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All signs point to no PPC in 10.6


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http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/ap...98033?artc_pg=3

 

Sorry folks, it's the end. First we have Finder in Cocoa, now huge reductions in disk space usage:

 

Mail is down to 91MB in size, whereas before it was 287MB. QuickTime is now 8MB instead of 29MB, TextEdit has been reduced from 22MB to 2MB and the Mac OS X Utility folder has dropped from 468MB to 111.6MB. Similar size reductions are reported in other OS X applications too.

 

This can only mean one thing: legacy PPC stuff is gone.

 

given the massive reduction in size of OS X and its applications, what could possibly be coming out if it's not the PPC code?

 

I know we have a lot of people here who pirate the developer builds, anyone here want to confirm?

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I am not sure if it is true of PPC code deletion until we see the final release of SL. I heard Apple is zipping all the language resources in a different place. I am not sure if Apple is doing the same thing for different code base.

 

I am guessing the OS can make a judgment on what arch type it will be installed then extract the right code based program and install.

 

The other thing is the basis of OS, ex. frameworks, libs, and so on. I am not sure if all these stuff have been slimmed to one arch type as well.

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http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/ap...98033?artc_pg=3

 

Sorry folks, it's the end. First we have Finder in Cocoa, now huge reductions in disk space usage:

This can only mean one thing: legacy PPC stuff is gone.

I know we have a lot of people here who pirate the developer builds, anyone here want to confirm?

I think the Apple page on SL states it is Intel only. If I am not mistaken...

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It's only natural, there's no way that they could do the Grand Central technology on PPC, they were old processors which were made before Apple ever came up with the idea, plus there's all kinds of advantages to using Intel over PPC, and this is Apple's way of getting the most bang for your buck.

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10a222

 

$file loginwindow

loginwindow: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures

loginwindow (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

loginwindow (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386

loginwindow (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

$pwd

/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS

 

so small apps size is due to localizations strings compression and filesystem compression used in snow leo (compression algo is as good as bzip2)

 

so please, stop this rumors till we see release

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10a222

 

$file loginwindow

loginwindow: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures

loginwindow (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

loginwindow (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386

loginwindow (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

$pwd

/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS

 

so small apps size is due to localizations strings compression and filesystem compression used in snow leo (compression algo is as good as bzip2)

 

so please, stop this rumors till we see release

 

Just because the executable is present doesn't mean it's functional. I would honestly be shocked if 10.6 supported PPC - it'd be an awful development move on Apple's part.

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Just because the executable is present doesn't mean it's functional. I would honestly be shocked if 10.6 supported PPC - it'd be an awful development move on Apple's part.

 

Just because the executable is present doesn't mean it's not functional. I would honestly be shocked if 10.6 unsupported PPC - it'd be an awful development move on Apple's part.

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Just because the executable is present doesn't mean it's functional. I would honestly be shocked if 10.6 supported PPC - it'd be an awful development move on Apple's part.

 

Well, if previous history taught us anything, Apple is phasing out the G4 just like they did the G3 (slowly and painfully). So IF PPC is supported, it will only be on the G5 processor.

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Well, if previous history taught us anything, Apple is phasing out the G4 just like they did the G3 (slowly and painfully). So IF PPC is supported, it will only be on the G5 processor.

 

The G5 processor was never even really supported in the first place - several major applications didn't even function with it. It would be a waste of development time to ensure that Snow Leopard would run on both architectures - I'd hate to have to run xslimmer on everything again.

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I know, but it's still 64-bit. You can program a 64-bit program in XCode that compiles to X86_64 and PPC64.

 

Anyway, they jury's still out on this one, it might be intel only, it might not. Maybe it is better that they optimize performance more for Intel, maybe it's good to still include support for Powermac G5's - think of the folks who bought G5 quads in 2006!

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meanwhile, i can now confirm that the only ppc support that is left in snow leopard 10a222 is the one that rosetta needs. The bootloader is gone, the bootloader specs too, many apps don't have ppc code. That means that it's very,very,very,very unlikely that ppc support will be added again in a future build.

 

And rosetta will be optional (but it isn't yet).

 

And, just in case you're interested, the finder isn't going to be rewritten anytime soon, no matter what whe keep reading on the web about a "cocoa finder". :)

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Just because the executable is present doesn't mean it's not functional. I would honestly be shocked if 10.6 unsupported PPC - it'd be an awful development move on Apple's part.

 

I can't wait until Snow Leopard's release when you eat those words. :huh:

 

For all practical purposes, PPC almost always performed slower than an equivalent Intel/AMD CPU.

 

This.

 

Also, when it comes down to it, what's the point in wasting the development time? They've gone through literally an entire generation of intel Macs - snow Leopard is not for the rare PPC holdout, snow leopard is about hardcore performance, the guys with the 8-core Mac Pros with 32 GB are Snow Leopard's concern. Snow Leopard is meant to take advantage of modern technology and improve stability and small issues - keeping PPC in literally doubles the workload, which would be an awful development move. It's incredibly naïve to say otherwise. Keeping PPC for Snow Leopard is like the antithesis of the idea behind the OS.

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