Computer Expectations

Hello everyone. I have a G4 (PPC) 1 GHZ EMac that I have been testing the Mac waters with before I commit to getting a more current Mac. My question is this, what should I be able to do with this machine? It is running OS 10 (Panther), 1 gig of ram and I have a 200 gig ext firewire drive. (I know it's not cutting edge but in its day what kind of programs/tasks were you guys using it for?) I have dabbled with iLife 06 apps.

My "primary" computer is a AMD 64X2 4000 with 4 gigs of ram running XP (again not cutting edge but it does everything I need. rip dvd for ipod, play wow, edit photos, etc.) would a mac mini 1.83 dual core be about the same level of performance? I say Mac Mini because I would use a KVM to share a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

I like the "vibe" of the Mac but dont know if I can justify the purchase without seeing a little bit more functionality.

Thanks for any comments.

I'm still sorta new to Macs so I might not be of much help, but the Mac Mini should be fine and I would go to an apple store if you have one near bye and try out leopard before you make the leap.

blg66 said:

Hello everyone. I have a G4 (PPC) 1 GHZ EMac that I have been testing the Mac waters with before I commit to getting a more current Mac. My question is this, what should I be able to do with this machine?

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Its a computer. You can do whatever a computer can do. There is no mystery about it. You can also run Leopard on it if you so desire, no need to get another computer for that.

blg66 said:

Hello everyone. I have a G4 (PPC) 1 GHZ EMac that I have been testing the Mac waters with before I commit to getting a more current Mac. My question is this, what should I be able to do with this machine? It is running OS 10 (Panther), 1 gig of ram and I have a 200 gig ext firewire drive. (I know it's not cutting edge but in its day what kind of programs/tasks were you guys using it for?) I have dabbled with iLife 06 apps.

Click to expand...

Back in "its day", it did exactly what you use any of "today's" computers for. It's just slower than today's computers. But on the other hand, it's faster than the computers of 10 years ago.

D3v1L80Y said:

Its a computer. You can do whatever a computer can do. There is no mystery about it. You can also run Leopard on it if you so desire, no need to get another computer for that.

Click to expand...

Not sure how that response addressed my question so let me try again:

I am not familiar with Mac apps especially ones that will work on a "G4" generation Mac. I see no benefit to purchasing an app that will not be usable on my system.

Some programs work in OS 9 but not in OS 10 without running in "classic mode" which I think I have working but it does not work with all of the software (mainly games, photoshop elements) (Kind of mysterious)

I know that I tried to use it to rip a dvd to an ipod format using handbrake took about 6 hours which is not a big deal other than I probably wont use the Emac in that capacity. (It's just an older computer.)

I purchased Panther after reading posts on this forum about it being the "best fit" for my generation of computer. (That was also a little mysterious finding just the right version for my computer. The forums input was invaluable.) Is Leopard going to increase the functionality of computer or just negatively impact the available resources? (cpu, ram, hardrive space)

I see from your profile you have a G4 powerbook which "I assume" is similiar in performance, what apps do you use?

Sorry for the confusion.

Tiger ran on my 350-megahertz G3, so there's no reason Tiger or Leopard wouldn't run on a 1 gigahertz G4. Probably Tiger would run faster than Panther. It does on my G4. But I don't know much about Leopard, other than it probably would run well on the e-Mac and you'd lose Classic.

But if you run Classic, you'd have (with luck) the OS 9 install disk on hand. So you could partition the drive and load Leopard in one partition and OS 9 in the other. Running 9 as 9, rather than through OS X and Classic, is better anyway.

Your e-Mac should run any app you care to load Edit: from PowerPC apps under System 7 to 9 (with OS 9 loaded) to anything written for OS X (including any apps restricted to Leopard, if it's loaded).

Yeah, about the only apps that actually require an Intel processor and thus you can't run on a PPC Mac are the things that let you run windows like VMWare, Parallels, and the Wine stuff.

I used to use my 1.42Ghz Mini to do all the things I used other computers for during the 1.5 years I had it. Video was a little tough, but I don't do that very much.

I think I better understand now what you are trying to ask. I'll try to explain as best I can...

First thing you should understand is that OS X is a radical departure from the "Classic" Mac OS, which is 9.x and earlier. OS X is built upon a Unix variant and for all intents and purposes is a new OS with nothing in common with the Classic Mac OS. It is as much a leap forward as Windows XP was over Windows 3.1!

Up until now, OS X has been something of a work-in-progress. Since OS 10.0, Apple has been constantly reworking and refining the OS to make it the best it can be. In many instances, newer versions of OS X have proven to be faster on the same hardware than the previous version due to whatever refinements that Apple had come up with. Now... in part because OS X has been a work-in-progress, oftentimes an app that worked in, say, 10.3, got broken with 10.4 due to some change in the OS that it relied on. So what you'll find when looking at software for OS X is that applications that are regularly updated often will, with their latest version, only work with 10.4 or later, for example. Often a developer will have an archived version available that worked with 10.2 or 10.3, but typically they may be a bit lacking in features because they got left behind as the OS progressed.

Now... you may think that this is something of a handicap. But look at Windows. Because Microsoft is so adamant at maintaining backwards compatibility as much as possible, they've wound up with an OS that is so huge and bloated that it's choking on itself.

Since you are looking for reasons to move on to more "current" Mac hardware, then the first thing you should be doing is dropping any "Classic" Mac apps. The future is OS X and Classic apps don't work on the Intel hardware. Their support in earlier versions of OS X was simply a stop-gap measure to help people use what they had during the transition period.

Secondly, you should consider upgrading to Tiger or Leopard. Your Mac is within their supported specs, and since the most current and updated apps do require Tiger at the least, you'll have access to the latest and greatest. As others have said, you may actually find your system works more smoothly. The system requirements are steeper, but eliminating support for older hardware makes for a leaner OS.

Welcome to Mac-Forums, blg66.

Something I would like to add is that usually app versions are more tied to OS version spans (example: 10.3.9 and later, and so on) on which they'll run than the processor on which they run, simply because Apple hasn't changed CPU architectures too many times: unless you look at Apple's last twenty years or so and the big schisms in changing CPUs.

Like for instance when Apple went from 68X00 to PowerPC chips (you see the change happening in the mid 90s when the Macs started to get the word Power to their model name), then from PowerPC to Intel.

To ensure that applications run on Intel Macs, when you go there, simply make sure you choose applications that have the Universal Binary label.

Noticed I highlighted the word usually at the beginning? Well in OS X Leopard's case, there seems to be quite a few apps that needed (or still need) to be updated to ensure compatibility, so you could say that OS X 10.5 Leopard is a bit of an exception (i.e. something that works in Tiger might not work in Leopard). So make sure you check for Leopard compatibility when you pick your apps.