Apple canceling security updates for PowerPC Macs

Last week Apple released a security update to address the DigiNotar root certificate vulnerability, but in doing so revealed that the company may no longer support PowerPC-based Macs, at least when it comes to security updates. Unlike previous security updates that have supported Leopard and even Tiger, Apple's latest update requires OS X 10.6 and OS X 10.7, and this means that users running OS X 10.5 will not be able to update their systems.

If you have an early Intel-based Mac that is running Tiger or Leopard, then the only way to ensure you can update it is to upgrade your system at least to Snow Leopard. This requirement for having at least Snow Leopard means that any Mac user running a PowerPC system, be it a G4 or a G5, will not be able to run the latest security update. Apple stopped supplying OS updates for PowerPC-based systems with the OS X 10.5.8 update, but this is the first time that Apple has no longer supported them with security fixes.

While the fixes addressed in the latest security update can be easily implemented in systems by manually disabling the DigiNotar root certificates in Apple's Keychain Access utility (see below), it also means that future security updates may not be supported for these systems.