Apple Expected to Demo Leopard Successor Next Week 432
4roddas writes "Reports circulated Wednesday that Apple may demo the next iteration of Mac OS X next week or even release code to developers in preparation for an early-2009 launch. According to an account on Mac enthusiast site TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), Apple may provide early copies of Mac OS X 10.6 at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which opens Monday and runs through next Friday in San Francisco. Mac OS X 10.6 will run on Intel-based hardware only, said TUAW, and so will mark the ditching of support for the older PowerPC processor-equipped Macs. Apple announced it would shift to Intel processors three years ago, and unveiled the first systems in January 2006; most analysts have said that move is largely behind the reason for Apple's renewed success selling personal computers. It has never disclosed how long it would support the PowerPC with OS upgrades, however. Ars Technica also weighed in Wednesday on Mac OS X 10.6; its sources pegged with OS with the code name 'Snow Leopard.'"
Hmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, it may rain tomorrow. Or, it may not. And I may be having sex with your sister. But then, maybe I'm not.
That's it... I'm going into journalism. This is just way too easy!
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Only kidding. My sisters are actually men though. Seriously. Even the married one.
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Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:4, Informative)
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Not just pay for it, but actually pass the tests. Which are pretty intensive, from what I gather -- there's a pretty good chance the BSDs wouldn't pass. But mainly because they aren't compatible with every single header file, command line utility, and API since V7 and on :).
One can certainly debate that particular point, but I've not looked at the conformance test suite, so all I can do is speculate based on comments I've heard from others.
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Re:Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:5, Funny)
I know you were trying to be funny, but think about that for a sec...
Re:Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Apple may or may not do something next week (Score:5, Insightful)
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In other news, NASA may or may not decide to demo a Death Star next week.
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I'll go read mac rumor sites when I want to see that kind of stuff.
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No, I'm New Here (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No, I'm New Here (Score:5, Funny)
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Not a surprise (Score:3, Informative)
Ditching PowerPC is an interesting choice though - it basically means that third-party developers won't be able to use any of the new features in 10.6 without abandoning a big chunk of their potential market.
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Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't XP vs Vista, sounds more like "Waiter my soup was at 121F when I specifically asked for it at 120.4F. (49.4444444C and 49.1666667C to our international readers)
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
On a side note, I have personally found it very interesting to watch the way people on Mac forums approach problems versus Windows or Linux users. Often there is an implicit assumption that any problem encountered is an OS bug (sometimes even if nobody else can be found who is experiencing the same problem) and you see demands that it be fixed in the next release. Possibly this is because a high proportion of the problems experienced by Mac users are indeed OS bugs.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Possibly, I guess, but probably not. An awful lot of the code that makes up OSX is the same code in FreeBSD/NetBSD and Linux. Where it differs-- well, I've never heard anyone claim that the Mach kernel is particularly buggy. All you have left is Aqua and the APIs, which are the parts that everyone seems to want to be open sourced and/or sold for their platform of choice.
So from all that (and personal experience with a Windows/Linux/OSX) I wouldn't be inclined to think the problem is that OSX has more OS bugs than other platforms. But I guess we could take your hypothesis another way-- that programs written for OSX are more bug-free than other platforms. That doesn't seem too terribly unlikely, but my personal guess would be that it's actually a combination of a few things:
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that the same thing tends to be true of Windows releases; they're just much less frequent. However, MS really just seems to do security patches and blame third parties for any software bugs. I have no idea what is true and what's really at fault, but you can't blame Mac users for expecting the computer they paid a premium for to work better when they paid the premium to have it work better. I paid the extra to have things work better and overall they do, but when there's an issue I expect it to be resolved in a reasonable time-frame. Generally it is, and that's why they'll keep getting my money.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
People seem to have quite varied experiences with Leopard, for me it has been much better than Tiger in the sense that with Tiger my iMac 24" managed to completely crash a couple of times under heavy load when using some not always stable apps but with Leopard the closest I've come to anything like that has been Finder crashing a couple of times.
In fact, the only real problem I've had with Leopard was with the incompatibility with Tiger FileVault images, I only had one user account (which was using FileVault) and after installing Leopard and then rebooting it was unable to mount the disk image which forced me to do some trickery in the console to convert it to a sparse disk image so I could rescue my files before doing an Archive and install installation.
/Mikael
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You have a bad install (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing I would suggest is to never plug/unplug anything (other than power) with the lid shut. That behavior had a convert friend of mine complaining, "this thing crashes 80% of the time when I try to wake it or shut it down." Once I told him to stop that, he said it hasn't crashed once.
I will say that the Intel portables are no where near as stable as the PPC portables. I could swap peripherals anytime. I could shut the lid, remove the battery, replace it, and open it back up and keep working. I would have windows users in airports and on planes absolutely freak out at the sight of that. The PowerBooks were awsome!
Re:You have a bad install (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
G4 owners are better off with 10.4 anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
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That will make me very happy as that means I can start building my FCP render farm far cheaper as PowerMAC towers with dual G5's will drop in price like stones.
Please Apple, tell the PPC people to pound sand. I need cheaper hardware!
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It was - it was almost as buggy as one of the betas, or perhaps 10.0.
I highly doubt it'll be called 'Snow Leopard' - Apple has registered the trademarks 'Cougar' and 'Lynx'. I have doubts about Lynx, because there is already LynxOS, and Lynx deodorant.
I also highly doubt they'll be abandoning PowerPC entirely yet. We'll probably see G4 support being dropped, but I highly doubt Apple would make such a rushed transition.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
To compare it to 10.0 is hyperbole.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
> I have doubts about Lynx, because there is already LynxOS
That's not anything that would stop Apple. They encountered a bigger legal challenge when they released OS 9.
> I also highly doubt they'll be abandoning PowerPC entirely yet.
I suspect that they may very well remove PowerPC support, however, as always, they'll keep PowerPC-based versions of OS X up to date, just as they always had OS X 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 running in the labs on Intel-based hardware. They like to keep their options open.
--Richard
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10.5.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:10.5.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Removed that, reinstalled as "Archive and Install," and the experience has been much better. And since 10.5.3 the appearance of the beachball has been much, much less frequent. Oh, and this is completely off topic: to anyone wondering whether to ditch Parallels in favor of VMWare Fusion. Yes. Go for it. Especially if you're using it with Boot Camp. Like night and day.
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X.5.0 caused the web cam to stop working. The fix, amazingly enough, was to unplug the computer and plug it back it. Other than that, it has been pretty typical Apple affair...little/no fuss and a bunch of features I'll never use.
Slow down, Apple... (Score:3, Interesting)
Typically with an OSX release, the early point versions go through some growing pains, and it's not until the mid point releases that things get rock solid and fast. When I first tried leopard (10.5.0), it broke a number of things; it offered enough extra that I put up with what it broke, but I wouldn't recommend it to others especially for mission critical business stuff. It seems to be getting better with each point release that rolls in, and 10.5.3 just came in the other day (and things actually seem a bit peppier), but I get the impression it has a little way to go yet.
I think Leopard's early problems has hurt Apple a bit, and I'd hate to see a 10.6.0 come out too soon, with a lot of the same issues as Leopard's first release. I want a fast and stable OSX! (Even at its worst, Leopard was head and shoulders above XP in terms of speed and stability and usability, of course; but when I first jumped ship to Mac when Tiger was mature, things were even better stability-wise.)
While the Windows release cycle is painfully slow and buggy, I worry that Apple's is almost a little too fast with this announcement (although the wait for Leopard seemed to take forever.)
Now who knows, maybe Snow Leopard isn't too revolutionary; maybe in losing some of the backwards compatibility hassles of PPC to move Leopard forward it will improve its speed and stability. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Re:Slow down, Apple... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm too cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course, this is all rumors, so getting indignant about it now is stupid. And very, very Slashdot.
Re:I'm too cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, even the rumor did not say "stability updates" just "stability and security improvements." I seriously doubt they are talking about bug fixes. More likely (assuming this rumor has any real foundation) they are talking about extending MAC to help contain unstable applications and better keep them from monopolizing resources. Another interesting thing about this rumor is it could quite easily be based on something true, but which was distorted by those that heard it. We're talking about a presentation at a developer conference. It would be easy for someone with inside knowledge to say, "yeah nothing really new, no new core frameworks ala CoreAnimation, mostly security and stability stuff" and have that interpreted by someone as the next version of OS X will not have any new features, instead of the next version not having new features developers need to worry about. For that matter, the original rumor also didn't mention if Apple will be charging for this release, that's just an assumption. Remember the 10.1 release was free because it included a huge number of stability fixes. Heck, for all we know Apple is in the process of migrating to a subscription payment service.
I agree it would be annoying if Apple released a new version that was just bug fixes and charged for it... but I also think that is highly unlikely.
Re:Slow down, Apple... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, according to all rumors about "Snow Leopard", those are exactly the issues that it's supposed to address. That's the entire rumor about Snow Leopard, that it's going to be a quick release that won't add much in the way of features, but it will be cleaning out legacy code, squashing bugs, and making the whole thing run fast. Some people have also noted that the last time Apple did this (10.1) the upgrade was free.
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That changed with the latest iMac update. The more expensive model is now a pretty good mid-range machine with a reasonable video card.
Do you really need a tower machine?
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Yeah, I'm not sure what this WWDC is going to be about. There's going to be the iPhone 2 (and firmware upgrade), which will be huge. There are rumors of another device, halfway between an iPhone and a laptop. There are rumors of an OS upgrade. There are rumors of their Pro laptop line getting a redesign. Some other things to boot. If all that happens, it seems like a little too much for one event.
So that's why I think it may actually be true that Snow Leopard, if real, won't have many new features.
Effectively Kill CPU Upgrade Market (Score:4, Interesting)
I would definitely reconsider my position if they went thru with this.
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In any case, your rule is working. If you want to reconsider your position, go ahead, but you'll have to justify it to yourself a little more congruently.
It's way too early to ditch PPC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's way too early to ditch PPC (Score:5, Insightful)
So? How many people were still using OS 9 when they dumped the G4 tower. They had to bring Classic-booting Macs back *twice* because of the outcry from education. I'm still convinced that Apple could have introduced Intel Macs at any time and they waited until they could dump Classic booting... the third time was the charm... before they dumped Classic with the Intel introduction.
Apple has always considered the educational market a critical one because it's a gateway market.
Now, where do you suppose many of the PPC Macs out there are?
A dying breed: (Score:3, Funny)
I'll wait for OS X 10.7, codename "dodo" or 10.8, "brontasaurus."
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Careful: linking to a Slashdot post to prove a point in a Slashdot point can create an area of infinite anecdotal density and lead to the formation of a Stupidularity!
PA Semi? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:PA Semi? (Score:5, Informative)
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OS Code Names (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OS Code Names (Score:4, Funny)
Just like Ubuntu goes alphabetically, everyone knows that a Tiger can kick a Puma's ass, and that a Leopard will rip a Tigers neck open as it attacks from a tree.
Re:OS Code Names (Score:4, Insightful)
Virtually every modern OS does this. Even Debian.
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I heard they are compiling a list of names right now.
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Disappointed if Intel only (Score:5, Insightful)
This support is pretty consistent. Look at previous OS releases. Mac OS 9, released 1999, was not fully depreciated until Mac OS 10.4,in 2005. For computers, the cube, the TiPB, and the G4 Powermac, all released in 1999-2000, did not lose support until late last year.
So what does this mean in terms of expectations. The last editions of the powerbook, for example, was introduced around around 2003 and sold until 2006. Given the history of supporting 7 years old hardware, and Jobs statement that he would support 5 year old hardware, we should not see a Intel only Mac OS X until at least 2010. Given that OS X is now pretty stable, except for very new features like Time Mac machine, which does not need a new release, and Jobs statement that the release cycle wil be slower, we should not expect 10.6 until late 2009 or early 2010.
If OS 10.6 is release later this year, and does not support PPC, it will be another indication that Apple is moving away from the long term support of customers and falling into the trap of the average consumer electronics company, I have no problem with certain apps not runing on the PPC, like the newest iMovie and iPhone SDK, and expect that even if 10.6 support PPC, it won't be a full support(although they never had to do partial support in the previous transitions), but a drop of PPC prior to 2010 will be extremely damaging to their reputation of reliability.
My prediction on the record here.... YellowBox (Score:5, Interesting)
- Drop the Mac branding, eg "OS X Leopard"
- Drop or minimise Carbon favor of Cocoa
- PC version of Leopard, or 10.6
- Apple Software Update can push/strongly advise major new apple software features to Windows users
In my mind, these add up to the old YELLOW BOX - i.e., the ability to run Mac (Cocoa) Apps on Windows. Yellow box is a compatibility layer. This feature was advertised initially with Rhapsody, but wisely withdrawn. We are now in a very different place. There are many desirable Mac Apps, and OS X is a desirable place for developers. Businesses begin to want Mac Apps and maybe eventually the full MacOS but need a transition path.
There is now every reason to release the Yellow Box and no reason not to.
- It provides the transition path
- It provides for stealth killer apps to seep onto Windows users' radar
- It will no longer dilute Mac Sales - because Microsoft's lustre and safety have gone
You'll all see that I'm right
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the stability, reliability, and intuitive feel of mac apps can not be feasibly maintained on an operating system for broader hardware ranges, and as such subject to greater instability. This of course doesn't touch on the fact the particular case you cite is the product of a third party not fully versed in the nuances of the programs involved, nor does it touch on intentiona [auckland.ac.nz]
Which would suck for me, since I'm nearly 100% PPC (Score:3, Interesting)
1) None of my major applications were going to be out in Universial for at least 12 - 18 months (Final Cut Pro, Adobe et. al.)
2) I had no idea how this transition was going to go. It was either going to be smooth as could be or an unmitagated disaster. So I played it safe.
I bought an intel iMac for my Dad about a year and a half ago for christmas. It was absolutely amazing how well things went, but I did spend close $7k all said and done on my Quad-Core G5. It's still a powerful machine, with 8GB of Ram, for video editing and compositing using Shake as well as the limited 3D work I do in Lightwave.
That being said, I'm still on OSX 10.4 as well. My laptop is the last 12.1" powerbook G4 and I still love this machine for traveling as it fits on any airplane tray table. (I just shoved out another $80 for a new battery).
Now I have plans to get a MacBook Pro by the end of the year, but still i plan to keep this little machine for traveling as well I have no plans to upgrade my PowerMac to a Mac Pro for another couple years.
This is more likely... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bear in mind that v10.5 requires at least an 867 MHz G4 to install. By the time v10.6 rolls out, the minimum requirements will probably be in the area of a 2.0 GHz G5, which will leave comparatively few PPC machines extant that can even run the beast, so Apple may think, "Why bother?". That would mean no PPC laptops, as no G5 laptops were ever released, leaving only iMacs, Power Macs, and XServes able to run it. After all, my own Dual 2.0 GHz G5 Power Mac is already over three years old, and will be four-and-a-half by next summer. There's no reason to expect that Apple will support these machines indefinitely. A still more likely explanation is that only faster G5's (as described above) will run v10.6 PPC, and PPC support will be removed in v10.7, as this will avoid pissing off the punters too much. Not that Apple is any stranger to pissing off their customers, but they seem to know we'll eventually forgive them if they deliver the goods with the new candy.
The biggest clue is that the banners rolling out at the Moscone Center all read "OS X Leopard", rather than "Mac OS X Leopard". While this may indicate Apple finally moving on from the old Macintosh OS code, it is also possible that it means nothing more than that Apple is rebranding "OS X" in conjunction with the release of the 3G iPhone (or 2G, if you prefer iPod terms instead of cell network terms), something which has been intimated with every discussion of the iPhone's current OS as "running OS X", rather than running "Mac OS X". It may also have something to do with these "electric computers" that are streaming into the country at an astounding rate (which are likely the new iPhones, but who knows? Apple is very, very sneaky.).
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Mac sells computers. They want the OS to be a selling point for their hardware, not the other way round. They've also always had significant limits on what's ok to put in a Mac, in order to prevent issues with OS and driver compatibility, in addition to making sure cheap junk doesn't easily get put in the machine.
They don't care as much about OS market share as they care about how many computers they sell.
Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:5, Insightful)
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BeOS tried that. NeXT tried that. IBM (OS/2) tried that. It doesn't work.
They didn't work because they were small companies, and Microsoft crushed them when they tried to negotiate OEM deals with companies like Dell and HP by threatening to penalize those OEM's. Apple isn't a small company. They have big income outside of the PC market now, and they wouldn't be intimidated or defeated . And the last time they let cloners run their OS, Mac usage picked up dramatically.
You can argue whether it makes financial sense for Apple to license their OS to OEMs, but you can't really argue
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They release MacOS X only for Macs. Is there a reason why they don't release it for regular PC's? Is it because they'd like people to buy Mac hardware along with the OS? But maybe there would be more Mac OS's sold if they also made a version for regular PC's? Or maybe they do it because there are less possible compatibility problems if they only make it for their own Mac hardware, because PC's are too customizable?
This question is nothing new, people are constantly asking it and just about any story on Slashot about OS X has multiple threads about it.
I don't think we've ever gotten an actual answer from Apple, the the usual answers from Apple fans are:
Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:5, Insightful)
1) It avoids treading on Microsoft's toes. Mac versions of MS Office help to sell lot of Apple machines, so pissing the Redmond Gorilla off by competing with them in the commodity OS market wouldn't be a particularly good idea.
2) Apple tried it in the past, and ended up losing far more from lost sales revenue to clone makers than they were earning by licensing the OS. This was therefore one of the first things Jobs killed off when he took over at Apple, so it's unlikely he'd want to risk the same thing happening again.
Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:5, Interesting)
Develop drivers for a VM like Virtualbox and you automatically support a wide range of diverse hardware, without the development costs of running native, the Mac experience within a VM machine would be consistent.
However It wouldn't be as good as a real mac and the natuaral upgrade path would be to a real Mac. The problem with the clones was superior performance at a better price. Of course people would buy a clone over the apple product when it was faster and cheaper than apple were offering.
The VM route doesn't compete against Apple hardware, real Apple hardware will result in a better eXperience than the VM resulting in improved Apple hardware sales.
It would be so easy to sell
Taste the Apple eXperience, one bite will have you wanting more.
The VM experience would be a tool for apple to sell more mac's a completely different proposition to selling clones.
Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:4, Informative)
The real reason is that Apple is a hardware company.
Everybody say this out loud over and over until you die:
APPLE IS A HARDWARE COMPANY.
Yes, they produce some great software but they make their money (which is the thing that really matters) on hardware.
--Richard
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Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
No really, the answer to all your questions are "yes". You seem to understand the situation so I'm not sure why you're asking.
Q:Is there a reason why they don't release it for regular PC's?
A:Yes, there are a couple reasons, at least. You give two of them later on.
Q:Is it because they'd like people to buy Mac hardware along with the OS?
A:Yes. Apple makes most of its money selling hardware. That's the business they're in. OSX and iLife are largely built to be enticements to buy their hardware, just as the iTMS was created to encourage people to buy iPods.
Q:But maybe there would be more Mac OS's sold if they also made a version for regular PC's?
A:Yes, there would most surely be more sales of OSX. The question is, would the increased profits from OSX be enough to make up for the lost hardware sales? The answer is "probably not".
Q:Or maybe they do it because there are less possible compatibility problems if they only make it for their own Mac hardware, because PC's are too customizable?
A:Yes, that's another problem with supporting generic PCs-- you're going to have to support every little piece of crappy hardware anyone wants to buy. Worse yet, you're going to have to deal with the fact that a lot of that hardware comes with poorly-written drivers that will crash your system. The fact is that a *lot* of instability that people see on Windows is driver-related. By being both the OS developer and the systems integrator, Apple gets a level of stability that would otherwise be much more difficult to reach.
Re:MacOS for PC's (Score:4, Informative)
I'd note you're missing a major reason. Currently Apple competes in the computer system market against Dell and Sony and HP, largely on the strength of OS X, a desktop OS. Selling OS X for generic hardware would put them in the desktop OS market directly, a market monopolized by MS. No businessman in their right mind wants to be competing against a monopoly in the market they have monopolized. It costs significantly more than a normal market with higher risk and less return. Quite likely, Apple would fail in that market, regardless of the relative quality of OS X and Windows.
It would be economic suicide to unbundle OS X and Apple computers until the market is at least somewhat competitive, maybe 70% dominated by Windows. That's still quite a ways off, so Apple is focused on slowly chipping away at Windows market share and hoping they can get there some day.
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In comparison, for Windows' top of the line editions of in the same time period (XP and Vista), you paid about $500. Note that OEM and system builder version of OS X don't exist for obvious reasons, so you can't compare those. And nobody ever said Macs
Re:Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you have to re-buy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would you have to re-buy? (Score:5, Funny)
OMG! you would be the joke at all the apple parties.. "Dan in IT, he's still running 10.4 can you believe it?"
"Oh I know no wonder he's not married, come on 10.4? what is he thinking!"
Buy new hardware and upgrade, it's how not to make a Apple etiquette mistake.
NOTE: I use and Love apple hardware, I just make fun on the nuts that think they have to have the new shiney.
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This makes me very uneasy, especially in the area of media players. Code gets frozen, denying you access to/compatibility with newer revisions of formats like matroska.
If they drop ppc
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No, you can explain to your boss how you don't have to touch your paid-for, stable and presumably useful machines for a couple of years except for the odd security patch and hardware glitch.
Next: justifying your own existence!
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The existing PPC kit will run no problem on 10.5 for a couple more years. This will probably be the timescale for 10.7, at which point patches for 10.5 would stop being produced. That gives the 5 year life time. I don't understand that problem.
Re:BOO, Apple! (Score:4, Informative)
Why bookends? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BOO, Apple! (Score:5, Insightful)
It may (rumors, remember) leave PowerPCs unsupported. But that is an inevtiability, anyway.
Re:BOO, Apple! (Score:5, Insightful)
And instead, you can worry about drivers never being available for your cards, peripherals, etc.
Re:BOO, Apple! (Score:4, Informative)
Hell, I'm still running 10.3 on my home computer and 10.4 on my work laptop. Somehow a lack of 10.5 has not hurt me at all, I doubt a lack of 10.6 will have any more of an effect.
Re:Release Date and other inferred info (Score:4, Funny)