The question of how long Apple will support Leopard, which has gone virtually undiscussed heretofore, leapt into the spotlight, center-stage, the other night when my buddy Max told me he had to buy a new Mac in order to upgrade his iPhone.
After a quick check of his Mac's specs I told him that all he needed to do was upgrade from Tiger to Leopard (and max out his RAM, but that's another thread), which would enable him to run the latest version of iTunes (10.1.1 as I write) and upgrade his iPhone's iOs.
We were left with the question, though, of how much time will the close to $200 investment he'll have to make buy him?
Apple's PPC to Intel switch has left it with something of a down-the-road public relations nightmare, namely that at some point (which, extrapolating from Mactracker, will be in August (Edit) 2013 2011 when the final Power Mac G5 goes vintage) it will be able to legitimately drop support for Leopard and leave every PPC user in the world who wants to run a supported version of OS X in the position of having to buy not just a new version of OS X, but a new Intel Mac.
That, in and of itself, is not so terrible, because many users are in a position to put the decision off for years (witness the number of users who are, wisely or not, running other legacy versions of OS X), but it has been exacerbated by the huge proliferation of iOS devices, the need to upgrade which will ultimately (i.e. when iOS upgrades become available exclusively via a version of iTunes that won't run on a PPC Mac) force many users' to buy new Macs now whether or not they had any intention of doing so at all.
So... The question I've been trying to get to is: Can we expect Apple to support iTunes for Leopard until past August (Edit) 2013 2011, and hoping against all hope, possibly even later for how long?
Last edited by artie505; 01/26/11 01:32 PM.
