Confirmed: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will run on G4’s

Jun 12, 2007 - 16 Comments

There has been some concern since the announcement that Leopard is a 64 bit operating system that those of us with 32 bit machines would be left in the dust with Tiger. Fear not though, Endgadget dispels this rumor after talking with Apple. This means that G4’s, G5’s, Core Solo’s and Core Duo’s will be allowed to run Leopard, they just won’t necessarily run at optimal performance for things built for the 64-bit platform. This is both good and bad news, good that we can all run Leopard, bad that we won’t have the same performance as Core 2 Duo Mac users will have. Perhaps this is a good excuse to upgrade your hardware come fall?

Endgadget: 64 bit Leopard will still work with your machine

.

Related articles:

Posted by: David Mendez in Mac OS, News

16 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. apple support says:

    http://support.apple.com/kb/SP517

    for all of those who still come across this topic just click the link

  2. stuart says:

    hi i have a emac g4 and i want to know if i can upgrade to leopard
    SPECS:
    1.25Ghz G4 Processor
    512Mb RAM, 40Gb Hard Drive
    Apple ComboDrive
    Mac OSX v10.4 Tiger
    PLZ REPLY ASAP THANKS :)

  3. Oscar says:

    Dear Forum,

    I have a Power PC G5 Dual 1.8GHz currently running 10.4.11 a couple of questions:
    1) Can I run Leopard on this rig at all?
    2) I know I won’t be able to use all the new features but I’m more concerned about experiencing freezes/hangs and the like….does anyone forsee any problems?
    Many thanks for any advice….

    • Lee says:

      AbosoFrigan-lutely!
      I had an iMac 1.8ghz.. w/10.58 installed.. worked just fine..
      I had installed 2gb ram.. the Main difference was a LITTLE
      difference in speed(somewhat Slower)on the 10.5x Leopard
      than it was w/Tiger 10.4x w/1gb ram.. NUFF said..
      it Does work! LL

  4. Armondo says:

    Dear G4 I beat God of War part 1 on God mode in one night Thank you

  5. achadd says:

    Bill, i think your eMac could run the Mac OS X 10.5 as the minimum system requirement to run the OS is G4 867 MHz, 521MB RAM, 9GB dsk space. Don’t forget, u will need a DVD drive for installation of the operating system

  6. Bill says:

    I have an eMac G4, 1Ghz, 768MB, 80GB, can anyone tell me if this can run Mac OSX 10.5?

    Cheers

  7. BillA says:

    Thanks for the story. Might save me abundle as I add new machiines and want to mesh with the old ones.

  8. Reviladigedo says:

    glad I can run it on my older macs”

  9. niclet says:

    Hey Chris,
    I don’t know for the speed but since your Mini’s video-card is a Radeon 9200 it surely doesn’t support Core Image by consequence Core Animation “Core Animation runs on any Core Image-capable Mac (including most Mac systems shipped in the past two years).” dixit Apple – Core Image minimum requirement can be found here http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301347

    But video-cards can make some “interpretation”. For example, when I run the Tiger’s Fast User Switching transition (which use Quartz Extreme), on my actual PowerBook G4 1.5GHz the transition is the normal turning 3D cube but on my old PowerMac G4 400MGz, the transition is only a fade out cut. The function works but without the astounding graphic FX!

    So, I’m pretty sure you’ll be “graphically” able to run Time Machine on your Mac Mini but the UI graphic transitions, animated or not, will probably be “interpreted” by your Radeon 9200.

    We’ll see…

  10. Chris says:

    Good question, but I can’t answer it. Indeed I saw a performance increase after I installed 10.4 on my G4/350MHz server. I’ve got a 1.42GHz Mac Mini G4 right now, and plan on getting 10.5 asap, that is unless of course it will be dog slow. Core image is another issue. The mini’s do not support it, does this mean I won’t be able to use features like time machine? I really wish Apple would address all of our concerns (a FAQ maybe?). Hmm…

  11. niclet says:

    @ Eric: I understand this but, for example, when my “old” Sawtooth (G4 400MHz Tower) was upgraded from Jaguar to Tiger, it was faster than ever in most of tasks. Tiger is running like butter on this machine. Will Leopard fade this improvement?

  12. Eric says:

    Of course the performance won’t be as good on a G4 as on a Core 2 Duo – because it’s an older chip, 32-bit not 64-bit and also running at a slower Ghz clock rate. To hope for the same OS performance from a much older Mac as a new one and call it bad news when it does not happen is odd. Sooner or later new OS X releases will be for Intel only. I would anticipate Leopard will be around for 2 years, then 10.6 will be for G5s and Intels, and 10.7 for G5’s and Intel, 10.8 for Intel only. Just a guess.

  13. niclet says:

    But will it be slower than Tiger on a G4?

  14. Bill says:

    G5s *are* 64 bit…

Leave a Reply

 

Shop on Amazon.com and help support OSXDaily!

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site