Mac Veterans: PowerPC Pride!

[vbetts]

Why was I thinking the atom is in the Macbook Air...? Well, that's cleared up now.

[dorkbydesign.]

Why was I thinking the atom is in the Macbook Air...? Well, that's cleared up now.

 

Because the macbook air is slim and the atom is in the eeepc.

[MGJulius]

Apple was still using PPC processors in there XServes in early 2007, so that would suck for the people who bought it and only got 2 yrs of upgrade ability. But if Apple does make 10.6 Intel only then all "loyal" mac users will more than likely buy an intel mac, which goes to show you how Apple has much of the mac user base by the leash

[Colonel]

Go PowerPC! You will never be forgotten!

[Metuas]

I was a PPC fanboy to the final moment - then I bought a MBP and everything changed.

 

Still do love my G5, though. Runs Pro Tools and CS3 better than the MBP, to be honest.

[Sevan]

I really love all the fanboy comments here. Can we be somewhat serious here and stop bashing people because they like "this" and "that".

 

Apple made a decision in 2006 to move to the Intel Platform, the reason why, being the fact that Intel was introducing the Intel Core series CPU's. On top of that, PowerPC couldn't keep up with today's standards no matter what you say. It might have been good several years ago, but it doesn't cut it now.

 

Bash me all you like, you'll probably fail in making your point anyway.

[superchase]

It's somewhat laughable and childish how the Intel Mac owners diss the older Power PC's like they were a forgotten wife or member of the family. Just try to shut them up in the closet pretend they'll all go away. Even funnier still, because once 10.6 comes out, many of the existing Intel Macs may not be able to run the new OS up to its full potential, and they will, like the PPC users, find themselves on the verge of obsolesence, needing a new machine. I'd wager that some of the existing MacIntels like the first imacs, minis and Air notebooks won't be powerful enough to run 10.6 seamlessly and well. And weren't there some 32 bit Intel Macs? Perhaps the MacBook pros and the silver towers, but the others might be left in the dust. 

 

I'd wait for Snow Leopard to come out and then make a decision to buy a new computer. Because the new 64 bit machine will require a fair bit of reprogramming by developers making 64 bit applications. So in fact, new stuff like a 64 bit Adobe Suite or Microsoft Office for the Mac may require a new computer, not just installing a new OS on an older MacIntel. And the new MacIntels may be miles apart from the existing ones. It's one thing to put out a nice glitzy OS. However, it's another to make sure it works with the existing stuff.

 

I gotta bunch of Mac Software, but I'm not buying any more until this new OS comes out. Apps like a Final Cut Studio 3. Or a new version of Shake. Or Maya. or Adobe Creative Suite. Or Microsoft Office. So the real point at which obsolescence kicks in is probably not for  few years until 10.6/64 bit computing has fully settled in, and that might not be for 3-4 years after 10.6 is released. Many offices are still using the old apps, and they work just fine. So even if Apple doesn't support the G5 in 10.6, they'll be around much longer than we think. Gotta remember that apps such as Adobe CS3 are still considred relatively new when many places have paid thousands of dollars for their software are still stuck on CS or CS2. So the transition to 64 bit is a major move which will take years to fully sink in.

 

Also, computer owners have to remember that not all of the exsiting peripherals will necessarily work that well with the new OS. Scanners, printers, video cards. So that will present another problem for existing MacIntel users. I remember when the MacIntels were first announced, Apple said that the transition was complete. But it had just begun, and if the recent bugs by Microsoft and Adobe are any indication, we're still in the middle of this transition. I'd say it will complete itself by 2014 at the earliest, when MacIntels become the clear majority and most Apple owners are no longer using the PPC, which will by then make their appearance in large volumes on the shelves of second hand stores.

[Synaesthesia]

2014! Macintels are already in the majority. Anyway, 32 bit stuff will still work fine on Snow Leopard.

[superchase]

2014! Macintels are already in the majority. Anyway, 32 bit stuff will still work fine on Snow Leopard.

 

 

Oh, I'm not making the argument that a person try to hang on to the PowerPC forever. Technology comes and goes. I'm just saying that existing MacIntel owners might be in for a huge disappointment when they discover that their hardware may not necessarily take advantage of the new OS's capabilities, and several 3rd party software will have to be rewritten and with this new 64 bit technology, might not be as compatible with the older MacIntels as their owners would like. Plus the newer MacIntels coming out after 10.6 may have less resemblance to the older ones than existing owners might care to think. So existing MacIntel owners may be in the same bind as we PowerPC owners.

 

Yes, I'm interested in eventually getting a new MacBook Pro - but not the ones they are selling right now with 32 bit OS X 10.5 on them. My strategy is to get one either after OS X 10.6 has been tested and debugged for about a year pending user feedback. And then upgrade my software once 64 bit titles begin to appear. 64 bit Adobe CS5 or CS6, 64 bit Final Cut Studio 3, 64 bit MS-Office 2010, Maya 2010, Avid XPress 2010 and so on.  Let the market be my beta testers. So I'd say my own transition to the Intel platform won't begin until 2010 at the earliest, and possibly 2012, when 64 bit only begin to be accepted as a household word. It hasn't yet in the Wintel world, even though they've had such machines, software and operating systems for quite a number of years. Most Windows users are still on 32 bit. Which is why I say that the old PowerPC's probably won't become obsolete until at least halfway through the next decade. As I said, people paid a lot of money for Adobe CS, CS2, CS3 and they're not gonna dump them so fast. It takes time and money to upgrade systems. And in a sluggish economy, people may hang on to their old systems longer than the manufacturers would prefer.  

 

You see what's wrong with all you MacIntel owners is you're not looking at the transition time frame. Apple claimed that the transition was complete in 2006 when they dropped the PowerPC from production, when it had in fact it had just begun. We're still going through this transition.

 

Personally, I fully intend to keep my G5 even after it becomes 'obsolete'. I haven't upgraded to 10.5 because I heard that it's junk. 10.4 Tiger works perfectly fine for me. It seems that the G5 and Tiger had come together at the same time and were the perfect build. All the software and hardware that was built for it functions almost perfectly, unlike all the currently incompatibilies I hear about the MacIntels with software and hardware on the market today. Funny how the best often comes out last, when they just discontinue making it.

[Synaesthesia]

That makes sense. I mean, your current content creation tools are more than capable. It will take a while for all the major programs to become 64-bit, especially Final Cut Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, Logic, Office etc that aren't Cocoa.

 

Your G5 isn't "obsolete", even if Snow Leopard doesn't support it. Leopard will always run great on it.

 

Leopard is 64-bit by the way. Snow Leopard just extends it's functionality further with a full 64-bit kernel and apps. I like Leopard, it runs well, has some new features, and has never had performance or stability issues for me. (This is on a few hacks, and a Powerbook G4). As long as you have 1 gig or more of RAM. But Tiger is great too.

[Darwinian Dude]

Apple will ditch compatibility for old technology if it's best for the product line, but they aren't stupid. Knowing that the last machine to move from PPC to Intel was their G5 Tower, their 'Pro' machine at the time, dropping PPC support now would anger a lot of pro users. But Snow Leopard, not being vastly different from a user perspective to Leopard, would provide a good switch over time. Snow Leopard will be the last PPC version though IMO, if indeed it does support them still.

 

I have a G5 I use as a media centre, (was cheaper than a mac mini second hand, that's why I bought it) and do you realise that a 1.8 DP G5 won't even play HD youtube videos? Admittedly this is no doubt poor flash coding on Adobes part, but the PPC chips are dinosaurs performance wise. Fine for general tasks, but for encoding, rendering, real time plugins in audio or video software, in my experience, the G5's act like I'd expect a machine of their age to act like.

 

What the Mac faithful may not realise is how good the Core architecture is; running XP in bootcamp on my first intel iMac, a 2.0 CoreDuo, i was able to double my cubase plugin count over my Pentium 4 3.2.

 

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not anti-mac or anti-ppc, next to the Late '08 Macbook I write this on is a Beige G3 with 60gb hd, usb, running 10.4.11 via xpostfacto and running the safari 4 beta, and I have dozens of older macs, going right back to the Plus.

 

But the future is here, and it's Intel. I'm just old enough to remember the 'fat binaries' and the 68k -> PPC transition. With technologies like Fat Binaries, (68k - PPC) Classic (OS9 emulation under OSX) and Rosetta (PPC code on Intel) Apple has provided some wonderful bridging to make it easier for us over the years, but only for so long.

 

R.I.P.P.P.C.

[Synaesthesia]

do you realise that a 1.8 DP G5 won't even play HD youtube videos

This is Adobe Flash's fault. Flash performance on OS X is terrible. You can try downloading the latest Flash Player 10, which helps a little. But for really smooth playback, play the videos in VLC, Quicktime or Perian.

[applehacker]

PowerPC was just an architecture. Thats all. When it couldn't keep up with X86, it died. Thats the way life is. If you can't evolve as fast as the environment changes, you die. Im happy apple went to intel. It gives FLEXIBILITY. You can run pretty much any operating system on the intel chips now, where as in PowerPC, we were limited to OS X and some versions of linux, and one weird version of Windows NT. Anyway, my opinion still stands as Intel is the better for the future. End of story.

[projekt k]

my hack recognized my os x as a power pc for a installation, do u think ill be able to install Snow? I have the UD3P motherboard ;-) thanks

[ARMAGEDDON]

Apple had it choice to transit from PowerPC to intel only for money. Only just for a big number of customers, switchers from Windows... At first time i was happy to hear and watch how Apple going to x86 arch on 10.4... But when i realize that it was a juts for money. My dreams about two architectures lives together like SPARC and AMD in Sun Microsystems - crushed. It was a big disappoint. Some peoples says that intel processors is a FASTEST on the world... But it not quite true, because family of PowerPC chips had a biggest industrial recognition on whole world (industrial, military, aerospace divisions, clusters and more...). Remember the PWRFicient PowerPC chip. It was a brilliant in whole family. Fully flexible, multi-core low power consuming and dissipating chip. From 5 to 11 watts with a 2.0 GHz both cores. Or may be PowerPC Kilocore?? 1025 cores on one chip, it has a fully functional 1 PowerPC core and 1024 flexible 4-ways 8-bit cores that can be transformed in 16,32,64,128,256-bit high efficient cores. Intel can do this?? I don't think so... Already IBM have a high-performance POWER6 chips that already passed through 3.0 GHz and much more - up to 5 GHz (already server line - "The new 64-core, 128-thread Power 595 offerings are world's fastest Unix-based servers on Earth."), remember Jobs in WWDC 2005 that claimed about something "they didn't do for me 3.0GHz chip!!!!". PowerPC Cell that have a more than 100 gigaflops (more than Mac Pro can do). Isn't it quite fast and good processors?? Yep - it the best processors in world. But Apple... Apple want an army of switchers, not users with supercomputers with high efficient and performed chips inside... "Think Different" is dead. Now time for mass-switchers.

[DukeRaoul]

This is Adobe Flash's fault. Flash performance on OS X is terrible. You can try downloading the latest Flash Player 10, which helps a little. But for really smooth playback, play the videos in VLC, Quicktime or Perian.

 

I believe there is a coding problem with the way the Adobe Flash player works on PPC macs!

Even old crappy Dell systems that benchmark well below nice PPC macs play Flash better. Every PPC mac I have seen in the past year or so has suffered from terrible playback on Flash videos, and it does not make sense in reference to the level of performance these systems deliver elsewhere. So I think Adobe just half-assed it on the PPC code or something.

[ARMAGEDDON]

It is true, DukeRaoul. Adobe didn't make low-level code optimization in Flash for PowerPC.