This isn’t the first time Apple’s been in this situation. The first PowerPC Mac was released in 1994, but core elements of the classic Mac OS remained written for the Motorola 68000. Pink/Taligent and Copland never panned out. It took until Mac OS X to be released in 2001 for PowerPC Macs to receive an operating system that was fully made for it, and even then Mac OS X undergone successive performance improvements. By then, it was time for the Intel switch. Snow Leopard’s was Intel-only, so PowerPC Macs cannot go beyond Leopard.