All the
talk is about Tiger's new features (which we all know by now -
Dashboard and Spotlight) and the havoc that Dashboard is causing,
given that it can run potentially malicious widgets downloaded in
the background from websites accessed by Safari 2.0. (If you turn
off the "open safe files" option in Safari's preferences, this
issue is nonexistent.)
These seem to be the hot topics, which brings me to what people
have not been talking about much - the computers that Tiger will
run on, and whether it's a good idea to try to get a little more
life out of your older machine by using a tool like XPostFacto
to install 10.4.
The machines that are officially supported in Tiger have already
been established by Apple, and they include any Mac with built-in
FireWire. This cuts out all the beige
G3s (previously cut out by Panther), as well as some of the
early iMacs. While most people won't want to run Tiger on a 233/266
MHz G3, there were slot-loading 350 MHz G3 iMacs (blueberry and indigo) that did not ship with FireWire
ports, and these are not officially supported. This also cuts out
the early 300 MHz clamshell
iBooks.
Apple obviously does this for a reason. Imagine the number of
phone calls they'd be getting: "I just installed Tiger on my 233
MHz iMac, and it's soooo slow. Why can't you make your software
work better?"
This would also be a marketing disaster - people complaining
about the lack of speed of OS X might cause others to think
twice about buying a new Mac, even if those complaining were
running seven-year-old machines.
While I wouldn't want to be running any version of OS X on
a 233 MHz G3 processor, there are some that want to give it a try
just to see how well they can make it work. That's why we have
XPostFacto.
Also, if you happen to have a processor upgrade in your older
Power Mac or iMac, it may be worth installing Tiger, and XPostFacto
will certainly prove useful for that.
What about realistic requirements?
I don't have Tiger yet (I am waiting for some of the bugs to get
knocked out of it first), but a 350 MHz G3 feels a bit slow
occasionally running Panther (10.3). I'd suggest a 450 MHz G3 or a
400 MHz G4 would really be needed in order for the system to still
feel responsive - and that's a minimum.
That's for Panther - what about Tiger? With the additional
features, it's bound to use more system resources. In fact, the
official RAM requirement has (finally) gone up to 256 MB from the
128 MB required by 10.0 through 10.3.
What type of Mac would you want to run Tiger on? I'd guess that
Apple's pretty much right in cutting off Macs at the FireWire/no
FireWire point. While Tiger will probably function fairly well on
some of the non-FireWire PowerBooks (a 400 MHz Lombard should run it
decently), the slower iMacs would probably choke on Dashboard, and
the 300 MHz iBooks with their slow video chips and low screen
resolution would make the Tiger experience rather
disheartening.
I mentioned last week that I'm not
planning to install Tiger on my 350
MHz blue G3, primarily for the reason that this machine tends
to be fussy with OS X - and now that I finally have Panther
(v. 10.3.8) running without problems, I don't want to change
it.
The other reason has to do with the system's specifications. A
350 MHz G3 is just adequate for 10.3, and it does lag sometimes.
The other problem is that there's just not enough RAM - I have 384
MB installed - to run anything more than what's already on there.
If the minimum requirements of Tiger are 256 MB, we all know that
means that 512 MB are required in order for performance to be
decent, and buying PC100 RAM for a 6-year-old computer is a little
bit pointless, since it won't be useful in a newer system when I
decide to upgrade.
I do plan on installing Tiger on my 12" PowerBook G4, however. While I
have not used that machine for over a week, I know that an 867 MHz
G4 should be more than capable of running Tiger, and with a RAM
upgrade (it's got the stock 256 MB right now) there should be no
problems whatsoever.
Then again, you never know.
