New to Mac / Few questions if I may

I purchased a G4 PowerPC to get my feet wet with Mac and seem to be getting hooked early. I am running however 10.2.8 which I am told is several years old. With this in mind, will 10.4 (Tiger) have the following:

1. iPhoto? (I have this along with imovie now but I can see nowhere on the Apple sight that is mentioned in OS X Tiger, I do see however something called iLife, am I to understand that I have to purchase what used to be free in order to get iPhoto now?

2. The ability to be purchased as an upgrade vs. 129 dollar full install? (If not, can I still place the disk in and upgrade to it without losing data, or as in the PC world, just backup data and do a complete rebuild?)

Also, I see that the current OS's have a Name followed by a series of numbers. Thus for example Jaguar mayu have been 10.2, 10.2.1 etc.. throughout its lifetime. If I start out with 10.2 and there are, lets say, 6 version upgrades are these free to me or must I pay for all of them? Or are these like service packs to the PC world and they are a free download.

Thanks ahead of time, and I look forward to helping as I learn as well.

Welcome to Mac-Forums, Jarvis Sweet. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Tiger will not have iPhoto on the install disk. iPhoto is part of the bundled apps when you buy a Mac but once the iLife suite is updated you need to buy it as it is an independent product from the OS.

As for upgrading without loosing data, you can chose the install scheme i.e. Archive and Install will put all your user stuff and the older system in a folder called Previous System. You will need to make sure you have enough disk space to accommodate this kind of install though as it basically means you are doing a double install, disk space-wise.

Another thing, make sure your Power Mac G4 can handle DVDs as the usual Tiger install disk is a DVD. If you need to have Tiger on CDs instead, you can order them in a special order.

MacHeadCase said:

Welcome to Mac-Forums, Jarvis Sweet. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Tiger will not have iPhoto on the install disk. iPhoto is part of the bundled apps when you buy a Mac but once the iLife suite is updated you need to buy it as it is an independent product from the OS.

As for upgrading without loosing data, you can chose the install scheme i.e. Archive and Install will put all your user stuff and the older system in a folder called Previous System. You will need to make sure you have enough disk space to accommodate this kind of install though as it basically means you are doing a double install, disk space-wise.

Another thing, make sure your Power Mac G4 can handle DVDs as the usual Tiger install disk is a DVD. If you need to have Tiger on CDs instead, you can order them in a special order.

Click to expand...

In his second question, I think what he was trying to get at was whether there was a less expensive "Upgrade" edition along the same vein as what MS does with Windows (i.e. you can purchase a $99 upgrade instead of the full-on $200 clean install version). I have to admit that I'm wondering the same thing since Leopard is so close to release and I'd rather not pay $120 (or more) for it if I can avoid the expense by buying an "upgrade" edition.

Point upgrades (10.2 to 10.2.8) are free as Service Packs are in Windows. Moving from 10.2.x to 10.4.x is considered a new operating system and must be purchased. Also, if the computer you have does not have a full install of iLife (GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto,etc.) you must purchase iLife to get the whole thing. But, if you buy a new computer (except maybe MacPros) you get the newest operating system(pretty soon 10.5), iLife and the FrontRow "Media Center-ish" software with a remote control all included.

mikebishop2 said:

Point upgrades (10.2 to 10.2.8) are free as Service Packs are in Windows. Moving from 10.2.x to 10.4.x is considered a new operating system and must be purchased. Also, if the computer you have does not have a full install of iLife (GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto,etc.) you must purchase iLife to get the whole thing. But, if you buy a new computer (except maybe MacPros) you get the newest operating system(pretty soon 10.5), iLife and the FrontRow "Media Center-ish" software with a remote control all included.

Click to expand...

Ugh... I thought that might be the case. I wonder what has to happen before they move to the OS XI moniker? To me that's still a point upgrade...

mikebishop2 said:

Point upgrades (10.2 to 10.2.8) are free as Service Packs are in Windows. Moving from 10.2.x to 10.4.x is considered a new operating system and must be purchased. Also, if the computer you have does not have a full install of iLife (GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto,etc.) you must purchase iLife to get the whole thing. But, if you buy a new computer (except maybe MacPros) you get the newest operating system(pretty soon 10.5), iLife and the FrontRow "Media Center-ish" software with a remote control all included.

Click to expand...

Mac pros get ilife too.