Is Leopard the Best OS for a 12" PowerBook?
From John Muir:
Hi Charles,
I have the very same PowerBook as Greg: the original 867 MHz 12" PowerBook G4.
It's my first Mac, and as such I'm still rather attached to it. It has
run every version of OS X since Jaguar, right up to and including
Leopard. Each major release has been an improvement in its own way,
though Leopard was the first time there has really been any decrease in
overall speed.
For just about a year I ran Tiger on this Mac from a CompactFlash
card, as I wrote about in Operation
FlashBook: Running Tiger from Flash on a PowerBook G4.
The flash experiment probably helped inure me to slower performance.
Tiger on my conventional hard drive had always been quite snappy and
certainly faster than Jaguar, but when the drive started off on its
journey to failure, long pauses started to appear as data was being
held up, so I knew I had to replace it. Flash was certainly an
interesting way to do this, carrying the advantage of pure silence. But
once again all was not well there, and the poor performance I wrote
about in the article was the first sign of the flash card's similar
demise.
When Leopard came out, I bought a new hard drive and installed 10.5
afresh. It was not fast. Better than the very flaky flash performance,
which had only become worse since I wrote the article, but definitely
not the PowerBook of old. I suspected the 640 MB of memory I had
installed, an old upgrade from back in the Panther days when the
factory installed 256 MB was no longer enough. A surprisingly cheap
upgrade to the model's absolute maximum of 1152 MB later, and Leopard
was notably better behaved.
RAM upgrades are vital for keeping old machines
on new software.
RAM upgrades are vital for keeping old machines on new software. If
you space them out long enough, you'll pay less for the bigger, later
ones as the industry's price curve crossed before you.
Anyway, how is Leopard overall now?
Well, much better than I had to say Tiger was in that article. I
won't pretend Leopard feels identical on an 867 MHz G4 to, say, the
2 GHz Core 2 Duo in my Mac
mini, but it's at least as usable as I found my original Mac OS:
Jaguar. I have Safari, iChat, Mail. and NetNewsWire
running continuously, and they're well behaved and almost as quick as
on the Intel. The difference comes when you try something more
demanding: I do a lot with video on the mini and it's an order of
magnitude ahead of the little PowerBook. The iWork suite's word
processor, Pages, is quite sluggish on the PowerBook, which surprised
me at first - until I tried the other iWork 2008 apps as well. They run
far better on Intels. Of course, TextEdit is as speedy and better
featured than most people know anyway, so no real trouble there.
With high performance demands comes a lot of heat. As you know,
these original 12" PowerBooks aren't the coolest runners among Apple's
laptops. Since I loathe fans coming on too, I use Reduced Performance
CPU mode (found in System Preferences) to control that. In fact, I made
a pair of AppleScripts to toggle the setting and can "flip the switch"
with just the function keys whenever I like, thanks to FastScripts. The other
side of the equation is a nifty utility called iStat Menus, which I
have displaying a CPU history graph and temperature reading up in the
menu bar next to Time Machine and AirPort. Of course, I'm just the kind
of geek who likes these readings anyway, and I have the same displayed
on my Mac mini for no better reason than curiosity!
I'm pushing the PowerBook extra hard with one last thing. I'm
learning Cocoa programming at last, so I have the latest Apple
developer tools installed, including the iPhone SDK. Technically, the
minimum requirement is an Intel Mac, but I use FireWire target mode and
my trusty Mac mini to overcome that obstacle each time there's a new
beta! Surprisingly, all the apps involved are Universal Binary, so I
can even run the iPhone simulator on my five-year-old 12" Mac. Not bad.
Xcode is noticeably sluggish on my G4 compared to the Intel Mac mini,
where it feels more at home, but this way I can keep learning when I'm
away from my desk as well.
To be honest, I would always run the latest supported OS, as I'm too
involved with the new technologies each version introduces under the
hood. I'm also forever experimenting with third party software, and a
lot of that follows the latest releases for just the same reason. In
other words: I'm a features over performance man.
Leopard doubtlessly runs better on Intel Macs than G4s. And when
Snow Leopard comes around, I'll need new hardware at last to keep up
with it. But what is amazing is the value you can get out of your Mac,
years and years after you bought it.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the interesting observations and
analysis.
Judging from the sort of performance I'm getting with
Leopard on this 1.33 GHz 17" PowerBook with 1.5 GB of RAM, I don't
doubt that it must be a pretty sluggish cat on a 867 MHz G4 with just
over a gig. of memory.
Tiger is the optimum performance system on this 'Book,
and on my two old 550 MHz G4 Pismos as well, but as you say,
features can trump performance, and Leopard runs well enough on the
1.33 unit for me to put up with the performance compromises and other
angularities, although I wouldn't think of attempting to run Leopard on
the Pismos.
Incidentally, Tiger 10.4.11 runs very well on my
wife's 700 MHz G3
iBook.
I expect to be upgrading to a Macintel before the end
of the year, mostly because I need Intel support for software reviews.
I don't really need more power than this old G4 provides for my
actual work tasking, much of which I actually still do on the old
Pismos, which I still like better than any other Macs I've ever
owned.
Charles
Leopard on TiBook, Apple a Gamble, and Linux
From Jeffrey:
Charles,
Leopard on TiBook:
I find that my TiBook
handles Leopard acceptably well. I find it only slightly less
responsive than it was under Tiger. My battery life is still very good
(~3.75 hours). I find it significantly more responsive than a 600 MHz G3 iBook running
Tiger.
That was a supported configuration that I didn't care for using on a
daily basis, whereas my TiBook is a supported configuration that I find
usable. That said, using the TiBook makes me enjoy using my Quicksilver (2 800 MHz G4s,
Radeon 9000 Pro, 1.5 GB RAM, 146 GB 15K SCSI) all the more, because
that machine has both video and hard drive upgrades that make it quite
responsive with Leopard. You may find it interesting to note that a
dual 800 Quicksilver is not a supported configuration, and I prefer it
over my supported
TiBook (867 MHz, 1.0 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive).
Apple a Gamble?
I have come to expect Apple to support good
hardware for a long time, and I expect Apple to continue to support any
hardware that can reasonably run the latest OS.
You know I read all these articles saying "get over it" with regard
to PPC and Snow Leopard, and I've been struggling with why I feel so
negatively about that. Basically my response is that I have come to
expect Apple to support good hardware for a long time, and I expect
Apple to continue to support any hardware that can reasonably run the
latest OS.
Yes, I've seen Apple support some hardware too long (e.g., 7.5.5 on
a Mac Plus, 9.1 on a
Duo 2300c and a Power Mac 6100, etc.). Really, I
do appreciate that providing support too long doesn't really does do
anyone any favors. Those systems were not adequate to do the latest
operating systems justice, and really there was no use it supporting
them. I have no good reason to believe that OS 8.6 would have run well
on a 68040, and I tried running 8.1 on a 68030 (because I could), and
it wasn't my best user experience either.
Unsupported status for my Quicksilver was the first time I ever
found a machine that Apple stopped supporting that I thought was more
than adequate for the task. Not a problem, because there were ways to run it anyway. Still, a
video upgrade was all that was required . . . no different
than adding extra RAM to a machine, is it?
But if I had bought a computer the price of a G5 dual or quad
machine, even at Apple refurbished prices, and Apple not only stopped
supporting it, but I couldn't even run the most current software
"unsupported" after less than four years, I would feel very angry and
virtually betrayed. I find it impossible to believe that these
machines, especially the ones with dedicated graphics cards, would be
"inadequate" to run an operating system capable of running on a
Core Solo Mac mini or even
a MacBook with
GMA 950 graphics.
But the bottom line for me is this: Why should I believe, based upon
Apple's current path, that an Apple computer that I purchase new today
will be supported beyond three years from now? How can I rationalize a
decision to purchase a new Apple computer if they do not continue to
demonstrate a reasonable period of support, especially for their
flagship models?
In a nutshell, I can't.
Before I am going to be comfortable with the idea that Apple is
going to cut a bunch of G5s off at the knees with the release of Snow
Leopard, I need to hear why I should believe that isn't going to happen
to me next time . . . when the 128-bit 16-core subnotebooks
running PA Semi's latest low-power chipset set represent such a
leap-forward in technology that you poor folks who have those pathetic
Xeon quad core machines should just get over it and be thankful for the
3.5 years of support that you got. Perhaps a bit over-dramatic, but I
think the question is still valid. And the answer...?
Why Not Linux?
Some say, don't worry, if you want to stay current, you can run
Linux on your Mac.
That's true.
And to that I would say when I choose to run Linux, I have a greater
variety of hardware configurations and alternatives better supported by
Linux if I don't buy Apple.
Ditto for *BSD.
Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
I think that the issue with PPC support and Snow
Leopard is a somewhat unique one, with the dynamic in play unlikely to
be repeated. It isn't as if PPC users are being cut adrift. I expect
Leopard support and security upgrades will continue for years to come
yet.
The thing with Snow Leopard, as I (no doubt
imperfectly) understand it, is that most of the things that will
functionally distinguish OS X 10.6 from OS X 10.5 will be
features that are closely integrated with Intel's rapidly developing
chip technologies, so even if Snow Leopard continued to contain the
code to boot PowerPC machines, it would still in a functional sense be
Leopard with a name upgrade on non-Intel machines.
Consequently, I can understand Apple's (presumed)
decision not to extend PPC support at the expense of compromised
performance on Intel Macs and code bloat - and I'm speaking as one
whose last system purchase was a G4 30 months ago.
Actually, I think even Leopard is one version too far
for this 1.33 GHz G4, but the Leopard feature set has seduced me.
Charles
Depreciation and Value for the Money
From Yuhong Bao:
The combination of depreciation and value for the money always leads
me to buy into the mid-end.
Yuhong Bao
Hi Yuhong Bao,
I think that's often a wise policy.
For example, the "mid-end" MacBook is definitely the
best value of the three configurations Apple offers.
However, when there's no "mid-end", as with the 15"
MacBook Pro, my inclination would be to go with the low-end (so to
speak) model, which I think is a substantially better value for the
money than the high-end model (which costs 25% more and doesn't really
deliver proportionately in terms of power and value added).
Charles
Forget Firefox - I'm Going Back to Opera
From Leif:
Hi Charles - found this, Forget
Firefox - I'm Going Back to Opera for Browsing and Email, but you
perhaps already saw it.
(Sent from Opera. Not that I have really switched.)
lh
Hi Leif,
Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that article, and
it's an excellent apologetic for Opera.
I've been using both Opera 9.5 (now 9.5.1) and Firefox 3 since
they were released almost simultaneously last month, and they're both
good browsers, but Opera is superior by a substantial margin, mostly
because of a whole host of little things and without even factoring in
the embedded email client.
The latter I'm finding very tempting as I continue to
struggle along with not-quite-Leopard-compatible Eudora 6.2.4. Two
things hold me back, the first being a dozen years of experience and
archived messages in Eudora, along with the fact that it's still the
best email client ever designed, while the second is hope that Odysseus development
will come to fruition soon with a stable and reliable modernized
interpretation of that Eudora goodness.
Charles
Voice Dictation Software for PowerPC Macs
From Nancy:
Dear Charles,
I read and enjoy your columns a great deal, and we have corresponded
in the past. Although I'm sure with the volume of email you receive,
you don't recall. (It was about laptop cooling pads, I believe.)
Anyway, there is a family of Mac users in my town whom I try to
help, and one of them called me today with a problem. She suffers from
neck pain, and is finding it difficult to type for long periods on the
iBook G4 12" that she inherited from her sister (who in turn got it
from my son!). It's the
1 GHz model with 786 MB RAM, running Tiger 10.4.11. She called
me today asking what voice dictation software she could purchase. I
remember reading your reviews of MacSpeech's iListen, so I went
straight to their website and was dismayed to find that iListen is no
longer available, and that MacSpeech Dictate is Intel-only.
So my question to you is, are there any sources where she might
still be able to purchase iListen? Or are there any other apps she
might be able to use instead? I seem to recall that iListen was pretty
much it for the Mac.
Thank you for your assistance, as I know how busy you are.
Best,
Nancy
Hi Nancy,
Thank you for the kind words about my scribbling. I
think I do recall our correspondence about the cooling pads, but can't
place it precisely in time.
I learned something from your letter, to wit: that
MacSpeech has discontinued iListen sales, which is disappointing. I'm
still using iListen myself, as I have not yet switched up from my old G4 PowerBook. I
assume that the reason for dropping it was that supporting two
completely different dictation products would stretch a small company's
resources too thinly, and there may also be issues with costs for
continuing to license the Philips Speech Engine used in iListen as well
as the Dragon
NaturallySpeaking engine used in Dictate. That is all
just deduction on my part.
Anyway, what I would suggest for your friend is to get
a copy of IBM
ViaVoice 10 for Mac, although development was suspended some time
ago, and it only supports up to OS X 10.3.9, so your friend would
be obliged to "downgrade" her operating system to Panther from Tiger.
ViaVoice for Mac is still available from Nuance.com for $124.99
including an Andrea USB microphone. The 1 GHz 12" iBook does
support OS X 10.3, which is the OS it shipped with.
I used ViaVoice quite a bit in the early days of OS X
(and also older Classic Mac OS versions), and it is actually pretty
decent dictation software in the context of its era, although not up to
the standard of Dictate and later versions of iListen.
Charles
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