Software Support for PowerPC and Intel

John Kheit has warnings for Mac users about the Intel switch, but I think he's missing some key details.

Software vendors will abandon support for PPC machines as soon as it makes business sense to do so.

This is, of course, true, but it's no different than it has ever been. Vendors only target any CPU for a certain period of time. How many vendors really design their software to run well on a G3 or even a G4/667?

Maintaining a PPC build after the initial switchover will be trivial in most cases, so vendors will support PPC in the general sense for quite some time. Apple isn't telling developers to port and optimize for Intel, it's telling them to switch from a PowerPC-only mindset to processor independence. For Cocoa developers, it will be even easier, since they're less likely to have architecture-dependent code in their apps anyway.

Processor independence is just sort of important in general, because architecture changes are a given. The idea here is to be more flexible. This is the logic behind the Accelerate framework. Apple also provides abstractions for the hardware-specific GPU APIs. This is really just the right way to do things.

We already saw that when Doom 3 was released for the Mac. It supported only the very fastest Macs while leaving many other current and/or new Macs out in the lurch.

This is how id software is in general about their titles. They push the envelope for hardcore gamers. It's nothing new.

Did anyone notice no Jaguar (aka OS X 10.2) version of the security patch was released. Why? Because Apple wants you to upgrade to new software.

That's true in a word-by-word sense, but I doubt it's strictly for the obvious reason. The problem is that for such a large engineering project, digging up old code with major architectural differences is incredibly complex. The challenege is to find a balance.

But the fact is that 10.2->10.4 is a much different situation than PowerPC to intel. Apple will be selling PowerPC and Intel-based machines simultaneously for some period of time, but they stopped selling Jaguar as soon as Panther came out.

This gradual transition changes all the rules, and I think Apple realizes that it's much harder for a consumer to transition off of old hardware than old software.

Considering that Steve Jobs mentioned that the entire Intel transition would be complete in two years, that should make at least some people stop and mull things over.

I think John misinterpreted this. Apple's hardware products will be transitioned by that point. This does not mean PPC will be abandoned for software, specifically for the reasons cited above.


Overall, though, I'm not sure what John is looking for. Should Mac publications tell their readers to stop buying computers until Intel machines ship? Who does this help? I don't understand the logic here. Either you're in the market for a computer or you're not.

In fact, the coexistence of 32-bit G4 and 64-bit G5 products is similar in some ways to the coexistence of Intel and PowerPC Machines. If there was no Intel deal, would we all be warning people to not buy 32-bit machines when they'll all be 64-bit in a few years? Developers will eventually abandon 32-bit processors, just as they abandonded 16-bit processors.

I don't see any sense in telling a consumer to struggle with an outdated machine for a year when we don't know anything about the nature of the products that will be available at that time. For all we know, IBM will do a 180 and come out with some incredible chips. May the Intel transition will take longer. Think of the people that were holding out for a 3GHz G5 for all this time. We just don't know.

Comments Temporarily Disabled

I had to temporarily disable comments due to spam. I'll re-enable them soon.