Back when I was a Mac user I was a big fan of the PPC Macs, and honestly never liked the direction Mac OS X took after Apple moved to x86 to chase the bignums, nor did I like how quickly they dropped what I felt was the better hardware (the x86 Macs never ran as cool, and the early x86 MacBooks had this nasty sleep/wake bug where they'd sometimes appear to sleep but actually didn't and would then start cooking themselves). I suspect that they'll be doing the same with their move away from x86 now, as well, which I'm sure will once again be a menace for those stuck using them for work purposes.

Quoting: PenglingBack when I was a Mac user I was a big fan of the PPC Macs, and honestly never liked the direction Mac OS X took after Apple moved to x86 to chase the bignums, nor did I like how quickly they dropped what I felt was the better hardware (the x86 Macs never ran as cool, and the early x86 MacBooks had this nasty sleep/wake bug where they'd sometimes appear to sleep but actually didn't and would then start cooking themselves). I suspect that they'll be doing the same with their move away from x86 now, as well, which I'm sure will once again be a menace for those stuck using them for work purposes.

Yeah, PPC was usually more efficient than x86. RISC is in general. I used to be a bigger Mac person during the G3, G4, and G5 days. It's a shame that the G5s had such a heat issue. Though they probably could've just made a different variant for their laptops.

I always thought that Apple making those first generation low-end x86 Macs with 32-bit chips was a mistake. They should've just went straight to x86-64 and never bothered with IA-32. Cause then the stupid decision to remove 32-bit support would've never had to have been made.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped x86 after Sonoma. It’s a real shame Apple are like they are, I just love their hardware.

Quoting: Linux_RocksYeah, PPC was usually more efficient than x86. RISC is in general.

Yep, exactly. I know there were the two schools of thought about it back in the day, but I was in the "They shouldn't've done it, it's just to put bigger numbers in the marketing and won't help the software side much." camp, as you've probably guessed.

That said, Rosetta was a fantastic solution to the architecture change, and was the second thing ever to open my eyes to the potential for compatibility-layers in computing (the first was the official BBC Micro emulator for the Acorn Archimedes, which I was quite impressed with back in primary-school, where those computers were commonplace). It's been really neat seeing that pay off with Wine and Proton these days!

Quoting: Linux_RocksI used to be a bigger Mac person during the G3, G4, and G5 days. It's a shame that the G5s had such a heat issue. Though they probably could've just made a different variant for their laptops.

I had a G4 as far as the laptops went - I think that, for the time, it really hit the sweet-spot for performance and reliability. I skipped over the G3 iBooks with the notorious motherboard problems, even though I loved the brightly-coloured casings (I wanted a red one, way back when, and I'd love to see some other company pick up a similar aesthetic someday when it inevitably comes back into fashion).

I'm glad that x86 in portables has improved so much since then, though, since that's been good for me on the Linux front. I don't think I would want to use PPC nowadays, since I'd be losing some flexibility, but it would've been nice if it had gone on for longer than it did.

Quoting: Linux_RocksI always thought that Apple making those first generation low-end x86 Macs with 32-bit chips was a mistake. They should've just went straight to x86-64 and never bothered with IA-32. Cause then the stupid decision to remove 32-bit support would've never had to have been made.

Totally agreed! I can accept that, marketing-wise or at least shareholders-wise, it was probably the right thing for them to switch to x86, but going 32-bit at that point was never the best move.

Quoting: damarrinYeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped x86 after Sonoma. It’s a real shame Apple are like they are, I just love their hardware.

I miss the G4 iBooks. They were built like tanks, in spite of their relatively slim appearance. Loved them.

Last edited by Pengling on 4 August 2023 at 5:30 pm UTC

My Mac is a Late 2014 i7 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB Fusion Drive. I'm debating whether to downgrade to macOS Mojave for 32-bit support, or just say screw macOS on it period, and use it as a FreeBSD file server after x86 gets dropped. I already use the OpenCore Legacy Patcher on it, but I do plan on eventually getting an Apple Silicon Mac mini to replace it with.

Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: Linux_RocksI used to be a bigger Mac person during the G3, G4, and G5 days. It's a shame that the G5s had such a heat issue. Though they probably could've just made a different variant for their laptops.

I had a G4 as far as the laptops went - I think that, for the time, it really hit the sweet-spot for performance and reliability. I skipped over the G3 iBooks with the notorious motherboard problems, even though I loved the brightly-coloured casings (I wanted a red one, way back when, and I'd love to see some other company pick up a similar aesthetic someday when it inevitably comes back into fashion).

I'm glad that x86 in portables has improved so much since then, though, since that's been good for me on the Linux front. I don't think I would want to use PPC nowadays, since I'd be losing some flexibility, but it would've been nice if it had gone on for longer than it did.

The white G3 iBooks were more reliable, iirc. I always wanted a 900MHz G3 iBook cause it was a great Mac OS 9 machine too. The dual-processor 1.25GHz G4 PowerMacs (without the FireWire 800) were the fastest official OS 9 machines, but the community made a patch or whatever that lets you run OS 9 natively on the last 2 dual-processor PowerMac G4s. Which means the actual fastest OS 9 machine is the dual-processor 1.42GHz PowerMac G4. Another one that I always wanted. That 1080p 23" Cinema Display was awesome too.

PPC had the last laugh though after Apple. The 360, Wii, and Wii U all were PowerPC based, and the Cell in the PS3 was POWER based. The GameCube also was PPC, and at E3 2005 the 360 kiosks were actually using G5 PowerMacs. Plus FreeBSD has really good PPC support still, and there were (are?) good Linux distros for it as well.

Last edited by Linux_Rocks on 4 August 2023 at 10:39 pm UTC

If they dropped x86 after Sonoma, 2019 Macs would have received only 4 years of updates. Sure, Apple is Apple but even they will not limit these to 4 years. I think macOS 14 and 15 will support x86 and then we will lose support. Also if I recall correctly Apple started warning users 1 year in advance with 32 bit support discontinuation and we haven't seen something similar in Sonoma for x86_64 apps. Yet.
Also since people mntion which Macs they have: We have a MacBook Air Early 2015 running 10.14, just because updates take a lot of time and disk space. Still good with macOS, even better with Linux.

Last edited by mr-victory on 4 August 2023 at 8:16 pm UTC

I'm forced to use a Macbook for work. The only saving grace is brew. So long as brew supports whatever crap Apple excretes next, it'll still be better than Windows.

(previous couple of jobs let me install and maintain Arch on the provided laptop, 10000% more productive.)

Quoting: PenglingYep, exactly. I know there were the two schools of thought about it back in the day, but I was in the "They shouldn't've done it, it's just to put bigger numbers in the marketing and won't help the software side much." camp, as you've probably guessed.

Sorry for jumping in with my poorly-sourced "I think I heard somewhere one time, at some point" citation, but I heard Steve Jobs went with Intel because IBM was just too slow. The business relationship wasn't working out for Apple, and they weren't letting them do the things they wanted to do. That was his official position, anyway.

(That's from an audiobook biography about Steve Jobs, although I haven't listened to it myself. I've only gotten into conversations about it with someone who has)

As for the topic of this thread, I would be surprised, but nonetheless happy if my 2017 Mac was supported with the next major version of macOS. I believe next year's will be the last for x86 macs based on 2019 being the last year an x86 Apple computer was released. After that, I'll be getting another two years of support from Adobe, which will give me some time to figure out what the hell I'm going to do instead.

I've switched to Affinity for some stuff, so I might end up just using that even when my Mac computer is no longer supported, at least for a while. I need After Effects too, though, which is trickier. I've considered installing Windows 11 on it, but that's tricky because of the TPM requirement. If the next major version supports x86 Macs newer than mine, then I'll probably use OpenCore to buy some more time. This Mac was really expensive and still performs well, so I'm not going to just throw it out after 8 years of usage. But writing over it with GNU/Linux wouldn't help me with the proprietary software I need.

I live in hope that, by that point, H.264's patents will have expired, DaVinci Resolve will have encode/decode support on GNU/Linux (even if AAC still isn't there...), and I can move my After Effects workflow to DaVinci Fusion or Natron. That, or I'm going to use Lightworks...

I'll probably be opening Photoshop and inDesign in a Windows VM. But by that point, Affinity Photo might work well through Wine. So I might only need inDesign for very rare occasions (yay). As much as I prefer the macOS interface to Windows (if only slightly), I admittedly only use Windows and macOS as a bootloader for the Adobe suite and a few other proprietary applications, so it doesn't matter to me that much.

I'm hoping 2026/7 looks very different.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualSorry for jumping in with my poorly-sourced "I think I heard somewhere one time, at some point" citation, but I heard Steve Jobs went with Intel because IBM was just too slow. The business relationship wasn't working out for Apple, and they weren't letting them do the things they wanted to do. That was his official position, anyway.

(That's from an audiobook biography about Steve Jobs, although I haven't listened to it myself. I've only gotten into conversations about it with someone who has)

That slowness was especially bad when it came to any possible laptop version of the G5. The heat issues being the worst aspect. I blame IBM for that more than Motorola, but I *hate* Big Blue anyways. As much as I do Microsoft. (Though I ironically miss my Pentium II IBM tower. lol)