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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Intel-only

MacNN has listed the minimum specifications of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, due to be released in "about a year". The biggest change is that it is Intel-only - PowerPC users are left out in the cold.

Or to be precise, the Developer Preview is Intel-only but I think this will extend to the final release as well. Why? Because Snow Leopard is about speed and optimization of the operating system and what better way to optimize the OS than to remove code for systems that haven't shipped in 3 years (by the time it is released next year)? There are very few applications out now that aren't Universal Binary or Intel-optimized, and three years is pretty generous I must admit.

However, before you throw out your old PowerBook or PowerMac, remember that Snow Leopard has very little in the way of features and is purely an optimization release. As you're not running cutting-edge hardware anyway, the extra performance probably doesn't make much difference to you. But I'm sure the frantic selling will begin regardless.