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Unraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth

According to proponents of this myth, Apple and third party developers will soon stop making software that runs on PowerPC Macs; even Leopard, the next release of Mac OS X, will be Intel only! They’re wrong, here’s why.

This myth is so fantastically absurd that it has to involve Mark Stephens, writing under the name Robert X Cringely. Remember, Cringely was also involved with spreading the Red Box Myth, the Mac OS X Microkernel Myth, and the Mac OS X Needs a Linux Kernel Myth.
His recent speculation that Leopard would not work on PowerPC Macs managed to imply some sort of Osborne Effect for Intel Macs that could only be managed by Apple actively obsolescing all PowerPC Macs this year:
“Speeding-up performance is great, but normally a system vendor won’t want to do that for older hardware, which might encourage some users to keep their old box and just add a new OS. […] For this reason alone, I’m guessing that the new OS X Kernel won’t be backward compatible to PowerMacs. But this is just a guess.”
Read more in “Unraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted


This myth is so fantastically absurd that it has to involve Mark Stephens, writing under the name Robert X Cringely. Remember, Cringely was also involved with spreading the Red Box Myth, the Mac OS X Microkernel Myth, and the Mac OS X Needs a Linux Kernel Myth.
His recent speculation that Leopard would not work on PowerPC Macs managed to imply some sort of Osborne Effect for Intel Macs that could only be managed by Apple actively obsolescing all PowerPC Macs this year:
“Speeding-up performance is great, but normally a system vendor won’t want to do that for older hardware, which might encourage some users to keep their old box and just add a new OS. […] For this reason alone, I’m guessing that the new OS X Kernel won’t be backward compatible to PowerMacs. But this is just a guess.”
“Unraveling The PowerPC Obsolescence Myth”
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/F2155356-71C8-4A95-9A0C-3EA63B1EF959.html
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.