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Leopard: Is it really that bad?

It's not so much that it's bad. You mentioned XP and Windows 7. XP remained well supported for many years by both developers and Microsoft. Leopard has little support these days. This means sometimes you may encounter strange issues with internet use. You won't be able to run newer software. It's quite different. People typically choose it over Tiger because it still supports way more stuff.
 
Scrivener is still made for PowerPC, and I highly recommend it. It's pricey, but it works from everything from Tiger to Mountain Lion. Bean just reached EOL and is no longer being developed period, but it's still a good word processor. I'm using iWork primarily on my PowerPCs though.

There is a version of Espresso for Leopard PowerPC too. Honestly, like I said in another post. Just ask for a license key that works with these versions when you go to make a purchase. Some developers even openly say that this is perfectly fine to do. Don't just stick to open source just because you THINK you have no other choice. Leopard was the golden age for apps, and there are tons of good ones.

Leopard isn't bad. But it wasn't made for 20-40GB hard drives and 512MB RAM. As long as you have a pretty big hard drive (I have a 350GB RAID), it makes up for it though.
 
Leopard's bad? Get to your room young ....it?

It works, handles most Mac software or versions of it, and works seamlessly with Lion at least during screen sharing.

No complaints.
 

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What the hell?

Leopard, bad?

Just because it's not the flagship anymore doesn't mean there's something wrong with it.

They don't make the Ferrari Enzo anymore, does that make *it* bad?
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
What the hell?

Leopard, bad?

Just because it's not the flagship anymore doesn't mean there's something wrong with it.

They don't make the Ferrari Enzo anymore, does that make *it* bad?
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I know but I'm kinda getting tired of reading 'Get Linux 'cause is up to date, Leopard is outdated and old' so it is more like an informational thread. I like to think that I'm not the only one who thinks Leopard still is a good OS.
 
rjcalifornia said:
I know but I'm kinda getting tired of reading 'Get Linux 'cause is up to date, Leopard is outdated and old' so it is more like an informational thread.
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I don't use Linux right now, I don't need it. However, there are cases where Linux is a superior OS to Leopard (up to date software, up to date internet things.


rjcalifornia said:
I like to think that I'm not the only one who thinks Leopard still is a good OS.
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You aren't the only one. But it isn't as good as it was, which is to be expected.
 
rjcalifornia said:
I know but I'm kinda getting tired of reading 'Get Linux 'cause is up to date, Leopard is outdated and old' so it is more like an informational thread. I like to think that I'm not the only one who thinks Leopard still is a good OS.
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Eh, at least Leopard actually works ;)

Linux is not for newbies. Linux is not for a regular Mac "power user". Linux on PPC is inferior to Leopard on PPC, PPC for desktop computing was an uncommon platform at the peak of Apple's PPC days, and now it's basically a relic. The most devoted PowerPC developers are working for the Mac side of things.
 
I don't think leopard is that bad nor any mac I've ever had but thats because I've never had any other os that lasted over two months without getting sick and needing a new install and to be honest that was a 50/50 chance if it took well to that and these were all up to date machines dell,hp,emachines...I just had really bad luck with them for some reason.So osx in general have all treated me really well.
 
I've installed leopard on a second hand PowerPC. I use ML in my iMac and I don't miss so much things in the ppc. I've installed almost apps that I have in ML ( old versions, but ok ). And I can install Diablo 2! :) . I only miss the full screen mode. There are not so much differences between Leopard and ML.
 
ResPublica said:
For about six months it really was terrible (you couldn't even connect to the university WIFI with it, which was noticed by an entire auditorium when a professor asked me to look something up for her on my Macbook), but the last versions aren't too bad. In fact, the difference with ML is hardly noticeable.
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I have to disagree. My wife has Lion on her Early '09 Macbook, and I have Mountain Lion on mine (it's my old Mac which I am keeping until I am fully bedded down with my new rMBP), both updated to the respective latest versions. The two are identical in spec apart from that. Both have 250GB HDDs, 2GB of Ram and 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Processors, and both have the same applications. (mine has more music and data on the hard drive).

Mine will smoke hers, except on one thing. Hers will shut down faster than mine. The reason mine smokes hers is the memory management on Mountain Lion is better than that on Lion.
 
cjmillsnun said:
I have to disagree. My wife has Lion on her Early '09 Macbook, and I have Mountain Lion on mine (it's my old Mac which I am keeping until I am fully bedded down with my new rMBP), both updated to the respective latest versions. The two are identical in spec apart from that. Both have 250GB HDDs, 2GB of Ram and 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Processors, and both have the same applications. (mine has more music and data on the hard drive).

Mine will smoke hers, except on one thing. Hers will shut down faster than mine. The reason mine smokes hers is the memory management on Mountain Lion is better than that on Lion.
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I happen to have the same Macbook and indeed I did notice an improvement in performance when I installed Mountain Lion on that laptop, altough it remains slower than Snow Leopard. On other (and newer) Macs the difference in performance was a lot less noticeable. By the way ML hardly adds any new functionality to Lion.

----------

A different issue with Leopard is the lack of security support from Apple. This is the only thing that bothers me when I use old versions of Mac OS X. Apple tends to drop support very quickly.
 
I'm using Leopard on my eMac (1.42 GHz model from 2005 with 2 GB of RAM), and it works pretty well. It is a bit sluggish at times, but it does outperform our Dell Dimenson tower PC in our sunroom (which has a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 Processor, 1 GB of RAM and Windows XP SP3!) Firefox is becoming a pain on the eMac due to if you try to upgrade Flash on Firefox, it will become unusable and is constantly reminding you that you have an old version of the plugin, but Safari is fine. When watching YouTube videos I mostly set them to 240p and that seems to help.
I can also use Photoshop CS2 and iMovie HD 6 pretty well on the eMac, too! It's a good general use Mac, especially while I wait for my new MacBook to arrive this week...

In fact, the first time I ever tried out Leopard was on a PowerPC Mac, back in late 2008 when we went and upgraded most of the PowerMac G4 QuickSilver 2002 towers at my college's Fine Arts building. Because they used 800MHz processors (they were the 2002 model), we installed Leopard by means of a hack and a FireWire DVD drive. It did seem sluggish at times, but it still worked really well, especially with the RAM upgraded to 1.5 GB on all of them. But then in summer 2009, they replaced the PowerMacs AND the Dell Optiplex towers they used for media editing in the same labs with 24" aluminum iMacs, each with a 1 TB hard drive set up in 500 GB partitions; one with Leopard (complete with iLife '09, Final Cut Studio 2 and Adobe CS4) and the other a Boot Camp partition with Windows XP Professional (this inspired me to try out Boot Camp myself once I got my recently-deceased early 2009 MacBook.)
 
I have Leopard running on my dad's 1.67GHz PowerBook and even with 1GB RAM it performs incredibly well. Apps only take 3-4 "bounces" to open. I can't wait to see how it runs on 2GB.

I also have it on a 1.42GHz eMac which is using 2GB RAM. It's a bit slower, but nothing close to rendering it inefficient. Not even tempted to downgrade to 10.4.

I like that Leopard is able to run most apps and their older versions.
 
I have had Leopard installed on my Digital Audio since late 2008/early 2009 and have been very happy with it. It's been the most stable Mac OS I've used (in comparison to PREVIOUS versions of OSX used at work and at home - I've had limited exposure to Snow Leopard at work, and no exposure to any Mac OS after SL, so I can't really offer any opinions there).

I've been using CS2 and Final Cut Express 4 on it mainly, and at some point will be posting info on a massive upgrade I did to it last summer, but that's for another day. :)

To me the issue isn't so much the OS, but that upgrading can only go so far. Examples: DA has a 1.5 gb limit for RAM, and it would be so nice to be able to speed up the system bus. Yes there are options for GPUs and processor upgrades, but those only go so far on a G4 architecture when editing video.
 
Lil Chillbil said:
So I guess everybody still agrees that snow leopard is king ? :D
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What I really dislike about Lion and ML is above all the lack of scroll bars and the grey look. For the rest, I think they add a number of nice features, like Mission Control, full screen apps (very nice on a 13" Macbook), iCloud synchronization, reading capabilities in many languages... To me, that's reason enough to stay with Mountain Lion on my 2009 Macbook.
 
Leopard's great as long as you've got the hardware for it. It doesn't run that well on my PowerBook G4 Titanium due to age and hardware limitations, so I keep Tiger on there, but on my Quad G5? It's perfect.
 
r.j.s said:
Maybe locked away in Apple HQ, but most likely not.

It's an entirely different architecture - and since OS X isn't open source, no one can go through and translate SL for PPC.
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Theoretically someone could with the help of a decompiler.
 
rabidz7 said:
Theoretically someone could with the help of a decompiler.
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No they couldn't. Some of the binaries are malformed mach-o binaries, others are signed and can't be resigned without Apple's private key, and other binaries have had their symbols stripped away. Those three things make it impossible to do.
 
Lil Chillbil said:
When it comes down to it, Snow leopard is the greatest os in the world and mountain lion is a piece of garbage, leopard is a close second to snow and as long as it meets your needs then there is really no need to upgrade. But now that my needs have changed drastically since last summer when I was happily rocking a sawtooth. My job now requires at least quad cores 16 gigs of ram and over 4000 gigs of storage the g5 just doesn't do it anymore
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+1 on this. I recently (as in two days ago) downgraded my 3-year-old 13" MacBook Pro 5,5 to Snow Leopard from Mountain Lion. It's significantly faster, more responsive, and has better battery life. Plus, I never used iCloud on my Mac and do not need that. Finally, the MBP makes my hands sweaty from being too warm despite apps only using about 10-20% of the CPU.

Regardless, I don't believe I'll be buying another Mac in my future, as I don't like what Apple's done to OS X (not that Windows 8 is amazing).
 
^Windows 8 is the best Windows OS so far IMO if you install startmenu 8 by Iobit. It's fast and I think it's much better than XP or 7.
 
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