Brandon716
Senior Member
One thing I do think Apple is rather hard to understand on is their ingenious marketing department. They say things and have said things for years that absolutely aren't true.
Just look at their web page on Rosetta, the built-in emulation program in OS X to run PowerPC binaries on an Intel x86 Mac:
http://www.apple.com/rosetta/
It clearly states that "There's no emulation. No second-class status." when it couldn't be further from the truth.
Rosetta doesn't appear to be an emulator because it doesn't open up in a different environment or require a reboot, but its still emulation. A huge performance hit takes place when running PPC binaries on an x86 Mac, and not only that, but many programs (particularly intensive 3D games) just won't work at all or are too slow to work properly. And the problem for the end user is that they buy these new blazing fast dual or quad core x86 systems that are much faster than their previous PowerPC Macs, yet the software runs slower??
That's the problem with Apple. Apple uses clever marketing all the time, but sometimes they put outright lies up and people who aren't technical (i.e. most of their clients) really believe this stuff.
There's some serious incompatibility problems because Apple has switched platforms virtually every 2 years for the past 10 years. OS 9 32 bit - OS X 32 bit PPC - OS X 64 bit PPC - OS X 32 bit Intel x86 - OS X 64 bit Intel x86.
That's 5 platform changes since the original OS X came out in March 2001, just months before Windows XP 32 bit x86 came out in fall 2001.
Admittedly the big deal isn't going from a 32 bit version to 64 bit version (save for driver issues), the real problem is that Apple has had a total operating system re-write no less than 3 times in the past 7 years. Not just a version change from 32 bit to 64 bit, but TOTAL re-write of the OS. OS 9 - OS X Power PC - OS X x86.
One would hope that Apple stays with the x86 platform and stops this non-sense from skipping around every other year. Apple only adopted Power PC technology in the mid 1990's and it barely lasted 10 years.
I remember my first Macintosh when I was a kid, we got a Motorola 68k Mac Performa in 1995, my first home Macintosh. It was totally outdated within two years and wouldn't run ANY PowerPC software despite having a relatively fast processor for its time. A matter of fact, some of the 68k Quadras and Performa's at 66MHz outperformed the original PowerPC systems for years because of the lack of PPC software or a fully native MacOS at the time.
So we bought a Power Mac G3 for a family system in 1998 barely 3 years after investing into that original 68k Mac because NO NEW SOFTWARE would work.
This has been an ongoing problem for Apple for many years now. You don't know if you're current Mac will be able to run anything in several years because they keep changing the technology.
My family purchased two Macintosh systems: A Performa 68k processor based Mac in 1995 and a PowerPC G3 Mac in 1998. In 1998 it made sense, I was in high school and needed Mac compatibility. Today it really doesn't make sense at all looking back at why we spent so much money for systems that were outdated so quickly.
My Vista laptop today can run Windows 95 applications from 13 years ago mostly with no problems, just as a comparison.
And for the Mac fans out there, this seriously isn't dogging Apple that bad. They have some terrific technology and some terrific products, but you pay a huge premium for a product that just doesn't seem to last from a compatibility perspective.
You'll go away spending $2,000 on a Mac system that you can easily buy a Windows Vista machine for $800 with similar hardware. Particularly since PCs have open hardware architecture and you can buy from different processor and motherboard vendors, etc.
My biggest problem with Apple to this day is the fact that they don't open up their architecture. They could possibly overtake Windows and Microsoft's hedgemony if they just set a rule that they would become a software developer and leave the hardware to the open market much like Microsoft. Of course they would need to retain some quality control to ensure the Mac ease of use, like requiring drivers and hardware to be approved, but Apple will never do this. They will forever be the expensive, custom built PC that controls only 5% of the market (if that).
Old programs run through the Rosetta emulation system and its not that fluid, these new dual core Intel x86 iMacs are tanking some of the many MacOS PowerPC applications that run faster on older hardware that is slower.
