Dave-

I am still using Panther on both of my older macs - an iMac 700 and blueberry iBook, yes the original 300 model is still running and running panther amazingly well. I didn't get Tiger because neither one of my machines has a DVD drive - so no, I won't be upgrading to Leopard. My next upgrade will be a new machine in a year or so. Personally, I have found no compelling reason to either get a new machine or to upgrade to a new OS. Panther is still the standard by which all future comers are measured in my book - a truly outstanding system.

I have a PowerBook G4 with 1.5ghz processor. Even if Leopard runs slower i would not be able to handle "Leopard Envy" so i plan on upgrading

I would argue that Windows Vista also, at least on all three of my 4-5 year old computers - runs faster the Windows XP.

I have a Powerbook G4 1.67GHz. I just upgraded to 2GB of RAM (from 1GB) to be ready for Leopard. I'm buying it from the local Apple Store the day it is released.

ive got a powerPC G5 1.8GHz and just upgraded to 2 gig Ram too from 256, Ive been waitin for leopard too but if performance is going to be a problem then I might just stick w/ 10.4

I have a G4 iMac with a 1.25GHz processor in it, and—to be honest—I'm extremely hesitant to upgrade. I'll likely wait until reports start coming in at MacNN on its G4 performance before I upgrade. I'd hate to lay down the cash for Leopard only to find it makes my Mac run like molasses.

I have a desktop PM G4 (Sawtooth) originally @ 500MHz, upgraded to 1.5 GHz Mercury Extreme proc, 2 GB RAM, Radeon 9800Pro and WD 10k Raptor HDD and is an EXCELLENT Tiger machine! I will definitely upgrade to Leopard no matter what, via PostFacto or similar and I am sure it will be a GOOD Leopard machine as well no matter what Apple want you to believe or do! I did some bench tests and actual imacs are not that much faster as Apple is trying to tell you! I will get the new NT PowerPC 7448 @2GHz if I'll really have to, to speed things up further, even if is not a very cost effective upgrade anymore! Its a shame Apple treats PowerPC owners as second class citizens already! The Hell with Intel!(at least untill they really come up with something really shattering!!!)

Dave,

I have several PowerPC Macs that I'm using from a Sonnet G4 boosted 7600 to a 1GHz iBook and ultimately my prized dual 1GHz Quicksilver all of which are running Panther. I've toyed with the idea of upgrading to Tiger but have not felt compelled to do so until recently. The more I learn about Leopard and the fact the Apple has migrated away from the PowerPC architecture in favor of Intel has me thinking twice. This is leading me to go out and purchase a full blown copy of Tiger so that I won't be left out in the cold. Since it appears that Tiger may be the last truly PowerPC friendly version of OS X, I'm heading down to the Apple store now before it's gone. Of course this is my own humble opinion.

Mike in SoCal

I plan on jumping to Leopard. I've got a dual 867 mirror door, 2GB of memory and an ATI Radeon 9800 with 128MB of memory. That should do it. Honestly we still don't know what the heck kind of cat Leopord will be until it is released. I do wish that we would know the before copies of Tiger get hard to find in the event that yeah, Leopard won't run well on my machine.

I think I will be okay though. My hopes are based on iMovie 7 in iLife 08. I read that someone talked to Apple's folks and they said that the requirements for the new iMovie (no G4's) was actually more based on video cards than main processors. For some reason it was easier to just make the blanket statement. Sure enough, people hacked iMovie and say that it works fine in G4's with good video cards. I'm betting the same will be true for Leopard. Then again, I thought we would all be using Newtons in our day to day lives by now.

Frank

leopard will not run slower on ppc mac obviously it will n somewhat slower because of the bus speed and cache. I have already run leopard on a 733 hacked to run on that machine and indeed it is slow! Powermac computers will NEED to have a core image 4smooth operation otherwise a bit sluggish.

I have a Power Mac G4 Mirror Drive Doors 1.25 dual processor system and 2GB maxed out memory + added a new 128MB Ati radeon pro 9700 graphics card - This machine will make mincemeat out of Leopard, otherwise its back to AMD and hacking the OS to run on a PC. I hate intel so much that I'd like to see their corporation go under and AMD to reign supreme!! SCREW INTEL, SCREW INTEL MAC PC'S because they are PC's and PowerPC macs are REAL MACS!

POWERPC and proud!

my 2.5 dp G5 runs the beta's of Leopard faster than Tiger fear not.

Looking forward to trying out Leopard on my 1GHz Titanium PowerBook G4. I'm running Tiger on a couple of iMac G3s ... one is 400MHz with 256MB RAM.

I agree with mr ben-ami above..intel 'macs' are not macs at all..they're simply Apple PCs that run a unix variant..the very fact that you need emulation to run macintosh applications (both power pc, and older) bears that out.
With Leopard dropping all classic support, even on PPC. the very last connection to macs is gone.
As I still use classic occasionally, having (like many many people) a large investment in classic (mostly graphics) applications..I can say with certainty that I will *never* move to Leopard...
...unless I buy a PC some day.. ,-)

Long story short. I will never buy a Apple PC.

If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.
Steve Jobs, Fortune, 1996-02-19

I moved to a laptop as my primary computer ten years ago. Both my past laptops — a G3 Wall Street and a G4 PowerBook — ran OS X as well as such Macs could.

As such, my laptops performed above and beyond the call, standing up to much, much abuse for 4 and 5 years respectively, before throwing in the towel.

Having computers that run that hard, that long, and with 4 upgrades to their operating systems is unheard-of in the Windows/PC world. From my friends' experiences, Vista is running painfully slow on machines that are les than two years old. My impression is that anyone who still has a machine slower that 867 Mhz does so because, well, their machine still works. But to expect their legacy Mac to support the latest and greatest OS is a little ridiculous.

Save your pennies, go out and treat yourself to an upgrade...or don't. But don't whine about being locked out of the wonders of the new OS. Apple's waited long enough.

I was left behind when Tiger came out because my 2001 Quicksilver Power Mac tower does not have a DVD drive. I did not want to pay extra for exchange CDs from Apple. Today I happily stay with Panther 10.3.9 with my main Macintosh computer while I await for Apple to create a consumer grade tower desktop similar to the G4.

Have you actually used a developer release on a G4, or is your commentary only empty speculation?

My dual-core 2.0ghz PowerMac G5 just got the deluxe treatment with 8 gigs of RAM so I think I'll be just fine when Leopard rolls around.

I had the chance to play with a recent Leopard DVD and tried to install it onto
the very first G4 Mac - the Powermac G4/350 ( Codename 'Yikes' ), which is in fact the same Mainboard as in the blue/whites, but with a G4 CPU.

Leopard refuses to even boot it and gives Kernelpanic with the words "No drivers for this platform".

So all PCI-Graphics-G4 Macs are out. It wont install.
My guess is at AGP-Graphic Macs ( starting with 350MhZ G4 ) the installer will check the clock and will refuse if under 866 MhZ.

Interesting times ahead.My old G4 is now bound to die with Tiger on it, and G3 Macs will become soon worthless . That is bad business Apple - keeping older macs out of the OS means that coming hardware from Apple will not function
anymore and of course some Software will sooner or later demand the lates OS . Or for example Java is only available in OS ( try using Java on 10.3.x ) and Apple offers no "backports" and so on.

Why not unlock the OS to run on older hardware with the option to turn features off that would not run anyway ?

Maybe Apple does not know that there are Millions of solid older macs around and that many people that don't have the money for something new are buying older macs at ebay ( alone for running and getting to know OSX ) or this is just the pain-push to tell people to get rid off their old computers.

Microsoft has seen the desaster with Vistas hardware requirements and people complaining about an OS that eats up all the Ram .. IS LEOPARD "VISTA RELOADED" ???

I will keep my "obsolete" G4 running. With Tiger of course.Until he never boots up to the Apple-Screen again.

Kudos, Dave. When inspire a Infinite Loop post on Ars, you know you've made the big time!

Who says I'll be upgrading to an Intel-based Mac?
I switched to Mac to get away from Microsoft and Intel, and I'm not gonna let Steve Jobs force both down my throat just because he's high on lifestyle gadgets at the moment..
I'm seriously annoyed by the lacking support for PPC-Macs. This is clearly an alienation of the installed base, forcing them to buy new Computers by making software slow on purpose for older Macs. Apple has never done this in PPC-days, as you so correctly point out. Which is the reason I held them in great regard, but like said alot has changed in the company since the Intel-switch...
I've bought my last Mac - unfortunately, because I still like OS X the best. People like me who shelled out a nice $3000 for a Quad G5 are gonna be thrilled that 10.6 won't even run on their certainly still *very* speedy machines!...
What happened to the 5 year period of support? If 10.6 is out in 1-2 years time that'll be only 2-3 years after the last PPC-Mac has been sold (!!)...

I have a first generation iMac (with the little mushroom-like base) and I didn't make the cut-off for Leopard-which in and of itself is not life threatening but it sure sucks not to be able to get a simple iCal update as a result of that. I remember when I was still upgrading to OS 7... ahhh the good old days, when integration was built into the Mac. Sure it would be nice to run Leopard but that means having to buy a new Mac and I don't want a new one. I like my old one. It works perfectly and some geekoid at Apple better come up with a way to update iCal without having to do a system overhaul, particularly when OS discrimination is the flavour-du-jour in Cupertino, CA.

I've been using tiger on my old Original iMacs (CRT Screen). The first one required the firmware update to take it, the second I simply swapped hard-drives, and it runs ) Tiger 10-4-10 quite happily (but a bit slow!)
I'm sure it will be POSSIBLE to put Panther onto older Macs with tricks like this - whether it is worth it is of course another matter - what really times out old Macs is the high cost of RAM upgrades once the RAM is no longer a current type - one of my iMacs has only 384 meg and that's why it has trouble with Tiger.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned linux, bsd, or other free operating systems that do no have planned obsolescence. I have been using my iMac (was 233 MHz, now 266) with Debian Linux as my main desktop computer for two years and have been very happy with it. The only thing wrong is the sound driver doesn't support the microphone.

I comment is simply this:
If any one has an older Mac machine
such as myself and others who desire
the latest and greatest,...just up-grade
the speed, the ram and get rid of extra
programs on the hard drive that don't
need to be there.

This is all anyone has to do to run Apples
new operating system on the ppc mac!

Mike

I have a 1.5 GHz Powerbook... while my husband has the black macbook with intel duo processor, needless to say, leopard isn't running as well on my powerbook but wonderfully on his macbook...