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Power PC G4 can I upgrade to latest OSX software?

Dal123

Dal123

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 23, 2008
903
0
England
I am using an old Power PC G4. I know people are telling me it's old and I should upgrade. Though really I am very happy with it, I have invested thousands of hours creating documents, websites, databases etc. for my business.
I would like to purchase filemaker pro, though I need to have newer osx system. This is what filemaker says technical specs:

Apple MacOS X 10.5.7 - PowerPC G4 - RAM 512 MB Apple MacOS X 10.6 - RAM 1 GB Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 - 1 GHz - RAM 1 GB Microsoft Windows XP SP3 - Pentium III - 700 MHz - RAM 256 MB Microsoft Windows 7 - 1 GHz - RAM 1 GB

I didn't think it was possible on a power pc g4 by looks of above it is. I just need 10.6. I am currently using 10.4.11. I have 2GB of Ram, with a 1.33 GHz processor. Can I upgrade to 10.6 if so how??

Thanks for any advice. Don't really want to invest in a new machine and lots of new software. Just getting handy with my current software.
 
Those specs are written confusingly. Much more helpful would be:-

Apple MacOS X 10.5.7 - PowerPC G4 - RAM 512 MB
Apple MacOS X 10.6 - RAM 1 GB
Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 - 1 GHz - RAM 1 GB
Microsoft Windows XP SP3 - Pentium III - 700 MHz - RAM 256 MB
Microsoft Windows 7 - 1 GHz - RAM 1 GB

I've bolded the minimum specs that are relevant to you. You need to be running Leopard 10.5.7 or above for the software to work. Your system meets the other requirements.
 
Filemaker Pro 9 is available on G4 PowerPC with 10.4.8. Can I upgrade to 10.4.8 from 10.4.11?? If so how. I have tried downloading updates on this but cannot find anything on this.
Thanks
 
Last edited:
Dal123 said:
Thanks for your input chaps, so basically I cannot have it :(. I'll check to see if there are any older versions of filemaker pro that would work on my machine.
Thanks again.:)
Click to expand...

Read Queso's post.

You can upgrade to 10.5.7, and it sounds like you should be fine with that.

You can't install 10.6, but 10.5 fully updated should let you do what you want.

If you're still running a G4, investing in new hardware would definitely be worth it, but just to do what you want to, it looks like it's possible with what you have now.
 
Dal123 said:
Filemaker Pro 9 is available on G4 PowerPC with 10.4.8. Can I upgrade to 10.4.8 from 10.4.11?? If so how. I have tried downloading updates on this but cannot find anything on this.
Thanks
Click to expand...
10.4.11 is a later update than 10.4.8. Getting to 10.5.x is not free and not downloadable.
 
Thanks for your input guys, so snow leopard is 10.6 and later. I will download 10.5.7 and check it out.
Firstly I will purchase an external hard-drive to back-up my data as if this crashes it is catastrophic.
Thanks again.
 
Dal123 said:
Filemaker Pro 9 is available on G4 PowerPC with 10.4.8. Can I upgrade to 10.4.8 from 10.4.11?? If so how. I have tried downloading updates on this but cannot find anything on this.
Thanks
Click to expand...

That wouldn't be an upgrade, it would be a downgrade since you are already on a newer version (10.4.11) of the operating system than the required 10.4.8.

That being said, you can also upgrade to 10.5.x Leopard which is the last supported release of Mac OS X for PowerPC Macs. However, in order for Leopard to perform at acceptable speed, you should have 2 GB of RAM in that machine, a minimum of a 1 GHz G4 CPU (faster is HIGHLY recommended) and you should have a graphics card in that system with 64 MB video RAM or more.

I can tell you from experience that Leopard CRAWLS on a 17" iMac G4 1 GHZ / 1 GB RAM, 32 MB nVidia GeForce - it was unbearable and we were forced to downgrade back to Tiger 10.4.11 on that computer.

On another note, Leopard is no longer being sold. You will have to look on eBay or similar places for used versions.

The message is simple: Apple officially killed PowerPC Macs.
 
Dal123 said:
Thanks for your input guys, so snow leopard is 10.6 and later. I will download 10.5.7 and check it out.
Firstly I will purchase an external hard-drive to back-up my data as if this crashes it is catastrophic.
Thanks again.
Click to expand...

For a trial I would clone your system (using Carbon Copy Cloner for instance) on to the external hard drive and experiment with this as the start-up disk. That way you business machine is untouched whilst you decide what you are doing. Also just check that there are not any other applications that are going to not work properly when the upgrade is performed.
 
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