[X4U] Re: Guesses on G4 lifespan? (net kat)

[Zane H. Healy]

> hmmm, what leads you to say that "some 'ware won't run on intel-based Macs"?

A *LOT* of Mac software (in fact you could probably say most) won't run on
Mac OS X/Intel.  It will only run PPC binaries that run native on Mac OS X,
and I'm not certain that it will be able to run all of those via Rosetta.

All of us with old 68k, or even PPC software that they can't live without
have a serious problem.  In my case, I've got a couple 68k apps I still use. 
One of which pretty much falls into the "can't live without" catagory.  Of
course I also still need classic Appletalk support, so I'm stuck at 10.3.9
until I can remove that need.

> compatible. I am able to open and work with documents going back to the
> late eighties. Some software isnt backwards compatible. I can't open
> powerpoint 2 documents in powerpoint 4 but powerpoint 2 still works in
> classic and I can thus still access these documents, modify them, print
> them to a pdf, or the like. A few issues surrounding apps that required the
> math co-processor (remember that?). But by and large macs have been
> exquisitely backwards compatible, essential for my using my mac as my
> laboratory notebook.

Sadly, neither PowerPoint 2 or PowerPoint 4 will run on the new Intel Macs. 
I believe the last two versions will, but Office 98 and prior will not. 
This will be a problem for all those MS Word 5.1 holdouts.

> lets hope (or insist) that the new intel macs retain complete backwards
> compatiblity, if necessary through something along the lines of classic.
> 
> otherwise I stay with my (still wonderful) G-4 and kachink, mac loses
> another loyal purchaser/upgrader. Lets hope not.

I have a feeling that there is going to be a market for something along the
lines of Virtual PC that will allow us to run our older apps.  I'm willing
to admit that it really doesn't make sense for Apple to expend the effort
doing this, but this is the perfect thing for some third party developer to
do.

		Zane