so they dropped the support for osx 10.4, why everyone’s abandoning osx10.4 while it’s still working fine (on all previous 2.5 versions), any plan on the near future?
They dropped it!!!
I think you may be jumping to conclusions. On the last stable release candidate, the OSX version just took another day or two before being available.
There are some 2.57 PPC builds here:
The 32-64 official build for OSXs is a beat confusing. It will run as 64 on OSX 10.5 10.6. I don’t have a 10.4 for testing.
seems blender does not support 10.4 anymore as of today there’s still no offical version for 10.4 to download, i dont really see why as it’s not jumping from 2.4 directly as of every previous 2.5x beta they all work just fine on 10.4 (and more stable than windows xp)
10.4 has been taken off the graphicall as well, does this mean it’s not supported anymore, anywhere to find a latest build for 10.4 (talking about 2.57b)?
!0.4 is powerpc only, seems like they just stopped building for that architecture.
No, 10.4 is not PowerPC only (I’m running 10.4.11 Tiger on Intel iMac), and Blender Foundation have not stopped supporting PowerPC. There is a link in Blender Downloads for Blender 2.57b, PowerPC (23 MB). Unfortunately, it looks like they HAVE stopped supporting Tiger at this time. Seems odd, as I’m sure there are many more Tiger on Intel users like me, rather than people still using ancient G4s with 10.5 or greater.
From two Ton Roosendaal emails regarding my questioning 10.4 support…
“All our volunteers who help building Blender moved to 10.5 or 10.6 already.”
“If anyone would provide us with a good 10.4 build, we’d put it online immediate…”
Unfortunately, unless more people demand it, it seems 10.4 support won’t be coming for 2.57. 
I’ve resisted upgrading to Snow Leopard due to questionable CS3 support, but it looks like I may have to if I want the latest Blender builds.
Steve
Unfortunately, unless more people demand it, it seems 10.4 support won’t be coming for 2.57…
More people demanding it won’t do anything at all. That is not what Ton said, and not what he meant. It is also not a matter of “they” dropping it. Blender is not “they”, it is only “us”.
Blender is an open source project that is written and maintained by volunteers: ordinary people like you and I. “Demanding” that volunteers cater to you is never going to work.
If you want Blender to be available to Mac Intel users on 10.4 then you just need to get involved and help make it compile for your platform. Or find someone else willing to do so. As Ton mentioned, all the people that normally do this for you have moved on to newer operating systems so they can no longer do this.
So again, it comes back to it not being a “they” issue, but an “us” issue. If nobody in the community of Mac Intel 10.4 users is willing to step up and help with this, then it will not be available. Then you have to either stick with an older version of Blender, or you will have to upgrade your OS and move into a different community of Mac users that have people willing to help out.
Harley
Sorry, “demanding” wasn’t a good choice of words. I’m certainly not demanding anything of Blender developers, and do understand that it’s an “us” - a community of volunteers and contributors. I did understand Ton’s message, and just wanted to share the feedback with others hoping to see 2.57 come to OS X Tiger. I don’t have experience as an application developer, so it’s unlikely I can contribute to platform compiling or the like, at this time. Apologies if I ruffled a feather, I’m a newcomer here.
best,
Steve
Steve,
Actually, there were no feathers ruffled, and I apologize if I came across a bit harsh.
I was just trying to point this thread toward a solution.
It is just how platforms get dropped in this kind of situation. If a group of users of a particular platform gets so small that there isn’t anyone amongst them willing to maintain and create builds for it, then it is that group that is dropping it. This is because this type of work really needs to be done by someone using the same hardware and software, and is therefore a member of that same group.
Harley
So the reason it is not available anymore is, that nobody of the developers have a 10.4 system running anymore?
Wouldn’t it make sense in this case for the Blender Foundation to keep an “old” 10.4 system around (say on a bootable external drive), just to make 10.4 compatible builds?
I think it’s always nice to stay as compatible as possible.
The people that maintain the builds are not developers at the Blender foundation. They are regular guys at their own homes all over the world, who volunteer to do these things.
It would be easy to keep old equipment at the Blender Foundation. But hardware and software on a shelf somewhere doesn’t do any good on its own. What they are missing is a person, like you, with the old OS that is willing to commit to doing this work of maintaining a build environment for OS 10.4
Harley