“Just weeks ahead of its public launch, Apple Inc. has updated the minimum system requirements for its next-generation Leopard operating system to exclude 800MHz PowerPC-based Macs,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider.
Apple “had long stated in developer documentation that the software would require ‘an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (800MHz or faster) or G5 processor,'” McLean reports.
But, “engineers for the company recently determined that Leopard installs on 800MHz PowerPC G4 systems ran ‘too slow,'” McLean reports. “Leopard will now require Macs with ‘an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: It’s not that Leopard won’t run on lower-spec’ed Macs, just that Apple won’t be recommending it (based on the fact that our still-working iMac DV 400 MHZ G3 with 192MB of RAM is currently sitting in a corner happily running Mac OS X 10.4.10 Tiger).
Macromancer, there was just no “450 Mhz”. It was either 400 Mhz or 500 Mhz, at least rev.As, as far as I know (please let me know if I’m wrong, lol). Mine’s is fully updated and runs pretty smoothly. And it is still better looking than the MBP C2D 2.33 Ghz sitting next to it. So, in other words, don’t complain, hehehe. Peace
I installed the Beta of 10.5 on my Clamshell 366 iBook…. It wasn’t pretty. Or even useable. Me thinks 10.4.10 is the max for poor little PET.
So where will dual G4 processors fit into things?
I’ve always considered my dual 500 to be equivalent of over 866…
At 933 MHz my iBook is over the bar by a whopping 7.6%. Yay.
But if the new CPU-hungry OS diminishes the playback from my favorite music notation app: Boo.
But then I could justify a hardware upgrade to myself. Yay.
On my budget, tho, that would be a chunk of change. Boo.
But if I gave my iBook to my sister, who struggles with pre-XP pentium, she would really like it. Yay.
I guess you could say I’m a little ambivalent right now.
Is this really a question of processor speed, or just Apple’s way of saying the 800 MHz machines shipped with inadequate video cards?
Anyway, my six year old 867GHz G4 (which has an upgraded video card, I forget what exactly) will live on. It’s the kids computer now, but I’ve gotten more value out of that machine than anything else ever. The PowerCenterPro 180 I used for 5 years is a close second. Somehow, I just don’t think the current crop of iMacs will be as good (I couldn’t wait and wound up with one of the early CoreDuos), but here’s hoping I’ll be proved wrong.
PS: the Pentium III thinkpad mouldering in my file cabinet still has Windows 2000 on it.
From the most recent Seed Note:
System Requirements
To run Mac OS X Leopard, you must have a Macintosh computer with:
– An Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (800 MHz or faster) or G5 processor
– A DVD drive
– Built-in FireWire
– At least 512 MB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)
– A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
– At least 7 GB of disk space available, or 12 GB of disk space if you install the developer tools
At least Apple didn’t spend the last year or two selling “Leopard Ready” Macs that can’t actually run Leopard.
That said, this reminds me when iDVD wasn’t “recommended” for my G4 Cube 450. iDVD actually ran great. Rendering/burning was another story; you’d start the Cube on it at the end of the day, and let it run overnight. Slow but it DID work.
This is the very reason I use Microsoft Windows with DELL or Gateway computers. With a little tweaking, I can run Vista on my P2 with a minimum of 512MB of RAM. All my legacy hardware are supported because of the vast amounts of drivers from 3rd party companies that I can easily find. Yes it may take 15 to 20 minutes to boot up, or 5 or 10 minutes to launch Office 07, but the point is, with MS Windows from Bill Gates and Ballmer, users will never be orphaned using their systems.
This issue has come up on Macbooks and other intel systems.
I had had the problem your talking about. I shut my iMac 2.4 down, rebooted and reinstalled the 1.1 intel iMac patch. I also installed a small application called smc Fan control which allows you to increase your minimum fan speeds (iMacs have 3 fans). I increased my HD fan to 1800 RPM and the CPU fan to 2000 RPM, you can now hear a very slight fan noise now, but I haven’t had a lock up in 3 days. Worth a try. Also there is free application called Hardware Monitor Lite that lets you monitor things like fan speed and various temperatures (intel iMacs have a ton of internal sensors) both apps can be found by using Google, or the Version Tracker web site.
Luck, MacFhearghaile
Holy Sheet how … droll ! You want a matte screen Mac Pro with an external screen? Well … not nearly as amusing as ZT, but it shows you are either trying or a total loss. Can’t quite figure which.
On Topic: I gave my son my 733 MHz G4 QuickSilver when I upgraded to a dual G5. Guess I have to either upgrade again (horrors!) or get him a dual-G4 1.2 GHz accelerator. The accelerator costs as much as a Mac mini … hmm.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod Cast
OK, so Leopard can ran on Macs as old as 6 and a half years?? Which means they can be 8 years old before an OS is introduced that would make them obsolete???
It cannot be said often enough: Mac OS X is significantly leaner than any MS offering from this century. Even XP struggles running on machines from 6 years ago. Vista cannot even run on anything slower than 1GHz and with less than 1GB RAM. And, while Vista’s official minimum system requirements are devised by Microsoft’s legal team (meaning: it can run the OS, but nothing else), on a 6-year old Mac, you can put your Leopard, your Photoshop, your Final Cut (not the most recent one, though, since it won’t work on G4) and go edit photos and movies. And it WILL work!
well if you buy a vista computer now, it may run the most up-to-date MS operating system indefinitely, since MS may never get out an update to Vista
Good to hear MDN’s iMac DV400 is still running Tiger. A friend still has Jaguar on hers but I’ll probably ugrade it for her after I get the Leopard family pack. She only uses it for iTunes and Word so she should be fine.
Tiger runs just fine on my old G3 500Mhz iBook. So what if I only load Leopard on my Mac Pro.
May be we can cut out some core services (like frontrow, Crash report, Apache, etc) and you can run it fine even on 700 Mhz iMacs.
OK, Tiger may run happily on older hardware.
BUT
Leopard’s dock is now Core Image accelerated, so if your graphics card is about 2 or more years old then the CPU has to handle the rendering of the dock. And this caused like 20% of my 1.2Ghz G4 to be used at all times in build 9a466. So unless they allow you to turn off the fancy dock effects ( which i thought decreased productivity ) then I wouldn’t run it on anything that doesn’t have a pretty new graphics card.
Predrag, I was surprised to find my wife’s new 20″ Al iMac was dipping into disk cache even with 1 GB or RAM on board. Got a second stick and discovered that a single log-in with nearly nothing running uses half a GB and a second log-in brings that to over .9 GB … with nothing substantial running!
My wife often has Pages, TexEdit+, Netscape, Safari, and a couple minor things sitting “live” in RAM. Even that load does not eat up the 3rd-party GB, but two logins is on its knees with one app. Not everyone has two logins active on a single machine, but some have three or four. OSX may “walk” with that load on a GB of RAM, but “run”? Not really.
Dave
@DLMeyer: In my experience, many people don’t fully understand what the System Memory stats are saying. The amount of memory available to the OS is actually the Free + Inactive amounts. So, it’s probably not as bad as you think.
See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918
I got a G4 400MHz, and 450MHz hapily running OSX.4.10.. not to mention my 500MHz G3
MDN magic word: “does” as in it DOES work.
@DLMeyer
What was your total RAM? 2 or 3 GB?
Absolutely… excellent comment.
iMac DV 400 MHZ G3 with 192MB of RAM
I still have 2 of these. Plus a Bronze PB running 10.4.10
They run very well in fact.
Adobe CS2 isn’t great. But for most part THEY get the job done.
My iMac 24″ Aluminum was a welcoming jump. And I thought I’d get rid of the others when it came. I was waiting for Leopard’s minimum requirement to come aground.
Oh well… those old iMacs SURE lived well.
thx
Just like Vista – it’s gonna make you get a new machine!
It’s better when Apple ups the specs. Gives us an excuse (for the benefit of the IT department or finance department) to require new hardware upgrades to run the new OS.
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MW: point … get the point?
The old 350Mhz iMac i srunning Tiger quite well (as well as it ran MacOS 9.2.2, in fact)… but slow is slow, period, no matter wich OS you’ll take and tweak a little…
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Leopard will certainly boot on older Macs (with some Terminal writting)… yet, it won’t make them youger…
damn it!
so much for that family pack 🙁