Mac Specs: White MacBook. iLife '08. iWork '08. Mac OS X 10.5.7
There is still a large group of PowerPC users. If Apple wants people to switch, they should offer to give a discount to those people. Otherwise, many will say "Why should I get an intel mac? Why should I pay money for a new computer when my current one works just fine?". Therefore, Apple should either continue support, or offer incentives for PPC users who want to upgrade to intel machines.
Mac Specs: Black Macbook C2D 2GHz 3GB RAM 250GB HD
PPC users aren't being compelled to upgrade to Snow Leopard. It's not like their machines are going to be turned off upon Snow Leopard's release or anything like that. Their computers are working just fine right now and Leopard is a solid OS. So they don't get to enjoy some of the newer features, that's what happens when you have progress. I'm sure plenty of G3 users complained when Leopard dropped G3 support, but their machines still work fine to this day on Panther/Tiger.
There is no reason for Apple to provide monetary incentives for PPC users to upgrade to Intel machines. If PPC users feel like they absolutely need certain Snow Leopard features, then they know what they have to do to obtain them. It's the price you pay for progress.
Mac Specs: Mac Pro 2 x 2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS 10.5.2
Quote:
Originally Posted by iPod Nano
There is still a large group of PowerPC users. If Apple wants people to switch, they should offer to give a discount to those people. Otherwise, many will say "Why should I get an intel mac? Why should I pay money for a new computer when my current one works just fine?". Therefore, Apple should either continue support, or offer incentives for PPC users who want to upgrade to intel machines.
My early Intel Mac Pro works just fine. Maybe Apple should give me a discount to a new one as an incentive to upgrade also. Otherwise, why would I upgrade when what I have works fine?
__________________ It's a "Mac", not a "MAC". There is no such thing as a "MACintosh" computer.
Mac Specs: White MacBook. iLife '08. iWork '08. Mac OS X 10.5.7
But I'm saying that if apple wants to stop offer tech support or service to PPC machines and want people to get an intel instead, there needs to be an incentive.
Mac Specs: Mac Pro 2 x 2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS 10.5.2
Quote:
Originally Posted by iPod Nano
But I'm saying that if apple wants to stop offer tech support or service to PPC machines and want people to get an intel instead, there needs to be an incentive.
They've never supported ANY machine indefinitely or given discounts for owners of machines no longer supported. Why should G5 users be any different? G5 users WILL get an Intel Mac eventually when their current system no longer suits their needs. As stated many a time... they don't mysteriously stop working when they are no longer supported.
__________________ It's a "Mac", not a "MAC". There is no such thing as a "MACintosh" computer.
Mac Specs: Mac Pro 2 x 2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS 10.5.2
I just stumbled across an interesting article that details why support for PPC was dropped from Snow Leopard.
Quote:
PowerPC is being dropped from Snow Leopard because there is no similar performance advantage with the PowerPC architecture in going 64-bit as there is in moving from x86 to x64. X64/AMD64 offers twice as many general purpose registers as x86, and that's where virtually all of the performance boost derives. The performance gain usually offsets any performance loss associated with using larger data items by ~15% but not uncommonly by as much as 25%.
Not the case with PowerPC. The number of general purpose registers is unchanged between 32-bit and 64-bit PPC, so applications are left with the performance loss of using larger datums in 64-bit mode. As a result, PowerPC apps typically run a little slower in 64-bit mode than in 32-bit mode.
But I'm saying that if apple wants to stop offer tech support or service to PPC machines and want people to get an intel instead, there needs to be an incentive.
Does Apple still support the 68k processor based Macs? Do car companies offer incentives when they stop production of the 08s? Aside from maybe some small cases, this never happens and why should it?
With all multithreading optimizations GCD is set to offer and the general focus on optimization (which can be partially achieved by writing code that can target specific processor features), supporting PowerPC would have definitely been quite non-trivial. Sure they could have done it, but in a release that prioritized streamlining the code base, it doesn't really make sense.
To the degree that features need to be optimized for a specific instruction set, yes. But there should be* nothing about Grand Central (or multicore programming in general) that is specific to any ISA. Grand Central is just an abstraction layer for fundamental programming techniques which are the same regardless of whether the cores in question are PowerPC, Intel, or SPARC.
