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The Future of Mac OS X on PowerPC
by , 3:15 PM EDT, October 1st, 2007
Whenever Apple comes out with a major new release of its OS, some Macintosh hardware gets left behind. While Leopard includes support for PowerPC Macs, it's worth looking at Apple's history to see if Mac OS X 10.6 will abandon the entire PowerPC line, according to Daniel Dilger at Roughly Drafted.
"Previous versions of Apple’s OS have drawn the line for officially supported Macs based on practical considerations, rather than just being arbitrary or artificial. Here's what the past suggests for Mac OS X Leopard and the version that comes after it," Mr. Dilger wrote.
It turns out that there are some fairly frequently used metrics for deciding whether a new OS version needs to leave a line of hardware behind. By looking at how Apple has done this going all the way back to System 7 in 1996, it's possible to make a good prediction about what Mac OS X 10.6 will support.
While Apple has a tendency to make radical changes in hardware, such as the Motorola 680x0 transition to PowerPC, then PowerPC to Intel, the pace of change has still afforded a rather generous position by Apple in how far back they go.
For example, "The release of Mac OS X Panther 10.3 in 2003 extended support back to Macs with G3 processors and built-in support for USB. This wasn't due to an actual requirement for USB, but rather a shorthand way to describe a cutoff for the support of the significantly different architecture of "Old World" Macs designed prior to the iMac, as all New World Macs also provided support for USB. Panther retained a roughly five year support window for existing Mac models," Mr. Dilger noted.
Another major factor to consider is the aggregate of how many Macs lie within, say, a five year window in the past. For example, the majority of the installed base of Macs today, about 22 million, is still PowerPC. These customers will be buying software well into 2010. In addition, the architecture of recent Macs, even through the PPC to Intel transition, hasn't changed that much since 2003.
There are additional technical considerations, thanks to the way Apple has set up its 32- and 64-bit architectures, something Microsoft has had trouble with. The bottom line was easy to arrive at. "Worrying about 10.6 or even 10.7 being Intel-only shouldn't be among anyone's greatest concerns," Mr. Dilger concluded.
Observer Comments
Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:33 pm Subject: long of the tooth
I think by 10.6 I'll be ready to move on. I think getting another year may be possible of my G4 MDD. I think supporting the thing with a new OS 7 years out from it's birth is a bit much to expect. And it will run 10.4 & 5.
Really, what do you expect? try running Vista on a 7 year old PC. In fact, try running it on a 1 year old PC.
In my case I bought a DUAL PowerMacG5@2,3Ghz in early 2005... This machine is going to be 3 years old next January and it still runs like the monster it is... Everything runs smoothly and all my Intel friends get amazed while using it... I upgraded it to 8Gb's of Ram and an AGP 8x Pro ATI FireGL T2 graphics card... I think it can take way more OSÒ‘s for a few more years. The hardware cuts should go along gradually as requirements increase (like the 800Mhz cut in Leopard), there are a lot of users, developers and pros like me with this kind of G5's that want to buy 10.6 and 10.7 and 10.8 and even 11.0... Until the hardware doesnÒ‘t meet the limit to control the software it should be like this. ;=)
Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:54 pm Subject: Five year from now!
I seem to recall Apple making an official statement as to the length of PPC support when they first announced the switch to Intel. Some quick searching reveals no such announcement, though, except from Microsoft regarding Office, so maybe I'm just confused. -_-
Apple made some arbitrary judgments about supported hardware with Tiger. Specifically, only Macs with built-in FireWire are supported. That means my old iMac DV+ is supported, but the low-end iMac from that same generation, which is nearly identical, is not. I'm pretty sure Tiger will install just fine on those machines without FireWire, but they are not "supported".
Regardless, that's a respectable range of Macs that are officially supported. The newest unsupported machine was released in the summer of 2000, just about 5 years before Tiger's release, and was discontinued in early 2001. The oldest supported machine was released in '99.
I would guess that 10.6 will have PPC support, but 10.7 will not. If Apple maintains a 2-year upgrade cycle (it's been 2.5 for Leopard, actually), that will put 10.7's release in late 2011, more than 5 years after the G5s were discontinued.
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