Adobe has announced it is dropping PowerPC support from its next version of the Creative Suite for the Mac. “By the time the next version of the Suite ships, the very youngest PPC-based Macs will be roughly four years old. They’re still great systems, but if you haven’t upgraded your workstation in four years, you’re probably not in a rush to upgrade your software, either. Bottom line: Time & resources are finite, and with big transitions underway (going 64-bit-native, switching from Carbon to Cocoa), you want Adobe building for the future, not for the past.”
It has been about 4 years since Apple has released Power PC Systems anyways. Any Power PC OS X systems would be well showing its age by now. And updating your CS will not probably be the best idea as the new features will probably run that much slower. Stick with the current version if you don’t want to upgrade. If you do want to upgrade then you have reason to get a New system. It has been long enough to get a new one anyways.
I have an old 1.67 G4 powerbook. The screen is not as bright as newer ones, and some edges around the keyboard are a little “worn off”, but the rest still works perfectly. In many ways, this notebook blows off many low/mid-end notebooks I’ve seen using by my colleagues in these weeks (including performance).
I would have no reason to switch if it wasn’t for an increasing number of programs built *only* for intel (for no reason whatsoever). I could certainly use Snow Leopard on this machine (and love to), but it’s not supported. Again, this is not a terrible issue, but eventually stuff will only be compiled without *any* backward compatibility.
I could simply stay “behind”, but being a developer, this is not acceptable. Not that I need the speed, honestly. I still prefer my opaque screen to the glass (even after trying it for months), and I love to be able to replace the battery with a fresh one when I’m traveling. On the hardware side, I see absolutely *no* reason to switch.
Could you expand on the part about one notebook blowing off another?
Actually, it’s your fault, as a developer, that your PPC Mac will be outdated within a few months. Since Apple developers always think they need to stay updated, virtually no new software works on older revisions of OS X. And since Apple cuts off support for their hardware several years prematurely, older Macs can only run abandonware for older OS X versions.
I think the key word here is “developer”. Do you use any apps that may need more power, such as the Adobe suite and Apple’s movie-editing stuff?
By opaque you mean matte screen, yes? Apple now offers the 15″ with an antiglare finish. Need more battery power than 8 hours? Get one of these:
http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperMac-External-MacBook-Battery-and-Car…
Kind of a non-issue. As for your system’s performance; Even most G5 systems are left behind by the cheapest MacBook Pro in terms of performance. I can’t see how you’d possibly want to avoid upgrading.
Err… The cost?
I’ve got to ask, have you considered a linux distribution for your PPC Mac? I don’t know what kind of developing you do, so it’s probably not a practical option… but at least you’d have current software.
I am not PPC nor a Mac users, anyways:
That’s utterly bs to me. Only because I don’t waste hardware or upgrade often, it does not mean I don’t like software upgrades.
Of course it is a pity that the still very beautiful PowerBook G4’s are running out of date.
Just as I will find it a pity that my beautiful unibody MacBook Pro will run out of date in a few years.
But this has *always* been Apple’s philosophy (with the emphasis on always); not to keep dragging around with legacy stuff. Even Microsoft is tending towards such an approach.
So stop your whining. Please! I know Macs are expensive, but updating your hardware along with your software is really the way we should accept things are today.
I’m not a Mac dude (but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express), but I seem to remember the earlier Mac story to be just the opposite. For years, Mac supported a way for people to keep the same Mac and use add-in boards to keep up. I think people could even put PowerPC add-in boards into their 68K Mac. When they finally stopped doing that, leaving no upgrade path for some users, it was quite controversial.
May be a little hard to fit a new add-in board into a Ti-Book or any laptop for that matter, but I see your point. I guess if you brought a Mac Pro then you would be able to do that.
Did the LCIII allow and upgrade like that? (I’d kill for an LCIII running OS X).
This is really new to me, so thanks for correcting me there, fretinator! 😉
Yes. Just accept the Kool-Aid.
Yep and move on from IE6
I personally want the next version of photoshop to take advantage of everything the latest hardware and software has to offer. I certainly don’t want to see it ‘not use’ a feature in order to protect backwards compatibility.
Lets not forget these G5 users can continue to usethe current photoshop to their hearts content. If you NEED a new feature of the new CS then it might be time to also upgrade your hardware (esp as the G5 ebay price is still quite high atm and I expect it will drop post snow leopard)
I thought they used it for Photoshop elements. If they used Qt wouldn’t they get PPC support for free?
Well, not for optimized algorithms.
Adobe should’ve used Qt anyways. That way separate code bases for Mac and Windows GUIs would be avoided. Adobe had to port all GUI anyway when they moved from Carbon to Cocoa.
Then again, using cross platform toolkits generally means that the program looks and feels “not quite right” on all the platforms it runs on, so I feel like it makes more sense for them to develop “native” guis for each target platform.
Apple seems to want everybody to move along to Intel hardware and pressuring ISVs like Adobe to only compile their apps for x86 is a big part of that. The fact that Apple is discontinuing PPC support in 10.6 (the version of OS X likely to be shipping when the next version of Adobe stuff comes out) probably has something to do with the decision also.
Nevertheless, I look forward to snapping up a cheap used G4 laptop once all the Jobs-worshiping masses are finally forced to move along.
I had a PPC, then brought the first Intel iMac, and was very happy with the upgrade. Heaps quicker. Stay on G4’s if you want but I think the Intels are quicker.
High-end G4 notebooks have the miserable performance of middle-class Atom netbooks with the weight of modern Intel Core notebooks. Combine that with the horrible durability of old batteries (new ones are half the price of a new netbook) and you’ll end up with a very expensive piece of slow hardware.
Oh, BTW: Try to get some SD RAM to increase the main memory to something somewhat acceptable.
Also, don’t pin this down to Steve Jobs. John Sculley (Apple’s CEO before Jobs returned) considers not moving to the Intel platform one of his greatest mistakes during his Apple career:
http://macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7045“ rel=”nofollow”>http://web.archive.org/web/20071208100556/