Leopard on an 8 year old G4 Power Mac -- can it be done?

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.

[Peppie @ Oct 26th 2007 2:56PM]

Good effort though.

[Ignatius @ Oct 26th 2007 3:26PM]

If I remember correctly... Windows XP installed on a 386. Ran, not fast by any measurable feat, but it ran.

[Greg @ Oct 26th 2007 3:57PM]

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.

[Danny @ Oct 26th 2007 4:12PM]

Impressive stuff, guys above this comment. But Windows XP launched in 2001, Leopard launched 3 hours ago. So they're not really comparable.

[John @ Oct 26th 2007 4:34PM]

Processors running 8 MHz came out a lot longer than 8 years ago too...

[Joseph @ Oct 26th 2007 6:38PM]

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.

[TOS 1.04 @ Oct 28th 2007 7:48AM]

[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.

[Shane @ Oct 26th 2007 2:58PM]

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...

[LJKelley @ Oct 26th 2007 3:01PM]

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.

[Eric @ Oct 26th 2007 3:04PM]

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.

[Steven Powell @ Oct 26th 2007 3:07PM]

very good point

[Dick @ Oct 26th 2007 3:05PM]

I agree with LJKelly and furthermore who cares.......?

[Nubaeus @ Oct 26th 2007 3:07PM]

Back to your regularly scheduled gadget blog(heavily laced with pro mac banter)...

[nerdtalker @ Oct 26th 2007 3:10PM]

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?

[Andrew @ Oct 26th 2007 3:18PM]

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

[eh @ Oct 26th 2007 3:23PM]

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).

[Neal @ Oct 26th 2007 3:33PM]

Andrew - that is both amazing and disturbing :) Very ugly and I don't doubt the 15 min boot time, but wow all the same!

[slotsky @ Oct 26th 2007 3:34PM]

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.

[Shane @ Oct 26th 2007 3:36PM]

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.

[applefreak @ Oct 26th 2007 3:49PM]

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!!!!!

[Christian Martin @ Oct 26th 2007 3:51PM]

Done it on a 7 year old PC.

[eh @ Oct 26th 2007 4:09PM]

applefreak: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/drugfact/crack/index.html

[bryan Webster @ Oct 27th 2007 3:46AM]

LOL Vista would not even work properly on my HP Core 2 Duo laptop with 2GB Ram, never mind an 8 year old PC!

[nih @ Nov 1st 2007 9:12AM]

"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.

[imacmatt09 @ Oct 26th 2007 3:02PM]

Kudos to the first person to get this to run on an iMac G3.

[Zachary Pruckowski @ Oct 26th 2007 7:21PM]

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.

[LukeA @ Oct 26th 2007 3:03PM]

This bodes well for my Powerbook.

[Brad @ Oct 26th 2007 3:05PM]

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).

[Xidius @ Oct 26th 2007 3:05PM]

10.5.1 for you. :)

- Xidius

[Mark Henderson @ Oct 26th 2007 3:06PM]

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.

[Marc J. Driftmeyer @ Oct 26th 2007 8:52PM]

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

[almostinfamous @ Oct 26th 2007 9:30PM]

here's hoping, Mark! i've got the same one.

[Jason @ Oct 27th 2007 11:54AM]

Leopard is up and running perfectly on my late 2006 iBook (1.25Ghz, 756mb RAM) - took about 30 mins to install

[Mark Henderson @ Oct 27th 2007 1:18PM]

Mark Driftmeyer,

I went with the Crucial, basically as soon as I bought my iBook. It's been great. Good luck with that!

[Mark Henderson @ Oct 27th 2007 1:18PM]

Jason - any video issues? How about Time Machine - does it seem to just work the way it should?

[BigReg @ Oct 27th 2007 8:03PM]

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.

[Rob @ Oct 26th 2007 3:09PM]

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.

[David Clark @ Oct 26th 2007 5:19PM]

Was it not Steve Jobs that talked about shamelessly stealing?? *cough*

[BTaylor @ Oct 26th 2007 3:10PM]

Why not try copying the DVD Player app from Tiger over to the Leopard partition and running that?

[Thomas Ricker @ Oct 26th 2007 3:18PM]

@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

[wireless.nemo @ Oct 26th 2007 3:19PM]

"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?

[Bruce Deschacht @ Oct 26th 2007 3:22PM]

@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

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Oct 26th 2007 3:33PM]

Actually, using VLC might be the better option.

[Chris @ Oct 26th 2007 3:35PM]

"I thought Macs were super stable and never crashed?"

The app crashed, not the whole system. Nobody said applications don't crash on Macs.

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Oct 26th 2007 3:36PM]

And, of course, I missed in the original post that VLC is skipping frames in Leopard.... maybe an update will fix that.

[Bruce Deschacht @ Oct 26th 2007 3:37PM]

Microsoft Messenger is a testament to this fact. Thank God Adium is Leopard compatible :)

[wireless.nemo @ Oct 26th 2007 3:18PM]

jesus.... 11.4GB for that? wow.

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Oct 26th 2007 3:31PM]

Porn.

[tyeo098 @ Oct 26th 2007 3:19PM]

APPLE LIED TO US!!!!!!
THEY SAID NO PPC SUPPORT!!!
onoz...

[Charlie Taylor @ Oct 26th 2007 3:28PM]

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...