“The feature set of the new Mac operating system will be revealed soon, but there’s no way that all currently supported machines will run it,” David Morgenstern writes for eWeek. “Which ones will make the cut and which will be left running Tiger?”

“Apple Computer is putting the final touches on the feature list for “Leopard,” its version of OS X due for unveiling at the company’s forthcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in early August. Since that list is a super deep-dark secret, the Mac community is abuzz with speculation on what features the update will contain as well as many fake screen shots purporting to be genuine leaks,” Morgenstern writes. “But what few in the Mac community are talking about in advance of WWDC are which Mac models will make the Leopard cut. Apple will orphan some Mac models for sure, but which ones?”

“What will be the deciding factor for who will receive Leopard and who will be denied? Will it be machines running the G3 processor? Or what about the G4? Or will it be the speed of the processor? When OS X 10.4 Tiger was released, Apple made FireWire the line, leaving out a number of PowerPC G3-based models that had USB and SCSI connectors but no FireWire ports. Still, many older two-toned clamshell-style iBooks and CRT-based iMacs made the cut,” Morgenstern writes.

“It’s way too early for Apple to cut out all of the G4 and G5 machines,” Morgenstern writes. “However, machines with a G3 processor could be cut off. The last model appears to be the 14-inch iBook 900, which was discontinued in the fall of 2003—three years and two versions of the operating system ago.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: FYI, we have an iMac (Indigo) with a 400MHz G3 with just 192MB of RAM and it runs Mac OS X 10.4.7 Tiger (see image above). It’s no speed demon, but it does get some daily use (email, Web, word processing, etc.). That iMac was released in the summer of 2000, so it’s now six years old. Try something like that with Windows Vista.

Do you think our little indestructible RAM-deprived iMac G3 will be able to run Leopard?