Snow Leopard officially puts PowerPC Macs on endangered species list
By Tim Stevens 
posted Jun 10th 2009 7:06AM
posted Jun 10th 2009 7:06AM
[Via MacRumors]
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Good, I always thought Micro$oft should do that with windows to keep people from using newer os's on old junkers. PowerPCs no matter how fast they are don't compare with intel based macs these days and having used leopard on a G5, this is a good move because leopard ran like crap on anything that wasn't intel based
The last PowerPC G5's were sold in the first half of 2006. That's barely 3 years old now for a computer that most likely cost a few thousand dollars at least.
This is poor business in my eye on many factors, without even mentionning how much landfill these Apple PC's probably use up once their owners find out they can't get the latest and greatest on them.
@Rask
I have never seen a Mac in a landfill or in a pile of junk waiting by someone's garbage can. People usually keep old Macs like antiques.
@Paul
There was a blue iMac at the local recycling depot last Saturday when I dropped off my garden waste.
@Mark Anderson
Well, I saw an albino squirrel once, so anything is possible, but it's extremely rare. Seeing a Mac in a landfill is almost as rare as seeing a Zune in public!
Wait a minute... You put a $ instead of an S for Mircrosoft!!!! You're so cool!
Computer specs are advancing year-to-year faster than ever. In 2006 I picked up a 1.6Ghz laptop with 512MB of RAM and an 80 GB hard drive for roughly the same amount of money I just spent on a 2.53Ghz laptop with 4GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive. I obviously run XP on the former, Vista Premium 64-bit on the latter. Vista Premium 64-bit would run like pure crap on the former. The point is, specs advance, and so follows the software.
@Paul
Well since you're British and the Zune isn't on release here I'd say it'd would be pretty bloody rare.
You're right though - there's probably ten to twenty times as many PCs in landfills as Macs and I guess there's a reason for that. Wonder what it could be?
***
Engadget Note: As we all know Paul will come back with some variant of "Coz PCS break and are crap and Macs last 4EVA!" it's actually because PCs sell about 20 times more volume than Macs. Yo may return to your regularly scheduled reading now.
@Rask
This switch to an intel based platform was announced in 2005 though. Anyone who bought a PowerPC based Mac after that should have known that the platform would no longer be supported at some point. Plus I'm sure if you ask any computer company would tell you that you should upgrade your computer after 3 years ;)
@Mark Anderson
Well, thanks for making the insults easier for me!
But seriously, all you have to do is go back to my original statement. Old Macs are like antiques. Why? Because of the design. A beige box is not a collectors item (although Apple made many a biege box back in the day). A Bondi Blue iMac is.
And scarcity automatically makes something more valuable. BMWs, which have 2 percent of the car market, is always going to be more valued than say, a Buick, which probably outsells BMWs three to one (because they're cheap).
Of course, I don't foresee this same scarcity phenomenon for the Zune, I'm sad to say. Especially that first model.
landfill knowledge...
we have tramps posting here apparently
I actually take a lot of my trash to a residential landfill and can state in the affirmative. I have never seen a Mac thrown away. PCs yes, Macs no. And of course, if I ever do see a Mac in the trash, I'll probably grab it and sell it on Ebay.
Sorry, I don't agree that 10.5 doesn't run well on PowerPC-based systems. I have Leopard installed on an old 1GHz G4 PowerBook and it runs fine. I strongly suspect that it would much better on a G5-based system so I am quite certain that the system resources of the older systems are not an issue.
@Kelmon
Exactly darn right. Apple isn't going to support it because they made a MAJOR CHIP CHANGE three years ago. It's not like that's going to happen every three years. It's just an unfortunate consequence of making such a drastic change.
Tyrant Apple forces you to wholly upgrade hardware-wise, your 3 year old Mac to support their newest OS and you people still moan, whine and bitch at how horrible and evil MS is because Vista is slow on 8 year old machines (which are the only machines around with less than 2GB of RAM, which in turn are the only machines that Vista really is slow on - and cheap laptops of course).
You defend by saying, oh...we were warned beforehand, so it's ok. Seriously? Wow, just...wow. I swear to God that Steve Jobs has sold his soul to Satan and really does have a dead-loyal following. Apple really can't do any wrong.
Apple spills milk = the glass was slippery, the milk was heavy
MS/Dell/Gateway/Acer-etc. spills milk = the hand is diseased, the hand is frail, the hand SUCKS!, the hand is CHEAP!
@Paul - Macs are PCs too! Stop using their names to mean otherwise!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer
@CreepinJesus
No.
Why do all of you die hard windows fans hate Apple so much? is it because you don't like their product? you don't like their customers? or you don't like competition?
because you guys actually sound more like trolls than Paul, this sounds like a witch hunt
murmermer:
Their attitude, their fans' attitude (not plural. hivemind), their users attitude.
A lot of Apple's success is based on the ignorance of their customers.
@Paul
You think... an old blue iMac is an antique piece of art to be kept?
...
Jesus you're sad.
Wow. I don't think I've ever been to a landfill in my 19 year old life. And if I did, the Mac-to-PC ratio of discarded computers would be the second to last of my concerns. The last, of course, being the release of Windows 7.
@Paul a. Chapel
"Well, I saw an albino squirrel once"
Albino squirrel? Isn't that the name of the next version of Ubuntu? :P
@inno8sky, who said: "Hey shit for brains (Paul) there seems to be a significant amount of beige in apple's past."
Which is ironic since I actually said "Apple made many a biege box back in the day."
I hate fanboys/girls, ignorant consumers, and misleading computer ads.
I use Vista, 7, XP, Leopard, Tiger, FreeBSD, s60, and WinMo.
I'm not a fan of companies, I'm a fan of their products. I'm hoping others will do the same in the future. It's best for the consumer and they wouldn't sound like idiots.
To give you an example of how crazy people are about old Macs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soyburger/sets/72157594228629049/
Writing this on my HP TC1100 built in 2003 (1.1 ghz). Bumped up the memory to a gig and runs Vista good. Moved on the Window 7, now it runs like butta. Pending there is no future major hardware problem, I can see myself using this machine for another 4 to 5 years.
@Paul
Actually that's a great example of how some people are just crazy period.
If you see a computer in a landfill, someone's doing it wrong.
They get recycled.
I strongly disagree... I have a Dual 2 Ghz PwerPC G5 and have run Leopard since the morning it was released. It runs flawlessly!!!! This is the reason that I switched from PC to mac in 2004 and have never looked back.
I don't own an intel computer because the only benefit that I saw was to run Windows on it....why on earth would I want to do that!!
@Mark Anderson, who said: "Actually that's a great example of how some people are just crazy period."
Says the guy who claims to own a MacBook.
A Macbook. Singular.
I used the plural form?
It does seem a bit early. My work machine is a Power Mac G5 dual-core 2.0 running Leopard. Having recently used a G3 600 with Jaguar, I'm actually quite surprised at how slow the G5 feels. I think it's Leopard's fault -- just feels sluggish, while Tiger on my 4x2.66 Mac Pro at home flies. I obviously understand the latter SHOULD be a lot faster, but the Leopard machine exhibits quite a few hangs that I am not used to seeing on a Mac. While I haven't tested it same-for-same on any specific Mac, I feel that Leopard is the first OS X release to feel *slower* than the previous one.
Frankly, I blame Leopard more than the "old" G5 technology. I'm used to old Macs lasting at least 5 years (hell I used that old iBook as my only computer for 5 years!) so this seems early. It would have been nice to have Snow Leopard be the final PPC release, bringing some speed improvements over Leopard and giving the PPC platform a few more years of life.
@ all y'all
Please stop bickering so the teacher will give us milk and cookies after recess.
Did Paul just admit that you have to be crazy to own a MacBook?
Yes, I did.
Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
@Paul
Good show, good show.
Reference for those who didn't know.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#33XwMb/www.elise.com/quotes/a/heres_to_the_crazy_ones.php/topic:Philosophy
I think the Ubuntu release is actually Squishy Squirrel, in keeping with the alliteration and all.
Contrary to popular belief just because 10.6 comes out in late 2009, Intel only, doesn't mean 10.4 or 10.5 running on a PPC Mac will magically stop working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvn_Ied9t4M
i am running 10.5 on my powerbook just fine, and although i cannot upgrade to snow leopard, i haven't seen that there are too many new features i cant live without. i will just wait till 2011 when they ship OS11 and buy a new laptop with intel
I've manage to install Leopard on my old Gigabit G4 (even though it technicaly can't be installed on that machine) and it Leopard runs just fine.
@UnixSysEng:
how many spaces are you using on your 10.5 system?
I noticed that when i went from 6 spaces down to 4 things speeded up quite a bit.
-j
@Paul, your trolling is legendary, albeit sycophantic. By the way, your BMW/Mac analogy is garbage because iPod’s outnumber Zune 80:1…which by your account would make the iPod a Buick. Of course, if you actually used a Zune, you’d realize it’s every bit as functional as your iPod.
Read: Basically the same product.
Pompous ass.
@Paul a. Chapel,
first let me say that you, my good sir are one of the worst examples of an apple fanboy.
there are more windows computers (not PCs because the term "PC" accounts for both windows computers and macs.) in landfills because Microsoft has 90% of the computer market share, while apple only has, what (i think at the last count) 7 to 9% of the computer market share.
therefore there is roughly a 10 to 1 ratio for each windows computer sold in comparison to apple computers.
with more computers sold, there, should, by definition, be more windows computers in landfills.
@Rask & @ Paul a. Chapel
Don't send reasonably new (or old) hardware to the wastesites if it doesn't have to. This move by Apple is pretty artificial in that respect because many of them are in use and could be used onwards. Fret not, you can still have the latest security and software updates if you install Linux :) Debian Gnu/Linux has support for the powerpc architecture, and a 64-bit-only PowerPC port (ppc64) in the works (according to wikipedia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Architectures
Paul, I have never seen a Mac or Windows computer (avoiding the PC term since they are both PCs) at a trash dump because, well, I don't spend my weekends hanging out at trash dumps. Apparently you do.
Nice comment on the Zune! You are just so hateful towards the Zune and Microsoft, aren't you? Hate, hate, hate. All you do is spread your sad little form of hate.
@moldymac
I have a Dual G4 PowerMac and an iMac G5 at home, both run Leopard absolutely fine. However it was inevitable that Apple were going to leave PPC behind eventually. I think they have absolutely done the right thing. I will get Snow Leopard for my MacBook and be happy with the others running Leopard.
And the G4 torrent server running Tiger... heh.
I've still got my working MacPlus and it doesn't even run OSX or 9 or 7 or whatever. Really, who gives a crap. I'm still running some aging G4 FW800 dualie with Tiger Server and it needs to be finally replaced (a damaged Level 3 cache) with any Intel Mac computer. Snow Leopard will force me to upgrade from a five-year-old computer. Big deal. I got my money's worth out of it running 24/7 for a few years. Oh, Apple is making me suffer terribly. Bunch of whiners. Continue running your older computers with Tiger or Leopard. It won't kill ya and you're not exactly orphaned.
If you're not running at least one Intel Mac by now, then screw it. You darn sure don't need Snow Leopard for gains in speed which is what it was designed for. If you gripers don't want your G5s because they can't run Snow Leopard, I'll take a couple of them and be happy with them running Tiger Server 24/7. For a fact, G4s do not run Leopard faster than Tiger. Leopard does seem to get more frames out of a graphics card, but overall it's slower.
Apple is nowhere near other OS's.
1. Apple ties you to specific hardware. Nifty looking imacs, laptops, minis, but try to change a graphic card, which we know its industry most non consistent part of the machine. Thanks god you can add-on ram. Everything else soldered on board :)
2. While its OS is advertised as most advanced (i remember Steve saying 10 years on promo), it happens that 2 3 4 years old macs are stuck with old operating system. But its not just the os. Compare this to windows or linux OS, and get a conclusion yourself.
3. Software that comes along with it is also problematic, and that is most important. While people are ok without stacks, or new features in snowL, they wont be ok when they try to install newer versions of software which will require newer OS.
4. Third party software tied to the operating system version!? Plugins, addons, flash players, dvd video players.... Why is this so, read on the next bullet. Can someone find a positive thinking in this?
5. Development is awful, the developer tools are tied to specific version of OS. SDKs run on current versions of operating systems. You can develop for earlier releases on current, but you cannot develop for current on earlier release, which for developers mean, that apple has a lot of not consistent changes inside the OS. Just for comparison, you can install VS2008 on windows XP, vista, and win 7. And you can choose to develop windows mobile different version, dependent on which sdk you use.
6. Java is never current on OSX, PPC worst.
7. Advertisement of show stoppers, as improved features...
"LESS call drop"!? What is this!? former version had more call drops, newer has less. buy it it definitely has call drops just less!?
Examples of apple most advanced:
You cant use Xcode iphone 3 SDK on 10.4.11. (Aggravated customer of 10.4)
You can throw your PPC mac G5 in garbage, thats it for G-s. (Aggravated customers of PPC Macs)
3 versions of iphone in 2 years. (Aggravated customers of iphone 1 and 2)
Conclusion:
Seems that apple has no direction where to go. Proof is that you can buy a nice 3000 $ laptop with intel GMA TODAY, and nobody in apple store will tell you that major snowL feature is CUDA which works on NVidia macs aaaand some of ATIs.
I personally own 3 apple apparatus at home, and that is going to change.
My iMac G5 is softly crying.
With its age you shouldn't worry, it'll have forgotten all about this by dinner time.
KarlW,
My wife says computers (and consoles) should last 10 years before you have to upgrade. Didn't you know that.
Why is your iMac G5 crying?
Not sure what all of you are whining about... Snow Leopard is only an enhancement of Leopard. Your iMac G5 processor has only 1 core so it cannot take advantage of the new threading techniques because the processor does not support threading. The GPU on your iMac is extremely weak these days so getting to also process every day tasks that SL will also allow it to handle will further slow your system down. The fact of the matter is that most of the features that are enhanced in SL, will work on most G5 systems.
Just as Apple still supports Tiger, Apple will support Leopard after September. You will do just fine next year on the OS out today. Your computer will not magically die in September.
The only people that I can see complaining are those with dual or quad processor PowerMac G5's. Those can support a few things in SL that the rest of the G5's cannot.
VTEC inside! (I got a B16A2 under the hood!)
@smoke_me_a_kipper
If it involves anything with transistors or tires, when ever your wife says anything about it just smile, nod and ignore whatever was said.
@Smoke_me_a_Kipper
Did your wife happen to be somehow affiliated with Sony?
@Smoke_me_a_Kipper: Your wife is wrong.
It should be crying. Technological advances have consigned it to the dustbin of history. Oh, btw, two reason you might not see macs in dump landfill ... more and more have recycling programs or "exchange" type side businesses which resell donated macs/pc's. I just dropped off 2 eMacs. They're totally useless to me and, evidently, to the students of our local grade school and high school, which declined them (for personal, not school, use). Second, PC's are so much more inexpensive than Macs that people are less hesitant to part with a $600 investment than a $1200 purchase. Simple economics. You pay a lot more, you're less like to want to part with it ... knowing you're gonna have to pay a lot more for a replacement.
Can't be that bad... I can run OS X 10.5 on my AMD so they'll(hackers) find a way to run it on PPC.
You don't get it.
Oh wow.... just wow -_-
doubt it, amd and intel both have x86-64 architectures now and so, are both pretty similar, power pc is neither x64 or x86 so snow leopard is never coming
x86 =/= PPC
x64 =/= PPC
Your AMD is an x86 (or x64, depending on the processor) and the architecture is way different.
i stopped checking for software updates for my powerbook 10/2003, since last september
I dont know wether to celebrate or not.
On one hand you have Powerbook users who shelled out good money in 2006 who now have an unsupported machine, and on the other hand i dont have to put up with those god damn MASSIVE updates. I have a lowly 5gb quota (wireless) and they expect me to download universal packages for every single god damn program update and 10.5.x update?
My Powerbook g4 blew up a few weeks ago (my own fault) and it was replaced with a Dell Mini 9 but i still have a g4 eMac that runs superbly with Leopard plus my iMac which ill be updating with Snow Leopard straight away.
To be honest, the people to feel bad for are those who bought the final iMac G5s that were released just before Christmas 2006 and the Core Duo versions were announced about a month later. Those machines will only just have gone past their 3-year warranty period with AppleCare and now they are technically obsolete, as far as the Mac OS is concerned.
Doesn't matter because we all know Mac users have more money than brains.
And I'm being totally serious and not sarcastic at all.
So you think it's okay to bash mentally challenged people? How mature of you.
So by Paul's admission Mac users are mentally challenged
People are perfectly capable of being idiots without any disability, thanks.
I'm just saying, if all you Apple Haters think Apple users are mentally challenged, what's the point in bashing them? Bashing them is going to make them smarter? Is that how it works?
The fact that you can't afford a Mac doesn't make Mac users stupid, it just makes you poor.
I can afford and own a Mac and think a lot of Mac users are stupid. Of course the same goes for a lot of Windows users or, indeed, pretty much everybody.
I don't even see why you try anymore, Anderson.
@Paul
Given your level of comeback I don't see why I do either.
Touché. I suck.
pew pew pew
@Cunthor, who said: "Seriously, go and break your hands so you can't type anymore."
But... but... if I do that I won't be able to finish writing my novel while wearing a black turtleneck in Starbucks.
@ superhobo
I don't know about that one. The Mac users I know, have more brains than money. I am not talking about your run-of-the-mill college graduate brains, I am talking about National Academy of Sciences, Nobel prize caliber brains. The kind of brains that move knowledge and science forwards, not by baby steps but by leaps and bounds. If you continue to spew that false claim, it just goes to show you lack of brains.
My brilliance is surpassed only by my massive bankroll!
okay, not really.
Jefferson Neyen: I base my judgement on all the Mac users I see and interact with every day, not some uber nerds you claim to know.
@superhobo
Jealous much?
"Jefferson Neyen: I base my judgement on all the Mac users I see and interact with every day, not some uber nerds you claim to know"
Ah, that expalins it. By your own admission you run with a crowd of stupid people. Birds of a feather.......
Why don't you just go through a few forums on the net? Count how many idiotic mac users you see making ridiculous claims and believing them and compare them to windows/linux fanboys.
Both of you have a grand total of 36 comments on Engadget and it's network, so I'm guessing you're not very familiar with the itards around here.
And lastly, you can't recognize a joke even if the person making the joke says it's a joke.
You know what else is a joke? Your senses of humor. At least Paul has one (severely bent, but at least it's there).
They are just preventing what happened with Vista. Everybody who cried about Vista ran it on a really old computer with 512MB of RAM. (but we shouldn't need more than 640kb anyway...)
What? You mean there won't be hundreds of articles bleating about how the new OS won't run on their old outdated hardware like there were when Vista came out? Oh the humanity!
Although in fairness to Apple they haven't done anything really stupid like claim Snow Leopard will run on low spec hardware when it quite clearly wont. Yes, I'm looking at you Mr Vista Capable sticker.
In all fairness, each iteration of the OS X (at least since Panther) has actually been faster than the previous: my iBook G4 is much snappier with Leopard than it was with Panther. But hey, you gotta give up sometime (just ordered a new MacBook Pro, anyway).
Not Leopard. Tiger was pretty quick on my iBook.
Tiger was faster than Panther.
Leopard was a dog.
Fresh install only, too.
@Joonas
Yeah, but more to the point, it's not like Apple is just being mean. They made a major chip change. That's probably not going to happen again for a long time, if ever. It's doesn't make sense for them to continue to support it, if by supporting an older chip they can't move forward.
I'm sure there were some very pissed off horse lovers when the first Ford Model T became popular.
Well, hasn't it been almost three years since the last PPC Mac? That's about extent of the support time that Apple has for most of it's models.
Typical lifecycle is at LEAST 5 years.
Big deal. Just run 10.5. It's not that different anyway.
I was just wondering, is it possible at all for the PS3 to run OS X in any form, since it's cell is based on the PPC?
No. The Cell Broadband Engine's PPU is Power Architecture-based, but the firmware is completely different than Apple's. If you want to experiment, install Fedora Core or Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3.
Bah, humbug.
Funny for those who paid 5000$ in 2006 on a nice G5.
The last PPC Macs were sold in 2006, three years ago. Where are all the people screaming at Apple the way they did with MS because Vista didn't run well on three year old systems? Snow Leopard doesn't run at all!
Well, at least Apple isn't lying to people and putting stickers on their old computers telling people that it's "Vista Capable," when it's clearly not. Apple support structure has always supported models for three year time intervals.
Pay a premium and get dumped on from a height 3 years later.
Well, I don't foresee Apple making a major chip change every three years, so this is likely to be a one time thing. I've seen Leopard running on unsupported Macs that are seven years old. Apple is pretty good about optimizing OS X and Snow Leopard is the ultimate example of that.
@Paul:
There will NEVER be support for Snow Leopard on unsupported hardware. The code is not there.
They have drawn the line with this OS. Some see it as a good thing, but tell that to the 8 core owners of Powermac's who paid upwards of 3 grand on hardware that is still fast today and in no need of an upgrade (that is, until now).
Meanwhile, Windows 7 runs on hardware that was made in 2002, and pretty well. Not acknowledging the refinement Microsoft made to Windows with 7 is just blind ignorance, or fanboyism at its worst.
@Ruben, who said: "Some see it as a good thing, but tell that to the 8 core owners of Powermac's who paid upwards of 3 grand on hardware that is still fast today and in no need of an upgrade."
That's quite possibly the stupidest comment I've ever read. If you bought a BMW six years ago, and the people at BMW are upgrading all the current BMWs to some new technology like say, GPS (I wouldn't know, don't own one), you're not automatically entitled to the newest upgrade just because you paid a lot of money. It sucks, but it's not BMW's or Apple's fault.
If Microsoft had changed the base of Window's chip architecture from X86 to PPC, they would be doing EXACTLY the same thing with Windows 7.
Of course, I never mentioned Windows 7 in the first place.