 10.6.1 is released.
Of course there is always the unknown stuff that could form the engine of a tablet. I'm currently under the assumption that an ARM device would be the only likely core. On the otherhand Apple is about the only company that could get Intel to build a completely custom Atom that could drive the machine.
Dave
This will certainly change in the future when Intel goes to 32nm and get's a proper low-power chipset, but at the moment "Atom" is a joke compared to what is already available with ARM. The iPhone itself uses an ARM11 core, which is already obsolete. ARM's newest is the Cortex series, which includes the Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 which both come in multi-core versions and run over 1.0Ghz, all while using an order of magnitude less power than an Atom. I guess it really depends on how different desktop OSX is from the ARM-running iPhone OS, and what features they are going to be focusing on, and also if this device is more like a 4-5" Nokia N800-like "tablet" or a 7-10" "tablet" more akin to a subnotebook.
Hey, AI, you guys should take a page from the App store and start screening some of your ads. Specifically the PC alert window at the top of the page that constantly makes that stupid boing sound, tells me I'm the 1,000,000th visitor and I've won something (right). The alert, as you know, has an annoying wiggle and when you click the close box (if you can hit it), it STILL takes you to their ad page.
I'm serious, a few more like this one and AI will be off my RSS feed.
There were several attempts in this list to explain the real meaning of "no new features" and the scope/amount of changes in Snow Leopard based on the information available so far. I will make one more.
1. Concentrating on "under the hood" changes does not mean Apple is going to fix bugs and optimize the existing code only. They are going to add lots of NEW stuff there. They are laying out a platform for the future. It is more like low-level architectural changes than code optimization. If you insist to compare that to Windows release cycle, it is more relevant to talk about WIndows NT - Windows 2000 releases than a service pack. I don't hink Apple will make the change in one shot though. Some preparation was already done in Leopard and some may be left for future OS releases.
2. One of the changes is a new 64-bit kernel. It is not known how many changes Apple will make along the way but this is a big change. The new kernel is enough of a reason to drop PPC. First, there will be no need to test and fix it for PPC. Second, it may contain processor optimization itself and there is no reason to spend resources on an architecture extinct in Apple's product line.
3. From a purely financial point of view Apple does not care how many users will buy the new OS. It represents a negligible part of their revenue. The only thing Apple will want to avoid is an OS version which is publicly dismissed by the customers, like Vista was. That is the reason Apple tries to lower the expectations for those who will not get the difference anyway.
4. Based on 2. and 3. above, it is quite possible that many new features, or the OS as a whole, may not be supported on PPC. With 10.5 Leopard there were low-level changes in the Objective-C runtime. Along with the new kernel, those changes may need to break computability with 32 processors to be fully deployed. Get ready for 64-bit only OS from Apple in the [not so distant?] future.
A lot of what you say is true, but many, millions, will upgrade to it anyway. Apple will be promoting this. They already have during Steve's address.
Also, every new machine will come with 10.6 installed. If Apple sells 25 million machines in the possibly two years before 10.7 arrives, they will likely have at least 30 million machines on 10.6.
There's no way this won't be a very public thing. It's GOT to work, and not break too much.
Yes millions will upgrade anyway. And Apple must be working on making the new system not just stable and ready for the future - but able to use all the old stuff without a hitch. I just don't know enough to say whether that's possible. Apple can rewrite drivers for all their own hardware so that's fine - do peripheral drivers need rewrites? Are there things that can not be made compatible no matter how much effort?
So yeah millions will upgrade - but will Apple released it at WWDC and talk up all the great underlying technologies for developers while deliberately warning off consumers? It's not going to stop people like us wanting to have a go, and telling regular users not to buy it will just get more headlines about Apple.
They could easily offer a choice of 10.5 or 10.6 on new computers too. Hell I don't know what they'll end up doing, just what they've said so far sounds like they're playing it like the Intel transition (which means that yes they are saying how good it'll be, but they're also aware of problems and want to make it smooth).
If Microsoft had made Vista look and feel identical to XP and told people it was their platform for the future but that average users should hold of because it was SO GOOD that it broke compatibility with lots of apps... they would have got vastly different press and interest. (And sold millions anyway). And a year later they could have pushed a new interface and features.
As far as I know with first betas of Leopard seeded to developers Apple strongly suggested that all new drivers are made universal binaries including 64-bit support. I don't know if Apple will provide a solution for backwards compatibility for 32-bit drivers in Snow Leopard.
During the PPC - Intel transition PPC printer drivers worked OK but other hardware required Intel-driver to work. My guess is that we will see the same pattern here.
Apple hasn't cared about any users' feelings for a long time. However, there is a dark side to rapid obsolescence, one that's particularly poignant at a time when most people are too busy worrying about making ends meet to consider major discretionary purchases.
If you show your buyers that their products will be rendered obsolete in a time frame that is shorter than customer expectations then you alienate then. Alienated customers tend to look around for alternatives rather than buying on the supplier's schedule. Worst case scenario: customer moves to a competitor and takes their entire family/company with them. Apple is fairly lucky there because popular belief is Windows PCs have a very short lifespan, but if the hardware doesn't break down a PC can actually last a long time because most software today doesn't require anything newer than Windows 2000, an operating system that's older than Mac OS X 10.0.
I'm still on PPC mostly because I'm struggling to pay the bills every month. In addition my G5 tower is still fast enough for everything I do and has plenty of RAM and storage capacity so I really don't need anything new. I'm now thinking my jump to Intel will take place when 10.6.1 is released.
You're going a bit overboard here.
What does obsolete mean? It doesn't mean that the newest OS intermediate version can't be installed. It means that the device isn't usable in an efficient manner when compared to more modern devices.
Its quite possible that every old Mac is obsolete already, whether or not they use 10.5 now.
It may also not mean that, if an individual finds their older machine to work perfectly well for them.
Not having 10.6 install on a PPC machine doesn't instantly make that machine obsolete. Nothing changes for the user.
It will have been a good three years since the last G5 machine was produced when 10.6 arrives. That's just fine.
There are times when transitions simply must be made. Apple has had to go through those transitions for some time now. Each time, this has rendered older machines "obsolete". That's the way it goes.
If 10.6 isn't available in at least the G5, then this latest transition to the x86 platform will have been completed three years after it started.
One of the biggest problems MS has, and why Vista has been such a bust as far as anything new is concerned, is because, like Apple in the 90's with Copeland, they found that you can't have significant backwards compatibility, with drastic forward looking changes to the OS. Something's got to break. As it is, Vista didn't run at all, or well, on many machines sold within the last year before its release.
The x86 is different enough from the PPC, that features intended for the x86 can't always be shoehorned into the older, less powerful systems. While the later G5's may be powerful enough, there aren't enough of them for Apple to spend considerable resources on an attempt to keep them current with this.
What if only some of the internal, and external advances, can be put into a G5, not to speak of the old G4? Should Apple then release two versions of 10.6? One full version for the Intel platform, and one half assed version for the last PPC's? I think not. At least, unless this is proven wrong, it's what I see. If Apple surprises us, that would be great, but also unexpected.
I also look at this in another slightly different way than seeing three years as a cutoff.
People will rarely upgrade the OS in their machine if they think they will be getting a new one within a year. If Apple charges for this upgrade, the same thing will be true with it.
If people do have three year old machines, the newest possible PPC machines, a large number will be looking to replace them with new ones before too long. They won't want to spend more money on their old ones. For most, those last PPC purchases will have come 3.5 years on average, before they buy a new machine with 10.6 installed.
If the upgrade is free, then more people will want it, naturally. Even so, they know their old machines are on their last legs.
I think that a certain number of people will be ticked off, but that will always be the case, as it has been in the past.
Apple must look beyond that. The future is more important.
The advice that bloggerblog gave you may be helpful, but it obfuscates the real problem by making it look like a screen resolution issue only. It is a screen resolution issue in a sense, but the problem is that there is no capability to choose different font sizes for the system fonts, i.e., all the text that you see that cannot be controlled directly by the application. All fonts of that sort are presented in a fixed size that cannot be changed except by setting the effective resolution of the screen to something other than its native resolution. That is not a good means to the reasonable end, because when you change the effective resolution, everything changes, not just the system fonts.
To be blunt, this is a horrible shortcoming in Apple's OS, that they should have addressed a very long time ago. I have made it clear at both the Apple retail store and also via email to Apple that I for one will not be buying any Mac until this very real and very annoying problem is addressed. The information that has leaked, if by chance it is correct, strongly suggests that this shortcoming will be corrected in 10.6. Perhaps someone at Apple was in fact embarrassed over this and other similar issues, and decided that it was time to step back and address these sorts of things.
Assuming that this is what they are doing and that this problem will be corrected in 10.6, I applaud them for taking this approach. It sounds to me like they are doing exactly what needs to be done. When people talk about ?under the hood?, I wonder if they do not understand that an OS is supposed to concern itself only with ?under the hood? matters. When it is claimed that an OS does not support some particular application, then except for when that application has truly unique hardware dependencies, this is a mischaracterization of the situation. It is of course true that the OS supports applications, but in the sense of universal, common support for all applications. As such, it is more useful to think of the OS as supporting hardware, not applications.
If you show your buyers that their products will be rendered obsolete in a time frame that is shorter than customer expectations then you alienate then.
Logically, that's how it should happen but with Apple it seems to be different. They have switched from OS9 to OS X in 2000 and from PPC to Intel in 2005. These were huge changes - in 5 years, OS 9 apps were made largely obsolete. To switch to Intel-only in 2009 would only mean obsoleting 4 year old hardware and it's not really obsoleting it as it can still be used for the job it was used for the previous years. It's well outside of warranty anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bregalad
I'm still on PPC mostly because I'm struggling to pay the bills every month. In addition my G5 tower is still fast enough for everything I do and has plenty of RAM and storage capacity so I really don't need anything new. I'm now thinking my jump to Intel will take place when 10.6.1 is released.
That's what I think a lot of people will do, which is why I think them discontinuing PPC is one of the best things they can do for profit. It will force people who don't want to be left behind to let go of older hardware. When you spread the cost of a new computer over the course of a 4 yearly upgrade, even an entry level Mac Pro will cost about the same as your phone bills over that period of time so it's a fairly inexpensive item.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
So is there anything more official about whether PPC support will be dropped in 10.6?
I still haven't seen anything beyond speculation, has apple actually said anything either way?
Magic 8-ball says: All signs point to yes.
I don't think it's explicitly stated that the final version won't have PPC support but the developer release didn't:
If they intended to continue PPC support, I imagine they would have done so from the beginning. Supporting 32-bit and 64-bit is hard enough without adding 32-bit and 64-bit PPC into the mix. Plus they are focussing on optimization and reducing OS X's footprint. The PPC bloat takes up about 2GB:
If their aim is to lower the footprint, this stuff has to go. It'll be interesting to see what stage Snow Leopard is at in terms of performance and footprint.
Supposedly Apple were maintaining internal PPC builds but who knows. They could separate them into two releases - that isn't quite the same as multiple Windows versions as each release only targets one set of hardware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PXT
So for those of us waiting to buy new Macbooks this October, will we see the benefits of later upgrading to Snow Leopard on our hardware?
If they do what I hope they will do and finally go with all dedicated graphics chipsets then I would say yes, you should see a benefit. Not necessarily in 3rd party apps at first but core elements like Quicktime and apps depending on Core libraries. Even in the worst case, if you don't benefit from 10.6, you'll at least benefit from SSE4 in the new processors somewhere.
Comments
Try this website:
http://www.3dexpress.de/
the app allows you to force any resolution on your monitor, worked wonders for me.
Thanks for the thought, I will take a look.
I also expect that part of the reason to limit userland and this the draw is that Apple doesn't want to make this an update that attracks users with no idea what is going on. I see it as a transitional update that will allow people running Leopard to stay on that platform for a good long while. This does two things it gives Apple time to stabilize the new OS after tons of users get their hands on it. Second is the issue of third party software and hardware. It will take time to get software and drivers up to speed and stable. Apple will want people to be interested in SL the just don't want them to think it is mandatory nor maybe well supported out of the box.
Since there is a lot of new tech going into SL the rate at which third party developers will be able to take advantage of those features will be highly variable. In other words some apps will launch with SL and take advantage of much of the new tech. Other apps might be a long time coming if at all. Which is a final point not all apps will benefit directly from all the new goodness in SL.
Or to put it sweetly the tech in SL is very interesting from the standpoint of a person with that sort of bent. However I'm not to sure the majority of the apps I currently use will see great benefit. Of course part of that is related to my already running WebKit which may or may not release with SL.
Dave
If they *are* dropping PPC support, then it makes sense not to add too many user-facing features so PPC people don't feel they are missing out on much by having to stick with 10.5.
Apple don't care about PPC users' feelings. They are primarily a hardware company. If anything, they will do the opposite so that PPC users will finally make the jump to Intel hardware and their profits will go up. On top of that, people will be buying Intel-compatible software upgrades. There may have to be a lot of software upgrades to take advantage of Snow Leopard even for people who already have an Intel Mac.
this thing has to be the tablet os. I hope.
I think the answer here is that part of the tech here would go into a tablet and be immediately useful. Otherthings like OpenCL are another story as Apple MIGHT NOT have access to a GPU or other hardware to accelerate an OpenCL app on these rumored devices.
I say rumored but do realize I'm also very interested in tablet like devices in the slightly larger than iPhone size. As always the question is how much electronics can you cram into the bag. Don't get me wrong it would be great to see a GPU in a tablet device that can support OpenCL but I just don't see it happening with a tablet this year or next. Dual or maybe even quad core processors yes.
So in a sense yeah SL is likely a dependency for a tablet. That more for it being slimed down than anything along with better SMP support. On the otherhand I don't expect that a tablet will come with a 64 bit CPU or some of the other hardware SL would need maxed out. SO would be used for it's leanness more than anything.
Of course there is always the unknown stuff that could form the engine of a tablet. I'm currently under the assumption that an ARM device would be the only likely core. On the otherhand Apple is about the only company that could get Intel to build a completely custom Atom that could drive the machine.
Dave
... but perhaps Apple NEEDS to make sure people don't see this version as a big thing.
Let me go to an extreme (which is likely to be wrong)... to illustrate what I mean.
Lets say Apple is looking at a fundamental underlying change to how the OS works, and knows that the unavoidable side effect is that it is going to break many applications, cause driver issues, and cause discontent - but it's GREAT for the future. The answer is to release an OS that people don't really care about... that they don't feel a burning desire to upgrade to. Give the app developers and driver developers time to make sure everything is smooth (hell.. give APPLE time to make sure everything is smooth). Then release 10.7 with the new underlying system and new bells and whistles (right around the release time of Windows 7).
(Of course if they add Exchange integration to Mail on 10.6, they'll need to release the same integration to Mail on 10.5.)
They did this with the Intel transition.... they made it seamless, they made it look like nothing was changing. I have no idea what degree of underlying changes is required for it to be something they'd rather HIDE from us. I assume to some degree we'd be talking about something similar to all the driver & app issues Vista had - but Apple won't market 10.6 as the answer to everyone's prayers and get user backlash from the incompatibilities.
A lot of what you say is true, but many, millions, will upgrade to it anyway. Apple will be promoting this. They already have during Steve's address.
Also, every new machine will come with 10.6 installed. If Apple sells 25 million machines in the possibly two years before 10.7 arrives, they will likely have at least 30 million machines on 10.6.
There's no way this won't be a very public thing. It's GOT to work, and not break too much.
Does it? That would wipe my theory. What are the changes? (by major, I assume you mean significant enough that people other than 'the faithful' will want to change OSes to get the changes?)
We're assuming a lot. One thing likely to make it this time is resolution independence. That would be a very big thing. And it's here now, just for developers only. Gives them time to program for it.
Try this website:
http://www.3dexpress.de/
the app allows you to force any resolution on your monitor, worked wonders for me.
This is exactly what we're talking about NOT having to do.
Apple don't care about PPC users' feelings. They are primarily a hardware company. If anything, they will do the opposite so that PPC users will finally make the jump to Intel hardware and their profits will go up. On top of that, people will be buying Intel-compatible software upgrades. There may have to be a lot of software upgrades to take advantage of Snow Leopard even for people who already have an Intel Mac.
Apple hasn't cared about any users' feelings for a long time. However, there is a dark side to rapid obsolescence, one that's particularly poignant at a time when most people are too busy worrying about making ends meet to consider major discretionary purchases.
If you show your buyers that their products will be rendered obsolete in a time frame that is shorter than customer expectations then you alienate then. Alienated customers tend to look around for alternatives rather than buying on the supplier's schedule. Worst case scenario: customer moves to a competitor and takes their entire family/company with them. Apple is fairly lucky there because popular belief is Windows PCs have a very short lifespan, but if the hardware doesn't break down a PC can actually last a long time because most software today doesn't require anything newer than Windows 2000, an operating system that's older than Mac OS X 10.0.
I'm still on PPC mostly because I'm struggling to pay the bills every month. In addition my G5 tower is still fast enough for everything I do and has plenty of RAM and storage capacity so I really don't need anything new. I'm now thinking my jump to Intel will take place when 10.6.1 is released.
Of course there is always the unknown stuff that could form the engine of a tablet. I'm currently under the assumption that an ARM device would be the only likely core. On the otherhand Apple is about the only company that could get Intel to build a completely custom Atom that could drive the machine.
Dave
This will certainly change in the future when Intel goes to 32nm and get's a proper low-power chipset, but at the moment "Atom" is a joke compared to what is already available with ARM. The iPhone itself uses an ARM11 core, which is already obsolete. ARM's newest is the Cortex series, which includes the Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 which both come in multi-core versions and run over 1.0Ghz, all while using an order of magnitude less power than an Atom. I guess it really depends on how different desktop OSX is from the ARM-running iPhone OS, and what features they are going to be focusing on, and also if this device is more like a 4-5" Nokia N800-like "tablet" or a 7-10" "tablet" more akin to a subnotebook.
I'm serious, a few more like this one and AI will be off my RSS feed.
1. Concentrating on "under the hood" changes does not mean Apple is going to fix bugs and optimize the existing code only. They are going to add lots of NEW stuff there. They are laying out a platform for the future. It is more like low-level architectural changes than code optimization. If you insist to compare that to Windows release cycle, it is more relevant to talk about WIndows NT - Windows 2000 releases than a service pack. I don't hink Apple will make the change in one shot though. Some preparation was already done in Leopard and some may be left for future OS releases.
2. One of the changes is a new 64-bit kernel. It is not known how many changes Apple will make along the way but this is a big change. The new kernel is enough of a reason to drop PPC. First, there will be no need to test and fix it for PPC. Second, it may contain processor optimization itself and there is no reason to spend resources on an architecture extinct in Apple's product line.
3. From a purely financial point of view Apple does not care how many users will buy the new OS. It represents a negligible part of their revenue. The only thing Apple will want to avoid is an OS version which is publicly dismissed by the customers, like Vista was. That is the reason Apple tries to lower the expectations for those who will not get the difference anyway.
4. Based on 2. and 3. above, it is quite possible that many new features, or the OS as a whole, may not be supported on PPC. With 10.5 Leopard there were low-level changes in the Objective-C runtime. Along with the new kernel, those changes may need to break computability with 32 processors to be fully deployed. Get ready for 64-bit only OS from Apple in the [not so distant?] future.
Rant about some annoying add
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A lot of what you say is true, but many, millions, will upgrade to it anyway. Apple will be promoting this. They already have during Steve's address.
Also, every new machine will come with 10.6 installed. If Apple sells 25 million machines in the possibly two years before 10.7 arrives, they will likely have at least 30 million machines on 10.6.
There's no way this won't be a very public thing. It's GOT to work, and not break too much.
Yes millions will upgrade anyway. And Apple must be working on making the new system not just stable and ready for the future - but able to use all the old stuff without a hitch. I just don't know enough to say whether that's possible. Apple can rewrite drivers for all their own hardware so that's fine - do peripheral drivers need rewrites? Are there things that can not be made compatible no matter how much effort?
So yeah millions will upgrade - but will Apple released it at WWDC and talk up all the great underlying technologies for developers while deliberately warning off consumers? It's not going to stop people like us wanting to have a go, and telling regular users not to buy it will just get more headlines about Apple.
They could easily offer a choice of 10.5 or 10.6 on new computers too. Hell I don't know what they'll end up doing, just what they've said so far sounds like they're playing it like the Intel transition (which means that yes they are saying how good it'll be, but they're also aware of problems and want to make it smooth).
If Microsoft had made Vista look and feel identical to XP and told people it was their platform for the future but that average users should hold of because it was SO GOOD that it broke compatibility with lots of apps... they would have got vastly different press and interest. (And sold millions anyway). And a year later they could have pushed a new interface and features.
This is exactly what we're talking about NOT having to do.
I couldn't agree more, I went to the website, scanned the FAQ for about 30 secs and closed the tab. This is exactly what I don't want to have to do.
Apple is working on it, I'll wait till they are ready.
do peripheral drivers need rewrites?
As far as I know with first betas of Leopard seeded to developers Apple strongly suggested that all new drivers are made universal binaries including 64-bit support. I don't know if Apple will provide a solution for backwards compatibility for 32-bit drivers in Snow Leopard.
During the PPC - Intel transition PPC printer drivers worked OK but other hardware required Intel-driver to work. My guess is that we will see the same pattern here.
I still haven't seen anything beyond speculation, has apple actually said anything either way?
Apple hasn't cared about any users' feelings for a long time. However, there is a dark side to rapid obsolescence, one that's particularly poignant at a time when most people are too busy worrying about making ends meet to consider major discretionary purchases.
If you show your buyers that their products will be rendered obsolete in a time frame that is shorter than customer expectations then you alienate then. Alienated customers tend to look around for alternatives rather than buying on the supplier's schedule. Worst case scenario: customer moves to a competitor and takes their entire family/company with them. Apple is fairly lucky there because popular belief is Windows PCs have a very short lifespan, but if the hardware doesn't break down a PC can actually last a long time because most software today doesn't require anything newer than Windows 2000, an operating system that's older than Mac OS X 10.0.
I'm still on PPC mostly because I'm struggling to pay the bills every month. In addition my G5 tower is still fast enough for everything I do and has plenty of RAM and storage capacity so I really don't need anything new. I'm now thinking my jump to Intel will take place when 10.6.1 is released.
You're going a bit overboard here.
What does obsolete mean? It doesn't mean that the newest OS intermediate version can't be installed. It means that the device isn't usable in an efficient manner when compared to more modern devices.
Its quite possible that every old Mac is obsolete already, whether or not they use 10.5 now.
It may also not mean that, if an individual finds their older machine to work perfectly well for them.
Not having 10.6 install on a PPC machine doesn't instantly make that machine obsolete. Nothing changes for the user.
It will have been a good three years since the last G5 machine was produced when 10.6 arrives. That's just fine.
There are times when transitions simply must be made. Apple has had to go through those transitions for some time now. Each time, this has rendered older machines "obsolete". That's the way it goes.
If 10.6 isn't available in at least the G5, then this latest transition to the x86 platform will have been completed three years after it started.
One of the biggest problems MS has, and why Vista has been such a bust as far as anything new is concerned, is because, like Apple in the 90's with Copeland, they found that you can't have significant backwards compatibility, with drastic forward looking changes to the OS. Something's got to break. As it is, Vista didn't run at all, or well, on many machines sold within the last year before its release.
The x86 is different enough from the PPC, that features intended for the x86 can't always be shoehorned into the older, less powerful systems. While the later G5's may be powerful enough, there aren't enough of them for Apple to spend considerable resources on an attempt to keep them current with this.
What if only some of the internal, and external advances, can be put into a G5, not to speak of the old G4? Should Apple then release two versions of 10.6? One full version for the Intel platform, and one half assed version for the last PPC's? I think not. At least, unless this is proven wrong, it's what I see. If Apple surprises us, that would be great, but also unexpected.
I also look at this in another slightly different way than seeing three years as a cutoff.
People will rarely upgrade the OS in their machine if they think they will be getting a new one within a year. If Apple charges for this upgrade, the same thing will be true with it.
If people do have three year old machines, the newest possible PPC machines, a large number will be looking to replace them with new ones before too long. They won't want to spend more money on their old ones. For most, those last PPC purchases will have come 3.5 years on average, before they buy a new machine with 10.6 installed.
If the upgrade is free, then more people will want it, naturally. Even so, they know their old machines are on their last legs.
I think that a certain number of people will be ticked off, but that will always be the case, as it has been in the past.
Apple must look beyond that. The future is more important.
Thanks for the thought, I will take a look.
The advice that bloggerblog gave you may be helpful, but it obfuscates the real problem by making it look like a screen resolution issue only. It is a screen resolution issue in a sense, but the problem is that there is no capability to choose different font sizes for the system fonts, i.e., all the text that you see that cannot be controlled directly by the application. All fonts of that sort are presented in a fixed size that cannot be changed except by setting the effective resolution of the screen to something other than its native resolution. That is not a good means to the reasonable end, because when you change the effective resolution, everything changes, not just the system fonts.
To be blunt, this is a horrible shortcoming in Apple's OS, that they should have addressed a very long time ago. I have made it clear at both the Apple retail store and also via email to Apple that I for one will not be buying any Mac until this very real and very annoying problem is addressed. The information that has leaked, if by chance it is correct, strongly suggests that this shortcoming will be corrected in 10.6. Perhaps someone at Apple was in fact embarrassed over this and other similar issues, and decided that it was time to step back and address these sorts of things.
Assuming that this is what they are doing and that this problem will be corrected in 10.6, I applaud them for taking this approach. It sounds to me like they are doing exactly what needs to be done. When people talk about ?under the hood?, I wonder if they do not understand that an OS is supposed to concern itself only with ?under the hood? matters. When it is claimed that an OS does not support some particular application, then except for when that application has truly unique hardware dependencies, this is a mischaracterization of the situation. It is of course true that the OS supports applications, but in the sense of universal, common support for all applications. As such, it is more useful to think of the OS as supporting hardware, not applications.
If you show your buyers that their products will be rendered obsolete in a time frame that is shorter than customer expectations then you alienate then.
Logically, that's how it should happen but with Apple it seems to be different. They have switched from OS9 to OS X in 2000 and from PPC to Intel in 2005. These were huge changes - in 5 years, OS 9 apps were made largely obsolete. To switch to Intel-only in 2009 would only mean obsoleting 4 year old hardware and it's not really obsoleting it as it can still be used for the job it was used for the previous years. It's well outside of warranty anyway.
I'm still on PPC mostly because I'm struggling to pay the bills every month. In addition my G5 tower is still fast enough for everything I do and has plenty of RAM and storage capacity so I really don't need anything new. I'm now thinking my jump to Intel will take place when 10.6.1 is released.
That's what I think a lot of people will do, which is why I think them discontinuing PPC is one of the best things they can do for profit. It will force people who don't want to be left behind to let go of older hardware. When you spread the cost of a new computer over the course of a 4 yearly upgrade, even an entry level Mac Pro will cost about the same as your phone bills over that period of time so it's a fairly inexpensive item.
So is there anything more official about whether PPC support will be dropped in 10.6?
I still haven't seen anything beyond speculation, has apple actually said anything either way?
Magic 8-ball says: All signs point to yes.
I don't think it's explicitly stated that the final version won't have PPC support but the developer release didn't:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/06/...rd.intel.only/
If they intended to continue PPC support, I imagine they would have done so from the beginning. Supporting 32-bit and 64-bit is hard enough without adding 32-bit and 64-bit PPC into the mix. Plus they are focussing on optimization and reducing OS X's footprint. The PPC bloat takes up about 2GB:
http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~pxk/cs/osx-space.html
If their aim is to lower the footprint, this stuff has to go. It'll be interesting to see what stage Snow Leopard is at in terms of performance and footprint.
Supposedly Apple were maintaining internal PPC builds but who knows. They could separate them into two releases - that isn't quite the same as multiple Windows versions as each release only targets one set of hardware.
So for those of us waiting to buy new Macbooks this October, will we see the benefits of later upgrading to Snow Leopard on our hardware?
If they do what I hope they will do and finally go with all dedicated graphics chipsets then I would say yes, you should see a benefit. Not necessarily in 3rd party apps at first but core elements like Quicktime and apps depending on Core libraries. Even in the worst case, if you don't benefit from 10.6, you'll at least benefit from SSE4 in the new processors somewhere.