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Will Leopard support the G3?

Swad

By Swad

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If you've poked around Apple's "Leopard Sneak Peek - 64-Bit" page, it's quite likely that these words stood out to you:

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

Those words aren't there now. For a reason unbeknown to we lonely consumers, the line was erased.

 

This means at least one of two things. First, Leopard won't be supporting the G3 (the only doubtful one of the bunch). This is certainly possible, given the age of the G3. Whether it's plausible remains to be seen.

 

There is a second explanation, however, that comes from Macenstein:

The line “From G3 to Xeon, from MacBook to Xserve, there is just one Leopard.” is technically inaccurate. There are TWO Leopards; consumery Leopard, and Leopard Server. And in theory you are supposed to run Leopard Server on the Xserve they mention in that same line as well. So while I do not doubt that Leopard will either run grudgingly (or not at all) on a G3, we have no official word yet from Apple. It could just be a poorly worded sentence that Apple’s marketing guys eventually caught.

"Consumery," indeed.

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Rammjet

I remember reading something from leaked developer notes that it would support the same machines as Tiger - Any G3 with native Firewire and beyond.

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dtm3dd

I can see it running on a G3 - just without the smoothness of the new machines. Obviously some parts of the OS would have to be scaled back in system preferences.

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CoolBits

I dont belive Leopard will have any PPC code to run on G3 as it comes with new intel machines and apple sure wants G3 and other PPC users to buy new intel hardware...

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bluedragon1971
Well, Apple had to remove it after figuring out that Tiger doesn't run officially on all G3's. IF it does run on the G3, it will be a select group, i.e. Any G3 with an AGP graphics card.

 

The only G3's with an AGP card are the last generation (800Mhz and above) of G3 iBooks. Everything else had PCI.

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lane

It would be insanely stupid for Apple to support such old hardware with this transition. In any case a Mac Mini will be much faster than any G3 and once you factor in the cost of buying Leopard, upgrading your graphics adapter, ram, hard drive, etc... why not just buy a Mac Mini?

 

If for some asinine reason Apple does support the G3 machines they won't support anything less than an AGP model because of the requirements of the new interface effects.

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dtm3dd

I dont think Apple will actively remove support for the G3, it will occur naturaly as it is a super advanced OS on an ancient piece of Hardware. But anyone wanting to buy Leopard and then run it on a G3 as an every day machine is clinically insane.

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rogabean

Ummmm I for one hope it does support the G3.

 

I just bought the girl an iBook 500MHz G3 Dual USB (w/ FireWire).

 

Upgraded her RAM to 640 and slapped in a slot loading DVD Burner.

 

She loves this machine. Currently running Tiger 10.4.7 (and quite well I might add)

 

She is looking forward to Leopard, although she realizes it will most likely be the last Mac OS to support her machine. She only likes 12" iBooks and G3 slot loading iMacs. Any other computer in her words is "ugly" and she would never own it.

 

I can't see a good reason for Apple to drop support of these just yet. Might as well transition them out with the rest of the PPC line naturally.

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Urbz

I really don't think the G3 will be supported.

On second thought, it'll be supported, but it will run so painfully slowly that nobody will use it.

 

Why?

 

Apple will want the G3 Macs that are still running OS X to upgrade to the latest Intel Macs. How can they do this? By "teasing" their old customers. By saying "look at the greatness!" and then saying "HAHA you're machine's greatness isn't the same!" They'll want to upgrade. A small purchase of an older G4 may fix the problem, for now. I believe this'll happen over and over again. That's how G4s are gonna be phased out. And the G5 crowd will probably upgrade naturally to Intel Macs because they already have newer machines and will want to keep with the tradition. If you had a G4 iMac and later got a G5, you'll get a Duo eventually! By the time the G5 users have all moved on (or most of them...) Apple's announcement that they're dropping the PPC support won't come as much of a shock: not many will have PPC machines left.

 

Although it does suck a little: Apple makes great machines which generally last for a very long time, and remain in a useable state. Though i suppose they'll still run for a long time. Hey, the OS 9 users have mostly moved on to OS X, but the ones stuck in the past don't mind either because everything works, or because of choice.

 

So i think older machines will be upgraded either by a little push from Leopard or because the G3 is really getting old... If there was a G6, the exact same thing would happen. Things change, Apple wants to make more money, the world goes on!

 

-Urby

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HowEver

The answer to this depends on features, I suppose.

 

Do you need your G4 iBook to usefully run Dashboard? No? Then Tiger is fine. Forget the ripple effect. What Leopard features will suck on your G4?

 

What won't suck on your G3 then? No point running the latest GarageBand, for example, but Tiger makes G3 machines with enough RAM and anything above 500 Mhz things of beauty indeed.

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A Nonny Moose
The only G3's with an AGP card are the last generation (800Mhz and above) of G3 iBooks. Everything else had PCI.

 

WRONG! The following G3 models have AGP cards

 

1. Any iMac with a slot loading CD drive

 

2. Any iBook

 

BTW, Mactracker rules for all your Apple history questions

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helgegrimm

I don't have the Developer Preview of Leopard, but I really hope the final version will run on my G3 machines when it's released next year. Colonels, is it correct that the current version of Leopard doesn't install on G3s, but runs just fine if you somehow manage to install it nevertheless?

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Schwinn555
I don't have the Developer Preview of Leopard, but I really hope the final version will run on my G3 machines when it's released next year. Colonels, is it correct that the current version of Leopard doesn't install on G3s, but runs just fine if you somehow manage to install it nevertheless?

 

It took me 2 days to figure out how to install Leopard on my B&W G3 ! It wouldn't install from a DVD nor from the Mac install pkg which some pople used. I had to use the way talked about in forum topic:

 "For those who are having trouble installing Leopard. Try this.it works" in the 10.5 Leopard forum 

It is basicly installing from one hard drive partition to another. The only glitch as mentioned is the built -in ethernet not working. It has been really amazying stable and fast even running on an old slower hard drive then my main one.No crashes nor freezes in 24 hours of running.  In fact I may switch to it as my main OS if no issues come up and if my needed apps work. I don't know if the install issues are a mistake that will be fixed by Apple or if it's the way of the future.

My B&W has been upgraded to G4 650 MHz and has a Nvidia 5500 128MB PCI card  flashed from PC) which runs in the 66 MHz Video slot of the B&W and gives me native core image & Quartz Extreme. 

I sure hope the final version will somehow run on this machine!

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Mebster

I just would like to ask everyone what the extra benefit of installing Leopard on a G3 is? Wouldn't it run slower than running 10.4.x? Wouldn’t it therefore be better for that reason to keep tiger?

Apart from the 64bit OS which the G3 won’t appreciate. I didn't see a lot of serious greatness on Leopard. Obviously it's better to try both and see which seems to work better.

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