Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 24th Sep 2007 20:01 UTC
Just weeks ahead of its public launch, Apple has updated the minimum system requirements for its next-generation Leopard operating system to exclude 800MHz PowerPC-based Macs, AppleInsider has learned. Apple has yet to officially announce the hardware requirements to run Leopard, due out in October, but had long stated in developer documentation that the software would require "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (800MHz or faster) or G5 processor." According to people familiar with the matter, engineers for the company recently determined that Leopard installs on 800MHz PowerPC G4 systems ran "too slow". Support for those systems was subsequently pulled from the most recent pre-release copies of Leopard, which inform testers that the software "cannot be installed" on those computers. My take: Assuming this turns out to be true, there are going to be a lot of unhappy G4 owners - including yours truly.
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Member since:
2006-01-02
Everyone does it. Why increase the OS X team's testing matrix or take a risk of customers having a pathologically bad experience by supporting a 4 year old machine? It's not in the financial interests of the company and chances are good that customers on those really old machines have a "fixed" deployment that doesn't change much. Their old OS won't magically stop working and their old apps will still function.
The only problem that could arise with a long tail of legacy users is that old security bugs might finally be exploited. It's not that likely to happen, though, because there simply aren't enough old Mac users to pique the interests of the Russian hackers.