It's no surprise to hear that
Leopard smokes on the latest Intel box, right? That's all fine and dandy for new Mac owners but what about the rest of us (the majority) who are still pumping that legacy PowerPC architecture beneath Cupertino's OS? How does Apple's
OS of tomorrow run on say, an 8 year old Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics)? We decided to find out. Our test machine sports a paltry 512MB and 1GHz clock courtesy of an after-market CPU upgrade (was 400MHz) -- just a tad better than the 867MHz / 512MB minimum requirement. While the box held up surprisingly well, there's one major problem which you old-timers should be aware of.
Let's get to it.
Oops, that's not the appropriate resolution for our screen, Apple. Nevertheless, everything we need is front and center. With our 20GB disk formatted down to a paltry 19GB, we braced for a clean install. There's always that secondary disk sporting Tiger... just in case.
Of course, the first thing we did was to pare back the installation from 11.4GB to 5.9GB by deselecting the Printer Drivers, Additional Fonts, Language Translations, and X11 support from the default install. We can always add them later, dig?
The initial estimate of 32 minutes actually took only 20 minutes to install -- no upgrade here folks, just a clean OS. Peppy, and much faster than we had anticipated. We were up and dancing on the desktop and on our WiFi network in another 8 minutes after answering a few setup and configuration questions.
Mmmm, spacey.
Yes, it's true.
With a whopping 12.78GB left over, we're ready to start testing apps. If you've already been using Tiger on your G4 then you won't notice any performance difference -- it's still pretty snappy. Granted, you won't get Stevenote-like cached performance but it's certainly acceptable for casual use.
Surely, however, our ATI Rage 128 Pro graphics card will choke on all the fancy graphics. Well, yes and no. Here's what worked:
- Spaces and Expose
- File stacks and fans
- Quick Look
- YouTube videos
- Coverflow too, after waiting a bit for the images to load -- subsequent pans are lickity quick
And what didn't:
- Time Machine -- Oh it backed up the data ok which is the important bit we guess. However, you can't get to it using their nifty time traveling interface. Not that we expected to. Launching the Time Machine app sends our G4 into a black hole of despair. After bringing up a few random finder windows our Power Mac inevitably manages to escape from the other side after about a minute of machine-locking terror.
- DVD Player -- Unexpectedly bad news here folks. No matter what we did, even swapping out our after-market Pioneer DVR-104 for the original Matshita PD-2 LF-D110 DVD-ROM drive, Apple's player crashes with that error above. No Disney for you kids!
- VLC 0.8.6c -- Ok, it's not an official part of the OS but with Apple's DVD Player giving up the ghost we had to do something. Sadly, VLC is dropping about 25% of the frames making the viewing experience, well, awful. Thing is, this version works just fine in Tiger. We're hoping (really hoping!) for an updated release soon.
- Front Row -- What, you don't expect miracles do you? The application loaded, we could hear it, but the screen was black making it worthless.
So what's the bottom line? We wish it were as simple as a one sentence summary. We'd like to recommend a G4 running Leopard as your kid's computer. After all, this version finally brings some useful Parental Controls onto the scene to lock down, monitor, and more importantly, simplify the interface for your youngsters. You can even monitor their use without having to fire up Apple's Remote Desktop or some janky VNC application -- it's all baked in and automatically setup. Even the parental controls can be remotely managed without ever having to enter the scorched plastic hellscape of your toddlers room. However, without the ability to playback movies, you're missing out on the whole electronic-babysitter angle. That's why we're leaving ours in dual-boot Leopard / Tiger mode for now. You just never know when 90 minutes of silence might be required.
posted Oct 26th 2007 2:50PM
Good effort though.
If I remember correctly... Windows XP installed on a 386. Ran, not fast by any measurable feat, but it ran.
heres a cool web site I found they get windows xp on a system running a intel 486 clocked down to 8 yes 8 Mhz and 20mb of EDO ram.
http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm.
Impressive stuff, guys above this comment. But Windows XP launched in 2001, Leopard launched 3 hours ago. So they're not really comparable.
Processors running 8 MHz came out a lot longer than 8 years ago too...
throw in a better video card and the DVD player will run, as well as some of the other eye candy.
DVD player has a new interlacing that requires a certain video card minimum.
[quote]
John @ Oct 26th 2007 4:34PM
Processors running 8 MHz came out a lot longer than 8 years ago too...
[/quote]
Yes actual 8-MHZ is, but a 486 clocked to 8-MHz is NOT the same as am actual 8-MHz chip, your just making a vastly superior 32-bit chip run slower.
An actual 8-MHz chip like an 8088 only has a 16-bit architecture and an 8-bit data-width, (we are talking original IBM PC here) There is no way XP would run on one of those machines. less cache less memory slower FPU or even no FPU. and roughly 1/50th the instructions per second.
It just shows all you PC people think about is clock speed clock speed clock speed, i suppose you like your cars as pegout 206s with v8 engines, a pint sized fuel tank and 2 low gears. youl be the nosiest and slowest car on the block.
Now for the obligatory Mac vs PC comment...
Ha! Try loading Vista on your 8 year old PC!
Back to your regularly scheduled gadget blog...
Idiot... Vista would install on 1Ghz 512MB. It wouldn't be pretty, but neither was this install. I installed Vista Beta on my 1.3Ghz 512MB Vaio back in the day and it ran and played DVDs and that was BETA.
It would work just as well after similar upgrades. No fancy graphics but the basics would be there. And ten bucks says the DVD player would work too.
very good point
I agree with LJKelly and furthermore who cares.......?
Back to your regularly scheduled gadget blog(heavily laced with pro mac banter)...
Again, it's pointless and frivolous to really compare the two, but, in this case...
I've tried it on a similarly spec'd machine (from the x86 family, obviously, but same era as the G4), and yes, Vista does work. No, it doesn't have random problems like the DVD player not working or the powerpoint equivalent not functioning because it REQUIRES OpenGL hardware-accelerated drivers. In that regard, Vista does have it beat. Obviously Vista won't support aero.
However, I'm very impressed with Leopard's install time and how functional it seems to be from your report. How is general web-browsing in safari, I wonder?
Not my pic, and I heard the thing had a 15 minute boot time, but;
http://gallery.pandaria.co.uk/main.php/d/1837-1/90vista_4.jpg
Vista Basic has practically exactly the same system requirements. And if we take a stroll back to "mhz myth" lane, it looks like Vista has lower system requirements since it only requires a 1ghz cpu (which according to Apple is equal to like a 400mhz G4 or some other BS).
Andrew - that is both amazing and disturbing :) Very ugly and I don't doubt the 15 min boot time, but wow all the same!
Actually done it on a 9 yr. old machine w/512. DVD works fine, everything runs slick, long as you turn off the high-end eye-candy.
For those of you not quite sharp enough to pick up on it, the comment was intended to be somewhat tongue in cheek but it drew about the expected response. :-)
I use OS X, Vista and XP on a regular basis. My OS of choice is in fact OS X but it would indeed be interesting to do a side by side comparison of Leopard and Vista performance (boot time, etc) at minimum specifications.
This is @ JLKelly
that was beta testing, then Microsort made it an actual OS and ruined it.
Apple is making build 9A581 into OSX 10.5.0 TO MAKE IT BETTER!!!!!
Done it on a 7 year old PC.
applefreak: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/drugfact/crack/index.html
LOL Vista would not even work properly on my HP Core 2 Duo laptop with 2GB Ram, never mind an 8 year old PC!
"LOL Vista would not even work properly on my HP Core 2 Duo laptop with 2GB Ram, never mind an 8 year old PC!"
You probably want to engage the services of a readily available tech support company, maybe one of the ones that help older people. You certainly can't blame your obvious failings on the OS.
Obviously, the minimum requirements really boil down to video card. Apple listed 867 as the min MHz because they know the graphics cards in that line of machines are able to cope with all the CoreGraphics/CoreAnimation fanciness in Tiger (i.e. hardware shading/texturing).
Kudos to the first person to get this to run on an iMac G3.
Leopard requries AltiVec (G4/G5) or SSE3 (Intel), and the G3 has neither. It's not a speed issue - a 5 GHz G3 (not that such a thing is remotely possible) couldn't run Leopard, as it lacks the requisite SIMD/FP units.
In theory, you could hack around that (as the hackintosh folks did in making SSE3 optional on OSx86, and basing it on SSE2), but the amount of work required makes it unlikely, and the speed cost to do that makes it impossible. You COULD make it work, if you were willing to hack it sufficiently, but it'd take weeks and would result in a performance probably twice as slow as the clockspeed would indicate.
10.5.1 for you. :)
- Xidius
This bodes well for my Powerbook.
Thanks for lookin' out for us ol' timers. I have a late 2004 1.25 GHz iBook G4 (32 MB Video RAM), 1.25 GB RAM (the max possible). I like Tiger just fine, so I don't want to go "fixing" something that's not broken... Though, I'm still cautiously optimistic that Apple's minimum system requirements really mean that Leopard should work fine on my iBook, if I ever decide to upgrade.
Mark,
What specific 1Gig PC 2700 333Mhz RAM chip did you end up buying to bump the iBook memory max? I'm looking to buy
the: Crucial 1GB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Notebook Memory - Retail
here's hoping, Mark! i've got the same one.
Leopard is up and running perfectly on my late 2006 iBook (1.25Ghz, 756mb RAM) - took about 30 mins to install
Mark Driftmeyer,
I went with the Crucial, basically as soon as I bought my iBook. It's been great. Good luck with that!
Jason - any video issues? How about Time Machine - does it seem to just work the way it should?
Video may be an issue, but I think the biggest issue with the 8 yr old G4 was not the 1 GHz processor, but the paltry 512MB of RAM. The machine would have run better with a memory upgrade instead of processor upgrade.
If the author went back and looked at the CPU usage, it would not have been maxed, the system was breaking its back on disk I/O caused by swapping because of the lack of RAM. Always, always, always upgrade your RAM *first* if you haven't maxed it out before a processor change.
You guys should try get it running on some unsupported hardware. I got an iMac G4 700Mhz, and Leopard just wont install (doesn't even load, just the grey screen and the apple logo).
How well did you read the article? They did install it on unsupported hardware. The installer checks the model of the machine, not the CPU speed. Unsupported machines will still be unsupported even with CPU upgrades installed.
You are not going to be able to install it straight from the Leopard DVD to your 700mhz iMac. You have to trick the installer into allowing it. I posted some possible ways to another person in this thread, so search through to find the easiest ways to do it. At the time I am writing this, my post may need to be approved by the mods before it shows up, so you may have to wait a while before you will be able to find it.
I have a G3 sitting right next to me. But, I can't afford to buy Leopard just to prove a point.
I'm shamelessly accepting donations for those who'd like to fund this experiment.
Was it not Steve Jobs that talked about shamelessly stealing?? *cough*
Why not try copying the DVD Player app from Tiger over to the Leopard partition and running that?
@BTaylor,
The Tiger version crashes with an error "the application DVD Player quit unexpectedly..." blah blah blah. What about Mplayer RC2? Was released for Linux earlier this month, can't find OS X compiled version.
Thomas
"The Tiger version crashes with an error "the application DVD Player quit unexpectedly..." blah blah blah."
I thought Macs were super stable and never crashed?
@wireless.nemo: They are when you're not using a dodgy hack on a barely supported system.
@Thomas: Did you just copy the app? Why not try deleting the existing Leopard app and any of its folders in /Library, then copy the Tiger app and the DVD's /Library folder
Actually, using VLC might be the better option.
"I thought Macs were super stable and never crashed?"
The app crashed, not the whole system. Nobody said applications don't crash on Macs.
And, of course, I missed in the original post that VLC is skipping frames in Leopard.... maybe an update will fix that.
Microsoft Messenger is a testament to this fact. Thank God Adium is Leopard compatible :)
Vista worked fine on a 8 year old machine? Then I wonder why is not working fine with all the new ones out there? Peripherals, who needs them? ;-)
All of my peripherals work fine on my Vista system. My question is will Leopard work with an 8 year old printer? That's what everyone expects of Vista. By the way, I'm serious. Will it?
Name them. Every single device I have works PERFECTLY in my Vista box. I installed a 7 year old PCI RS232 card in my dell yesterday, Vista installed the driver like it should, and it works right away.
Hate Vista all you want, but at least back your hate up with facts.
That said; I am jealous of a 20 minute install, last Vista install I did took a little over an hour.
I'd let you know if Leopard will work with an 8 year old printer if it hadn't taken a fall in my recent move and now is much like an accordion if you hold it from the top... But I will be installing Leopard on my 7 year old Mac tonight! I would assume that it would work no problem with an 8 year old printer as I never had any issues with my old printer with each new release of OSX, and never even had to install any drivers or extraneous software for it either.
I'll have to agree... I can plug pretty much anything into XP or Vista and it recognizes it and well, 'it just works'. I bought a Mac Mini a year ago and well 95% of items I plug into it 'just don't work'. Why doesn't apple even support burning on external optical drives? Apple's 3rd party support is sadly almost non-existant.
I think a lot of the crap said about Vista is from idiots that don't know how to use their computers. I've had my Vista box since beta and it's been running great all along. Of course there's an issue here and there, but I can say the same thing about my mac mini running 10.4.x and my Ubuntu install as well.
EVERY OS HAS ISSUES!
Last night I spent 45 minutes trying to get my mother's brand new Vista-running HP laptop to print to my HP Deskjet 5850. I finally gave up and just plugged in my PowerBook -- which, last time I was at *her* house, was able to immediately and seamlessly print to her obscure Brother printer.
@balt: I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's this search engine called "Google"
"According to an HP support article, the correct substitute is the Deskjet 5600 driver. This driver should be included with Vista"
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00808478&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=305980&dlc=en&lang=en
That took all of 45 seconds. Google "hp deskjet 5850 vista driver" and it's the first result.
jesus.... 11.4GB for that? wow.
Porn.
APPLE LIED TO US!!!!!!
THEY SAID NO PPC SUPPORT!!!
onoz...
um, what? They said they wouldn't be supporting classic, which lets you run OS 9 within OS X. They never said they weren't supporting PPC machines, if that were true then I shouldn't have been able to install it yesterday on my Dual 2Ghz G5, seeing as it is also a PPC chip...
It'll be interesting to see how many machines the next XPostFacto release will open Leopard up to. I'd love to get it running on my old Gossamer G3 233mhz Desktop... Something about those older machines that had so much soul.
i have a question. i have macbook that came with ilife 06. i dont really want to go and buy ilife 08 to put on leopord after i clean install. is there anyway to get ilife 06 from tiger to leopord?
One of the restore disks that came with your macbook has ilife 06 on it. After installing leopard, just insert the correct disk and you should be able to install just fine. (checks pile of restore disks..) Insert the first restore disk and select "Install bundled software only". When you get to the disk selection screen, click customize and select the ilife apps you want to install.
I think that you guys should throw in a Radeon or Nvidia card that support Core Image and try again! My guess (hope, since I have a 1GHz G4 Sawtooth) is that the programs are failing due to a lack of core-compatible video.
From what I've read it is possible to install leopard onto a legacy mac with a G4 processor that doesn't meet the requirements by installing through target boot mode from another mac that does meet the requirements. Let it be noted though that this does not work from macs with a 64bit processor, A.K.A. G5 and Intel macs minus the core duo macs.
The title is a bit misleading. Yeah, the Mac is 8 years old, but the 1Ghz G4 upgrade in it sure isn't. 8 years ago, that machine would have maxed out at 500Mhz, which falls far short of the minimum 867Mhz required by Leopard. The single 867 chips weren't introduced until August 2001.
I have a 933mhz PowerMac G4 Quicksilver and have had no problems installing Leopard - at least not that I have noticed. It works pretty darn well for the upgrade. I think if it were a clean install, it would even be better.
This will definitely be the last time I upgrade OS on this machine. Bought it in 2001, I would say it's done about as much as any computer could.
Looking forward to at least two or three more years with it. Great machine!
@LJKelley
I know for sure my PC 8 years ago wasn't the best available, but it was above average at 750MHz and 256MB...a bit of distance from your 1GHz and 512MB. I remember having speed problems when I started running XP on that; I can't imagine trying to run Vista on it.
All new OSes bog down old systems...that's why the new ones are 2 or 3 times faster than the 8 year old ones. Also the reason I have no desire to run Vista on my 2.2GHz, 1GB machine.
New hardware and old software beats old hardware and new software every time.
XP ran slow on a 750 MHz P3? I had it running on my 600 MHz P3 and it ran way faster and more stable than it ever did with Win98. Presumably Win2k would have been better, but I never tried. I am sure Vista would make it cry, however.
Damn, I'm doubting installing on my 1.33Ghz 768MB Powerbook now...
It's just funny how Apple made fun of vista not being released yet in the 2006 WWDC, and then they ended up releasing 10.5 a full year after Vista
(yeah, it's a full year. Vista Enterprise Edition was released in Oct. 2006 and I got mine in Nov. 2006. Vista home edition, home premium, and ultimate were released on Jan/30/2007)
What? OS X.5 hasn't been in development since 2001, announced to ship in 2003, oh wait, 2004. No, 2005. Ok, late 2006. That was the Vista roadmap. Leopard was announced June 2005. Not nearly the same pickle MS was in.
If someone would try this on an iBook G4, a 1.33 and have everything working, then I'd upgrade, otherwise I'll have to stick. Just like the other poster, why "fix" something thats not broken. I'd still like to use it though..
Donations for a MacBook accepted..
wow this surprised me, it really looked like i could pick up a real cheap machine and test the new version of mac os. Kinda sad. Wonder if they will go out of their way to fix the problems. But vista works on the minimum without problems like this although,i must say, pretty slowly. Is this the last version of mac os that will run on powerpc?
We use a 466MHz PowerMac G4 (with an impressive 256MB RAM) at school... and it's still running OS 9.
That is, until the hard drive crashed. But eight years of constant and intensive use will do that to a hard drive...
For now, we're booting Ubuntu from Live CD just so we can use it for the Internet... no Finale, so we can't use it as our music notation computer.
Hopefully we can get some of the data back, but I doubt it.
Thanks for the recap of what's possible on a G4 system.
I have a bit more succes on my PowerBook Alu G4 1.25Ghz machine with 1 GB Ram and ATI Radeon 9600.
I did the upgrade on a 45GB installation with a lot of programs, and the installation (I put the DVD on a firewire (my superdrive is broken) lasted around 45 minutes, quite impressive.
All programs works, DVD Player, Time Machine, Adobe CS3, Matlab, MS Office '04 and so one.
Only problems so far, is the lack of smb support in Time Machine, netatalk to Debian fileserver dosn't work, first backup to Time Machine took around 4 hours!!! And ofcouse, only read-only zfs kext support :(
Leopard is like Walt M. said - Evolutionary not revolutionary. But still nice upgrade, it's a fine polish on a very nice Unix bassed OS. Looking forward to 10.6.
Has anyone else not noticed the Menu bar is solid in the screenshots?
@Tony and @Balls
As I said above, I actually have an 8 or 9 yr old box I dug out of the garage and installed Vista on as an experiment. Ran just fine, as long as the eye-candy was disabled. DVD works great - my kids use it to play games and watch movies.
I personally think the Mac/PC wars are idiotic. I believe that both are fantastic. Mac makes incredible stuff that works really, really well (well, usually! Nothing's perfect). But for all the Windows bashers - I think it's worth noting how well Msft's OSs work considering the logistical compatibility nightmares they have to overcome (that Mac does not, due to its proprietary stance). To run an OS as robust as XP and Vista across such an incredibly broad range of devices, OEMs, manufacturers, chipsets, etc... is astounding. Does Windows have deficits that Mac does not? Sure - but they have MASSIVE challenges to contend with that Mac does not as well. Considering that, I think Msfts products are genius.
As for copying features, all I can say is - whatever. There would be no high-tech marketplace if no one copied features. Everyone innovates certain things, and then borrows ideas from other innovators. Yeah, Msft did it with the original GUI. But don't forget where Apple got the GUI that Msft copied in the first place. Sorry, Xerox! It's the reality of this market - good ideas are good ideas, and it's silly to beat people up for using them under different names than they were originally conceived under.
Just so you know, I'm on a PB G4 1.67GHz and DVD player, VLC (playing a DVD) & Front Row work perfectly. I realize that's not the same as the 8 year old G4, but still felt like saying it.
Very interesting, since I'm typing this on a G4 (AGP Graphics) with 1GHz Sonnet upgrade. Mine has 1.5 GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card, though. System Profiler says Quartz Extreme is supported but Core Image is not. I wonder how it'll cope with Leopard. After years of using Retrospect, I'm really looking forward to Time Machine.
What a wonderful story, but why use the stock video card? Used AGP graphics cards are everywhere and super cheap! I replaced my rage128pro with a used/flashed 9800pro for $35. Also, Who upgrades their CPU without first maxing out their ram? Where's the RAM?
Is it just me, or is that space background just awfull? I just don't like the colors and the "space theme"
:)
Just bail on the the upgrade if you're running anything G4. That's right.. Just put your money to a Mac mini or something bigger unless you need to have those extra PCI card slots. If you need the PCI card slots then look at a CPU upgrade card.
Running the 8 year old Mac is cool, but it really is time to buy a new computer.
I've been trying to replace my 12" G4 PowerBook for 2 years. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't made any replacement.
No, 13" 5+lb MacBricks don't count.
So, if Apple won't make a portable for me, I'll either stick with what I have, or hack a lightweight Windoze laptop to run Leopard.
Apple has made plenty of replacements, just not one that is exactly what you want. So in that respect you're the limiting factor, not Apple. Oh and I think another 12" would be a good thing, but it wouldn't stop me from buying a machine if I needed one. I'd either do a 15" or a MacBook.
I'm on the fence about upgrading to Leopard with my macbook (intel core duo). I'd prefer to not take any additional performance hit vs running tiger.
My experience with upgrading Mac OS X versions is that each upgrade will make the machine run faster, until it doesn't.
What I mean is that my iBook G3 900 MHz ran faster with Tiger 10.4 than with Panther 10.3, and Panther ran faster than Jaguar 10.2, with which it shipped. I've no hope of trying to get Leopard to run on that machine, though.
For some older G3 machines, Tiger was the version that ran significantly slower than the previous version, but they still ran Panther faster than Jaguar.
I wouldn't refrain from upgrading a Core Duo Mac out of fear that it will take a performance hit. The opposite is more likely to be true, if the past is any indication.
@ Slotsky
Your right, Microsoft does have to cover a much bigger range of devices, But I don't think it borders on astounding, It's what they should be doing, considering their market share and license policy. Even after all these years there's still quite a few Windows users that are still looking for compatable hardware drivers on the internet every time a new version of Windows is released, that should not be the case, Not with Microsoft's resources.
I agree, it's the job they should be doing. But it is a tall order that isn't in any way easy to tackle. I don't think that fact gets factored into the perspectives of those who so often and easily criticize Microsoft and Windows (a la the infamous commercials). I also think that a lot of the device and driver compatibility problems aren't Microsoft's fault, but that of the vendors who are either behind the ball or unwilling to comply with licensing requirements.
I got Tiger installed onto a super old Blueberry iMac by simply formatting the drive and setting everything up beforehand on a current Mac, and then popping in the drive into the iMac.
Worked a treat and it was way below system requirements.
yeah i did the same thing at one time by swapping drives. I have the same G4 mentioned in the article but it doesnt have the CPU upgrade. i wonder if a drive swap would work.
yea thats kinda what i was wondering. My guess is if a super old imac can handle osx, a decent g4 should be fine with leopard. if anything shouldn't it run better than panther / tiger? give it a shot!
Similarly to Bill, I've got a sawtooth G4 AGP running. Upgraded the CPU with 2.0ghz PowerLogix and am using a flashed ATI 9200 128mb AGP card and 1 gig of RAM. Wondering if the larger capacity video card would make the difference here.
~6 gb drop just from deselecting those things to install? looks i have to start deselecting things to install...
Has anyone installed Vista on an abacus yet?
Yes, but you will have turn of Aero for it to work :)
3.4gb of printer drivers? Am I missing something, or does that seem excessive...
CUPS
I'm actually planning to do this. I have a 450 mhz processor, so I will upgrade that, but an ATI Radeon gfx card, and a 1.6 ghz g4 processor upgrade, and my 8+ year old Mac will be using the latest OS on the market.
Does this apply for those of us running a, say, a last gen 12" PowerBook G4? I'd love to upgrade, but I don't want to lose DVD playback!