iBook G4 Leopard Install

[jrsx]

So I got my Leopard disk yesterday, and I decided to go right to install it on my 1.33 Ghz G4 iBook with 1.5 GBs of RAM. I booted up from the CD and did a partition, cutting my drive directly in half, so I could still use Tiger. Overall, I am pretty pleased. It now dual boots Tiger and Leopard. I haven't noticed much of a change in speed, but it is barely slower. However, it can run much more modern software. It does use more CPU power, which is believable, but many people say that Leopard is a bad upgrade for a G4, and that is not true. It takes slightly longer to boot up, but still faster than a lot of PCs I've seen. Everything worked out of the box. While installing updates, my trackpad stopped working, and the prefpane appeared in the prefpanes folder, but not in System Preferences. Upon reboot, everything worked. The system does heat up faster, but that's not really a problem. I think Leopard is a pretty good upgrade for the G4, and it can still run relatively modern software! I'm pretty exited to finally get Leopard running on the iBook. Overall installation didn't take too long, I didn't time it, but I think it was around 1 hour.

 

[Altemose]

I am not sure about the trackpad issue but my PowerBook G4's trackpad behaves poorly under Leopard for some reason.

 

[eyoungren]

Leopard gets a bad rap on speed because too many people assume that they can use the eye candy on below spec Macs. Or, they are trying to run Leopard with less than 1GB of ram on a slow hard drive.

But Leopard has a lot to say for itself…

• Printer sharing…vastly improved over Tiger.
• Stability…especially with network shares. Leopard will ask if you want to disconnect shares that have lost connectivity or quietly reestablish the connection in the background. Tiger will dump the Finder and give you the beachball for 10 or 20 minutes before you get control back.
• Firewall…vastly superior to Tiger.
• File sharing…much better interface and account control.
• and as you've seen, much better integration with modern apps and ability to run more modern apps.

Tiger is a good system, but Leopard is much more modern. The stuff above is just what I can name off the top of my head.

A suggestion…download Shadowkiller and get rid of the dropshadows on your windows. You'll notice an immediate speed improvement.

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I am not sure about the trackpad issue but my PowerBook G4's trackpad behaves poorly under Leopard for some reason.

That has NOT been my experience. If anything, it improved stuff that was broken or not working right on Tiger.

If your iBook does not have two finger scrolling, try installing iScroll 2. That's a pref pane that will give you two finger scrolling and trackpad tapping.

 

[Altemose]

I know what the problem is with my trackpad. It is a bad trackpad cable, but the gestures and scrolling settings in Leopard exaggerate the issue. This is not the normal behavior, however. If you throw on the Mountain Leopard theme by AQUADock, you would be left with a very modern feeling machine!

 

[gooser]

while installing 10.4 on my ibook the exact same specs as yours my trackpad also stopped working. functionality returned when i upgraded to 10.4.8. unless the problem reoccurs i would just ignore it.

 

[RedCroissant]

while installing 10.4 on my ibook the exact same specs as yours my trackpad also stopped working. functionality returned when i upgraded to 10.4.8. unless the problem reoccurs i would just ignore it.

The reason for the trackpad disappearance is because that iBook model shipped with 10.4.2 and installing the base 10.4.1 system doesn't seem to have the updated drivers for the trackpad. I don't know why that would happen when installing Leopard though, but that's what I noticed with OS 10.4.1

It's weird that it would still allow you to install the OS (I noticed this with both of my G4 iBooks)

 

[Hughmac]

I found that installing the 10.5.8 combo update on my iBook 1.33 sorted out any hardware troubles

Cheers

Hugh

 

[archtopshop]

I have been running Leopard on my iBook G4 1.33 for some time and have been very pleased with it. I especially like the two-finger tap that brings up a contextual menu--like a right click or control-click does. It really speeds up many common tasks and makes the entire system seem faster.

 

[jrsx]

I have been running Leopard on my iBook G4 1.33 for some time and have been very pleased with it. I especially like the two-finger tap that brings up a contextual menu--like a right click or control-click does. It really speeds up many common tasks and makes the entire system seem faster.

I know! I found that really helpful, I use right click a lot, and this really made things easier!