Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, may only be six months old, but rumours are already abound as to the next update to Apple's operating system. According to several sources, it's going to be called Snow Leopard, it won't contain any major new features, and is planned to go gold master December 2008, available a month later. The big rumour: it's going to be available for 64bit Intel machines only.
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Member since:2005-07-22
Member since:2005-12-13
In theory, applications can be PPC, Intel or Universal Binaries and as such the OS can be one of either as well.
Every Leopard Install DVD contains Universal Binaries to make it run on either of Apple's two supported platforms. This means that Applications will take up more space than actually needed, no matter the hardware platform.
At work I have images of a 10.4.11 installation, complete with all security updates and every needed application; one for PPC and one for Intel.
The Intel image - primarily made of Universal Binaries - take up at least 80% more space than the PPC image containing the same set of everything, but with less Universal Binaries to fill up its belly ...
Member since:2006-05-12
Think about it. Who runs the applications? The operating system, right?
Pick any program in the application's folder or any binary inside an OS provided framework (/Library), right-click and get info. Universal binary format. So, every single "program" in Leopard has two binaries inside, a compiled PowerPC binary, and a compiled Intel binary.
All I am saying is that "I" would be better off not having the PowerPC portion in my hard disk copy of Leopard. Most programs/libraries would be half the size! It would be even better if third parties dropped PowerPC too and started releasing Intel only binaries. Smaller, more disk efficient.
We could still run legacy PowerPC apps through Rosetta and 3rd party UB programs natively.
Member since:2007-03-29
You can drop PowerPC code from UBs by running Xslimmer: http://www.xslimmer.com/
Just be happy we're not getting Quad-binaries like on Next/OpenStep. 
Member since:2006-06-06
Member since:
2006-05-12
I would love to get Leopard with PowerPC binaries dropped out of the Universal Binary application bundles. Smaller applications and system libraries. I do not need PowerPC support on my Intel Mac. I want a lean and mean leopard machine with nearly half the disk footprint on all executable files.