Mac OSX Tiger to Leopard on early intel iMac

k++ · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:19

I have an iMac Core Duo 2GHz running Tiger. For some crazy reason, the latest version of Safari and iTunes wont run on anything less than Leopard, but they do have windows versions.

Also, Chromium, Firefox beta 4 and many other apps wont install. :mad:

I was thinking of buying Leopard, but first decided to see if it would work using a Leopard DVD that came with a MacBook Pro. It said it couldn't install on my machine.

I'm not sure of the difference between the included DVD with the MBP and the store bought versions of Leopard, so there is still a chance I could upgrade.

If I bought the box set at £122 would Snow Leopard install? I can't find the OS only, only the £26 upgrade.

Has anyone here done this?

A.N.Other · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:42

I went from Tiger --> Snow Leopard with a store-bought Leopard --> Snow Leopard upgrade disk. No problems at all and running very nicely on my early core duo MBP. I don't think you're technically meant to, though (there is, after all, a special Tiger --> Snow Leopard package that includes all the rest of the gubbins that comes with Leopard)

k++ · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:44

Is that the £26 upgrade?

Also, can you do a fresh-install or just an upgrade?

A.N.Other · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:46

k++ · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:48

Sweet, Much more palatable than the £122 fat-pack or a brand new computer

A.N.Other · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:50

That's what I thought

I had to move from Tiger for the same reason - iTunes wouldn't update (and I could see it was going to be a growing issue). The upgrade ran fine for me - no need for a reinstall unless you want to. Saved some HDD space with the switch and (perhaps) it's a bit more nippy?!?

theheyes · 10 Jan 2011 at 20:00

k++ said:
I have an iMac Core Duo 2GHz running Tiger. For some crazy reason, the latest version of Safari and iTunes wont run on anything less than Leopard, but they do have windows versions.

The reason is that it will rely on something they implemented in later versions of OSX. So they could either go back and put it in Tiger, or prompt you to upgrade. This is going to bite me in the behind over the next couple of years, because as it stands I don't plan to upgrade to Lion.

And yeah, it is kinda funny how there is still a version for XP SP2 which technically Microsoft don't even support any more.

NickK · 11 Jan 2011 at 08:26

MS support the majority of OS versions. There's a break now, if you're running windows 7 32bit you can still run old 16 bit apps but if you're running windows 7 64bit you can only run old 32bit apps or above.

Keeping up with the operating system is tough on developers. However overall this tends to be a good thing (especially with the speed improvements in leopard and SL). The problem is that users don't understand why it's better - developers see underneath and understand that it's better.

The problem I have with my current application is that on the one hand people will (for the purpose) want to use any old secondhand mac to connect their equipment to. On the other hand due to the sizes of the images (multiple images upto 150MByte each) snow leopard has vast improvements to the image handling, ability to cope with larger address spaces better and have better support for threading+OpenCL to increase the speed of processing of those images.
It's likely that they'll use a single machine, probably a laptop todo this.

That's just one example of the decision - go with older OS to allow people to use older equipment that is second hand, or, go with the newer OS for faster development and better user experience?
All depends on their target audience and goal. For Apple - to push forward and sell more..