Miscellaneous Ramblings

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Newer iPods Not Compatible with Panther, iCab Great with OS 9, and Backing Up to Eudora 6.2.4

Charles Moore - 2008.03.19 - Tip Jar

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Newer iPods Incompatible with Panther

Two emails in response to Newer iPods Incompatible with Panther?

From Mike:

Just read the question from a reader today concerning whether iPods with Tiger requirements will work with Panther . . . My brother received an iPod classic for Christmas, which we found out (the hard way) would not work with Panther, even if the newest iTunes and QuickTime are present. I don't know why they shouldn't work with Panther under these conditions, but plugging the iPod in will yield a message to the effect that Tiger or better is required. I'm not sure if there are any workarounds for this or not (I wasn't able to find any at the time).

Hope this helps,
Mike

From Mark:

Hi Charles,

I can confirm this problem. I bought a new 160 GB iPod classic, and it is not synchable with my G5 Tower running the latest of Panther (10.3.9?). I'm not in front of the machine right now, but I think you get an incompatibility warning in iTunes.

Why they shut out pre-Tiger machines is ridiculous to me. I don't want to upgrade my OS, as Logic Audio 6.3.1 works just fine for me on this hardware.

Mark

Hi Mike and Mark,

Thanks for the info. It clarifies that this is not just an isolated glitch.

Panther is no longer supported by more and more updated and new software. Fortunately, most Macs than can run Panther can also handle Tiger, at least with a bit of help from XPostFacto.

In the case of iPod synching, I would guess that it's probably more a technical issue than a deliberate block-out, but I can't say for sure.

In my own experience with a 500 MHz Pismo G3 and 700 MHz iBook G3, Tiger is as good as - if not better performing - on these machines than Panther.

As for Mark's Logic Audio 6.3.1, if it runs in Panther, I would be very surprised if Tiger did not support it nicely as well.

Had a reader tell me how he installed OS X 10.4.11 Tiger on his WallStreet PowerBook the other day, with very good success.

Charles

iPod Support in Panther, Maximum RAM, and Hard Drive Failure

From John:

Re: iPods and Panther, Intel RAM

Yes, the newer iPods are incompatible with Panther. Specifically, they're incompatible with OS X 10.4.10 and lower. You need 10.4.11 with the latest version of iTunes, 7.6 or higher. 7.6 will not run on any earlier version of OS X. It does occur that some people update iTunes on Tiger without having all the Tiger updates; then they cannot run iTunes 7.6 until updating to 10.4.11!

Re: MacBooks and RAM maximums

All Intel based Macs have accurate and very real specs from Apple on their maximum RAM capacities. The ones that hold 3 GB of RAM will allow you to put in 4 GB but will only recognize 2 GB of address space. These are hard limits.

Re: Hard Drives and failures

Hard drives fail. Most are engineered for 5 years of life. There is always some degree of variation in manufacturing. The actual life of the drive depends on what happens to it as well. Sometimes even a seemingly minor bump can cause the head on the spindle to bounce ("crash") into a platter. The resulting damage can take a long time to manifest as a problem, but may eventually lead to volume damage that requires Erase & Install, or, outright HD replacement.

Other damage, such as the bearings going out, or other mechanical or chemical failures, are inevitable and unpredictable. Hard drives are still one of the most, if not the most, sensitive components. Most problems these days with any system are HD related. Almost every other component will outlast the HD. The other components that will fail eventually are anything mechanical: keyboard keys, optical drives, mouse/trackpads, I/O ports, etc. The display backlight is another component that will fail eventually. The motherboard and its components will likely last until the capacitors go bad. This generally takes 10 years or more. When capacitors go bad, electronics are paper weights.

In summary, this is why Leopard has included Time Machine and the industry is quickly moving to solid state drives. A good comparison is vacuum tubes to solid state for power/signal amplification. It's taken 50 some odd years for solid state to be truly competitive at the high end of this for things like radar and high-power amplification circuitry.

Hard drives will eventually be replaced by storage that does not move. Expect that to signal an end to optical disks as well. Cheap flash media will be the eventual successor. One area you'll see this in is printable circuits. Particularly, the inkjet printable variety. However, cheap flash memory and the proliferation of it, as well as proliferation and ubiquity of WiFi connections will close the digital media distribution chain. Eventually, other media will exist but at times as novelty items sold in Japan.

John

Hi John,

Thanks for the info and commentary. That clears up the confusion about iPod support and RAM in Intel machines.

I've been lucky with hard drives, I guess. I still have every Mac I've ever owned in running condition, and the only hard drive failures I've ever experienced have been in new units with only a few hours on them, although some of the laptop units are pretty noisy.

I run my production machines 8-10 hours a day. I agree that solid state is the future, but it has a way to go yet to match either price or reliability of the conventional HD:

Charles

Mac OS 9 Browsers: iCab

From Thomas:

Hi Charles,

I just came across your remarks on Mac OS 9 browsers, incidentally just after installing iCab 3.0.5 on a PowerBook Pismo running OS 9.2.2

I don't know if there is still an earlier version without a nag splash available (it was until 3.0.3 I think), but the iCab is the best browser for old Macs that I know - there is even a decent version for 68Ks available.

You might want to try it.

All the best
Thomas

Thanks Thomas,

I'm an iCab fan, and I really like the latest iCab 4.1 for OS X.

However, I'm still partial to Netscape 7 for use with OS 9. iCab 3 would be my second choice, and good on iCab for continuing to support the Classic OS, and as you say still even offering a 68k version, although it's no longer being developed for 68k.

Charles

Migrating Back to Eudora 6.2.4

From John:

Thank you, Charles,

I will try to download 6.2.4. Hopefully it will successfully and automatically replace 8.0.0b3 without problems (can an older version overwrite a "newer" one? We shall see!)

best,
John

Hi John,

Good luck. I'm skeptical about being able to import archives and contact info back from Eudora 8.0 to 6.2.4, but it is possible to drag Eudora mailboxes manually into the Mail Folder in the Eudora Folder between Classic Eudora versions. I'm not sure whether Eudora 8.0 modifies the mailbox files in any way that would render them unreadable for Eudora Classic.

Let me know how you make out.

Charles

Go to the Miscellaneous Ramblings Mailbag index.

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and writing for Mac websites since May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com.

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