Can someone recommend me an Apple Forum?

Also - is there a minimum spec for OS X?

 

Apart from here you mean? lol

Seriously though, assume you mean help related, in which case:

www.macosxhints.com which also has a forum
www.macfixit.com again also has a forum
http://discussions.info.apple.com/ the "official" Apple discussion forums

Yes there is a min spec for OS X:
10.3.x = PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 processoer, built in USB, 128MB or more of RAM (I'd recommend anywhere between 256 and the max you can stuff into the machine, I'm running with 1GB on a first Gen G4)

For 10.4 (Tiger) the specs are:
Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 processor, Built-in FireWire, 256MB of RAM (or more), 3GB of available hard disk space (4GB if you install the developer tools)

 

I use Macosxhints often. The Mac Ach over at http://episteme.arstechnica.com is a good forum too.

Edit: As Markus says add as much Ram as you can its so much better with more than 512 its unbelievable.

 

Cheers - been looking at a 2nd hand G3 which seems pretty cheap rather than going for a Mac mini. Will be going the maximum RAM it'll take if I go for it.

 

Tiger also ships by default on DVD-ROM and there's an extra charge to get the CD-ROM version which you can only apply for once you've bought the retail DVD box.

Then there's the graphics card requirements, UI responsiveness improves greatly when QE kicks in (it's an old smelly dog without it):

- AGP + 16MB VRAM = QuartzExtreme minimum
- AGP + 32MB VRAM = QuartzExtreme preferred
- AGP + G4 CPU = Core Image intermediate
- AGP + Programmable Shader Support GFX Card = Core Image preferred

Simple isn't it

 

Yes, I would definately recommend loads of RAM on a G3, especially if you are going to be using Tiger with it. The only downside is that some of the extended niceties of Tiger aren't supported by the G3.

Either way, it'll still be nicer than Windows

 

I would avoid the G3 if I were you.

Pros:
Expandable, cheap.

Cons:
No warranty, slow graphics, no AltiVec, no QE, limited CoreImage (CPU bound), requires non-DDR RAM (getting expensive), no LBA-48 support (issues with HD's greater than 127GB), no USB2, no AirPort Extreme.

 

Have to say that I'd rather go the mac Mini route than an old G3. If you're going to run OS 9 on it, fine, it'll be nice and speedy, if you're wanting to run OS X on it, forget it. I've got a G3 here and we did, for a laugh, put OS X on it, let's say it was very very slow, and that was with 512MB RAM.

 

I was originally looking for a cheapish G4 - either Power Mac or iMac but the G3 I seen was really cheap but by the time I've upped the RAM (and probably graphics too) I could have a G4 for the same cash, so might go for one of those if I can find one cheap enough.

I've tried looking apple's site for spec's of the G3, G4 & G5 but without much success, just to find out the differences (other than speed)

Does the G4 support all the OS X (& Tiger)'s bells and whistles?

 

The graphics card in the "smurf" G3 tower is a non-standard 64bit/66MHz PCI slot (I think it is even inverted too) so any card you get to replace it will either have to be very specific to that machine (expensive) or a slower, "normal" PCI varient. There's no AGP slot available.

http://www.everymac.com gives you full specs. for all Apple models.

Re: Tiger support on older G4's: Depends what G4 it is. QE requires 16MB VRAM no matter what CPU whereas Core Image will fall back to doing its effects using the CPU; a task to which the AltiVec unit on the G4 is very suited. Trouble is many other parts of the OS use AltiVec so you begin to see a bottleneck.

Graphics upgrades are also a bit hit-and-miss on these older G4 towers as many were AGP 2x only (and I believe Apple was a little quick-and-loose in their implimentation of that standard). Only the later G4's had full AGP 4x support.

I can see Core Image/Core Video becoming a major part of applications in the next couple of years from everything from consumer grade stuff like iChat, iMovie and iPhoto up to Motion and FCP.

 

It appears everytime I read this thread I think I should step up a model - byt 5pm I'll be looking at dual g5 machines & the 30" cinema display...

I wasn't looking to make the full leap to Mac just yet, but I would like everything OSX has to offer.

 

Ah ha, he sees the plan!

 

Looks like you might be encouraged to invest in the new dual 2.7 G5 if Amazon is right:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...651336-0101715

 

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but ...

Is it going to be worth upgrading to Tiger? I'm not interested in the widgets (live stock prices on my screen! woo! woo!) or the dashboard or search. I'll happily upgrade if there are substantive performance improvements.

 

FJH,
It does seem to be a fair bit quicker than 10.3 in the tests I've run with it, and I'm not on the final release version either. There has been a *lot* of work to the BSD side of things, in other words, under the hood changes.

Apple is touting over 200 changes, so there might be something in the upgrade for you.

 

I was discussing this with my mate. He runs a 2.5 G5 (IIRC) with no internet/email. Just ProTools.

He couldn't see the need to spend on the update for extras he wouldn't use.

I, on the other hand, do the same work (www.daproductions.co.uk ) and have mine networked and internetted.

I will be looking at it seriously in the next month.

Dan

 

Personally I would forget the G3 and go with the Mini £339 + 1Gb from Crucial £89 = BARGAIN !

Picked up a base model Mac-Mini at the weekend and it really is quite snappy. That said I intend to use it in a slightly different role - the HD and Combo drives swapped out for a pair of soft RAID mirrored 250Gb.

I want to use the spotlight to index all data currently available on several hosts.

Will have to see how spotlight pans out but that is the plan

Let us know what you decide though . . .

rich

 

My missis can't understand why I'm itching to get Tiger. She just doesn't get it.



Mike

 

Forgot to mention that as I now have Tiger coming for the Mini £12 + iLife 05 now that is value £138 worth of OS and App's all for my £339 !

Not that I had this planned since the Mini came out

rich

 

Don't get a smurf G3 or any G3 for OSX, you will soon get cheesed off with it being slow. I have run it on a G3 333 lappy, 400mhz smurf and a 450mhz G4 all of which can be tiresome! (especially after spending time on my main machine which is a 2.5DP G5 Mmmuuuwwwhhaaaa)

The Mini seems the best way forward IMHO. or a 2nd hand G4 lappy or tower.

Anything old is simply just going to get worse and worse and it won't surprise me to learn that Apple drop support for G3s soon... Just my 2ps.

Rich

 

Think I'll probably go back to my original plan get the Mini - although reading through the stuff on Tiger it looks to me like Spotlight would be quite power hungry - is it? I get the impression it'll be like Norton Anti Virus. I'm not a fan of stuff running the background, I'd rather start a program myself rather than have is system hogging just so it starts a bit quicker.

Or is it just me stuck in my PC ways?

 

I think its just you stuck in your PC ways. From what I've read it just seems to be slow to do the initial index of all your files. Thereafter it will index on the go, therefore it doesn't take up too much processor.

There is currently a program called Quicksilver which is constantly indexing files in the background and that doesn't give me any noticeable slowdown, so I would expect Spotlight to be the same.

PS don't install Norton, its more harm than good on a Mac, I know lots of people who have had trouble with Norton and OSX.

 

So you're using a Mini only for Spotlight? How many hosts are we talking about?

I think what I'll probably do is go for the lower spec'd Mini - my intention is to get a dual g5 machine eventually and use the mini in the living room and connect it to the telly and home cinema amp and have it networked wirelessly to the a server upstairs for music/photo's/net access - mainly for the wifey so won't need a lot of processing grunt but I'll likely be going for the bluetooth extra's - keeping a keyboard & mouse in the cupboard.

 

Spotlight...
*cough* from personal experience, and you didn't see me, roight? *cough* It does take a while to initially index all the files, so your machine could be slow for about 5 - 40 mins, maybe longer, depends on number of items on your disk, after you've installed Tiger. Once done, it's very quick and you hardly notice it doing the indexing. Obviously if you then drop a whole lot of items onto the disk, say from installing multiple applications, it'll slow a little as it indexes them, but it's nowhere near the time it takes after initial install.

One thing I did notoice, though this was with previous seeds, was that if you don't have that much free disk space after install then you might see a message about your disk being full, this is mainly due to temp files being created when the indexing is occuring. I think this has been addressed though, as I've not seen it for quite some time, and i have done fresh installs of the latest seeds.

 

Sounds good - how good at indexing network drives though? and what if that network drive is on a PC?

Very tempted now...

If the Tower G5's are now getting a speed increase, what's the likelyhood of the Mini getting a boost?

 

*cough* *splutter*

I've just had a look on one of the machines here and there does not seem to be any way to get spotlight to search a network drive, regardless of type.

If you select the 'show all' option it allows you display items on: Computer, Home, and then the list of local disks. I did have a mounted drive (was CIFS mounted volume) and it did not list it in the list of available disks that I could narrow the found items down to.

I'm going to sniff around some more, see if I've missed some option somewhere.

 

I've read through some of the spotlight stuff on apple's site and it said that ms office docs contain a lot of the info it searches for by default.

I'm looking at converting my desktop into a server which will basically be a datastore, keeping my laptop as is and the mac mini. so as long as I have the hdd's on the lappy & server as network drives spotlight will index their info OK? I'm curious about files that the Mac won't (probably) be able to open such as AutoCAD .dwg's.

 

Had a look on Apple's site, seems the only mention of networked drives that spotlight will search is networked home drives, vis a vis:

Spotlight Support for Network Homes
Perform a Spotlight search on network-based Home directories in addition to searching local hard drives.

So it looks like the answer might be no, which is upsetting, but, due to the way spotlight works, not unexpected (network drive might not be availble all the time, where to store the metadata, locally or on the drive itself?)

 

well from what rich101 said he might not get to do what he had planned but will be interested to hear about his results.

To be perfectly honest, Spotlight is something I can probably live without - but it looks like a useful feature - an initial configuration period is acceptable to me anyway, I just don't like apps running in the background that barely get used - thats why I was concerned about resource hogging.

Widgets look handy - hopefully I can set one for the weather at the golf course

 

As Markus says add as much Ram as you can its so much better with more than 512 its unbelievable


on this recommendation i just upgraded to 1 gig of memory!