I'm SO confused with this eMac....Any help??

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jessicafjanes


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I recently bought an eMac for my 6 year old for Christmas and I've been trying to add some things to it before he gets it. It says is has OS X on it and it's version 10.5.8 (or something like that).
I am totally clueless and need to know if this is the highest OS that I can put on it? It seems that it's something called a Power PC so that has something to do with upgrades and games and such but this makes no sense to me.
I found a few gaming sites to download/buy games for it which will be just fine, just curious about the operating system. I don't know if i'm doing something wrong or if it just can't go any higher. Thanks!!
 
pigoo3

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jessicafjanes said:
It says is has OS X on it and it's version 10.5.8 (or something like that).
I am totally clueless and need to know if this is the highest OS that I can put on it?
Click to expand...


Yes…OS 10.5.8 is the highest OS an eMac can run.

- Nick
 
Raz0rEdge

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Welcome to Mac-Forums.

Apple used to make Macintosh computers using the PowerPC processors until about 2006 when they switched over to Intel processors.

These two architectures are entirely different and separate, so allow applications that were written for PowerPC to continue to function on Intel based Macs, Apple used Rosetta to allow for emulation and so on.

Well Snow Leopard dropped support for PowerPC based Macs, but kept Rosetta around to allow PowerPC apps to continue to run. Lion dropped Rosetta support and Mountain Lion continues that trend. So now, PowerPC is firmly planted in the past as far Macs and Apple is concerned..

This continuing lack of support is causing the market to flood with these PowerPC based Macs at very attractive prices, and there are a lot of people picking them and running into various situations with lack of software support that can't be easily worked around..
 
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chas_m

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Bottom line: you bought a really old computer. Forget about loading anything new on it. There are a few "old Mac software" sites around like Old Version Downloads - OldApps for Mac and there are a handful of things that will still support 10.5.8 but forget about flash, video, banking, java ...
 

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