atheros ar8151 network apple snow leopard

In March 2020, read a tweet by who posted a screenshot of Snow Leopard running on a PowerPC Mac. Knowledge that Snow Leopard’s earliest DPs could be used on PowerPC Macs was broadly forgotten. By then, most of Snow Leopard’s code base was Intel-only, but a handful of residual, “tri-architecture” components lingered. Internally, Apple may have maintained a UB fork as a plan B contingency.Īfter many more DPs, an OS X 10.6.0 “Golden Master” shipped August 2009. Although a “tri-architecture” kernel could boot on PowerPC Macs (namely, during startup “beneath” the grey Apple and loading wheel), it could not launch Finder. By Build 10A222 ( Darwin 10.0.0d3), December 2008, an all-new Finder, the first written wholly in Cocoa, was re-worked for Intel CPUs only. Though still PowerPC-bootable, 10A190 revealed just how much UB code, relative to 10A96, was gone and how less supported PowerPCs had become. Nevertheless, a second DP in October 2008, known as Build 10A190 ( Darwin 10.0.0d2), included UB code to run on PowerPC Macs and, like 10A96, a mach kernel compiled for three architectures - Intel 32-bit, Intel 64-bit, and PowerPC.

The following week, Apple clarified Snow Leopard would be Intel only. At an early stage in Snow Leopard’s development, continued OS X support for PowerPC Macs was still on the table. Apple withheld comment on the UB nature of this DP, designated Build 10A96 (with a Darwin 10.0.0d1 kernel). When Apple supplied a first Developer Preview (DP) of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard at WWDC in June 2008, its operating code prioritized Intel hardware but included a working kernel, Finder, and Universal Binary (UB) code for PowerPC Macs. OS X 10.5 Leopard, on sale October 2007, would be the last major version retailed for PowerPC Macs. During Apple’s product transition from PowerPC to Intel Macs, OS X supported both architectures, but a phase-out of PowerPC support neared.

Atheros ar8151 network apple snow leopard