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Apple's Leopard Will Exclude 800MHz G4 Processors
goombah99 writes "According to AppleInsider, Apple is about to announce that Leopard will not support 800 MHz G4 PowerPC processors. Previously developers had been told that it would require at least an 800 MHz G4. But AppleInsider alleges only 867 MHz G4s and higher will now be supported because of speed issues, and testers have been told that the new OS 'cannot be installed' on lesser machines. This cutoff in minimum requirements means that all those original iMac flat screens and Titanium PowerBooks are now forked to the Tiger (10.4) Update Path."
As far as I'm concerned, it's no real loss, to be honest.
Leopard looks to me to be quite a disappointing update. Not only did Apple completely cast out the refined Aqua look and feel in favour of something that looks like Windows Vista beat Front Row over the head, but there's nothing much I'm excited about (a backup utility? whoopee-fuck. multiple desktops? excuse me while i soil myself...) and indeed a lot I'm more apprehensive about (the iTunes finder with Cover Flow...jesus wept). I think I'll be sticking with Tiger a bit longer; it's a shame Apple diverted attention from what could have been a fantastic new release of OS X onto the glitzy, crippled fashion accessory that is the iPhone.
I'll probably get modded to hell and back, but Leopard is rapidly becoming Apple's version of Vista. Just like Vista, Leopard will be mostly under the hood changes and a few piffling new features, and a whole new look which goes for all out eye candy but simply doesn't match the elegance of what went before. I'm sure the XPostFacto guys will whip something up for all those G4/3 users in the mean time though...
I write bullshit
If this is true, Leopard is probably the last OS upgrade that will be available for the 1.2-1.5gHz PPC Mac Mini family.
Prepare to buy an Intel CPU Mac for your next major OS upgrade after Leopard.
Chip H.
There better be something good in there eating all those cycles. We will have been waiting for over two years.... The keynote demo's looked more like weekend projects that were a result of someone taking code home to play with. New lipstick on the same pig if you will.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
"Up until Panther, each version of OSX ran faster than the previous one. But Tiger is definitely slower than Panther. Looks like Leopard will continue the trend."
;)
I agree, but it must be noted that OSX 10.0 was dog slow and 10.1, while faster, was slow as well. So making 10.2 and 10.3 faster than their predecessors wasn't so remarkable.
10.4 is slower than 10.3 (in my experience), and 10.5 looks like it'll be slower still. So it seems that once OSX reached a decent level performance wise (10.3), Apple simply couldn't keep the speed increase trend going while adding features.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
apple users are low lifes anyway.
It's like a service pack, except that Apple charges $129.00 for it. So not everyone upgrades.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Ann Coulter is a hateful, evil-defending shell of a person who can't discuss issues or facts and prefers to slink along instead by making cowardly, groundless accusations and calling here enemies names.
I'm not the Ann Coulter in our relationship, Mr Anonymous Coward.
Comparing this to Vista? Geesh...
Vista runs on even 700mhz machines just fine, and these date back to 1999. Oh and Vista does graphics acceleration (not Aero, but GDI/WPF) on DirectX7 generation cards, that go back to 1998 (this is the equivalent of Quartz Extreme).
If Vista had OS X's requirements, people REALLY would have screamed about Vista requiring new hardware. Oh wait, wasn't that the Apple commercials telling everyon that? LOL
Vista runs fine on 700mhz processors with 1Gb of RAM. PERIOD. And now OS X won't even do 800mhz on PowerPC which ALWAYS ran mhz behind intel because it was more powerful? The 800mhz limit would be like Vista being limted to 1.5ghz Intel PCs, more than double the basic mhz requirements for Vista.
So stop the Vista comparisons, it isn't as big, slow or bloated as Leopard is appearing to be.
Also Vista does have a non-double buffer composer and true Vector based GPU acceleration, where Apple is still struggling to get an accelerated version of Quartz freaking running, which has been a MAJOR problem to date as the betas of Leopard demonstrate...
And the next nut to post that WPF is a rip off of Quartz, deserves Mac idiot of the year award. And I will ask them to show me Quartz running accelerated and performing both 2D and 3D vector UI presentation and animation. Oh wait, Quartz doesn't do real 3D...