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Leopard for Sale?

skateny said:
I share your frustration to a certain extent. There isn't always a buyer for every seller, but there are enough people willing to buy at a given price to make it worthwhile for some. This only part of what makes eBay such a success.

I shake my head whenever I see PowerPCs in awful condition -- missing HDDs, cracked displays, not known to work and missing an AC adapter/battery, and on and on -- offered at a premium. Whether or not it's by design, many of the PowerPC ads on NYC Craig's List are misleading in that they never mention that the hardware and much of the software is unsupported and not useful for many tasks. This may be a gray area in person-to-person commerce, and there will forever be opportunistic people who cash in on buyers' ignorance.

I bought my iBook for $200 three years ago in pristine condition. If I were looking to buy today, I wouldn't pay half that price unless I had a compelling reason to do so. My sense is that PowerPCs have reached a plateau in terms of price/worth. Things get old, and they start breaking down, even with the best maintenance and care. Unless you're a collector, someone who wants to play around with a PowerPC, or simply unaware of what you're buying, I don't see many people paying a premium as was the case just a couple of years ago.

I've kept my iBook in very good condition, and treated it with the same TLC as I've done with all my Macs. When I sold Macs in the past, people were universally impressed with their condition, to say nothing of receiving hardware upgrades, original packaging, stickers and original discs. I always got a price I thought was fair, and no one ever felt cheated.

I could probably get a decent price for my iBook were I interested in selling it. But I'm not. At this point, I'd much rather keep it, regardless of if/when I upgrade to an Intel Mac. And I just don't see the point in purchasing another PowerPC. I've done my time optimizing my older Macs, and have since reached diminishing returns in terms of keeping things current.
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Phoenix CL is the same. Some jerk is selling the first macbook and trying to get $300 for it by saying "runs the most current MAC OS," puts the wrong year, and also has a HDD capacity that doesn't match any of the macbook configurations. He/she also put up a stock photo of it with the OS X Tiger desktop. I was initially interested, but if I'm going to be stuck at OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.8, I might as well not waste my money "upgrading."

I think I'll always keep my iBook and when it starts to become less and less useful, I'll just modify it like crazy.

1. remove airport card, dial-up slot and modem hardware.

2. Install a usb hub and solder it to the board.

3.connect and place a wireless n usb stick(without the casing) inside the machine and find a way to fill the dial-up slot with a usb port.

2. remove ODD and put in a media-card reader and try to find a way to install a mini dvd system(probably not possible)

3. definitely getting rid of HDD and going with either a SSD or something similar but smaller perhaps. I considered compact flash.
 
RedCroissant said:
Phoenix CL is the same. Some jerk is selling the first macbook and trying to get $300 for it by saying "runs the most current MAC OS," puts the wrong year, and also has a HDD capacity that doesn't match any of the macbook configurations. He/she also put up a stock photo of it with the OS X Tiger desktop. I was initially interested, but if I'm going to be stuck at OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.8, I might as well not waste my money "upgrading."

I think I'll always keep my iBook and when it starts to become less and less useful, I'll just modify it like crazy.

1. remove airport card, dial-up slot and modem hardware.

2. Install a usb hub and solder it to the board.

3.connect and place a wireless n usb stick(without the casing) inside the machine and find a way to fill the dial-up slot with a usb port.

2. remove ODD and put in a media-card reader and try to find a way to install a mini dvd system(probably not possible)

3. definitely getting rid of HDD and going with either a SSD or something similar but smaller perhaps. I considered compact flash.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a plan.

For now, my next move will be a MacBook when the time comes. I'm also likely to optimize and upgrade further between now and then.
 
I'd like to chime in here as well.. I see it all the time.. bent and beat up PowerBook G4 Aluminum machines and I have seen the good, bad, and the ugly.

What really angers me the most is how idiots on ebay can sell their PowerBooks in the conditions they are in and at EXORBITANT prices. Is it that since PowerPC is dead and or dying they should jack up the prices? I mean, come on!! The worst shape G4 PowerBooks I see are, of course the Titanium ones of which I am looking for the 1GHZ model as its the last to boot into OS 9.

Secondly, the dc-in connectors are all bent up and how is one supposed to charge a PB G4 Aluminum machine if the dc-in is all messed up?? These machines shouldn't even be worth the price those sellers are asking for. I saw a DLSD G4 15 inch the other day on ebay for 300.00(299.99) and it had a bent dc-in port and several dings to the top case.

Sad.. but you don't see too many Intel Macs all beat up.. I am assuming there is abuse of PowerPC hardware going on here.

skateny said:
I share your frustration to a certain extent. There isn't always a buyer for every seller, but there are enough people willing to buy at a given price to make it worthwhile for some. This only part of what makes eBay such a success.

I shake my head whenever I see PowerPCs in awful condition -- missing HDDs, cracked displays, not known to work and missing an AC adapter/battery, and on and on -- offered at a premium. Whether or not it's by design, many of the PowerPC ads on NYC Craig's List are misleading in that they never mention that the hardware and much of the software is unsupported and not useful for many tasks. This may be a gray area in person-to-person commerce, and there will forever be opportunistic people who cash in on buyers' ignorance.

I bought my iBook for $200 three years ago in pristine condition. If I were looking to buy today, I wouldn't pay half that price unless I had a compelling reason to do so. My sense is that PowerPCs have reached a plateau in terms of price/worth. Things get old, and they start breaking down, even with the best maintenance and care. Unless you're a collector, someone who wants to play around with a PowerPC, or simply unaware of what you're buying, I don't see many people paying a premium as was the case just a couple of years ago.

I've kept my iBook in very good condition, and treated it with the same TLC as I've done with all my Macs. When I sold Macs in the past, people were universally impressed with their condition, to say nothing of receiving hardware upgrades, original packaging, stickers and original discs. I always got a price I thought was fair, and no one ever felt cheated.

I could probably get a decent price for my iBook were I interested in selling it. But I'm not. At this point, I'd much rather keep it, regardless of if/when I upgrade to an Intel Mac. And I just don't see the point in purchasing another PowerPC. I've done my time optimizing my older Macs, and have since reached diminishing returns in terms of keeping things current.
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Sounds like they are making Snow Leopard out to be sort of like Leopard and its absolutely outrageous seeing high prices for Leopard. Why is it so damn expensive? What makes Leopard any more expensive than say Tiger? Leopard and Tiger are not in the EXTREMELY rare category and yet they are out of most people's price ranges.

Panther is also selling quite high, but I think Panther, Jaguar, Puma, and Cheetah are all becoming extremely rare to find these days.

RedCroissant said:
What bothers me about eBay is that Apple is selling Snow Leopard for $19.99, but people are trying to sell it for much more than that and it's crazy.
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Why is Apple unwilling/unable to still sell Leopard for a reasonable price? Would it harm them to sell it for $19.99 like Mountain Lion? They obviously still have the master images so it would be no big deal for them to run off a batch of disks or allow a paid download surely?!
 
davewill2010 said:
Why is Apple unwilling/unable to still sell Leopard for a reasonable price? Would it harm them to sell it for $19.99 like Mountain Lion? They obviously still have the master images so it would be no big deal for them to run off a batch of disks or allow a paid download surely?!
Click to expand...

Just write to Mr. Cook!
 
I have the original retail copy of leopard in my drawer at home, didn't know it sold for so much! :eek:
 
Try watching for an eBay copy ending sometime in the middle of the night (for North America), set an alarm, and get up and snipe it.

I bought 10.5.1 new way back when, but I wanted a disc copy of 10.5.6. Got one barely used off eBay with Virtual PC 7 with XP Professional, all for a little over $40. Not bad considering Leopard was $130 and VPC 7 with XP was like $100-something. Just had to set an alarm to get up, bid and pay on my iPod Touch, and go back to bed.

Did the same with 10.4.6 Tiger last month, for about the same price.
 
I just bought this:

It seems ok; hopefully it really is the retail version. I live close enough to the guy I can visit him if it is a scam.
 
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jbarley said:
Leopard was sold on a DVD only, to the best of my knowledge.
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archtopshop said:
I believe that's an illegal copy of Leopard you just bought. Leopard was never released on a USB stick.
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I know it wasn't, but you can still boot from a USB. I would love to buy a legal copy from Apple at a fair price (I would pay the full retail price in a second even if it was $129.99) but since they refuse to allow me to (I have called and emailed them asking) I had to resort to other means. I'm not too proud/happy about it, but I figure at least this way I will get a working USB (hopefully) out of it instead of possibly buying DVDs that were only compatible with a certain Mac or out of licenses. :)
 
Estes said:
I know it wasn't, but you can still boot from a USB. I would love to buy a legal copy from Apple at a fair price (I would pay the full retail price in a second even if it was $129.99) but since they refuse to allow me to (I have called and emailed them asking) I had to resort to other means. I'm not too proud/happy about it, but I figure at least this way I will get a working USB (hopefully) out of it instead of possibly buying DVDs that were only compatible with a certain Mac or out of licenses. :)
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Or, since Apple isn't selling it, you could "resort" to buying a legal copy elsewhere that is still on the original DVD. There are plenty of full retail DVDs out there that are either individual or family-packs that would suit you just fine. You should request to have your money returned and then seek out an official version.

And I'm assuming that you're buying this for your macbook, right? If not, well, then this next bit is going to be a waste of time. Someone in Decatur is selling a white macbook from 2009 with the installation DVD included.
 
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RedCroissant said:
Or, since Apple isn't selling it, you could "resort" to buying a legal copy elsewhere that is still on the original DVD. There are plenty of full retail DVDs out there that are either individual or family-packs that would suit you just fine. You should request to have your money returned and then seek out an official version.
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Could you point me in the direction of a trusted website who sells them? I'll cancel it and buy from them.

No, it's not for my macbook (it runs Mountain Lion). It's for an iMac G4.
 
Estes said:
Could you point me in the direction of a trusted website who sells them? I'll cancel it and buy from them.

No, it's not for my macbook (it runs Mountain Lion). It's for an iMac G4.
Click to expand...

I will. How much are you willing to spend for either the individual retail disc or the family pack?
 
There is a full retail leopard dvd right now for $109 buy it now and multiple ending within hours one of them stating it was only used once and they have an excellent selling record having sold over 100 items with 100% positive feedback and with the picky ebay buyers today I would buy from someone with that kind of feedback. I'm not trying to argue about it though because I am on the fence about this whole thing since I am needing a retail disc myself,I do wish that apple would make such items more readily available and provide these disc at a discount , being able to get them new so you know exactly what your getting from a trusted company that manufactured your equipment would be great but I can say with almost 100% confidence that its not going to happen and I understand why,they have to provide support for what they're currently selling.A usb under license would be awesome but I'm about to go try to get one of these retail disc PEACE!
 
RedCroissant said:
I will. How much are you willing to spend for either the individual retail disc or the family pack?
Click to expand...

New in the shrinkwrap? I know that's close to impossible to find, but I would pay full retail. Used? Probably half of what it cost new (I would possibly go a little higher than half depending on the source I'm buying from).
 
GermanyChris said:
If I remember correctly Leopard sold for $129.99
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It was at in 2007 or so. They should have done the same thing as Snow Leopard. Make it available at a low price for those that need it for older machines. It's asinine to pay ebay prices.

archtopshop said:
I believe that's an illegal copy of Leopard you just bought. Leopard was never released on a USB stick.
Click to expand...

The used copies are arguably just as bad, seeing as the licenses granted aren't considered transferable if you read the EULA. I'm curious if there is a completely legitimate method of obtaining one. You might be able to by contacting Apple directly.
 
The used copies are arguably just as bad, seeing as the licenses granted aren't considered transferable if you read the EULA. I'm curious if there is a completely legitimate method of obtaining one. You might be able to by contacting Apple directly.
__________________
Legend has it that a bad GPU driver killed Intel's father. To this day intel can't bring themselves to write a good one.

I didn't know that they were untransferable,I mean what are you supposed to do if thats the case which it surely is ???? Find one never opened for $1000 yeah right.And apple would most likely say 10.5 leopard uhhh no we cant help you sir!!!! oh and anything you do is illegal,but we do have a new macbook pro that would fit you perfect.
 
g4manimac said:
I didn't know that they were untransferable,I mean what are you supposed to do if thats the case which it surely is ???? Find one never opened for $1000 yeah right.And apple would most likely say 10.5 leopard uhhh no we cant help you sir!!!! oh and anything you do is illegal,but we do have a new macbook pro that would fit you perfect.
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You didn't pay attention to what I said. I said they should provide a legitimate sales channel for these as they did with Snow Leopard. Note how OS upgrades purchased through the app store follow your account. If you're selling a computer, technically you're supposed to restore it to whatever OS shipped with it. In the case of boxed software, it's a method of delivery, not a tangible product outside of sales tax calculations. In case you can't tell, I really hate the scalping of old operating system disks.
 
jpcoelho said:
I have just purchased original, retail versions from OS 7.8, OS 8, OS 9 , OS X, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard for 30€... no original boxes or documentation, but I consider it a good deal, still!
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I still have each of those disks in their original boxes lying around. I had no idea they had such value. I also think I still have the box of floppies for OS 6, that came with my first Mac IIci. Hmmmm....
 
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