What If Apple Thought Like a PC Company?
From Edward Cornell:
A very interesting, well thought out, and amusing article in my
opinion. Something I'm sad to say hasn't been seen at LEM by me
recently. I grew up in the world of PowerPC processors, me being only
15. I believe the only 68k Mac I have ever used was (what I
believe was) an Apple II (one of the later ones, a c/e). My memories
are unclear of it since this was when I was only in the 1st grade.
However, Intel Macs are still sort of odd to me, as I am still very
pro-PPC.
Oh, and an interesting note, the 68K processor is still used as a
high-end one in "computers". Why the word computers in quotes? The
TI-92 series and the later TI Voyager series graphing calculators use
them. These are defined by the College Board as "computers" because of
their full QWERTY keyboards. From what I've heard, they're powerful
calculators, as they have some basic PDA-like functions such as word
processing. Amazing considering that this is the company that an
employer of that very same company helped develop the Integrated
Circuit way back in the '50s....
Edward,
Thanks for writing. I guess the piece was a bit of a
counterpoint to the "Leopard seems to run on any Mac with a G4"
discussion. The PC industry has stuck with the same old x86 processor
family for 26 years now, and I'm sure you can still buy PCs with
parallel printer ports and floppy drives (perhaps a BTO option). Apple
hasn't been afraid of change - two changes in processor families,
switching from SCSI to ATA for drive, replacing ADB and Mac serial
ports with USB, developing FireWire, creating a whole new operating
system, etc.
BTW, the Apple II was based on the 6502 CPU, not part
of the later 680x0 series from Motorola.
Dan
Leopard on a Pismo!
From Vic Mabus:
Hi, Dan -
Out of curiosity, I tried booting my Leopard FW drive from my G4 550
640 MB Pismo. Remember that this 'book
has 8 MB VRAM. It runs fine and stable, but not what you could
call "snappy," but way more usable than my 6100/66 running 9.1
:-)
V Mabus
Vic,
Congratulations, you're the first to report back on
Mac OS X 10.5 on a G4-upgraded Mac designed for the G3. I'm sure a lot
of Pismo owners will be thrilled to know it's possible!
Dan
Leopard on an Upgraded Pismo
From Adem Rudin:
Hey, this is just a quick report, I'll do a more detailed report
later.
I used FireWire Target Disk mode to install Leopard on a "Pismo"
PowerBook G3, that has a 550 MHz G4 upgrade courtesy of Daystar. It
also has 1024 MB of RAM and a Toshiba MK1032GAX, 100 GB 5400 RPM hard
drive.
Leopard seems to be working like a charm! It appears to operate at
the same level of almost-but-not-quite-snappy that Tiger worked at on
this machine.
DVD player does not work; it claims that no video device could be
found. Copying over the ATIRage128.kext and other associated files
relating to the Rage 128 card from 10.4 did not fix things. I haven't
tried VLC yet.
While the system uses both batteries, it does not recognize the left
battery bay at all. Removing the right battery yields a "no
battery installed" icon, although when unplugged from the wall, it
keeps running. Odd. Third party apps, such as Slim Battery Monitor,
recognize that there are two battery bays, but permanently show the
left bay as "empty"
-Adem Rudin
Adem,
Congrats - you're the second to report success with a
G4-upgraded Pismo. I'll be sure to note that DVD Player is not
supported on Pismo.
Dan
Leopard on an 800 MHz G4 iMac
From Matthew Baker:
Hi Dan,
I have Leopard installed on the following: 15" iMac G4 800 MHz (stock) , 512 MB RAM,
Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 32 MB (stock)
Installed Leopard using 1.25 GHz
PowerBook G4 on to FireWire drive, booted from that. Front Row
works like on my MacBook, DVD Player is fine, a little slow changing
from full screen to a window. It worked okay, so I didn't test VLC. I
wasn't able to test Time Machine.
The OS seems to run very similarly to Tiger, even slightly faster,
despite the fact it's running off a FireWire drive.
As a side note, attempting to boot a Pismo PowerBook G3 (400 MHz, 384 MB RAM,
upgraded 40 GB hard drive) off the same FireWire drive causes a kernel
panic at the Apple logo screen before the pinwheel comes up.
~Matthew
Matthew,
Thanks for writing - a especially for reporting what
happens when you try to run Leopard on a G3 Mac. We pretty much
suspected that it really does require a G4 CPU. Glad to hear Leopard is
running so well for you. Looking forward to making the migration myself
someday - when I no longer need Classic Mode.
Dan
'Universal' Boot Disks Possible with Leopard
From Ed Hurtley:
I just installed Leopard to an external hard drive. The same hard
drive happily boots both my eMac and my MacBook Pro. The catch? I had
to install from the eMac.
When I tried to install to the external hard drive, either via USB
or FireWire (it has both interfaces) on the MacBook Pro, it insisted I
had to repartition the drive as GPT. When I ran the install on the
eMac, it let me install it as APM. The resulting disk happily boots
both computers. Sadly, it will not boot my B&W G3 with a G4 upgrade.
(And even trying to install Leopard on the B&W rendered the
internal hard drive unbootable!)
Ed Hurtley
Ed,
Thanks for sharing your results. I know some have
managed to create a "universal" Leopard boot disk on an Intel Mac, but
that requires creating an APM partition and cloning the installation
from a GPT partition. Your solution doesn't even require an Intel-based
Mac.
I'll make a note of your unsuccessful attempt with the
Blue & White.
Dan
Once I get the B&W back in running order, I'm going to try
cloning from my 'universal' disk onto it. The trick appears to be the
fact that OS X boot CDs (I've tried Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger)
don't see the FireWire disk, since FireWire isn't supported at boot on
a B&W the way it is on most later Macs. So I'll probably need to
partition the B&W's internal hard drive and have one install of a
supported version of OS X (Probably Tiger) on one partition, then
clone Leopard onto the other from within the fully installed copy of
Tiger.
Leopard on an 867 MHz 12" PowerBook G4
From Ed Hurtley:
While Leopard only took about 20 minutes to install on my MacBook
Pro, it took over 2 hours on my 867 MHz 12"
PowerBook G4 (both "rev a" products.) The MacBook Pro is a 'maxed
out' 2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 7200 RPM hard drive. The
PowerBook was a 'minimum spec' 867 MHz G4, upgraded to 640 MB RAM,
stock 4200 RPM hard drive. I believe the 867 MHz 12" PowerBook G4 is
the very slowest machine that is officially supported by Apple. (The
much older 867 MHz "Quicksilver" Power
Mac G4 came with a faster hard drive.)
I must say, the Finder in Leopard "feels snappier" on the G4 than
Tiger did. QuickTime Player and Preview both launch so fast, I thought
it was QuickLook until I realized that QuickLook launches even faster!
The lack of USB 2.0 made setting up a USB hard drive as a Time Machine
storage location insanely long. (I actually gave up 8 hours in, when it
was only about 25% done, and set Time Machine to back up over the
network instead.)
DVD Player works just fine, Front Row is a nice addition, although
there is an about 5 second lag after hitting Cmd-Esc before the
interface comes up. Photo Booth runs with a FireWire camcorder as input
(previously used successfully for iChat AV in Tiger), but the lag is
impossibly slow. (Maybe 5-10 seconds per frame) and recording
video is laughably impossible. (Although I do appreciate the ability to
record video on the MacBook Pro.)
With the low resolution of the PowerBook's display (1024 x 768),
Spaces is a wonderful addition (I had used similar "virtual desktop"
programs before, none were as well integrated as this.)
I don't get all of the eye candy (Time Machine's restore UI isn't
animated, it's just a static background of stars), but it does feel
generally faster than Tiger. The real test will be in two months, after
my wife has used it at school a few hours a day, every day. (Most of
the time, she uses the PowerBook, I use the MacBook Pro.)
Ed Hurtley
Ed,
Thanks for letting us know how slow an 867 MHz
PowerBook can be. A shame Apple went with cheap 4200 rpm drives, as a
good 5400 rpm drive makes a world of difference - and "PowerBook" was
considered their pro line.
Dan
Update, the 867 MHz 12" PowerBook G4 was willing to do video (only
two-way, not the fancy multi-way) over iChat in Tiger, it can no longer
do video in iChat. It is also apparently too slow to do "Screen
Sharing" (which is funny, I've used the built in "Remote Desktop" VNC
sharing plenty). When I try to initiate a video chat from another
computer, iChat says "xxx has invited you to a Video Chat, but your
computer does not support video conferencing." Which is odd, since in
Tiger, if the receiving computer didn't support video chat, it would
default to a one-way video chat. This is in direct contrast to Apple's
stated video chat requirements: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306687
which state that "All Leopard-compatible Macs are supported" for 1-
to-1 video conferencing.
In addition, screen sharing through iChat is not even available. It
works through the Preference Pane activated, Finder-found method,
though.
Ed,
Thanks for sharing your findings. I've only used video
iChat once - a looooong time ago. I'll be sure to note for others that
video iChat and screen sharing are not supported on this model.
Dan
Update update. The Connection Doctor in iChat claims that the reason
for no video or screen sharing is "Slow Network". Which is odd, since
it's on the same Gigabit 802.11n router to 8 Mb downstream 1.5 Mb
upstream internet connection as my eMac
and MacBook Pro. It won't even try either one over Bonjour. Obviously,
multi-person video and Effects are "Insufficient CPU", but to claim
"Slow Network" in my case is ridiculous.
And in a later email:
Well, I do have an update. There are many reports of this
same problem on Apple's Discussion forums. It appears to be a "bug",
not a planned thing. The fact that iChat blames "slow network" when the
network is not an issue is obviously a problem. Downloading Ecamm's PowerBoost seems to
fix the problem. (It still says "slow network", but it works
anyway.)
Ed,
Thanks for sharing the workaround.
Dan
Leopard on a Digital Audio Power Mac
From Anthony Elliott:
Hey Dan,
I thought I'd send in my report on installing leopard on my DA Power Mac.
Specs:
- 466 MHz G4
- 1.12 GB of RAM
- Stock ATI Rage Pro + PCI ATI Radeon 32 MB (ran everything below off
of the PCI card)
- two 120 GB Seagate hard drives (other drive holds the Tiger install
I've been using since I got the unit)
I installed it via Target Disk Mode by hooking it up to my G4
Xserve. Had to do some swapping of the hard drive cable to get the
Xserve to see the right drive in the DA. I did a clean install that
took about 2 hrs. I did get an error on reboot for the Apple Pro
Speakers that I have hooked up to the Power Mac. I had to disconnect
them to get the system to start. Didn't try to plug them back in.
Overall the system runs, but obviously the graphical things like
Cover Flow do run slow. I think this is mostly due to the lack of a
video card that supports Core Animation. Even with this, the system is
still usable for basic stuff. I only had about an hour or so to work
with it before work so here are some bullet points of things I did
notice.
- QuickLook was able to show one of the stock PDF's fine, though it
took 3-4 seconds to load.
- Migration assistant was able to import one of my Tiger users with
no problem.
- When attempting to start Photobooth, I got a error message stating
it couldn't start this program since it didn't have a required video
card.
- I was able to start Front Row but didn't have any media on the
drive to test it with.
- Safari, though slow to start, ran about the same speed as on the
Tiger drive.
- Dashboard ran at the same speed as on the Tiger drive.
- Finder did run a bit slower then I would like, but everything
works, including screen sharing.
- Detected the original AirPort Card that was installed and seemed to
work fine.
- Menu bar is not transparent.
I still haven't decided if I'll stick with this or continue to run
Tiger. I'm going to have to run it for awhile longer to see.
Anthony Elliott
Sent from my iPhone
Anthony,
Thanks for the report.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
