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How do I figure out what Mac OS came preinstalled on my secondhand Powerbook G4?

J

Johnny7

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 31, 2010
45
0
Just curious to know, I received it off of ebay and didn't get any recovery disks but I did get a user burnt os x tiger disk :S. If specs help, Powerbook G4 12" 1.0GHz processor. I'd also like to know if this model came preinstalled with iLife or anything. Reason being is that I heard if your laptop came with certain things and you wanted backup but lost the disks you could make your own ;). Heh, I'm hinting torrenting(never torrented before though) the original programs but ONLY if it's legal because if they *did* come with it so why not :d?

Btw, I want to reinstall osx because it was second hand and I want a fresh start.

Thanks!
Johnny
 
CubeHacker

CubeHacker

macrumors 65816
Apr 22, 2003
1,243
251
Depending on your specific 1.0ghz revision, your ibook either came preinstalled with 10.2.8 Jaguar or with 10.3 Panther.
 
MacHamster68

MacHamster68

macrumors 68040
Sep 17, 2009
3,251
5
every mac shipped with install disc's for the OS and iLife , problem is most sellers just preinstall and sell the disc's separate as for example a tiger retail disc about £60 and leopard retail discs sell for £80+ because the demand is huge since apple does not sell them any more , so sellers buy old macs and preinstall their retail single user licence leopard disc on a hundred Mac's , which actually should be banned by ebay if the Mac does not come with the disc's corresponding to the installed OS
as the installed newer OS is only legal if it comes with the disc of the operating system installed , even family licence which allows to install on up to 5 Mac's , but only in the same family , so when sold if you follow Apples eula you need to reinstall the Os the Mac shipped with
here is your powerbook and it did ship not with tiger as only the last powerbooks from october 2005 with 1.67 ghz shipped with tiger
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g4/stats/powerbook_g4_1.0_12.html
everymac.com is a great site to find what was preinstalled and all the other spec

http://www.everymac.com/
 
J

Johnny7

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 31, 2010
45
0
Ah, so does this mean if I requested the factory disks, I'd only get panther and a fairly old version of iLife? Seems a bit unfair they discontinued the line of PowerPC OS disks. There are a ton of those older macs all around the world and it now costs a fortune to upgrade them, with tiger and leopard being so popular in the PowerPC world. Just unfair if you ask me :(.

Thanks for the info!
Johnny
 
MacHamster68

MacHamster68

macrumors 68040
Sep 17, 2009
3,251
5
thats the downside of Apples intel transition , they needed to find a way of forcing people to upgrade ,because to many still use their ppc Mac's and not producing the OSx install discs for ppc Mac's works

i can buy a snow leopard disc for £25 and install it on a netbook form nearly any manufacturer
but i cant buy leopard or tiger for a ibook or other ppc Mac's any more from Apple which means that prices for tiger or leopard retail disc's will go up sooner rather then later
and as i want tiger on all my ppc Macs i had a hard and expensive time as i have for each one now a tiger install disc , so if i sell one one day i can supply it with a original tiger disc rather then preinstalled or with copys
 
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