OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21277/Getting_Leopard_on_an_Unsupported_G4_in_a_Few_Clicks Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:16:55 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com You said you command me to laugh so . http://osnews.com/thread?357634 http://osnews.com/thread?357634 Turns out this is as easy as exploiting Safari on Mac OS X (that was a joke, I command you to laugh).

HA HA HA HA.

There you go.

On a more serious note, thanks for that report. I might give it a try on a 667 Mhz G4 here and see how it goes. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dtravis7) Comments Apple has always been like this http://osnews.com/thread?357638 http://osnews.com/thread?357638 >> further cementing my belief that this artificial cut-off point was put in place by Apple solely to sucker in more people to buy new Macs, even though their old ones are still capable enough. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (3rdalbum) Comments Nice one! http://osnews.com/thread?357641 http://osnews.com/thread?357641 I've got an old G4 733 running Tiger as my media server. i might give this a go. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siraf72) Comments No go here, I'm afraid http://osnews.com/thread?357642 http://osnews.com/thread?357642 I have an upgraded processor in my G4 (Sonnet 1.4 Ghz) and LeopardAssist won't work, unfortunately - I have the feeling I will have to temporarily put the old processor back in, install, then go back to the upgrade, although I have seen reports out there that others have managed to do this with the same card without a hitch (I have a G4 Sawtooth model that is apparently of the revision to allow a dual processsor upgrade - Uni-North number has a value of 7 or above).

Thanks for the link though to TweedehandsMac.nl. At first I despaired to see it was a Dutch/Belgian site only (delivery thereto), but after a few clicks understood that the UK version is called: http://uk.secondhandmac.com/, which I wasn't aware of. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (orfanum) Comments Rationale http://osnews.com/thread?357645 http://osnews.com/thread?357645 Their rationale is that it stops people from installing it on machines not capable of running Mac OS X Leopard and thus reduces their support calls. At the end of the day there was no need to deliberately castrate Leopard, all they had to do is put the minimum requirement (and state that Apple will only support those who meet or exceed the minimum requirements). If someone rings up needing help and they are running it on a machine outside minimum specifications then all the call centre has to inform the user is that their installation is unsupported and that they're on their own.

It shouldn't be Apple's responsibility to ensure people with under powered hardware don't install it on their machines; if end users want to take that risk and install Leopard on an underpowered machine then it is their own responsibility that it works and not Apple's - "This is what we support - if your machine doesn't meet those requirements then we don't support you".Edited 2009-04-08 09:43 UTC Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments Not Artificial http://osnews.com/thread?357668 http://osnews.com/thread?357668 Yeah, maybe it is artificial, but it feels like a practical line in the sand to me.

I was running Leopard on G4 Quicksilver 867 Mhz, right on the line. And it was usable, but it quickly became apparent I needed to find a Core Image video card and a processor upgrade.

While Leopard can feel snappier than Tiger in some cases, if you check out the benchmarks that the people at Low End Mac do on Leopard, Tiger, and Panther on these older Macs, Tiger is always just a little faster. Leopard improves performance in some areas (like graphics), but overall processing power dips down a bit.

I run Tiger on my G4 Cube right now, but it is really starting to show its age. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (NathanHill) Comments RE: Apple has always been like this http://osnews.com/thread?357669 http://osnews.com/thread?357669
Apple has always done this. When OS X.0 came out, it required a non-beige G3 macintosh. Somebody came up with a hack program called XPostFacto that allowed users of PPC 604 Macs and beige G3 Macs to install OS X.


The dumbest compatibility check I've seen from Apple was in Final Cut Express. We had an older version (4.0, I think) that my business partner wanted to move to his then-new Macbook - but it refused to run, with an error saying it only works with Macs containing an AGP graphics card. Despite the Macbook's video hardware being significantly faster than the AGP card in the computer we'd previously used to run FCE (a G4 800).

Fortunately, a bit of Google'ing revealed a fix (manually edit the plist file to remove the AGP check). And, of course, it ran just fine. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StephenBeDoper) Comments Works for me http://osnews.com/thread?357675 http://osnews.com/thread?357675 I did this on my PowerBook G4 400 (yup, the original Titanium, still going strong) last year and have had no problems. I had upgraded it some time ago to 768 MB of RAM.

I think it seems slow only in comparison to newer macs, and that the performance is comparable to when I had only run 10.3 on it. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (UltraNurd) Comments RE: Apple has always been like this http://osnews.com/thread?357681 http://osnews.com/thread?357681 That's not right - 10.0 through 10.2 were compatible with my beige PowerMac G3/266.

The original PowerBook G3 was the only G3 Mac that Apple excluded. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Cymro) Comments Glad to have been of assistance http://osnews.com/thread?357697 http://osnews.com/thread?357697 I'm glad Low End Mac could be of assistance. Most users who tried the hack we published had success, and that led to the development of LeopardAssistant, which we linked to right away.

I have run Leopard on a dual 450 MHz and dual 500 MHz Power Mac and have to agree that video performance really suffers with the ATI Rage card. I've since put a dual 1.6 GHz upgrade in my Digital Audio G4 (originally a single 533 MHz CPU), and I have to say that I'm quite impressed at video performance.

I am contemplating switching to one of these older Macs with that 1.6 GHz upgrade and the Radeon 9000 Pro video card from my Mirror Drive Door. It will be fun to see whether either of these "ancient" Macs can provide better overall performace than my dual 1 GHz G4 does thanks to that CPU ugprade.

Dan Knight, LowEndMac.com Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Low End Dan) Comments RE: Nice one! http://osnews.com/thread?357721 http://osnews.com/thread?357721 for a ref... os x leopard server runs fine for what I use it for...

if anything its faster than tiger server..

this is on a g4 450mhz cube w/ 1.5GB

if you want to put in a bigger hdisk you can with a hack to turn on lba support 128GB> hdisks Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nossie) Comments Comment by Sabon http://osnews.com/thread?357736 http://osnews.com/thread?357736 I've got two older Macs. A G4 800mhz iMac "lamp" and a G4 800 mhz PowerBook. I want to upgrade both of them but they were just below the line and I didn't really want to edit my plist and try it just in case it screwed things up. I didn't really want to spend the time creating a carbon copy clone and restoring if it failed. Maybe I'll do it now with the assist program that temporarily changes it and changes it back automatically. Obviously I still need to clone my hard drive just in case. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabon) Comments RE[2]: Apple has always been like this http://osnews.com/thread?357739 http://osnews.com/thread?357739 Not ENTIRELY accurate either. G3 Macs are hit or miss on 10.2 and earlier... The division referred to as 'old world' or 'new world' - Some G3 iMacs are effected, all of the toilet seat iBooks, and most of the desktop form factor G3's are also so afflicted.

Leopard assist is nice, but in a way I kind of wish it also ran on MacOS9 like XPostFacto does, since it's a faster/easier install if working 'clean'. Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deathshadow) Comments RE[3]: Apple has always been like this http://osnews.com/thread?357743 http://osnews.com/thread?357743
all of the toilet seat iBooks

Clamshell dude, clamshell. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (milatchi) Comments $400 Mac Mini http://osnews.com/thread?357751 http://osnews.com/thread?357751 http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB138LL/A?mco=MjE0NDk5Mw

Just saying. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alex Forster) Comments RE[2]: Apple has always been like this http://osnews.com/thread?357763 http://osnews.com/thread?357763 Now that you mention it, I think the beige G3 tower did work with earlier OS X; but the beige G3 desktop definitely didn't, and some of the G3 Powerbooks didn't. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (3rdalbum) Comments I prefer Tiger http://osnews.com/thread?357788 http://osnews.com/thread?357788 Tiger is much better for me, because of the one thing: Classic Compatibility Environment. It's no good to have to reboot in OS 9 every time I need to run some "unported" to OS X application or game.
I have Leopard installed on other partition, but I boot into Debian much often than into Leopard.
Sorry, Leo, without Classic you're useless for me, despite your cool 3D Dock and brand-new Cover Flow folder view. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (douglasm) Comments 10.5 killed my powerbook 12" http://osnews.com/thread?357799 http://osnews.com/thread?357799 i have a 12" powerbook with 1.33ghz g4 and 768 RAM

i installed leopard when it first came out and was kinda surprised at how nice the overall system was. worked really nice though a couple of things frustrated me. (to this day i don't use expose)

i started noticing a couple of issues with things a little while later. first the machine would get really hot and it took me a while to figure this one out. i was using quicklook a lot in the beginning and didn't realize how had that little app is on an older laptop. the mac ran out of ram quickly because everything in the finder gets a preview when you touch it and it's stored in ram. ram ran out which then had to go to HDD. luckily i had put in a larger hard drive a long time ago.

hdd would get hot and would overheat the little machine to the point that i would need to use an external fan on it.

then the wireless card started going from the heat and then the battery. to this day, if leopard is running the wireless works intermittently and the battery isn't recognized properly. the final blow to the system came when i reinstalled tiger on it. all the problems vanished.


so after all this, my suggestion would be don't install leopard on an older mac laptop (i refuse to install it on my dad's ibook with the same specs) unless you're prepared to turn off a lot of settings or at least not use them. it would also help to max out the ram of the machines, even though in most cases that's not enough. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (yesthisbig) Comments RE: No go here, I'm afraid http://osnews.com/thread?357858 http://osnews.com/thread?357858 If your upgrade card is over Apple's number of 867 MHz, it will be fine. I've upgraded two machines with 10.5 that have cards added.

The first is an AGB 450 MHz upgraded to a 1 GHZ machine. No problem.

The second is an Audio 733 MHz machine that had been upgraded to a dual cpu 1.8 GHz machine. That worked well also.

Apple always states that its OS's will not work (actually not be guaranteed to work) with third party upgrades. This is simply for liability issues. If Apple had control over the manufacture of those upgrades, it might be different.

But, over the years, I've upgraded many Macs, and never had a problem.

I've upgraded several Mac Pros last year with no problem either. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (melgross) Comments Reprehensible? http://osnews.com/thread?357864 http://osnews.com/thread?357864 Is this morally any different than installing OS X on a beige box? Or jailbreaking an iPhone? Just wondering. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zombie process) Comments