Strange Aperture System Requirements

I sat down a few minutes ago to attempt to install the copy of Aperture 1.5 that member fuchsdh generously gave me a weeks ago(as part of the lot of the big lot of software he gave away).

I attempted to install it on my main Quicksilver, which is my main computer for photography purposes.

Interestingly enough, it wouldn't install, as I didn't meet the minimum processor requirements. As per the install documents, I need either a G5 or a 15/17" PB with a 1.25ghz or faster processor.

I have an appropriate video card(I'm using a 9600XT, which has full core image support), and I would think that a pair of 1ghz 7450s with 2mb of L3/core would give better performance than a single 7447A with no L3, unless there's some sort of instruction set the 7447A supports that my QS does not.

As a corollary to that, I wonder if it would install on my(now) dual 1.6 Quicksilver, which has 7447A. I would need to put a core image card of some sort in it, which I think I could come up with(assuming a 9600 Pro would play nice, or at least I could use the PCI 5200). I'm away from that computer at the moment, so can't test it and won't be able to until late tomorrow or Monday.

So I guess my question is-does anyone know if there is something in the coding of Aperture that would prevent it from running on the 7450, or can I bypass the installation checks and have it work fine as many of us do frequently with Leopard.

If the latter is the case, I could always put my Quicksilver in TDM and attempt an install from a supported Powerbook. If no one has a direct answer, I'll try doing just that tomorrow and see what happens.

I give up!

I installed it on my A1139 Powerbook, which exceeds the stated requirements. It's running 10.5.8.

I tried to launch Aperture, and got the message "You cannot use this version of the application Aperture with this version of Mac OS X."

I'll also add that I was unable to do a TDM install as I'd planned, as the installer didn't allow me to install on anything other than the startup disk.

I have a Tiger partition on this computer but haven't yet installed Tiger on it-I may try that later and see if it will run in Tiger(since the "official" requirements state 10.4.8).

I'll also try it on my work G5 tomorrow, although if 10.5.8 is the problem I don't see how that will help. The only G5 system I have at my disposal at the moment is the Xserve, and I can pretty safely assume it won't run there as it doesn't have a video card(I ran into that problem with iMovie and several other programs, although fortunately iDVD does work so at least I can offload the heavy encoding to it).

Maybe it's time to start trolling Ebay for a copy of Lightroom 2.

weckart said:

Very odd. My A1139 came with a trial of Aperture 2.1.4 already installed. I have a boxed version of 2 I have never used so stuck the disk in and it seemed to find it OK. The trial version runs, too.

My A1139 is running 10.5.8 but with no haxies or other embellishments. Have you modded your Leopard installation so that it is fooling Aperture in some way?

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It's 100% stock. When I first received the computer, I dropped an SSD in it, ran the restore disks(which installed-I think-10.4.3) then upgraded to Leopard. I of course ran all the updates and have manually upgraded a few Apple-supplied programs(like Quicktime) to their most recent version. The only thing I've done beyond that is install the standard suite of programs many PPC users have(Leopard Webkit, Tenfourfox, Temperature Monitor, Mactubes) along with installing CS3. I've not done any speed improvements or optimizations like stripping out the universal binaries or other code that some folks recommend, or at least not on this particular computer.

Since, as I mentioned, I have a currently unused partition earmarked for Tiger on the drive, so I'll try running the restore disks and then updating from there to see if it will run.

I should also add that I had no problems with the install on the A1139. As best as I can tell, it installed correctly. The error message occurs when trying to launch it.

EDIT:

As per Wikipedia(at least if I'm reading correctly), I need 1.5.6 to run on Leopard. The 1.5.6 update was released around the same time as Leopard. Hopefully it's a free update that I can dig up on the Apple site, or otherwise maybe I can launch the program from Tiger and let it auto-update to 1.5.6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software)

Just thought I'd report that downloading and installing the 1.5.6 update allowed me to run it on 10.5.8 with no issues.

Here's the download link from Apple for 1.5.6(or at least until they decide to reorganize all their links, as they seem to enjoy doing from time to time)

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL183?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

And, as a further report-dragging and dropping the install onto the Quicksilver didn't work. Upon launching, the program reported that it was on an incompatible computer and shut down.

I'm going to try again on my 7447A-equipped Quicksilver, although I'll also need to install a core image card. Hopefully, my PCI 5200 will at least make the program happy.

Well, Aperture didn't give me a "system type not supported" on the upgraded Quicksilver, but did object to the lack of a Core Image card.

The only thing I had handy was a Radeon 9600 PC&Mac, which miraculously worked without any issues. Unfortunately, I had to install the drivers. This updated the boot caches, which is a guaranteed way to make the processor upgrade not work

I'll have to pull the hard drive and re-run the GigaDesigns installer on another computer.

Then, with a core image card and a pair of 7447As, I'll see if Aperture will install on a Quicksilver.

gavinstubbs09 said:

What's the program in your dock between PowerPoint and Photoshop?

Click to expand...

Chemdraw

Okay, it's time for today's "I'm an idiot" moment.

I mentioned earlier that I thought I'd messed up the boot caches by installing the 9600 drivers. The computer would start booting, but then throw up a stop sign about halfway into booting.

When I bought my dual 1ghz QS from Gavin, it came with two factory 80gb drives(listed on the sticker) that were set up in a RAID 0 array. This was a nice set-up, but my intention was to use that particular Quicksilver as a replacement for my other upgraded dual 1ghz with no L3. Thus, when I received the computer from Gavin, I simply swapped hard drive cages between the two computer.

The RAID array is fast-at least for IDE platter drives-so it seemed like an ideal set-up for what eventually became my "hotrod" dual 1.6ghz Quicksilver.

In swapping video cards around today(and opening and closing the door), I'd inadvertently pulled the cable out of one of the drives . Since the OS(and all other data) is striped across both drives, the computer couldn't access the complete OS. I'm actually surprised it booted as far as it did.

Incidentally, all is well now. I opened my other PC&Mac 9600 Pro that I'd been holding back for a while, and amazingly it worked the first time I tried it in the QS(this combination has a well-deserved reputation for being hit or miss).

Once I had the computer booted with a core image card, Aperture installed without a hitch. As I mentioned-the dual 1.8 Gigadesigns(currently running at 1.6ghz) uses 7447As. The 1.25ghz+ Powerbooks that are supported use 7447As(in fact, the processors on my upgrade card were factory rated for 1.25ghz). All I can guess is that Aperture uses some instruction set in the 7447A that's not supported in other 7400/7450 series processors. I'm talking out of my rear end on this one, but it's the only thing I can think of. As I said, the program absolutely refused to run on my dual 1ghz QS, even though it has a core image card.

The only other experiment I can think to try would be to try installing it on a 1.25ghz MDD with a Core Image card. I do have a single 1.25 and of course can put a Core Image card in it(I have a big stack of core image cards that will work in an MDD but not a Quicksilver). If it works in that computer, it would indicate to me that refusal to run on my dual 1ghz QS is related simply to processor speed. If it installs and runs on a 1.25ghz MDD with a core image card, I would think this would confirm this.

But, again, I'm talking out of my rear end on all of this. If you're not the experimenting type and want to run Aperture on your PPC Mac, stick to G5s and 1.25ghz+ 15 and 17" Powerbooks. Apple does specifically list supported GPUs, but ultimately what it comes down to is that Aperture requires core image support, so anything with Core Image should be okay.

I think I can probably pretty safely conclude that Aperture requires a 7447A, and the install block is not simply a clock frequency check. I(finally) got the FireGl X3(X800XT) working in a 1.25ghz MDD, and Aperture refused to install.

Altemose said:

I wonder if using the Open Firmware commands that are normally used for installing OS X Leopard (spoof CPU clock speed) would work in a scenario like this...

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This might be worth a shot, but since it want 1.25ghz or higher in a Powerbook I would think if it were a simple system clock check it would have installed on the MDD.

Altemose said:

According to the Apple system requirements here, they are very specific in terms of GPUs supported by Aperture. I wonder if the fact that your X800 is a flashed GPU is causing any issues. OS X may see and view it as an X800, but if the device identifier doesn't line up to the white list in the system requirements, it may fail anyway. That is just an idea that I have no way of testing.

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When I tried to install it in my upgraded Quicksilver with a Radeon 9000, the error message was "Your video card is not supported." If the video card were the issue on the MDD, from past experience, I would guess that it would say that specifically rather than a generic "system not supported" message.

I can stick a real 9600 in it and try, though.

No luck installing with the same 9600 Pro PC&Mac that worked in my Quicksilver.

Jessica Lares said:

My iMac G4 doesn't support Aperture. But I got it to work by changing something. I have forgotten at this point though.

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The last generation 17" and 20" iMac G4s have an FX 5200 Ultra, which is a core image GPU and on the "supported" list, although as I understand it's far from an optimum GPU. They are also 1.25ghz, which again meets the minimum processor speed requirements.

At the end of the day, I'd really just like to get it running on my dual 1ghz Quicksilver, as that's where most of my other photography work takes place.

FWIW, the version I did a "drag and drop" on for the QS was 1.5.6, which is required to run on Leopard. My install disk is 1.5.0, which will only run on Tiger.