Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory / Ram for your Mac. Top Quality, Competitive Prices, Lifetime Warranty. Expert Support and Video Installation Guidies too! 4.0GB Matched Sets from $87.99, Options up to 32GB. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Mac Spectrum

Leopard Runs Very Nicely on PowerPC Macs

- 2008.11.19 - Tip Jar

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter.

Popularity: LEMLEMLEMLEMLEM

Short link: http://bit.ly/Vh0ef

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

There has been lots of talk on various Apple discussion websites and Mac mailing lists that I subscribe to about how Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is not geared towards PowerPC Macs and was developed with Intel Macs in mind. I disagree with this.

A fellow group member had Leopard installed on a 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 and claimed it was unusable, so much so that he reverted to Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", something I found very strange. I have seen Leopard running on a number of G4 Macs. I even have it installed on my 1.25 GHz eMac with 1 GB of RAM, and it runs lovely; even when it had 512 MB of RAM, it was very much usable, and maxing it to its 2 GB limit will make it a very snappy machine.

Power Mac G4 'Sawtooth'As a tinkerer and lover of low-end Macs, I have installed it on both a 400 MHz PowerBook G4 Titanium with 1 GB of RAM and a PowerMac G4 Sawtooth with 640 MB of RAM (see Is Running Leopard on a Sawtooth Power Mac G4 Worth Doing?). While both of these machines are way under the minimum specs Apple restricts Leopard too, they performed a lot better than I expected. Both were useable, but under heavy use they would struggle.

Apple's minimum spec is an 867 MHz G4 with 512 MB of RAM. I have seen it running on an 867 MHz PowerBook G4 with 1 GB of RAM, which is about as low as you can get officially, and it runs like a dream.

I think the claims of Leopard not being PowerPC optimised is utter rubbish. I had a 1.83 GHz Core Duo Intel iMac with 1 GB of RAM, and Leopard never really ran properly on it. It wasn't until I upped it to 2 GB of RAM that the machine responded and worked properly - that made it more responsive and a lot more useable, but it was still plagued with problems, so much so that I at one point reinstalled Leopard, but the problems persisted.

In some respects, I think my 1.25 GHz eMac with 1 GB of RAM copes better than the Intel iMac did. I don't mean it runs faster - obviously the faster chipset, better graphics, and dual-core give the iMac the edge - but the overall stability and sluggishness on the iMac (considering it's way higher specifications compared to the eMac) is unbelievable.

I have had better results from PowerPC Macs, even lower-end G4s, than on Intel Macs. If there is anyone thinking of installing Leopard on older PowerPC Macs and wondering whether it is worth it, I say go for it.

Leopard is RAM hungry. If you are going to put it on a G4, make sure you have at least 1 GB of RAM, just to make the Leopard experience a nice one. Bear in mind the very low requirements of Tiger, so if you want a lightning fast machine, it might be a better alternative.

Intel Macs seems to be plagued with problem - at least mine was. It was a sad day when Apple dropped PowerPC Macs.

Until Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" is released - which is supposed to cut out the PowerPC platform altogether - I shall not be upgrading to another Intel machine. LEM

Recent Columns by Simon Royal

Royal also has his own Mac specific website.

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.