On Oct 25, 2010, at 3:24 PM, Mystic Prowler wrote: > Yes it sure will be. Strange to know that some Macs shipped with OS X 10.5 > and can only go to OS X 10.6.
I don't see any reason to assume that Lion will drop support for early Intel processors. The three year life of the final PowerPC Macs (2006 to Snow Leopard in 2009) was unprecedented. Even the G3 processor required by the final release version of Mac OS X in 2001 allowed four year old Power Macintosh computers from 1997 to run the new software. While I don't necessarily like it, I do understand why they dropped support, and now that the software is all-Intel there is no reason that the next two or three releases would need to drop support (once again, consider early OS X - support for the systems remained exactly the same (any G3 processor) from the earliest builds in the late 1990s to the release of Panther in late 2003, and by the time Tiger was at the end of its life in 2007, system compatibility went back eight years to the 1999 PowerMac G3). They may increase the RAM requirement, and from the video demonstrations it will require a Magic Mouse or multitouch trackpad, but I think the processors are probably safe. > OS X 10.6 is all about optimization and 64-bit stuff. G5's are 64-bit, so why > drop support for them? They dropped support for G5 because it is an entirely different architecture. Just because they are 64 bit doesn't mean they are in any way similar to Intel chips, and keeping software up to date for two completely different architectures causes programs to become bloated with unnecessary code. While I still prefer PowerPC and wish I could use some of Snow Leopard's features on my PowerBook G4, I understand why they did it. Apple is trying to move away from PowerPC and force software developers to design for Intel processors, and they are trying not to repeat the switch from OS 9 to OS X, where even years after everyone had moved on many programs, including some of Apple's own, were still built with the tools originally meant to serve only as a step between OS 9 and OS X. Steven -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist
