10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
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Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#2This is an interesting turn up for the books. While I use some universal binaries here and there, I don't run any PowerPC code on any Mac kit.
I wonder though, if Apple were to transition to their A4 chips for Macbooks whether we'll see Rosetta come back in an ARM compatible flavour.
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#3Looks like I'll be repurposing the quad and dual G5's here onto debian PPC, when I can scrape up enough for an intel big-mac /cries/
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#4Looks like I'll be repurposing the quad and dual G5's here onto debian PPC, when I can scrape up enough for an intel big-mac /cries/
Why? Nothing changes for you. Developers can still create universal binaries that run on your macs if the choose to do so. The only thing that changed is running PPC-only apps on intel machines, which is something nobody really cares about since there really aren't any PPC-only apps on the market. You already weren't able to upgrade to the latest OS, as Snow Leopard is Intel-only.
You could be worried about developers creating intel-only apps, which you won't be able to run, but that already happens on a big scale because almost nobody uses PPC macs anymore. This has nothing to do with Lion.
The bigger problem with Lion may be the dropping of 32-bit macs. Most people don't really know if their mac is 64-bit (Core 2 and up) or 32-bit only (Intel Core's, which is mostly the early Mac Mini's, iMacs and Macbooks I think). It's good for developers who want to write 64-bit only apps though, because once Lion has been adopted and SL support is dropped, they can just say 'Requires Lion', instead of the somewhat awkward 'Requires Snow Leopard on a 64-bit Mac' right now.
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#5Looks like I'll be repurposing the quad and dual G5's here onto debian PPC, when I can scrape up enough for an intel big-mac /cries/
Why? Nothing changes for you. Developers can still create universal binaries that run on your macs if the choose to do so. The only thing that changed is running PPC-only apps on intel machines, which is something nobody really cares about since there really aren't any PPC-only apps on the market. You already weren't able to upgrade to the latest OS, as Snow Leopard is Intel-only. You could be worried about developer…
The first Intel Macbook Pro is Core Duo as well.
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#6Interestingly there's an unreleased Intel version of Mac OS 9 that you see at Apple stories - it's used via Netboot for testing batteries (amongst other things I imagine, but when I saw it it was for testing). Looks like they still (as of late 2010) haven't gotten around to porting some of their old diags to OS X.
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#7You can check out all of your applications to see if you're running any PowerPC software. System Profiler -> Applications -> sort by Kind. Only culprit on my system is some random CS4 stuff.
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#8Interestingly there's an unreleased Intel version of Mac OS 9 that you see at Apple stories - it's used via Netboot for testing batteries (amongst other things I imagine, but when I saw it it was for testing). Looks like they still (as of late 2010) haven't gotten around to porting some of their old diags to OS X.
So that's the secret behind the AHT!
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#9This makes me sad because some of my old fun games won't work anymore (well, without a VM at least), but since I rarely play those, I like the fact that all the other stuff I use will be forced to "go native".
Re: 10.7 Lion drops support for PowerPC applications
#10Interestingly there's an unreleased Intel version of Mac OS 9 that you see at Apple stories - it's used via Netboot for testing batteries (amongst other things I imagine, but when I saw it it was for testing). Looks like they still (as of late 2010) haven't gotten around to porting some of their old diags to OS X.
I don't think it is actually OS 9 (how would OS 9 handle the current model SMCs?), I think it just looks like OS 9 but is instead running OS X/Darwin.