On Jun 9, 7:25 am, Dan <[email protected]> wrote:
> At 2:43 PM -0400 6/8/2009, Alexander MacLeod wrote:
>
> >On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Stephen Weber<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >And how long did you expect them to keep supporting the PPC
> >architecture, forever?
>
> yes. Or at least until the userbase becomes small. Right now, the
> ppc userbase is still over 15%, over 20% in some markets. That
> translates to millions of Macs...
>
> >And it's not like Snow Leopard is substantively different than
> >"regular" Leopard, it's just optimized for Intel
> >hardware.
>
> Yea, there are some optimizations in it. But mostly it's just not
> got the ppc code build. Pretty stupid when you think about it,
> really. OS X is NOT "intel only". It builds nicely for a number of
> architectures.
It builds nicely, the core, but it's not as simple as just clicking
Build and having the OS all ready to go, surely you know that. You
can compile Darwin for several different architectures but the Mac OS
it doesn't make.
How is this a marketing move? They want that lucrative Power PC-
owning market share? Or new users will say "Phew, thank God they
don't support that crusty old PPC hardware anymore, I'm finally ready
to buy?" It just does not make enough sense for them ton continue
developing on the Power PC side. It doesn't.
>
> So why rip out the ppc code? It's not a technological requirement.
> It's MARKETING Jobs Ego.
They COULD move a few Snow Leopard items to PPC, I'm sure, like
Exchange support and some UI refinements, but then they have to fork
the whole distribution because they can't integrate core technologies
like Grand Central Dispatch (which is WAY more than "some
optimizations") and so you have two different operating systems in two
different states and you have to try to maintain them and market
them. It's possible, but it sure isn't optimal. And this is a guess,
but I'd wager that in their moving the system apps to full 64-bit
support, they're also probably marrying those applications to Intel.
Apple does a lot of jackass things, I think that's undeniable, but I
don't see this as anyone's act of ego, I see it as a means of keeping
the OS lean and trim, and I appreciate that. I appreciate it as a PPC
user, knowing that I'm not going to have to suffer through updates
that don't work and slow bug fixes, and I appreciate it as an Intel
user, knowing that the OS is keeping up with the hardware.
Josh
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