On October 17, 1998 Apple released Mac OS 8.5, the first operating system that ran solely on Macintoshes with PowerPC processors. As far as system software upgrades go, this was the end of the line for any Mac built before the Power Macintosh 6100, introduced in March 1994. Earlier Macs ran on some variation of 680x0 processors and were supported mostly via emulation in a PowerPC environment. Emulation works, but it also slows things down. By 1998, Apple decided it just couldn't support 680X0 emulation for a number of reasons, but chiefly among them was speed.

What happened was just what you would expect. In user groups, USENET and the Internet (which was only starting to explode), apoplectic non-PowerPC Mac owners threatened class action lawsuits and the rending of garments. Of course, most Power Mac users loved the newfound speed introduced in Mac OS 8.5, thanks to code optimized for PowerPC processors and jettisoned emulation support.

It took Apple only four years to introduce the PowerPC chip and make any Mac without it obsolete. Technology moved on.

In September Apple will release Snow Leopard, which will only run on Intel based Macs, thus cutting off PowerPC support. This time it took eleven years from inception to extinction (well, three for the Intel transition), but even so I can hear the hue and cry machine cranking up. Once again, the major reason for dropping legacy support is speed. Technology has moved on.

Whenever something like this happens there is a potential for a marketing meltdown, but this time Apple is doing something brilliant. It is going to sell Snow Leopard for $29. When I saw this on the video stream of the WWDC keynote address my jaw dropped, my eyes glazed and only later did it start making sense to me. Apple first introduced Mac OS X in 2001, and excluding the free update to Mac OS X 10.1 from Mac OS X 10.0, a new version of the OS has been released roughly every 18 months, always at a price of $129. The sales pitch is always the same: with each new version, OS X gets new features and an "enhanced computing experience" which largely depended upon how much you like the new features.

Mac OS X 10.6 will be the fifth major release in eight years, and some users are complaining about feature overload. There will always be users who want four ways to do the same thing, but for others, feature-laden releases are overwhelming and the glimmer and excitement of a new OS X release has faded. What a perfect time to work under the hood, set up the core of the operating system for the future and stabilize what's already there! But of course you can't make everyone happy. I would expect a large group of users to not be mollified by a nicer QuickTime and an improvement to Stacks. In effect, where's the beef? The beef is under the hood this time.

The news that Apple has stealthily included Safari in its Software Updater bounced all over the Mac blogosphere today, and earned cheers and jeers (well, mostly jeers). Here's a quick roundup.

• The most attention probably comes from John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, who unequivocally calls the decision "wrong," and says that doing something other than "updating" with an "updater" betrays the public trust.
• Darby Lines at The Angry Drunk says that the whole matter is just plain "whining" and that Apple is hardly forcing the software on anyone, especially considering that there's a checkbox right next to the name of it. And it's not like, as many people have said, installing Safari on a PC is actually a bad move.
• The Inquirer actually makes a worthwhile joke: "Some iTunes users report that the box to sign up for Safari appears pre-ticked." At least we think that's a joke -- you'd only say Apple was "targeting" and "hijacking" Windows users if you were joking, right?
• Microsoft Watch calls the program a "rogue updater," while Paul Mison fisks them pretty completely and shows that even if Apple did somehow hurt the computers by installing a reasonable, standards-compliant browser, Microsoft has done much, much worse.

So what's the deal overall? As we said earlier, Jobs very plainly told us this was going to happen, and though, yes, users who don't pay attention may end up with extra software, it's extremely easy to not install the software. While a warning might have been nice, Apple isn't really outside its bounds here, so it's unlikely that they'll change it anyway.

The only real result is that users, whether PC or Mac, are reminded once again to pay attention to what they're clicking on. It's unexpected that Apple would be the company to remind us of that, but it's as true as ever.

So will there be an iPhone announcement at Macworld? Some speculate that yes, there will be. Others say no, at least not at this time. We here at TUAW are agnostic about the entire issue. We're happy to report rumors about the iPhone in its many possible incarnations--who might manufacture it, what it will be called, and who might buy it-- but we have no solid evidence one way or another as to when or if the beastie might appear.

So what do you think, TUAW readers? Are you with the yays or the nays on this one?