Apple Power Macintosh and PowerBook platform support
Platform glue and peripheral support for classic PowerPC-based Apple Macintoshes, covering the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) for keyboards and mice, the VIA-CUDA and PMU system controllers, and other on-board chips found in Power Macs, iMacs, and PowerBooks shipped from the mid-1990s until Apple's switch to Intel in 2006.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the hardware has been out of production since 2006 and real-world deployments are now mostly hobbyists and QEMU PowerMac emulation, yet the code still sees genuine upstream maintenance, including a stable-tagged ADB fix in 2026 and targeted pruning of obsolete sub-drivers like ADB_MACIO in late 2024. The right course is to keep the directory alive while continuing to retire individual pieces as they lose users, rather than removing the subsystem wholesale.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream bug-fix traffic still lands in this directory; `macintosh: adb` received a fix in April 2026 and was CCed to stable.
- lore.kernel.org
There is targeted removal work for at least one legacy subdriver (`ADB_MACIO`), indicating pruning of obsolete pieces rather than wholesale directory abandonment.
- qemu-project.gitlab.io
QEMU still emulates PowerMac boards with VIA-CUDA and ADB peripherals, supporting ongoing niche legacy/emulation use.
- en.wikipedia.org
Representative late PowerPC Macintosh hardware in this support family was discontinued in 2006, bounding mainstream new-hardware availability.
- cateee.net
`CONFIG_MACINTOSH_DRIVERS` remains present in current kernels, showing the subtree is still shipped upstream.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Lore evidence first: `mcp__lore_http__.lore_activity` on `drivers/macintosh/adb.c` returned both a 2026 bug-fix mail and a 2024 RFC removal patch URL, which I cite directly. A `lei q` shell query was attempted for confirmation but failed under sandbox socket restrictions, so it is not cited. Deployment evidence came from `web.search_query`: QEMU docs show surviving emulator use, Wikipedia gives a stable discontinuation date for representative PowerPC Macs, and LKDDb confirms the Kconfig subtree still exists. Conclusion: hardware is commercially obsolete and only low-volume legacy/emulated deployments remain, but upstream activity is still real, so annotate/contain rather than deprecate or remove the whole directory.