Snow Leopard + Power PC???

Adam Vincent wrote:
I guess I'll post this more as a question since my last post was removed. Why no Power PC support? This means some of my apps are eventually going to stop working properly, because upgrades will no longer be made for them. I have a trusty old G4 that I would rather not become a paperweight. I just bought Leopard for $129 or so for it not that long ago. This means sooner than later I'm going to HAVE to get an Intel machine for X thousand dollars. There's nothing wrong with my G4. Sorry just a little frustrated at being sort of forced to pay to keep up.

Your existing apps should continue to work just fine. What you eventually won't be able to do is upgrade them.

I guess you haven't read much about Snow Leopard then.

The huge reduction in install size and speed improvements is because they stripped out the code for PPC processors which Apple hasn't sold in 3 years (Sept 2006 was the last model to be discontinued). Since the average computer user upgrades their computer every 3 years... the timing is right.

Not being to load the latest OS is not going to make your PPC Mac stop working. This version of Leopard is focusing of the future of Macs.. not the past.

Your machine is 7 or 8 years old. There is a real cost to Apple to maintain and QA PPC support, and it seems they've decided it's not worth it.

You can run Leopard on that machine as long as you want; it's not necessarily a paperweight. But yes, if you want to run an OS post 10.5, at some point you'll have to move to Intel.

You can keep your system running as long as you like. I have found that over time your system will not be able to handle the newer apps and the lack of speed and memory will keep you bogged you down and your current machine will become very slow trying to processes the larger programs.

Anyways here is a list of my still working paperweights, for the older programs and floppy disks I still get from time to time.

G4 APG *400 MHz* Nov 1999 -June 2009
(Upgraded June 2003 CPU *1.0 GHz* (1,000 MHz)) G4 AGP/Powerlogix 1.0Ghz
2GB RAM,
optical drive DVR106 and again to DVR112D,
video Radeon 9800Pro Mac Edetion
PCI Cards; Tempo SATA w/2ea HD 300GB, to get over the 128GB limit on the IDE HD drive
SCSI Card,
USB 2.1 Card 4ports and one internal port
removed Zip 100 drive and replaced with front 3.5" hub with four USB 2.0 (via PCI card) and two Firewire (400) ports (via 3rd FW port on motherboard)
.
.
Quada 605 *25 MHz* (replaced Motherboard in LC II ) June 1996-Nov 1999  LC II *16 MHz* April 1992- Nov 1999
.
.
Mac 512e *8 MHz* April 1986-April 1992 w/ a 10MB external HD and a 400KB drives and a 800 Kb drive, ( it could read both sides of the floppy )
.
.
OS systems I have owned>
.
2, 3, 4, 5, (Never used 6) 7, (Never used 8), 9, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 & soon 10.6
.
I also have a Mac Plus (1Mhz), given to me. which I use as a door stop.

Message was edited by: Matthew Trageser

Word for OS X was first released in 2004, then again in 2008. That's every 4 years.

But who needs Word, period? There's free alternatives (Neo Office, Open Office) that work just as well.

The only way for any computer company to really make money is by further improving the hardware and software. That's just how it is!

If your computer suits your needs for now, that's excellent. Keep on using it, but keep watching the new software and hardware developments. Eventually your computer just won't be able to keep up anymore--or you may find it doesn't suit your needs as well--and you'll have no choice but to upgrade.

~Lyssa

Those folks at Microsoft could be accused of the same behaviour.

You can't buy XP anymore (at least not from MS) and you can't run Windows 7 on that same PC.
So does that mean Microsoft is forcing you to upgrade your hardware just so you can run the latest and greatest version of Windows?

Well at least Microsoft don't mind you running Windows 7 on a 1GHz Pentium III form 1999! Even 500MHz PCs have run Windows 7! Whereas Apple won't let a 3 year old Mac run the latest and greatest and even try to force you to upgrade in a recession. Personally I would like 10.6 for PPC even if it is released 6 months after the Intel version.

Also for as long as I can get PPC software of the latest versions I'll stick to my PPC Powerbook for now even if I have to use 3rd party software! As long as it continues to keep up on the internet and for my needs! I mean it can't be possibly fast enough to run Snow Leopard when it CAN run 720p HD videos AND Leopard VERY WELL!

What I've heard says that Snow Leopard is practically the same as Leopard except for performance increases and a few new features! If they want to strip the PPC code to make it faster on Intel macs then let them but then they can make a PPC version and strip the Intel code out the PPC version and make that faster giving PPC macs a few more years of use for their owners!!!

What's the point of snow leopard on your ppc? No 64-bit support, no OpenCL support, no multicore support...Your hardware doesn't support any of the new features of Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard without these features would be just... Leopard. You can get that now. No one is forcing you to upgrade, you can stay with your ppc. However, some people would like to see some of the new technology that's already on windows (gpu processing etc.). Snow Leopard for ppc already exists. It's 10.5.8.

Well at least Microsoft don't mind you running Windows 7 on a 1GHz Pentium III form 1999! Even 500MHz PCs have run Windows 7!

They don't sell computers, just Windows. They make all their money from software. It is worth it to them to put extra development money into Windows to make it work on older computers so they can sell more copies.

Whereas Apple won't let a 3 year old Mac run the latest and greatest

Apple develops the OS to sell their computers. It happens to work on older Intel Macs, and they are selling it for those Macs at a very low price. It is unlikely they are making much profit at $29. If they were only concerned for money, they could have made it available only on new computers, forcing customers to buy new hardware to get the new software.

and even try to force you to upgrade in a recession.

Nobody's forcing you to upgrade.

Personally I would like 10.6 for PPC even if it is released 6 months after the Intel version.

Would you be willing to pay enough to cover the development costs?

Also for as long as I can get PPC software of the latest versions I'll stick to my PPC Powerbook for now even if I have to use 3rd party software! As long as it continues to keep up on the internet and for my needs! I mean it can't be possibly fast enough to run Snow Leopard when it CAN run 720p HD videos AND Leopard VERY WELL!

What I've heard says that Snow Leopard is practically the same as Leopard except for performance increases and a few new features! If they want to strip the PPC code to make it faster on Intel macs then let them but then they can make a PPC version and strip the Intel code out the PPC version and make that faster giving PPC macs a few more years of use for their owners!!!

They could make a PPC optimized version, but it would not help sales of new computers, so development costs would have to be covered entirely from sales of the software. It might be hard to set a price that would sell enough copies to owners of older Macs that would generate enough money to cover costs.

Well they could just sell it at the standard OS X price of $89 or even a bit more. At least they could support machines up to 5 or 6 years old like with Tiger which could run on a B&W G3! Also the G4 was used right to the end of PPC and the G5 was 64Bit and no OS X version has yet fully supported 64Bit and it would help the G5 be properly supported before it's cut off! The G4 should be supported because it was the last laptop CPU Apple used of the PPC architecture so they should at least support the Aluminum Powerbooks and the late iBook G4s even if without the new features because new software will eventually cut support for Leopard if Apple cut support for the PPC and new software won't require a universal binary!

If Apple hadn't changed architecture these machines would not be facing such problems as people were always willing to make hacks etc (which is next to impossible when you change to a completely different architecture) and most software without high requirements like MS Office and iWork kept support for old machines. But now these machines will have zero use because even simple applications will have no support for PPC!

Done yet?

Lyssa wrote:
Word for OS X was first released in 2004, then again in 2008.

Don't forget Office v.x, evidently released in (roughly) early 2002:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1393/2002/02/office.html

Adam Vincent wrote:
Safari updates finally stopped. Safari got more and more bugs.

Non-updated software doesn't develop bugs.