• Step 1: Open terminal
  .
• Step 2: defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseMomentumScroll -bool yes
  .
• Step 3: Launch system prefs > Mouse/Trackpad > uncheck and check “scroll”
  .
• Step 4: All done!
  .

With a higher end GPU such as an Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, ATI Radeon X850XT or ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 Pro, momentum scrolling can at times be very smooth depending on the application and what you’re doing with the Mac.
.

4. Enable Desktop Widgets

In macOS Tahoe you’re able to add widgets to your desktop and same thing in Mac OS X Tiger and later.. erm.. well, sort-of. You can technically put them floating above everything else, arranging them to appear on your desktop without opening Dashboard. But the moment you open a window, these widgets float above it.

• Step 1: Open terminal
  .
• Step 2: defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
  .
• Step 3: Log out, log back in, or restart, or terminate the Dock.app in Activity Monitor.
  .
• Step 4: Drag-n’-drop your favorite widget like you normally would.
  .
• Step 5: Before exiting Dashboard, click-n’-hold the desired widget while at the same time exiting. Now it should stay.
  .

5. Click wallpaper to reveal desktop + Lock Screen

There’s an app that does both – closely replicates a feature from macOS Sonoma, as well as adding a much needed feature to Mac OS X Leopard – the ability to lock your screen without actually logging out. This app also adds transition animations between wallpaper changes on your desktop, whenever you decide to change them.

DeskShade is available for download from the Macintosh Garden. I have a shortcut key set to where if I press the CMD + D key and click the wallpaper on the desktop, it effectively mimics the feature “Click wallpaper to reveal desktop” with the exception of finder windows and Dashboard widgets.

There is a drawback, though. When using the screen locking feature, it seems immune to display timeouts, “Hot Corners”, and screensavers. If you lock your screen using this app and plan to be away from your PowerPC Mac for a time, you may end up needing to physically power off the display for energy conservation.

6. San Francisco system font

Use this one at your own risk, and keep a backup copy of your system’s original default font. It works by replacing the real Lucida Grande system font with only something named it, while actually being one of the San Francisco fonts. I haven’t found anything better out there so far, and it’s a nice change from what’s used up to OS X Yosemite.

• Step 1: Download LucidaGrande.dfont_.zip (Low End Mac Repository, 493 KB)
  .
  
• Step 2: Open terminal
  .
• Step 3: sudo cp /Users/(insert user name)/Desktop/LucidaGrande.dfont /System/Library/Fonts
  .
• Step 4: Log out, log back in, or restart.
  .

7. Universal Control for multiple PowerPC Macs

When using a PowerPC Mac with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, you normally don’t have the ability to use a single Keyboard, Mouse, or trackpad to move the pointer, type, and copy clipboard content across multiple Macs.

That is, until you download Teleport for Mac! A preference pane which lets you have a working “PowerPC version” of Universal Control. Universal Control has been baked into macOS since Monterey 12.3, and this .prefpane replicates most of the same features.
.

.
Low End Mac fully explains how to setup and install Teleport for Mac in a PowerPC Mac App Highlight article. If you wanna use one KB/Mouse/Trackpad between multiple Macs just like on Universal Control on newer Macs, this app may be for you.
.

8. Growl Notifications

It was a long time before system-wide notifications were built into Mac OS X. This isn’t an app I’ve poked around with much back in the day, but is yet another which quite a few knew about.
.

.

You can tweak the appearance quite a bit, change timeout settings, as well as the sound. This doesn’t work for absolutely everything, it looks like – and needs some poking around before being useful.
.

9. Add a Launchpad

There’s an app called Overflow, it’s also available on the Macintosh Garden. Lightweight, it can replicate the functionality of Launchpad for the most part.
.

.
It’s rather spartan for a Launchpad, but it’s best this way – it’s lightweight enough. You never know when an add-on, an app, an extension, system .prefpane, etc; will crank up CPU usage needlessly. When rendering the animations the CPU usage spikes, but stays at 0 when this app isn’t being used.

• Add multiple folders and access them from the left pane
  .
• Customize size of text labels, icons, and transparency of Launchpad
  .

10. Mouse Locator

In OS X El Capitan, there is a new feature where you can shake the mouse and it will enlarge the cursor temporarily, so you know where it is on the screen. There’s a PowerPC app with very similar functionality called Mouse Locator, available on the Macintosh Garden.

It works a little differently from the way the macOS cursor does. This one works off a timeout timer, but is equally effective in letting you know where the cursor is. You may also change it so the same action is taken when you press a certain hot key, as opposed to an auto timeout-action.
.

.
11. Bonus – “iPhone Mirroring” (barely an iPhone app, but works)

So you know how Xcode lets you run an iOS app in a simulator and how the current version of macOS has iPhone mirroring? As it turns out, you can kind-of sort-of get an iPhone 3G going on your PowerPC Mac’s desktop! You might not be able to hold it or use it very much, and it’s debatable if this applet was even used to test apps out back in the day.
.

.
One thing’s for sure though – It looks like an iPhone 3G, animates like one, and sounds like one when you dial a number in the Phone app. If you’re down to simulate an iPhone 3G on your PowerPC Mac’s desktop, then buckle up – the precambrian iPhone mirroring extravaganza is right around the corner.

• See: Run an iPhone 3G on your PowerPC Mac desktop (Sort of) – Low End Mac article
  .

In Conclusion

It comes as no surprise the features eventually adopted into macOS were once either apps, scripts, tweaks, etc; or may miraculously resemble closely to the modern-day features we enjoy. By taking inspiration from the functionality of newer versions of macOS, when we fit the pieces together, Mac OS X Leopard can feel alot less old.
.

.
It’s kind of incredible how 2 decades on, Mac OS X Leopard can slightly defy the odds and still poke around on the internet with the right set of hardware. Considering how fast PowerPC Macs were dropped, the diaspora to other hardware platforms including succeeding Apple hardware, the sudden depreciation of Adobe Flash, and all other technological forces at play – it’s a miracle we can even play a YouTube short on a Power Mac G5 reasonably, at all.

At the end of the day, you should be able to use your Apple hardware as long as you enjoy it, it meets your needs, and/or helps you remain productive.