This is hilarious. One of the main things we repeatedly hear as a benefit of the Mac OS is how well it makes older hardware work. Now we have a version that won't even work for an entire group of computers, and that is somehow being made into a positive.
Windows 7 on my 5 year old system runs better than it did with XP. If I had a 3 year old Power PC Mac I couldn't even run Snow Leopard. But that's a great thing!
No matter what Apple does, it gets a thumbs up from Mac fans.
No matter what Apple does, it gets a thumbs down from Mac haters.
I have an half year old MacBook Pro, and a 6 year old PowerBook. The machine has taken quite the licking over the years, but keeps on ticking... It arrived with 10.2 installed, and when 10.3 came out a month later, I got a free upgrade. 10.4 was another improvement, but 10.5 - Leopard - is both the zippiest and most feature laden OS it has ever run. I can't see a need for a new operating system on it, and neither do I expect it.
Apple has successfully addressed backwards compatibility for 32 bit Power PC G4 and 64 bit Power PC G5 based machines since the Intel machines appeared in January 2006... but no-one expects to be able to indefinitely upgrade their older computers, do they? You just want your older machine to perform well until it's time to retire it, and Leopard certainly has my 6 year old machine performing well.
Can the same be said of Vista for the average 6 year old PC laptop? Not if this paragraph from Wikipedia's Vista article is any indication:
Hardware requirements
While Microsoft claimed "nearly all PCs on the market today (2005) will run Windows Vista", the higher requirements of some of the "premium" features, such as the Aero interface, have had an impact on many upgraders. According to the UK newspaper The Times in May 2006, the full set of features "would be available to less than 5 percent of Britain’s PC market", however, this prediction was made several months before Vista was released. This continuing lack of clarity eventually led to a class action against Microsoft as people found themselves with new computers that were unable to use the new software to its full potential despite the assurance of "Vista Capable" designations. The court case has made public internal Microsoft communications that indicate that senior executives have also had difficulty with this issue. For example, his laptop's lack of an appropriate graphics chip so hobbled Vista features that vice president Mike Nash (Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management) commented "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine."
So while Apple has had two entirely different families of processors to take into account when designing its OSes, (which it has managed it very well), with Vista, Microsoft bungled the launch of its first new operating upgrade in 5 years, for its single family of processors.
With its legacy machines running (the very good) Leopard just fine, I have no trouble accepting that Snow Leopard will be the first Mac OS to only run on Intel machines. Apple has moved on from PowerPC compatibility because they can, without leaving PowerPC owners in a lurch.
42