So the next version of Mac OS X (10.6 “Snow Leopard”) is going to be Intel-only. That means those with the older PowerPC-based Macs are now left behind.

This is fine and good. The way Apple needs to move forward, they need to do it with the Intel chips. The old PowerPC chips just aren’t going to cut it any further, so it’s good for Apple to cut the losses.

I do wonder tho. In the keynote speech today Apple said after installing Snow Leopard that you’d regain a lot of disk space. My guess? The lack of the PowerPC portions of the executables. Makes sense to not bother shipping them any more.

These days for me to support PowerPC isn’t really a big deal. I work in higher level languages (C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Python, etc.) and I don’t have a lot of endian issues to deal with any more (e.g. we store things in neutral ways, like XML or plist-binary formats). So to deal with PowerPC is merely flipping the switch on the compiler to do ppc codegen. 

But it does mean that I need to buy a new iMac for the family. The old G5 one is certainly a relic now. I’ve always said with tech stuff that you should wait until the last minute to buy… wait until you absolutely must have it and can’t live without it any more for whatever reason, then buy and buy the best you can. Since there’s always something new and better on the horizon (and you know even better is just behind that, ad nauseam), that’s about the best you can do. I’ve put off the iMac purchase for as long as I could, and while I’m not rushing to The Apple Store to buy a new one, I know it’s coming.