10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications • Hacker News Board

Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications

#51

Post by __david__ » Sun, Feb 27, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #46

guptaneil wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably have data on how often Rosetta was downloaded for Snow Leopard to justify the decision. Apple does go through heroic lengths to preserve backward compatibility, but only for as long as it makes sense. If the backwards compatibility is going to harm moving the OS forward, then they are prepared to drop it, as in this case. Microsoft has always been too afraid to drop backwards compatibility (mostly becau…

> "Apple does go through heroic lengths to preserve backward compatibility Hardly. They could easily provide backward compatibility if desktop versions of OSX were easily virtualized and doing so officialy supported - which is the primary route by which Microsoft has provided backward compatibility (i.e code dependent on 16 bit libraries under x64 and legacy applications under Vista and 7).

Until about 2006 I could run programs written for the 68000 under System 7 on my Mac OS X machine. That's fairly heroic.

Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications

#52

Post by vetinari » Sun, Feb 27, 2011, 11:01 PM UTC

adulau wrote: post #18

If you want to reuse your old PowerPC hardware, you still have the option to run a recent version of GNU/Linux. Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) has a recent version (ubuntu-10.10-desktop-powerpc.iso) for PowerPC Mac.

Many ppc Macs use nvidia graphics. There is no proprietary nvidia driver for powerpc.

On the other hand, 10.5 runs fine on ppc. As a poster above noted, your old OS does not magically stop working after release of new version.

Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications

#53

Post by MrFoof » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

allenbrunson wrote: post #42

51Cards wrote: post #15

One thing I have always admired Microsoft for is the huge effort they put into maintaining backwards compatibility. This may come largely from my days watching business clients forced to run old legacy apps that had been around forever. Despite Window's many (many) shortcomings, whenever I hear people complain about the time it takes to roll a new version out I try to point out the task at hand. The broad hardware su…

Personally, I am going to argue the other direction. Windows is a pain to program for and use largely because it's filled with assumptions and code that date back to the eighties. It is very difficult to innovate with the boat anchor of the past shackled to your ankle. Think how much easier it would be for Microsoft to improve security if, for example, they could remove the assumption that it's okay for apps to blith…

Back in 1999, at the start of my career, I did a bit of "catch all IT" for a company, which included help desk and desktop support.

There was one fellow who hemmed and hawed at having to use Windows 2000. He wanted to stick with Windows 95. He ended up migrated, but he spent a furious amount of time getting the Windows 3.1 File Manager working. Apparently on his Windows 95 laptop he had brought it over as well.

He also was using a release of SideKick from 1992.

-----

How is this relevant? I recently talked to someone who does provide IT support for that same company. That same person? Still running SideKick. Still complains about not having File Manager. Also is hemming and hawing about having to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Company is also still on 10Mbps networking. The owner still refuses to use copper, since they're a fiber optic distributor (multimode fiber is run to each and every desk).