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OS 10.5 - Snow Leopard and G5s
Have I just missed it? Is there a thread somewhere about this topic that I just can't find?
Buried discreetly at the bottom of the breathless advertising prose for Snow Leopard on the Apple site is the disquieting note that Snow Leopard is ONLY supported on Intel Macs. This is a real blow to those of us who still own G5 based Macs.
I have been a Mac user, and a big Apple fan, since 2006. This is the first time in those three years that Apple has done anything that pi**ed me off, but they have done so this time. Abandoning their legacy (i.e. G5) customers at this point, only three years after the intro of the Intel Macs, seems darn hasty to me. I am NOT happy with this.
There is never a GOOD time to end support for a hardware family, but I would have expected Snow Leopard to support the G5s. I had expected Snow Leopard to be the last version of OS X to support G5s, so I am somewhat realistic, but to do it WITH Snow Leopard seems too soon to me.
My two cents.
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Leopard works very well on a G5 and will be supported for a long time to come. Snow Leopard is all about Optimization. Leopard is way too large and needed to shrink. Taking out Power PC support makes a big difference in size and also speed. Snow Leopard is fully 64 Bit. I know the G5 is a 64 Bit CPU but having code for both Intel and PPC just bogs down the whole OS. Most of the improvements in SL would only really work on an Intel Multi Core CPU anyway. Just keep using Leopard on the G5's. New Safari is out for it and even for Tiger.
It had to happen eventually and am glad SL got rid of all that code. Remember this is from a person with all G4-G5 machines except for my Heavily Modded Intel Mac Mini and I feel this way.
i believe the intent with snow leopard was to take advantage of the intel chips and make a smaller footprint for the install. This was achieved by getting rid of PPC code.
To be fair, and this is easy for me to say as an Intel Mac owner, the transition to Intel was ~3 years ago. The transition had to come sooner than later. In a perfect world, they could have had a PPC build and an Intel build but that would defeat the purpose of moving to all Intel Macs.
I get the feeling that what each of us believes is a reasonable transition time are greatly different .
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As others have said, this was about optimizing Leopard heavily for Intel. To do the same for G5 (and again for G4 to placate Powerbook owners) would have meant twice the work, twice the hassle, and really, compromises in the end to maintain a relatively seamless experience between the two platforms. It totally defeats the point. Making a G5-optimized build would mean forks in app compatibility and programming, and you would gradually see two Mac platforms develop and co-exist so long G5 systems are still ticking. Do you REALLY think Apple wants that? Or should?
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As others have said, this was about optimizing Leopard heavily for Intel. To do the same for G5 (and again for G4 to placate Powerbook owners) would have meant twice the work, twice the hassle, and really, compromises in the end to maintain a relatively seamless experience between the two platforms. It totally defeats the point. Making a G5-optimized build would mean forks in app compatibility and programming, and you would gradually see two Mac platforms develop and co-exist so long G5 systems are still ticking. Do you REALLY think Apple wants that? Or should?
I reject the idea that it would take twice as much effort. More effort, sure, but this is 2009, not 1979. Apple does not have legions of programmers writing x86 assembly code by hand; the code is quite portable. Supporting two architectures is not a big deal.
And for what it's worth, Microsoft will still support 1GHz machines in Windows 7. Microsoft's goal is to sell as many copies of Windows as possible; Apple's goal is to sell as many new Macintels as possible. It's all about priorities.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by technologist
And for what it's worth, Microsoft will still support 1GHz machines in Windows 7. Microsoft's goal is to sell as many copies of Windows as possible; Apple's goal is to sell as many new Macintels as possible. It's all about priorities.
That's not entirely a fair comparison. Windows was built from the get go around x86 processors. Hence why it's much easier for Microsoft to make an OS that will work on older hardware. With OS X, the oldest hardware Snow Leopard can support is the first iteration of Intel Macs.
Leopard's ability to run on slower G4s is a good indicator that SL is perfectly capable of supporting slower hardware, probably more so than Leopard, but the problem is that there was a change in architecture. So it's not like SL is limited to fast hardware while Windows is more scalable, it's just that there isn't any slower hardware to support for SL.
I reject the idea that it would take twice as much effort. More effort, sure, but this is 2009, not 1979. Apple does not have legions of programmers writing x86 assembly code by hand; the code is quite portable. Supporting two architectures is not a big deal.
And for what it's worth, Microsoft will still support 1GHz machines in Windows 7. Microsoft's goal is to sell as many copies of Windows as possible; Apple's goal is to sell as many new Macintels as possible. It's all about priorities.
PowerPC support is trivial for the simple stuff... it's much less so once you start getting down & dirty with CPU optimized code and hardware-level stuff.
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.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by technologist
I reject the idea that it would take twice as much effort. More effort, sure, but this is 2009, not 1979. Apple does not have legions of programmers writing x86 assembly code by hand; the code is quite portable. Supporting two architectures is not a big deal.
Even if you are right about the code being more portable, I still suspect that it remains that optimizing for each platform would leave apps in a state where you may have un-optimized Universal binaries performing at less than their potential, or developers would have to develop separately for G5 and Intel. That may or may not force them to have one of each type of machine to develop on. And many may simply choose to not support the G5-optimized build. I'm no programmer, so I concede my opinion is hardly well-qualified, but it certainly seems reasonable based on what little I do know.
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I understand the need to get rid of legacy code, but my oh my, the times they are a changin'... I remember harumpphh'ing when Windows ME came out and a clean install took a little over 1 GB. What a waste of space! What a ton of bloatware! How VERY Microsoft...
Fast forward to today. I have to say that saving 6 GB of space on today's terabyte drives just seems ... inconsequential. I think Apple could easily have decided to retain G5 support for one more release, at least from a "space saved" perspective.
I am still PO'd at the whole thing. I was looking forward to the changes now called GCD making my G5 feel a whole lot faster. Not going to happen now I guess...
...and even though I understand it, I am also PO'd at having to pay $699, as an existing iPhone 3G customer, to step up to the 3G S 32 GB. I understand, but I am still PO'd... and a little poorer too, because I *will* upgrade!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mac57
...and even though I understand it, I am also PO'd at having to pay $699, as an existing iPhone 3G customer, to step up to the 3G S 32 GB. I understand, but I am still PO'd... and a little poorer too, because I *will* upgrade!
Of course you have to pay to step up. You haven't fulfilled your contract obligation under which AT&T is recovering the subsidy they gave you on your iPhone 3G. Why this ticks people off... I just don't get! This is how it works on every carrier for every subsidized phone. What in the **** is wrong with all these people?
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I just think it is a difference in approach between MS and Apple. MS always strives to retain backwards compatibility, especially when many businesses have essential but badly written legacy windows apps.
If I hadn't bought my intel macbook I would still be a happy mac user on my 7 year old quicksilver G4 stuck with Tiger.
Apple are just ditching some legacy code and preparing OS X for the future. Its not about saving space but keeping OS X lean and easily adaptable to any future trends.
Unfortunately, if that leaves some users behind, Apple are not afraid of breaking some eggs
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It is all a matter of progress, marketing and bucks. Note comments by S Jobs recently about Intel and Java for starters. We have had all these same arguments when Classic was dropped, and even before that when PPC was first released with machines such as the 5200. And the problems we faced updating to OS X without first updating firmware.
Have purchased a Dual Core G5 and will be more than happy to run Leopard for the next few years.
Unfortunately, if that leaves some users behind, Apple are not afraid of breaking some eggs
Nor should they. No company should stop innovating to appease a group of users using a product that is not longer manufactured. I actually applaud Apple for supporting the PPC for the ~3 years its been since the transition. I'm surprised they did it for so long.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mac57
Fast forward to today. I have to say that saving 6 GB of space on today's terabyte drives just seems ... inconsequential. I think Apple could easily have decided to retain G5 support for one more release, at least from a "space saved" perspective.
Sure they could have but when is enough enough? After SL is released and 10.7 is being developed, what's stopping PPC users from again saying, "why not one more release?" At some point Apple had to let PPC support go and now is a great time to do it.
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"It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience." - Immanuel Kant Website : Twitter
M-F MotM - April 2009.
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