Nobody seems to be asking this about Leopard...

[steamboat26]

I am also wondering about the RAM requirement...Apple says that tiger only needs 256 MB RAM, but from what i've heard, you really need 512 MB, and even that is a little low. Anybody expect that leopard might not be as memory hungry as tiger?

 

[7on]

I am also wondering about the RAM requirement...Apple says that tiger only needs 256 MB RAM, but from what i've heard, you really need 512 MB, and even that is a little low. Anybody expect that leopard might not be as memory hungry as tiger?

Hopefully optimizes the crap out of leopard

 

[mark!]

Of course they will say a PowerMac with at least an AGP video card, kill off the CRT iMacs, at least have G4 PowerBooks, and don't know where the iBook will land.

awww but i love my sage imac 🙁
i think they'll drop support with the tray loading, but not the slot loading.

 

[Chundles]

I'd really like to see them optimise 10.5 really really well, Panther was a big boost in speed but Tiger was very similar. If they could really crank up the kernal or whatever gives the OS "teh snappy™" it would be great.

I used to think Apple might drop G3 support with 10.5 but then there were G3 iBooks in 2003 so that might not work so I though maybe to really kick back at Vista they could make Leopard run as well, if not faster than Tiger on the older systems - just to show that a fully modern, complex OS can run very well on old machines and still offer more features than Vista. But then, they dropped G3 support for iLife '06 so who knows what they'll do?

 

[rdf8585]

My guesses on cut offs for 10.5

- G4/G5/Intel only
- 64 MB VRAM
- 512 RAM

Of course, if I am right, my 9 month old Mac Mini will not be able to run 10.5 (32 VRAM) and if it will be able to, I would guess it wouldn't run smoothly. Would be somewhat of a letdown but 10.4 is fine for me.

 

[iBookG4user]

My guesses on cut offs for 10.5

- G4/G5/Intel only
- 64 MB VRAM
- 512 RAM

Of course, if I am right, my 9 month old Mac Mini will not be able to run 10.5 (32 VRAM) and if it will be able to, I would guess it wouldn't run smoothly. Would be somewhat of a letdown but 10.4 is fine for me.

That would cut off all iBooks and the last iBook was discontinued 2 months ago so it would not be good bussiness model to say that "Your 2 month old computer won't run the latest version of OS X.". I don't see that happening.

 

[rdf8585]

Well, I feel much better guessing about needing a G4+ and 512 MB+ than I am about needing 64 MB VRAM.

There's an article from July discussing all this -

http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20060717/tc_zd/183585

Thoughts on that?

 

[HiRez]

The G3 isn't radically different enough of a chip from the G4 to make it worth dropping support. Since the only major difference is the inclusion of Altivec in the G4, and since the Intel chips can't use Altivec anyway, there's no reason. Pretty sure G3s will still be supported. I do think the recommended specs will be at least a G4, 64 MB of VRAM, and 512 MB of RAM. Firewire will still have to be supported for years to come but I think it will slowly fade away and eventually disappear, unfortunately.

 

[rdf8585]

I probably won't be upgrading to 10.5 unless the cut off is 16 MB VRAM (supposedly Tiger did support ATI Rage Mobility or Rage 128 with 8 MB of VRAM) ... if the cut off is 32 MB VRAM, that's cutting it too close for my liking. I prefer to comfortably exceed the requirements rather than barely meet them.

 

[JFreak]

they dropped G3 support for iLife '06 so who knows what they'll do?

Exactly what I was about to say, but you seem to be faster 😉 I was lucky enough to *not* let my father buy the iLife package before I tried to install mine into his computer first. I suspected that it will not work (at least not well enough) with his G3/700 iBook, and it is true: Apple has put a cpu test to the installer, so the G3 is effectively dead.

I guess Leopard will require at least G4. The latest G3 computers were sold in 2003, and if Leopard will ship in early 2007, then Apple has no problem as they have served the last G3's for more than three years then. And nobody should complain, as the G3 was a deadend tech when the last units were sold - the G5 was introduced in June 2003 and there was a time when Apple sold three cpu generations at the same time...

On the other hand I'm hoping to be wrong as my father probably would like the new features but wouldn't want to replace his trusty iBook just yet 😉

 

[7on]

The G3 isn't radically different enough of a chip from the G4 to make it worth dropping support. Since the only major difference is the inclusion of Altivec in the G4, and since the Intel chips can't use Altivec anyway, there's no reason. Pretty sure G3s will still be supported. I do think the recommended specs will be at least a G4, 64 MB of VRAM, and 512 MB of RAM. Firewire will still have to be supported for years to come but I think it will slowly fade away and eventually disappear, unfortunately.

How will you edit DV film? DV still travels over Firewire and due to the technical limitations of USB it can't use USB. I'd like to see something new replace both though.

 

[Maxiseller]

How will you edit DV film? DV still travels over Firewire and due to the technical limitations of USB it can't use USB. I'd like to see something new replace both though.

Agreed - it would be a silly exclusion. I still use all my firewire ports on my PM and I just couldn't do without them. It's a much more solid interfacing method than USB.

I do agree though that G3 support will be dropped. I know that Apple is a software company too - but still, they're in it to make a profit. If they can get people to buy a whole new mac, then that's great! That means plenty of years of software updates in the future too!

 

[projectle]

As far as getting around the G3 requirement for the iLife packages, you could always use Pacifist to install them.

They "work" afterwards but are dog slow.

Personally, I would rather stick with an older version that runs faster on the hardware as there is not much in iLife that I really use on a daily basis.

 

[JFreak]

As far as getting around the G3 requirement for the iLife packages, you could always use Pacifist to install them. They "work" afterwards but are dog slow.

So, who thinks that a dog slow Leopard is worth installing? Not me. If the installer requires a G4 or better, then I'm not installing it on a G3, because older system is very likely to work faster than the latest and greatest.

Personally, I would rather stick with an older version that runs faster on the hardware as there is not much in iLife that I really use on a daily basis.

Me too. The requirements are there for a reason. Even if it's *possible* to install software to unsupported hardware, it is not reasonable to expect that system work better than the old one. That's why I guess Leopard requires Altivec or such.

 

[DeathChill]

The G3 isn't radically different enough of a chip from the G4 to make it worth dropping support. Since the only major difference is the inclusion of Altivec in the G4, and since the Intel chips can't use Altivec anyway, there's no reason. Pretty sure G3s will still be supported. I do think the recommended specs will be at least a G4, 64 MB of VRAM, and 512 MB of RAM. Firewire will still have to be supported for years to come but I think it will slowly fade away and eventually disappear, unfortunately.

No, the Intel chips can't use Altivec, but they CAN use SSE-SSE4 (well, Core 2 Duo's get SSE4) which is basically Altivec. I'm sure the Intel side will be optimized with more SSE+ calls while the PowerPC side will be optimized with Altivec calls.

 

[Vincey37]

edited

 

[VanNess]

No, the Intel chips can't use Altivec, but they CAN use SSE-SSE4 (well, Core 2 Duo's get SSE4) which is basically Altivec. I'm sure the Intel side will be optimized with more SSE+ calls while the PowerPC side will be optimized with Altivec calls.

If they use the accelerate framework (I think that's what it's called), then the OS automatically handles it and optimizes, be it altivec or SEE+

I'm still sticking with Leopard having the same hardware requirements as Tiger. Whereas iLife apps can be pretty resource intensive and rely on altivec/SEE+ in many cases to get things done (hence the minimum G4 requirement), it's hard to imagine basic OS functions requiring that much horsepower. It's kind of like saying an internet browser these days requires a 1 ghz processor. We're not there yet. I wouldn't expect blazing performance on a G3-class machine, and the latest eye-candy effects are likely a no-go, but a reasonable, adequate trade-off of performance and features - at least enough to get by.

But we'll find out for sure soon enough.

 

[yg17]

There will be so much @$$ kicking if they kill off support for Powerbook G4's...

They would not like to alienate customers who bought top of the line in the past 9 months...

All the others, who gives a smeg. They are old.

(I say that because I am typing this message on a Powerbook G4 17"

---

5,9 - 1.67 GHz 2GB DDR2 667MHz, 100GB 7200 RPM HD)

---

They're not going to get rid of support for the PowerBook G4s. The TiBooks will probably run it. Stop getting your panties in a bunch.

 

[spencecb]

They're not going to get rid of support for the PowerBook G4s. The TiBooks will probably run it. Stop getting your panties in a bunch.

Yeah, I agree. I don't understand why people are getting so bent out of shape about the requirements of the new OS. With each no itteration, Apple doesn't really raise the bar much as far as required system specs. It should be able to run on most modern Macs (G3, G4, G5, Intel).

 

[Nermal]

OK, G3s are still supported.

"From G3 to Xeon, from MacBook to Xserve, there is just one Leopard." - Apple

 

[ReanimationLP]

I'm willing to bet the iMac G3s and the Blue G3s will get cut.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

OK, G3s are still supported.

"From G3 to Xeon, from MacBook to Xserve, there is just one Leopard." - Apple

Hah - another jab at Vista.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

My question is not if it will run, but if it will run well.. I have a G4 Mini with Panther on it, and I'm just not sure if the jump to Lepord will be more hassile than it's worth (ie RAM upgrades, possible system slowdowns, etc)

 

[mkrishnan]

My question is not if it will run, but if it will run well.. I have a G4 Mini with Panther on it, and I'm just not sure if the jump to Lepord will be more hassile than it's worth (ie RAM upgrades, possible system slowdowns, etc)

How much ram do you have? What's the processor speed? And how do you use your system? My experience with Panther->Tiger is that with a G4/800 and 640MB of RAM, I was happier with speed and responsiveness on Panther than Tiger.

Based on Tiger, I'd be shocked if you'd be very "happy" with Leopard as a delta on less than 1GB of RAM. But everyone has different expectations, and there are people running Tiger on 384MB I'm sure.

There's also the option of selling and upgrading to an Intel-based Mini around when Leopard drops...

 

[26139]

Yeah...

are they going to drop off the Classic support for PPC macs running leopard?

Dude, seriously, while I know Classic can just be included, why in the heck would you still be running it? It's dead, old and buried.