Apple to Accept Returns of Mac OS X on Some G3s

An anonymous reader writes "A class-action lawsuit was filed over Mac OS X not working correctly on some of the older G3's, and Apple has tentatively agreed to refund the purchase price of the OS ($129) to people who purchased it for use on those computers, and wish to return it." The agreement is not final. If you wish to continue using the OS on your computer, despite it not working fully, you can instead receive a $25 coupon. The deal will, apparently, apply to the iMacs through the fruit-colored models; the pre-chiclet iBooks; the PowerBook G3s; the first three Power Mac G3 models; and the all-in-one Power Mac G3.

Comments

Models OS X does not run well on

[iJed]

OS X does not run well (in my opinion) on the following models:

1. Clam shell iBooks. These have 800*600 screens making them pretty horrible to use under X. Maybe its just because I'm use to my 19" Sony though.
2. Beige G3s. There are various unsupported things on the Beige G3. These include hardware DVD acceleration, 2D acceleration (on some graphics cards), 3D acceleration (again on some graphics cards) and even internal floppy drive support (although they are long dead on the Mac). However the beige G3 is still better of than the original iBook range.
3. Early PowerBook G3s. Like the beige G3s these have unsupported hardware DVD and graphics cards. However, unlike the beige G3, you cannot upgrade the graphics card.
4. Revision A iMac. These were not made for all that long but they have the unsupported (I think) Rage II graphics chip with only 2M video memory. All other iMacs are pretty much OK if you can endure the UI latency.

Re:the pre-chiclet iBooks?

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I probably should've stayed with OS 9 on my Wallstreet too, but I was one of those people who just had to see what OS X was like on it. I managed to have the slowest Wallstreet there is (233MHz with no L2 cache), so that turned out to not be the greatest idea. 10.0.* was nearly unusable for just about anything, but at least it ran without complaining. As of 10.1, if I didn't mind doing much outside of Terminal, it was almost tolerable, but I still ran stuff in Classic a lot of the time, just because it was noticeably faster that way. When I tried to upgrade it to 10.2, the installer trashed my 10.1 install instead of updating it, probably because I'd moved a bunch of things around to different locations, including putting the Applications folder on a different partition. The installer is (or at least used to be) very picky about some things and didn't fail gracefully.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's extremely slow, more so if you don't have at least 256-384 MB of RAM. iTunes uses over 60% CPU just to play an MP3 (although mpg123 and the sound daemon it uses only took a combined total of around 12%...), and doing two things at once really brings performance even farther down. But hey, at least it was as stable as it was slow and didn't act strange on the old hardware at all. I'm much, much happier with OS X on my current model iBook.

My former roommate has had good luck with it on his (G4-and-Radeon-upgraded) B&W G3, though, as of 10.2. It was perfectly usable before he upgraded it, but he didn't like 10.1 enough to stick with it then. It's probably worth trying out on yours, just to see how it goes, in my opinion at least.

-Nalgas D. Lemur

Which models are covered, by codename:

[frankie]

Any G3 with hardware DVD playback (unsupported in X) and/or less than Rage 128 video:

• iBook: P1 (aka ToiletSeat, 1999), unsure about P1.5 (ToiletSeat2, 2000).
• iMac: Bondi (aka RevA & RevB, 1998), LifeSavers (aka RevC & RevD, aka 5 Flavors, 1999).
• PowerBook G3: Hooper (aka original, 1997), MainStreet/WallStreet (aka G3 Series, 1998), Lombard (aka Bronze, 1999).
• PowerMac G3: Beige (aka Gossamer, 1997), All-in-One (aka Artemis, 1998),

Not covered:

• iBook: Dual USB (aka iceBook, aka Chiclet, 2001) and newer.
• iMac: Slot Loading (aka Kihei, 1999) and newer.
• PowerBook: Pismo (aka Firewire, 2000) and any G4.
• PowerMac: Blue & White (aka Yosemite, 1999) and any G4.