..There must be a very substantial installed base of PowerPC's that are still humming along quite nicely...
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.
My G5 has four cores. Quad 2.5 GHz and it's a damn fast machine. Much faster than the dual core intel iMac (with the stupid reflective screen) I have at work, so it's still a machine which is very much worth keeping. Why should I be forced to upgrade to a slower intel machine?
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.
Connected with the missing "Mac" on the OS X banners, does this open the way for other PC manufacturers to offer OS X on their machines?
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))
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.
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..."
I predict they aren't doing that this time. If Intel drops the ball, then they have AMD to fall back on.
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?
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..."
Personally I don't understand why some users are clinging to their PPC systems for dear life.
Its an old platform and in terms of speed and performance it makes sense to upgrade.
New systems might be expensive but with a better spec its an investment in my eyes
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.
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?
Personally I don't understand why some users are clinging to their PPC systems for dear life.
Its an old platform and in terms of speed and performance it makes sense to upgrade.
New systems might be expensive but with a better spec its an investment in my eyes
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.
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zanshin
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..."
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
I guess leaving PPC behind is the reason Snow Leopard will not have new features.
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.
Documentation included with copies of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard distributed during Apple's developer conference this week confirms that the next-generation operating system does not presently support Macs with PowerPC processors.
Well I guess it is now safe to say that there will be no PowerBook G5.
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
...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.
Of course, my office Mac is a dual-2.5 GHz G5, which Apple is about to drop support for.
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!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkAllan
My G5 has four cores. Quad 2.5 GHz and it's a damn fast machine. Much faster than the dual core intel iMac (with the stupid reflective screen) I have at work, so it's still a machine which is very much worth keeping. Why should I be forced to upgrade to a slower intel machine?
I'd be interested to see them try and abandon us. I seem to remember Steve Jobs saying PPC Mac would be supported for 5 years after the intel ones arrived. The lawyers must be rubbing their grubby hands in glee - can anyone say "class action"?
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.
You have a good point but all of this not supporting PPC talk is a bit overrated and blown out of proportion. Snow Leopard simply does not offer enough for Intel Mac owners to care a great deal about upgrading much less a PPC Mac owner.
10.5 will continue to be improved and supported by Apple for several years to come. It's the NEXT OS after 10.6 that you need to think about. That is most likely going to be a screaming kick butt OS with a ton of new features worth upgrading to. Obviously 10.7 will not support PPC either but hopefully by that time most Mac users are on Intel Macs. So Snow Leopard really isn't a big deal at this point.
Comments
..There must be a very substantial installed base of PowerPC's that are still humming along quite nicely...
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.
My G5 has four cores. Quad 2.5 GHz and it's a damn fast machine. Much faster than the dual core intel iMac (with the stupid reflective screen) I have at work, so it's still a machine which is very much worth keeping. Why should I be forced to upgrade to a slower intel machine?
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.
Connected with the missing "Mac" on the OS X banners, does this open the way for other PC manufacturers to offer OS X on their machines?
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))
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.
Then prepare to be disappointed!
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
I predict they aren't doing that this time. If Intel drops the ball, then they have AMD to fall back on.
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?
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
Aw, heck. I would've donated a G3 and a G4 to JPL if I knew it would end up on Mars!
Personally I don't understand why some users are clinging to their PPC systems for dear life.
Its an old platform and in terms of speed and performance it makes sense to upgrade.
New systems might be expensive but with a better spec its an investment in my eyes
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.
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?
Personally I don't understand why some users are clinging to their PPC systems for dear life.
Its an old platform and in terms of speed and performance it makes sense to upgrade.
New systems might be expensive but with a better spec its an investment in my eyes
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.
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.
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.
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
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
I guess leaving PPC behind is the reason Snow Leopard will not have new features.
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.
Documentation included with copies of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard distributed during Apple's developer conference this week confirms that the next-generation operating system does not presently support Macs with PowerPC processors.
Well I guess it is now safe to say that there will be no PowerBook G5.
Don't forget : you read it here first !
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
...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.
Of course, my office Mac is a dual-2.5 GHz G5, which Apple is about to drop support for.
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.
My G5 has four cores. Quad 2.5 GHz and it's a damn fast machine. Much faster than the dual core intel iMac (with the stupid reflective screen) I have at work, so it's still a machine which is very much worth keeping. Why should I be forced to upgrade to a slower intel machine?
I'd be interested to see them try and abandon us. I seem to remember Steve Jobs saying PPC Mac would be supported for 5 years after the intel ones arrived. The lawyers must be rubbing their grubby hands in glee - can anyone say "class action"?
It's official: Steve Jobs, go fuck yourself.
LOL. What a loser.
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.
You have a good point but all of this not supporting PPC talk is a bit overrated and blown out of proportion. Snow Leopard simply does not offer enough for Intel Mac owners to care a great deal about upgrading much less a PPC Mac owner.
10.5 will continue to be improved and supported by Apple for several years to come. It's the NEXT OS after 10.6 that you need to think about. That is most likely going to be a screaming kick butt OS with a ton of new features worth upgrading to. Obviously 10.7 will not support PPC either but hopefully by that time most Mac users are on Intel Macs. So Snow Leopard really isn't a big deal at this point.