Snow Leopard

[nixgeek]

Apple is a company, and companies need to make money. Additionally, since Apple is also a hardware company, they make the bulk of their sales by selling Macs. The fact that they now have Intel chips makes no difference, because Apple also made a similar transition back in the 90s from 68K to PowerPC. While I'm sure that many of those that spent money on the ultimately last model of the Power Macintosh G5 in 2005-2006 aren't too happy, it's not as if those consumers didn't already know what they were getting themselves into. As it stands, Leopard is going to be well supported possibly even a little beyond the arrival of 10.7 (Tiger has had about 4 years of support already, and I'm sure will be going on 5 years before developers start moving away from it). So that said, I think your PowerPC Mac or even 32-bit Intel Mac would be supported quite well with Leopard for a good while.

Personally, I have made preparations on my iMac G5 for the day where it is no longer supported by Apple or its developers. Most of the software I use on my Tiger installation (haven't moved to Leopard yet) is free/open source software. As it stands, they still support Tiger quite well so I really have no need to move to Leopard just yet. Additionally, I have also installed a PowerPC version of Ubuntu Linux that runs the most up-to-date versions of the free/open source software that I already use on the OS X side. The only issue I might have is with Adobe Flash, but with Gnash as a Flash alternative and the HTML5 support for audio/video with Ogg in Firefox 3.5, I don't think I would miss Adobe's Flash that much. Sure, it's not OS X, but it's good enough for my needs when that inevitable day comes along. Besides, I'm already running GNU/Linux on my PCs so the transition won't be so difficult.

PowerPC was great in its time, and it still holds a place in my heart. But practically, it's not as good as what Intel (or even AMD for that matter) makes available on the x86 and x86_64 side and the G5 just cannot handle what the Core series of processors have been able to for some time now. You don't have to march to Apple's tune, though, especially with the viable alternatives available to you. But if you want what they're selling, then you better keep up with their tempo.

[Jesse714]

I agree with the game part. Everybody is so opinionated anyway, even if i sat here and told the whole world why macs are better, nobody is going to care, their always going to have a reason why they're not.

[DavidKline]

I love my mac G4 mini, it outperforms my windows machine two to one which has a much higher clock speed. That's why I raised such a fuss, but after reading that Snow Leopard is only a small upgrade I'm not concerned about it though. I prefer to stay behind for now in the PPC platform for now since it outperforms Intel big time. All I was trying to say. Thanks DKline

[fryke]

There really isn't a problem here. The last PowerPC Macs were sold in 2006, so any PowerPC Mac will be at least 3 years old by the time 10.6 arrives. Since the changes are _mostly_ under the hood and we'll see application developers support both 10.5 and 10.6 for a while (and some even 10.4 still), you can still beat that dead horse for another year or two, although I seriously doubt you'll still consider the performance of a G4 Mac mini state of the art in mid 2011.

Moving to a new Mac is also _much_ more expensive when you're talking PowerMac G5 -> Mac Pro! You're in the lucky position of having to replace a Mac mini somewhere down the road. You can either keep everything around the mini and simply replace it with a newer mini (in, say, May 2010?) or go iMac or portable or something. And *still* you'll be able to sell the G4 mini for a little money towards that purchase! (It'll still be able to do webbrowsing and wordprocessing etc. by then.)

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by DavidKline

I love my mac G4 mini, it outperforms my windows machine two to one which has a much higher clock speed. That's why I raised such a fuss, but after reading that Snow Leopard is only a small upgrade I'm not concerned about it though. I prefer to stay behind for now in the PPC platform for now since it outperforms Intel big time. All I was trying to say. Thanks DKline

Don't blame the current crop of Intel chips for the fault of Windows. Apple knew what it was doing when it decided to move to Core and Core 2. They knew that the Core series of processors outperformed even the fastest PowerPC processor out there, the PPC 970 (aka "G5").

Even on a regular PC, I've found GNU/Linux to take advantage of what seems like untapped performance compared to running Windows XP on it. I have an older AMD system that flies with Slackware, but used to feel somewhat sluggish when running Windows XP, especially with only 512 MB of RAM at the time. Microsoft claims that Windows 7 will make my Athlon XP 2400+ run as it does now with Slackware (OK, they didn't say that verbatim, but they do claim it's faster on meager hardware). Not sure if I can truly believe this, but for their sake I hope the claim is true. And this processor (along with all the Intel Netburst-based processors) are nothing compared to a Core 2 Duo from last year even.

As it stands, my iMac G5 running Tiger with 1.5 GB RAM has a heart attack when I try to view Hulu in their HD format. However, my wife's Core Duo Dell laptop running Windows has no problem with it. That, in and of itself, should attest to how wise Apple's decision to go Intel really was.

[fryke]

I wouldn't expect Windows 7 to outperform Windows XP on the same hardware. I'd say Win7 will outperform Vista, though. But aren't we a little off-topic, because 10.6 will outperform them all *AND* it'll be a Mac OS.

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by fryke

I wouldn't expect Windows 7 to outperform Windows XP on the same hardware. I'd say Win7 will outperform Vista, though. But aren't we a little off-topic, because 10.6 will outperform them all *AND* it'll be a Mac OS.

Yes, I did digress a bit, but I wanted to make a case that one shouldn't blame the hardware for the bloat brought on by Windows.