leopard system requirements

Hi, I'm new to mac and wonder what are the requirements for mac osx? I'm planning to get the old ibook G4, and I heard it will run. But will the laptop be good enough to have all those eye candy that the 10.5 osx offers?

thanks

 

I think you'd be out of luck.

A lot of the eyecandy in OS X 10.5 depends on the Core Image and Core Animation frameworks. These require somewhat more modern GPU's. You can see a list of compatible GPU's here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Image#Compatible_GPUs

And you can read more about Core Animation here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Animation

The iBook G4 had a mobility radeon 9200 with only 32 megs of VRAM, so it is not supported (and even if it was, performance probably would not be all that great).

OS X will still run fine, just a lot of the fancy effects, etc. are going to be turned off. If the eyecandy does matter to you, you might want to look into a somewhat newer machine, depending on what your budget is.

 

As long as you got the most recent version of the Ibook you'd be able to run it; it would need to have the ATI Radeon 9550 (which was standard in the last updated Ibook before the Macbooks were released). If you can afford it get a Macbook, even if it's a used one: it will be compatible with everything on OSX for a lot longer.

 

Ahh, sorry about that, I was looking at the previous iBook G4:

http://support.apple.com/specs/ibook/iBook_G4_Mid_2005.html

I wonder how well Core Image/Core Animation will perform on that though; there was something about how it has barely acceptable performance with the GeForce FX 5200, but I'm not sure how that compares to the Radeon 9550.

I have to think that any of the OS X 10.5 stuff like Spaces, etc. would probably not be that smooth though.

 

thanks for the info, I may try look for the 2005 ibook version one, one pros I notice on the ibook packs a powerful video card which is pretty good for during those time. I have a thinkpad x31, released to be around the same time as the ibook g4, but only have ati 7000 which is very depressing compare to a 9200 ati.

But sadly they just aren't gonna make another 12" ibooks...

 

I'm not sure what is specifically sad about that. I can't think of any aspect of the 12" iBook G4 that makes it clearly better than the current MacBook.

Even dimension wise, it isn't that different, even though the 13.3" MacBook has a larger widescreen display.

The dimensions of the 12" iBook G4 were:
height: 1.35 inches
width: 11.2 inches
depth: 9.06 inches
weight: 4.9 pounds

And the dimensions of the 13.3" MacBook are:
height: 1.08 inches
width: 12.78 inches
depth: 8.92 inches
weight: 5.2 pounds

So basically, the MacBook is thinner and less deep, while only being a bit wider and .3 pounds heavier, yet it packs considerably more power.

-Zadillo