Apple's Leopard Will Exclude 800MHz G4 Processors 371
goombah99 writes "According to AppleInsider, Apple is about to announce that Leopard will not support 800 MHz G4 PowerPC processors. Previously developers had been told that it would require at least an 800 MHz G4. But AppleInsider alleges only 867 MHz G4s and higher will now be supported because of speed issues, and testers have been told that the new OS 'cannot be installed' on lesser machines. This cutoff in minimum requirements means that all those original iMac flat screens and Titanium PowerBooks are now forked to the Tiger (10.4) Update Path."
Bad Summary! Article doesn't say G5-only! (Score:5, Informative)
The article is specifically about 800MHz and slower G4s being excluded:
Nowhere does the article claim that Leopard will be G5 & Intel only.
Nice Catch (Score:2)
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Yes, that's what they're getting at. Basically, if you've got a G4 and it doesn't have Firewire, you're not going to be running Leopard.
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When it was originally posted, the summary said AppleInsider was anticipating that they'd drop all G4 support. That's why there are about 20 comments -- including this quote from the article -- correcting it. (And why it's tagged with "badsummary")
I'm glad the editors fixed the summary, but it would have been nice if they'd made some note to that effect, instead of confusing even more people.
Incorrect Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, AppleInsider said that 800 MHz G4 processors may not be supported. 867 MHz or greater G4 processors would still be usable. From TFA:
OS 10.6, it is speculated, may not support PPC processors (so, we're talking 2009 here?)Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx [microsoft.com]
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Yup, but you did end up with the most stable platform ever for running Notepad.
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You need to read the article... (Score:2, Informative)
Instead, Leopard will now require Macs with "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor." Other system requirements include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM (additional recommended), and at least 9GB of hard disk space.
So, instead of supporting 800 MHz and up, you now need 867 MHz and up.
Spelling Nazi time! (Score:3, Funny)
Apple: RECONSIDER (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Apple: RECONSIDER (Score:5, Informative)
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RTFA! (Score:4, Informative)
The text in the article reads
Leopard will now require Macs with "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor." Other system requirements include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM (additional recommended), and at least 9GB of hard disk space.
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best. OS. feature. ever. (Score:5, Funny)
And my OS still hasn't even perfected its flux capacitor relay yet. Egads, skunked by apple yet again.
It's a rumor site, for Christs' sake (Score:4, Funny)
ouch the summary was just false (Score:2, Informative)
Theory Versus Practice (Score:5, Informative)
There's a difference between stated requirements and what you can actually get to work. Users of the open-source XPostFacto [macsales.com] have known this for years. Can't run OS 10.3 on that old beige G3 tower? Sure you can! Maybe even 10.4.
Nonetheless, even 10.4.x is supported on the 400mhz PowerBook G3 (the version with a bronze keyboard and FireWire). It is not the speediest thing ever, but for email, Word/PowerPoint, and most web browsing, it's just fine. My main reason to consider replacing it: after seven years of use, the backlighting is starting to fade. But those dual battery bays are hard to give up.
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Re:Theory Versus Practice (Score:4, Interesting)
So presumably watching it run on a G4 ibook... (Score:2)
800MHz G4 IS SUPPORTED (Score:5, Informative)
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Presumably Apple is looking at the results of all that developer previewing and has decided that Leopard performs poorly enough on sub-867 MHz Macs that users will be pissed and thus blame Apple for making their hardware slow or hard to use
Include the word "rumor" in the headline (Score:4, Insightful)
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64-bits (Score:2)
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That will take awhile, given that Apple just killed the last 32-bit Mac mini two months ago. (And I want it to take awhile, given that I'm running a fast but 32-bit Core Duo MBP and won't be able to upgrade it for about a year...)
I would expect that over the life of 10.5 we will gradually start to see apps that will run only on 64-bit systems.
For its part, AltiVec support will disappear only when PPC support disappears. All PPC processors supported by Leopard feature AltiVec. It seems reasonable that PP
Odd. (Score:4, Funny)
This is why Linux on Mac is good and worthy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is the point. When Gnome or KDE copies features from OS X 10.6 or greater, owners of this newly excluded hardware will be able to get in on the fun as well.
There is some concern with upgrade paths (Score:5, Interesting)
When the 7300 came out, it cost around $1200. I bought it used for $500. The card cost me $300, memory was $50-$100, plus a $150 upgraded video card when it became available. I got about 7 years use out of that machine for the money invested.
A midrange iMac now costs twice as much, and has fewer upgrade paths than previous Macs. The white iMacs had options for 128 and 256 mb video cards but you could only buy them in that flavor, you could not upgrade them later.
To get a mac with upgrade options, you have to go with the $2500+ Mac pros. I bought a G4 1ghz about 4 years ago. I have no option to upgrade to a G5, and obviously can't upgrade to an intel. I can do surfing and wordprocessing on it just fine, but I can't play any new games on it, and the latest graphics programs and compression codecs for movies will drag to a crawl unless all other programs are shut down.
Now, the summary is utter crap. In fact, they are upping the requirement from 800 mhz to 867 mhz G4, and not ending it all together. However, this chops off 6 popular lines of Macs from being upgraded. My point is, however, upgrade paths are slowly getting shorter and shorter, and small changes like this are exposing that problem. The problem isn't the fact that Apple is upping the minimum requirements, it's the fact that without shelling out money for an entirely new computer, it's getting harder and harder to meet the minimum requirements. These 800 mhz machines were new just 4 years ago, and you can't pop in a $200 upgrade to get more life out of them.
I love Apple's products, and I'm still not considering a PC, but as a consumer, I want to be clear that keeping up with Apple is becoming more and more expensive, and there are no signs that Steve really cares (why should he, he's a CEO and his company is making gobs of money). I'm not comparing Macs to PCs, I'm comparing Macs to history costs of other Macs. The inflationary curve is out of control. At this rate will be back to the $10,000 price tag the Mac 2 had back in 1986 somewhere in 2015.
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Rename Tiger to R2-D2 (Score:2)
This is a perfect example... an 800MHz G4 on Tiger could be one of those "droids". I was quoted as saying recently that "If this G4 Titanium with Tiger is all the computer humanity ever got, we'd be doing alright."
Specifically, Spotlight is such a boon to workflow, that it's worth the Panther to Tiger s
for sale (Score:4, Funny)
Does this also exclude upgraded Macs? (Score:2)
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I have a DP800 Quicksilver with the same video RAM and HD specs you do.
I'm really wondering if my system will be left out - with the above upgrades, my system easily ran software requiring a faster machine (the COD2 United Offensive for example). Besides, a DP800 should outpace a SP867 machine. After all, it will be running more than one process.
On the other hand, my machine was purchased in Oct 2001. It's had a long, good life and needs to retire.
It's should be easily hackable (Score:2)
How about a proper useable shell. (Score:2, Insightful)
And these other bolt in shells suck just as horrible.
Yes I could run X11, but why would I run X11, ontop of Aqua just for a decent shell. I still can't believe in all the improvments, they still ship that shitty ass terminal app.
Re:How about a proper useable shell. (Score:5, Funny)
On a 1.2GHz G4 eMac:
I cannot quite type 1.2MB per second for more than a short burst, so I'll defer to your presumably superior typing skills and admit that I may not be as finicky as you deservedly are. Still, I would suppose that even one such as yourself would find Terminal.app to be at least, say, decent?
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There are G4 CPU upgrades for the slower 800Mhz... (Score:2)
You can find g4 cpu's on ebay from time to time.
how about dual 800mhz? (Score:2)
How "big" is an OS X update anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do Apple users actually keep up to date with OS X revisions? Is "Leopard" more like a service pack or a whole new OS or somewhere in-between? And what's the downside to not upgrading? Applications aren't tied to new OS X versions, are they?
In the Windows world, I would expect very few (non-geek) people to upgrade existing machines to Windows Vista.
Re:How "big" is an OS X update anyway? (Score:4, Informative)
I'd guess about half of them do. Most of the other half stay up-to-date with the minor revisions (10.4.x) for free using Software Update.
Is "Leopard" more like a service pack or a whole new OS or somewhere in-between?
It's a "whole new OS" like Vista is a whole new OS relative to XP.
And what's the downside to not upgrading? Applications aren't tied to new OS X versions, are they?
Same as with Vista. You get various OS improvements, most are low level. Slowly apps will come out that require those features. Five years from now it'll be the minimum required version, etc...
-pmb
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Honestly, I can hardly tell the various 10.x versions apart on a Mac (though I rarely use one), but I'm sure anyone can tell that Vista is a drastic change from XP, and it was quite a change from Windows 2000.
That's only because Microsoft has a habit of radically changing the look of their UI with each release. Apple prefers to maintain a consistent look, making only changes that improve the system's usability. On the other hand, the functional differences between Apple's releases are arguably larger than those between Microsoft's releases.
Re:Whoopee doo (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't please all the people all the time, but to pretend it's "Apple's Vista" when it's not even out yet is the biggest load of tripe I've ever heard.
Simon.
for Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
If it becomes a problem it is possible for Apple to change their mind in the middle of the 10.5 upgrade path and allow G3/G4 installs, like if they came up with some solutions to speed issues. Remeber Tiger 10.4.0 to 10.4.3 didn't support x86, but 10.4.4 and later does.
If Leopard becomes some amazing new must-have I will just have to buy a new Mac Mini, and turn my old G4 Mac Mini into a media player or a Linux-based home router. Not a huge deal to me since my G3's and G4's aren't gaming machines and I don't need to upgrade to a machine capable of gaming. (well I play games, but they would run on just about any system)
Re:for Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
Leopard is as great of a jump from Tiger as Tiger was from Panther. Nice refinements everywhere, significant new apps and features like Spaces/Time Machine, major improvements to Mail/iCal/Safari/Quicktime/iChat, lots of major improvements under the hood that will propel third party development, including Core Animation.
Vista is XP with a new theme, plus DRM support for the dying HD-DVD, and a bolted on version of Apple's Quartz (WPF) and Cocoa (.Net).
Leopard makes modern machines more usable. Trying to use it on a sub-800 Mhz G4 (which would include Powerbooks and iMacs prior to 2002, or PowerMacs from before 2001) might be unreasonable. Those machines are now over a half decade old. PCs from 2001 would barely run XP, let alone Vista.
The summary is wrong - it confuses "less than 800 MHz G4s" with "non G5s." There are more than a half decade of G4 Macs that will run Leopard.
Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture [roughlydrafted.com]
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XP came out in 2001.. I'd say a PC built in 2001 would have no problem running XP.
Re:for Developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not every PC in 2001 had "Designed for Windows XP" stickers. Wonder why?
"Barely running" and "no problem running" could overlap depending on your level of Windows Enthusiasm.
Windows XP had major and significant problems until SP2 in 2004.
Vista came out in 2007 (technically 2006). Do PCs from 2007 have no problem running Vista?
To reliably run Windows with features on par with 2005's Mac OS X Tiger, wait for Vista Service Pack 2 in 2010, or perhaps Seven in 2013, or Seven SP2 in 2016.
Yes I'm kidding, but no not really so much.
SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 2000s [roughlydrafted.com]
SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1990s [roughlydrafted.com]
SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1980s [roughlydrafted.com]
SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1970s [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:for Developers (Score:4, Informative)
I have a Macbook pro that runs VISTA just fine. However compared to Win2K or XP it is dog slow. It is totally unreasonable to expect to be able to run VISTA on even the fastest Pentium available in 2001. For most Mac users, 10.4.x will probably work for a while, just as XP will be running on most Windows users current hardware until the hardware dies. Even the newest computers have to work hard to run Windows VISTA. With nothing else running VISTA uses about 30% CPU cycles. XP uses only 10%, everything else the same.
Re:for Developers (Score:4, Interesting)
When WGA crashed and turned off the features of the few Vista users who were trying to be happy with their purchase, it had the side effect of revealing that Vista's premium features were eating up significant resources, and simply turning them off made the system far more usable.
WGA the Dog: Microsoft's DRM Failure Earns Zoon Nomination [roughlydrafted.com]
One disadvantage to Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage DRM program--which forces Windows users to verify their software as "not-stolen" in order to receive certain patches and updates, including Internet Explorer 7--is that Microsoft's WGA server is not as highly reliable as Microsoft likes to advertise.
And thus for Consumers (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, who will then go on to build newer and more interesting applications based on these features, which Consumers will enjoy.
Not that there aren't some consumer things of interest in the release as well...
Apple traditionally also quickly has their own applications take advantage of new OS features so consumers could see new applications fairly quickly that would be compelling on Leopard.
Re:Whoopee doo (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering how much end users bitch about the performance of the old finder, a new finder, if it performs well, would be a huge advantage all on its own.
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Re:Whoopee doo (Score:5, Funny)
I'll probably get modded to hell and back, but Leopard is rapidly becoming Apple's version of Vista.
I haven't used Leopard enough to know whether it's a step backwards for OSX and has no useful new features. However, even if that's the case, at least they only wasted 2 years making it.
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The number of Apple updates that have actually been steps backwards in terms of features lately has been disappointing. Personally I think iTunes hit a high water mark with version 6.0.4 or 6.0.5 and went downhill from there; everything since then has been crappier interfaces and addition
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Not everyone does nothing but share music all day... for me, the following features of iTunes 7 are easily more worthwhile than better sharing (since there is currently only one iTunes-capable computer on my network anyway):
- "Grouping" tag
- The extensive array of sorting tags
- Video handling features
- Podcast managing features
- Album (and, I suppose, the useless Cover Flow) view
- Additional smart playlist criteria
- and the big one: GAPLESS PLAYBACK. Did I say GAPLESS PLAYBACK? I hated iTunes until
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iqu
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Hint: alt-tab then you can run the mouse over the icons
Re:and we get slower still (Score:5, Funny)
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When I installed Tiger on my 1ghz Titanium PowerBook it feelt like getting a whole new machine. I had 1gig ram. Note that you need a fresh install to gain all the speedbenefits from Tiger, upgrading from Panther will limit the performance a tad.
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Disable Dashboard (Score:3, Informative)
I have a dual-proc G5 machine and I disable Dashboard, just because I don't use the thing and have never found it really useful.
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You need more than 512MB RAM... you need 1GB of RAM on a PPC, or 2GB on an Intel, to make Tiger happy. Dashboard and a number of Tiger's hidden processes are RAM hogs. On Intel, Rosetta is an even more dramatic RAM hog, often increasing (active+wired) RAM usage by 300MB or more when a Rosetta application first runs, and not giving all of it back when the application quits.
My experience is that with sufficient RAM Tiger performs significantly better than Panther on the same PPC machine. I've found this to
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Not to mention many powerpc linux potential switchers.
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He has an expectation for the experience, if the experience isn't within what he deems acceptable, it isn't allowed.
There are pros and cons of this.
Biggest Pro: End user experiences are much more consistent.
Biggest Con: Like you said. The end user doesn't get to decide for themselves.
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Well, Apple is all about 'user experience' and their announcement avoids people phoning them up and complaining about what they already knew. As always within a few weeks of release there will be people finding ways to run the system on older computers.
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Re:and we get slower still (Score:4, Interesting)
So why is Photoshop faster on Leopard then on Tiger? As an ADC member I have access to all the seeds and I can tell you without a doubt that Leopard IS faster then Tiger.
Re:and we get slower still (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh, wha?
Actually Tiger is much faster overall than Panther (excepting several finder actions... previewing images/.movs in column view, for instance), and as a fellow ADC member I can tell you that the new finder smokes. No more 5 minute lockouts if you forget to disconnect the laptop from the server before you leave the office. A NICE, extremely usable network browser.... lots of little polishy-bits. I'm hoping that the stacked dock icons make it back into the GM. I loved having all my office and CS3 icons in a single pile, not taking up huge amounts of real estate.
I'm not exactly buying into Apple's "entirely new finder" party line, but the improvements they've made are nice and snappy in the last several builds I've tested.
No idea why anyone would want to view a folder in cover flow mode, but whatever. It works, it's fast and Quicklook is mega-handy.
Can't really go into more detail for a couple more weeks, but if you follow the builds on the rumor sites you can see that Leopard is quickly approaching a solid release state.
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Re:Money doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Not this $#!+ again...
While they're not as dramatic as new Windows versions (and not as expensive), OS X releases are not comparable to service packs.
Service packs don't add new features. On the rare occasions when they do, the features tend to be related only to stability or security. That is comparable to OS X 10.x.x releases, not the major "big cat" releases. Those minor releases occur far more frequently than Windows service packs (which has its pluses and minuses).
"Big cat" releases add many, many features, both visible and under the hood. Assuming you accept the model of paying for an OS in the first place, they should be paid upgrades, because they fundamentally change the product you're buying.
And the last paragraph of your reply shows your only experience of Apple is through its Windows software (which could be better). Try actually using a Mac before pontificating about it.
Re:Money doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)
I know I shouldn't respond to this anonymous troll, but...
With every $150 service pack released for OSX...
There have been eleven releases of OS X 10.4.x over the last couple years. Once you had 10.4 all those releases were free. These releases are roughly equivalent to a service pack, in Microsoft-speak. Service packs don't add features, do they? The major releases all add features. Granted many of them are new capabilities for developers to take advantage of, but there are usually enough immediate benefits for the end user to drive sales.
And by the way, if you're going to troll, at least get your facts straight. Major releases of 10.x are $129 for a single machine, and $199 for a family pack that covers five machines.
Re:and we get slower still (Score:4, Informative)
They don't have enough RAM. If you do more than one thing at once Tiger will die with 512MB, while Panther has more room for error. If you have enough RAM to avoid swapping Tiger is snappier (once the Spotlight index is done and Dashboard is loaded).
Re:Death knell for PPC Mac Mini (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, just keep using a perfectly good computer as-is, instead of "upgrading" just because something new came out.
Re:Death knell for PPC Mac Mini (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, no! I have a four-year-old iPod and a two-year-old Mac Mini! I no longer fit the stereotype! I'd better go throw some money away right away, so people know how to pigeonhole me.
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Until it died earlier this year, my main machine was an iBook from 1999.
-:sigma.SB
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On a PPC.
I think he'll be alright.
Re:Death knell for PPC Mac Mini (Score:4, Interesting)
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Too bad for the people who didn't RTFA and just read the (incorrect) summary.