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.
Very good point. We all know Apple makes their own hardware obsolete pretty quick.
First of all, there are no "people" at rixstep.com. It's one guy, a disgruntled (as in AK-47 from a bell tower disgruntled) former NeXT engineer who has been frothing venom at everything in OS X that isn't a NeXTSTEP legacy for the last ten years. Ignore him.
Secondly, I think the nomenclature is very significant. I'll be very surprised if Leopard goes away when Snow Leopard debuts. In fact, the very small minority of changes in SL that are relevant to non-quad or octo-core machines will probaby be folded into Leopard as point updates. SL won't come out until at least Q3 09, right? Leopard and Snow Leopard will both be avavilable for their appropriate customers until the next update comes out at the end of 2010 at the earliest. And that's the five years they promised! Who knows, maybe Lion (?) and Mountain Lion (?) will also run in parallel for a couple of years after that. My Centris 610 won't run Leopard, either, but you don't hear me complaining. (I assume it's still in the basement somewhere....)
I'll be very surprised if Leopard goes away when Snow Leopard debuts... SL won't come out until at least Q3 09, right? Leopard and Snow Leopard will both be avavilable for their appropriate customers until the next update comes out at the end of 2010 at the earliest. And that's the five years they promised! Who knows, maybe Lion (?) and Mountain Lion (?) will also run in parallel for a couple of years after that. My Centris 610 won't run Leopard, either, but you don't hear me complaining. (I assume it's still in the basement somewhere....)
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking that. I've even stated the Lion/Mountain Lion comment if Apple were to come out with another major update that supports PPC, but I think extending Leopard point updates and support for PPC is the most likely outcome at this point.
Wow. Lots of interesting comments. Whining and crying about Snow Leopard not supported on the PowerPC. This is not something new. It was speculated months ago. Why would Apple support a FIVE year old processor? The PowerPC G5 came out 5 years ago. I am sure Mac OS X has reached a limit on PowerPC optimization. However, they can further optimize the OS for Intel, since that is the platform for the future, and has been for the past TWO years. With each new Intel processor, the OS can further be optimized. This cannot be done with the G5.
Any Mac running Leopard will have the same features as an Intel Mac running Snow Leopard. There are no new features! You are not being left behind by Mac OS 10.6. There are a few Macs that have wide support of the Mac OS, but most only support two versions. Some only supported ONE version of the Mac OS. Some Macs in the 68030 family only supported System 7 (System 7.1, 7.5, and 7.6 were not all that different). My Mac Centris 650 only supported System 7.1 through 8.1. Early Power Macs only supported System 7.1 through 9.1. Apple dropped 68040 developement in 1996, two years after the PowerPC transition. So they are dropping PowerPC development two years after the Intel transition. They dropped OS 9 development in 2003, two years after 9.2.2 was released. See a trend?
My current iMac G5 only supports 10.4 and 10.5. Is it dead? No. Apple will still provide support for 10.5 and they still support 10.4. They are now moving towards dropping support of 10.3 (the new MobileMe to replace .Mac will not support 10.3 syncing).
So stop whining and crying. Your G5 Mac will still run just fine with 10.4 or 10.5. I re-installed Tiger on my PowerBook G4 because Tiger runs better on the G4. Just because something new comes out, doesn't mean your Mac will die without it.
I am glad they are dropping PowerPC code. When I decide to get an Intel Mac in a few years, then the OS won't be bloated with dead code.
Now watch as all the complaints from G5 users stream in.
I agree with the move, however.
I'm a G5 owner and i think this is the logical step to keep engineers working on forward technology, and not dragging the company recourses with old weight.
My current iMac G5 only supports 10.4 and 10.5. Is it dead? No. Apple will still provide support for 10.5 and they still support 10.4. They are now moving towards dropping support of 10.3 (the new MobileMe to replace .Mac will not support 10.3 syncing).
So stop whining and crying. Your G5 Mac will still run just fine with 10.4 or 10.5. I re-installed Tiger on my PowerBook G4 because Tiger runs better on the G4. Just because something new comes out, doesn't mean your Mac will die without it.
Hear, hear! My g3 iMac on my bedside table (I use it for light web browsing and as an e-book reader) is still happily running Panther. It does everything I want it to do, and I'm not interested in forcing it to do things it would be slow and inept at. Up until a couple of months ago, it was still being offered at least "security" updates. For Panther! It must have ignored the kill signals that everyone seems to think Cupertino sends out to brick every computer running OS X 10.x when OS X 10.x+1 comes out. Seriously, if your g4 or g5 is running the software you want to run, what's the problem? It's probably the next update of your apps that are going to leave you behind, not Apple. And only because they require more horsepower than your old machine can muster. It's just a fact of life in the computer world. That being said, I'd hate to tell you how recently I used WordStar 5.5 on my 12 MHz 286 DOS machine. (I just liked Wordstar, what can I say?)
I'll be very surprised if Leopard goes away when Snow Leopard debuts. In fact, the very small minority of changes in SL that are relevant to non-quad or octo-core machines will probaby be folded into Leopard as point updates. SL won't come out until at least Q3 09, right? Leopard and Snow Leopard will both be avavilable for their appropriate customers until the next update comes out at the end of 2010 at the earliest. And that's the five years they promised! Who knows, maybe Lion (?) and Mountain Lion (?) will also run in parallel for a couple of years after that. My Centris 610 won't run Leopard, either, but you don't hear me complaining. (I assume it's still in the basement somewhere....)
No, it's Lion and Nittany Lion. Why not name an OS for extinct computers after an extinct mountain lion?
I bought this machine in 2002, and it's running solid with Leopard (albeit with a CPU upgrade and a few other additions) even today. Getting 7 to 8 years out of a machine isn't something to be mad about. Just because your Mac won't run the latest and greatest OS anymore doesn't mean it's by any means obsolete or useless. I can easily see this machine being speedy and useful until the end of 2009.
If your Mac can run 10.4 or greater I'd say you'll be safe for sometime to come. The latest bells and whistles? Perhaps not, but your day to day computing grind won't be hindered.
NO!! I totally disagree. I will HAVE to buy a new Mac with SL as my G5 will be too old and too slow. Now lets just stick with the plan ok.
I'm a G5 user, but I won't complain. (I will complain if CS4 leaves G5's behind, however.) But I am a bit surprised. After all the trouble to make the OS more chipset-agnostic, why bother to leave the G5s behind so quickly?
Seems a little blatantly hardware sales-driven, on one hand, but a ways down the line on the other, thankfully.
Leopard works on 800mhz G4. How old are those? 7, 8 years old?
Tiger....works on G3. How old were the first generation G3's? 10 years old now?
With that kind of track record, I am pretty sure 10.6 will run on at least G5.
Well what I meant by obsolete is that Apple doesn't take long at all before they're releasing both a new OS and new hardware. My MacBook was purchased just 10 months ago but the MacBook line has already been updated with bigger HD's, better graphics cards, Penryn processors ect.
But one thing that is good as you pointed out is that Macs run reliably for years and unlike Vista, Mac OS X works good with much older hardware.
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?
According to this site : Primatelabs, Mac performance (april 2008), the 4 cores PowerMac G5 has a compound score of 3217 while the Dual Core Intel iMac have a compound score between 2652 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz, early 2007) and 3608 (Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 2.8 GHz, mid 2007). So, yes, your G5 is still a very capable machine by today's standard (by comparison, my PowerBook G4 is a joke at 759), but not very impressive anymore. It is as good as any average iMac in fact. So your (expensive) G5 is notmuch faster than the dual core intel iMac on sale today, sorry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkAllan
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"?
For anyone to say "class action", Apple should first say "PPC are unsupported". Since Apple hasn't yet said so, no one can say "class action" yet.
Besides, supporting the PPC, doesn't mean that they have to do so with an OS numbered 10.6. They could easily choose to continue to update 10.5 for as long as they support 10.6...
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?
Some people are quite concerned as to whether the cooling systems in those things would hold up for very long.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdkennedy1
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.
OK, so they're somehow going to spend the R&D necessary to keep PPC up to date, only to have it ready just in case their x86 plans wither? That's a needless expense. Keeping OS X Intel compatible all those years was probably not that expensive, maintaining CPU architectures like that is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by internetworld7
Well what I meant by obsolete is that Apple doesn't take long at all before they're releasing both a new OS and new hardware. My MacBook was purchased just 10 months ago but the MacBook line has already been updated with bigger HD's, better graphics cards, Penryn processors ect.
On the hardware side, that's not Apple making them obsolete. If they didn't keep their hardware reasonably up to date, then what they sell would be obsolete.
After they acquired PA Semi I was hoping the PowerPC would stay in, or even end this unfortunate Intel alliance!
Good grief. I doubt PA Semi could keep Apple supplied with adequate designs for all their systems, considering that Intel spends (IIRC) billions every year in R&D.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bedouin
I think many of us feel bitter about the death of PPC for two reasons.
First, it's a defeat or sorts. PPC was something Apple had a personal investment in. It was made, to some extent, for us (though, obviously not exclusively). x86 never felt good enough for Macs because it wasn't custom, it wasn't something made specifically with us in mind. The move to x86 just marked this feeling of mediocrity, and the failure of PPC: the great hope.
You have too much of an attachment to an architecture. You've bought way too much into the RDF on this, Jobs had to make Intel seem bad. Apple for all it's trying couldn't make it viable enough to justify remaining. The architecture of the CPU isn't that important. As long as the CPU fit the specs, it almost doesn't matter except for legacy concerns, because switching architectures is a costly business. All software needs is a CPU that will run it. Processors are quite neutral. If you give it crap instructions, then it will behave badly. Give them good instructions and they will behave well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ktappe
...unless you consider that Apple was still selling G5's as recently as 2 years ago.
By the time SL is out, that will be three years. And those systems will probably be supported by most software for another two years. Five years is a pretty good run if you're the type that actually needs to keep up with the latest software. If you're the kind that needs to keep up with software like that, then I'd wager that on or before the fifth year, you're about due for a new computer to keep the software running smoothly anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mmeister
If you're concerned about this, start saving now. You've got several months.
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 also work on a NASA mission that runs on several PPC chips, but they're not really close to a G5, more like what was in the old beige PPC Macs (it only runs at 33Mhz), the chip is a RAD6000 if you're interested. BTW - almost all the scientists who work for NASA have Mac laptops. Go to any Astrophysics conference, and I'd say almost 70% of the audience is on Mac laptops. Our mission operations centre uses Mac Pros for many of our mission critical tasks.
According to this site : Primatelabs, Mac performance (april 2008), the 4 cores PowerMac G5 has a compound score of 3217 while the Dual Core Intel iMac have a compound score between 2652 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz, early 2007) and 3608 (Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 2.8 GHz, mid 2007).
Those are only up to April 2008. Since then new iMacs have been released. Primate labs lists even the slowest and cheapest iMac at only $1100 as scoring a 3220 with only 1GB RAM.
PPC is just a legacy ball-and-chain weighing down OS X. Plus, "Grand Central" sounds like it's going to be the killer "app" of 10.6 and how many PPC chips are multi-core?
PPC is just a legacy ball-and-chain weighing down OS X. Plus, "Grand Central" sounds like it's going to be the killer "app" of 10.6 and how many PPC chips are multi-core?
Exactly.
-Clive
The last generation of PowerMac G5s had dual core PPCs.
Also high end Macs have had dual CPUs for ages, I doubt that there any specific difference between a 4 CPU machine and a machine with a 4 core CPU when it comes to Grand Central.
If you're concerned about this, start saving now. You've got several months.
Or you could be like those of us that now have yet another reason to not upgrade to 10.5, which appears to have some issues. Great, I wait for about a year and get an OS that is feature equal to 10.5 plus QTX and new file system and grand central and big bonus it's best feature is that lacks the problems that 10.5 has although those problems appear to be going away slowly.
Comments
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.
Very good point. We all know Apple makes their own hardware obsolete pretty quick.
According to the people at rixstep.com...
First of all, there are no "people" at rixstep.com. It's one guy, a disgruntled (as in AK-47 from a bell tower disgruntled) former NeXT engineer who has been frothing venom at everything in OS X that isn't a NeXTSTEP legacy for the last ten years. Ignore him.
Secondly, I think the nomenclature is very significant. I'll be very surprised if Leopard goes away when Snow Leopard debuts. In fact, the very small minority of changes in SL that are relevant to non-quad or octo-core machines will probaby be folded into Leopard as point updates. SL won't come out until at least Q3 09, right? Leopard and Snow Leopard will both be avavilable for their appropriate customers until the next update comes out at the end of 2010 at the earliest. And that's the five years they promised! Who knows, maybe Lion (?) and Mountain Lion (?) will also run in parallel for a couple of years after that. My Centris 610 won't run Leopard, either, but you don't hear me complaining. (I assume it's still in the basement somewhere....)
Very good point. We all know Apple makes their own hardware obsolete pretty quick.
What are we talking about?
Leopard works on 800mhz G4. How old are those? 7, 8 years old?
Tiger....works on G3. How old were the first generation G3's? 10 years old now?
With that kind of track record, I am pretty sure 10.6 will run on at least G5.
I'll be very surprised if Leopard goes away when Snow Leopard debuts... SL won't come out until at least Q3 09, right? Leopard and Snow Leopard will both be avavilable for their appropriate customers until the next update comes out at the end of 2010 at the earliest. And that's the five years they promised! Who knows, maybe Lion (?) and Mountain Lion (?) will also run in parallel for a couple of years after that. My Centris 610 won't run Leopard, either, but you don't hear me complaining. (I assume it's still in the basement somewhere....)
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking that. I've even stated the Lion/Mountain Lion comment if Apple were to come out with another major update that supports PPC, but I think extending Leopard point updates and support for PPC is the most likely outcome at this point.
Any Mac running Leopard will have the same features as an Intel Mac running Snow Leopard. There are no new features! You are not being left behind by Mac OS 10.6. There are a few Macs that have wide support of the Mac OS, but most only support two versions. Some only supported ONE version of the Mac OS. Some Macs in the 68030 family only supported System 7 (System 7.1, 7.5, and 7.6 were not all that different). My Mac Centris 650 only supported System 7.1 through 8.1. Early Power Macs only supported System 7.1 through 9.1. Apple dropped 68040 developement in 1996, two years after the PowerPC transition. So they are dropping PowerPC development two years after the Intel transition. They dropped OS 9 development in 2003, two years after 9.2.2 was released. See a trend?
My current iMac G5 only supports 10.4 and 10.5. Is it dead? No. Apple will still provide support for 10.5 and they still support 10.4. They are now moving towards dropping support of 10.3 (the new MobileMe to replace .Mac will not support 10.3 syncing).
So stop whining and crying. Your G5 Mac will still run just fine with 10.4 or 10.5. I re-installed Tiger on my PowerBook G4 because Tiger runs better on the G4. Just because something new comes out, doesn't mean your Mac will die without it.
I am glad they are dropping PowerPC code. When I decide to get an Intel Mac in a few years, then the OS won't be bloated with dead code.
Wow! Its official.
Now watch as all the complaints from G5 users stream in.
I agree with the move, however.
I'm a G5 owner and i think this is the logical step to keep engineers working on forward technology, and not dragging the company recourses with old weight.
I guess i'll have to get a new Mac. DAMN!
My current iMac G5 only supports 10.4 and 10.5. Is it dead? No. Apple will still provide support for 10.5 and they still support 10.4. They are now moving towards dropping support of 10.3 (the new MobileMe to replace .Mac will not support 10.3 syncing).
So stop whining and crying. Your G5 Mac will still run just fine with 10.4 or 10.5. I re-installed Tiger on my PowerBook G4 because Tiger runs better on the G4. Just because something new comes out, doesn't mean your Mac will die without it.
Hear, hear! My g3 iMac on my bedside table (I use it for light web browsing and as an e-book reader) is still happily running Panther. It does everything I want it to do, and I'm not interested in forcing it to do things it would be slow and inept at. Up until a couple of months ago, it was still being offered at least "security" updates. For Panther! It must have ignored the kill signals that everyone seems to think Cupertino sends out to brick every computer running OS X 10.x when OS X 10.x+1 comes out. Seriously, if your g4 or g5 is running the software you want to run, what's the problem? It's probably the next update of your apps that are going to leave you behind, not Apple. And only because they require more horsepower than your old machine can muster. It's just a fact of life in the computer world. That being said, I'd hate to tell you how recently I used WordStar 5.5 on my 12 MHz 286 DOS machine. (I just liked Wordstar, what can I say?)
I'll be very surprised if Leopard goes away when Snow Leopard debuts. In fact, the very small minority of changes in SL that are relevant to non-quad or octo-core machines will probaby be folded into Leopard as point updates. SL won't come out until at least Q3 09, right? Leopard and Snow Leopard will both be avavilable for their appropriate customers until the next update comes out at the end of 2010 at the earliest. And that's the five years they promised! Who knows, maybe Lion (?) and Mountain Lion (?) will also run in parallel for a couple of years after that. My Centris 610 won't run Leopard, either, but you don't hear me complaining. (I assume it's still in the basement somewhere....)
No, it's Lion and Nittany Lion. Why not name an OS for extinct computers after an extinct mountain lion?
I bought this machine in 2002, and it's running solid with Leopard (albeit with a CPU upgrade and a few other additions) even today. Getting 7 to 8 years out of a machine isn't something to be mad about. Just because your Mac won't run the latest and greatest OS anymore doesn't mean it's by any means obsolete or useless. I can easily see this machine being speedy and useful until the end of 2009.
If your Mac can run 10.4 or greater I'd say you'll be safe for sometime to come. The latest bells and whistles? Perhaps not, but your day to day computing grind won't be hindered.
NO!!
I'm a G5 user, but I won't complain. (I will complain if CS4 leaves G5's behind, however.) But I am a bit surprised. After all the trouble to make the OS more chipset-agnostic, why bother to leave the G5s behind so quickly?
Seems a little blatantly hardware sales-driven, on one hand, but a ways down the line on the other, thankfully.
Clones are coming!
What are we talking about?
Leopard works on 800mhz G4. How old are those? 7, 8 years old?
Tiger....works on G3. How old were the first generation G3's? 10 years old now?
With that kind of track record, I am pretty sure 10.6 will run on at least G5.
Well what I meant by obsolete is that Apple doesn't take long at all before they're releasing both a new OS and new hardware. My MacBook was purchased just 10 months ago but the MacBook line has already been updated with bigger HD's, better graphics cards, Penryn processors ect.
But one thing that is good as you pointed out is that Macs run reliably for years and unlike Vista, Mac OS X works good with much older hardware.
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?
According to this site : Primatelabs, Mac performance (april 2008), the 4 cores PowerMac G5 has a compound score of 3217 while the Dual Core Intel iMac have a compound score between 2652 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz, early 2007) and 3608 (Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 2.8 GHz, mid 2007). So, yes, your G5 is still a very capable machine by today's standard (by comparison, my PowerBook G4 is a joke at 759), but not very impressive anymore. It is as good as any average iMac in fact. So your (expensive) G5 is not much faster than the dual core intel iMac on sale today, sorry.
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"?
For anyone to say "class action", Apple should first say "PPC are unsupported". Since Apple hasn't yet said so, no one can say "class action" yet.
Besides, supporting the PPC, doesn't mean that they have to do so with an OS numbered 10.6. They could easily choose to continue to update 10.5 for as long as they support 10.6...
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?
Some people are quite concerned as to whether the cooling systems in those things would hold up for very long.
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.
OK, so they're somehow going to spend the R&D necessary to keep PPC up to date, only to have it ready just in case their x86 plans wither? That's a needless expense. Keeping OS X Intel compatible all those years was probably not that expensive, maintaining CPU architectures like that is.
Well what I meant by obsolete is that Apple doesn't take long at all before they're releasing both a new OS and new hardware. My MacBook was purchased just 10 months ago but the MacBook line has already been updated with bigger HD's, better graphics cards, Penryn processors ect.
On the hardware side, that's not Apple making them obsolete. If they didn't keep their hardware reasonably up to date, then what they sell would be obsolete.
Yeah, well.
After they acquired PA Semi I was hoping the PowerPC would stay in, or even end this unfortunate Intel alliance!
Good grief. I doubt PA Semi could keep Apple supplied with adequate designs for all their systems, considering that Intel spends (IIRC) billions every year in R&D.
I think many of us feel bitter about the death of PPC for two reasons.
First, it's a defeat or sorts. PPC was something Apple had a personal investment in. It was made, to some extent, for us (though, obviously not exclusively). x86 never felt good enough for Macs because it wasn't custom, it wasn't something made specifically with us in mind. The move to x86 just marked this feeling of mediocrity, and the failure of PPC: the great hope.
You have too much of an attachment to an architecture. You've bought way too much into the RDF on this, Jobs had to make Intel seem bad. Apple for all it's trying couldn't make it viable enough to justify remaining. The architecture of the CPU isn't that important. As long as the CPU fit the specs, it almost doesn't matter except for legacy concerns, because switching architectures is a costly business. All software needs is a CPU that will run it. Processors are quite neutral. If you give it crap instructions, then it will behave badly. Give them good instructions and they will behave well.
...unless you consider that Apple was still selling G5's as recently as 2 years ago.
By the time SL is out, that will be three years. And those systems will probably be supported by most software for another two years. Five years is a pretty good run if you're the type that actually needs to keep up with the latest software. If you're the kind that needs to keep up with software like that, then I'd wager that on or before the fifth year, you're about due for a new computer to keep the software running smoothly anyway.
If you're concerned about this, start saving now. You've got several months.
Officially, I think a year and a bit more.
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
I also work on a NASA mission that runs on several PPC chips, but they're not really close to a G5, more like what was in the old beige PPC Macs (it only runs at 33Mhz), the chip is a RAD6000 if you're interested. BTW - almost all the scientists who work for NASA have Mac laptops. Go to any Astrophysics conference, and I'd say almost 70% of the audience is on Mac laptops. Our mission operations centre uses Mac Pros for many of our mission critical tasks.
According to this site : Primatelabs, Mac performance (april 2008), the 4 cores PowerMac G5 has a compound score of 3217 while the Dual Core Intel iMac have a compound score between 2652 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz, early 2007) and 3608 (Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 2.8 GHz, mid 2007).
Those are only up to April 2008. Since then new iMacs have been released. Primate labs lists even the slowest and cheapest iMac at only $1100 as scoring a 3220 with only 1GB RAM.
PPC is just a legacy ball-and-chain weighing down OS X. Plus, "Grand Central" sounds like it's going to be the killer "app" of 10.6 and how many PPC chips are multi-core?
Exactly.
-Clive
Even as a G4 user, I say let it die.
PPC is just a legacy ball-and-chain weighing down OS X. Plus, "Grand Central" sounds like it's going to be the killer "app" of 10.6 and how many PPC chips are multi-core?
Exactly.
-Clive
The last generation of PowerMac G5s had dual core PPCs.
Also high end Macs have had dual CPUs for ages, I doubt that there any specific difference between a 4 CPU machine and a machine with a 4 core CPU when it comes to Grand Central.
If you're concerned about this, start saving now. You've got several months.
Or you could be like those of us that now have yet another reason to not upgrade to 10.5, which appears to have some issues. Great, I wait for about a year and get an OS that is feature equal to 10.5 plus QTX and new file system and grand central and big bonus it's best feature is that lacks the problems that 10.5 has although those problems appear to be going away slowly.