Mac OSX question - nerdy?
Discussion
Ok. Nerdy time....
Some nice person has GIVEN me two Mac G4's 1.25Ghz/512Mb mem /120Gb disk and all twiddly bits.
Now what advantage has Tiger over say Jaguar/Panther etc. OS has been wiped (security etc) so what is best?
I think I am right in saying that Panther has a Unix type format but what does that mean to a normal person like me.
>> Edited by scared but happy on Wednesday 10th May 18:54
Some nice person has GIVEN me two Mac G4's 1.25Ghz/512Mb mem /120Gb disk and all twiddly bits.
Now what advantage has Tiger over say Jaguar/Panther etc. OS has been wiped (security etc) so what is best?
I think I am right in saying that Panther has a Unix type format but what does that mean to a normal person like me.
>> Edited by scared but happy on Wednesday 10th May 18:54
Too much to go into here really.
Regards to your spec I'd go for Panther, Tiger seems to need a lot of RAM. Ignore Jaguar.
Unless you want to stick some more RAM in it.
UNIX is behind the scenes, you don't have to worry about it.
Please mail me if you want more info, I'm a qualified Apple Technician, and until recently owned an Apple Authorised Service Provider.
Regards to your spec I'd go for Panther, Tiger seems to need a lot of RAM. Ignore Jaguar.
Unless you want to stick some more RAM in it.
UNIX is behind the scenes, you don't have to worry about it.
Please mail me if you want more info, I'm a qualified Apple Technician, and until recently owned an Apple Authorised Service Provider.
Every OS X is Unix-based.
www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/ said:So, most of the advantages from Linux and Unices with a Macintosh user interface.
Don’t let its elegant and easy-to-use interface fool you. Beneath the surface of Mac OS X lies an industrial-strength UNIX foundation hard at work to ensure that your computing experience remains free of system crashes and compromised performance. Time-tested security protocols in Mac OS X keep your Mac out of harm’s way.
xiphias said:
Tiger eats ram? Damn Straight! About 700mb before opening anything.
Rubbish! If that figure is correct then there is something seriously wrong with your machine and you need to do a bit of housekeeeping. I am running Tiger as I type and it is sitting quite happily in <400MB.
A 512MB machine will run Tiger quite happily. Yes, more RAM is better but it is by no means as essential as some here are making out.
If you saw Tiger running on two identicals machines, one with 512Mb, and another with a 1Gb, I promise you that you'd be stunned with the speed differential.
512Mb will run Tiger, and may seem ok. When you then try more memory you'll see what you were missing.
But then what would I know.
512Mb will run Tiger, and may seem ok. When you then try more memory you'll see what you were missing.
But then what would I know.
mefoster said:
Tiger eats ram? Damn Straight! About 700mb before opening anything.
Rubbish! If that figure is correct then there is something seriously wrong with your machine and you need to do a bit of housekeeeping. I am running Tiger as I type and it is sitting quite happily in <400MB.
A 512MB machine will run Tiger quite happily. Yes, more RAM is better but it is by no means as essential as some here are making out.
Defintly 700. I don't think I need to do any housekeeping, this machine is less than a month old.
xiphias said:
Tiger eats ram? Damn Straight! About 700mb before opening anything.
Rubbish! If that figure is correct then there is something seriously wrong with your machine and you need to do a bit of housekeeeping. I am running Tiger as I type and it is sitting quite happily in <400MB.
A 512MB machine will run Tiger quite happily. Yes, more RAM is better but it is by no means as essential as some here are making out.
Defintly 700. I don't think I need to do any housekeeping, this machine is less than a month old.
Sounds about right.
The iBook I'm on now has got 768Mb. I've got Mail and Safari open, and obviously Dashboard is running in the background.
Free RAM? 33Mb.
Currently running:
Finder, Dashboard (11 widgets open), iChat, Stickies, MeetingMaker, Safari (4 tabs), Mail, Terminal (3 ssh connections), BBEdit, ARD Manager, iTunes and Address Book
Memory in use 348MB and it's not paging or struggling.
As I said, yes, more memory is better and yes I agree that a 512MB machine will feel faster if you add more memory but to say that Tiger needs 700MB before you open anything is just plain rubbish. Apple Certified or not, there is something wrong with your setup.
Finder, Dashboard (11 widgets open), iChat, Stickies, MeetingMaker, Safari (4 tabs), Mail, Terminal (3 ssh connections), BBEdit, ARD Manager, iTunes and Address Book
Memory in use 348MB and it's not paging or struggling.
As I said, yes, more memory is better and yes I agree that a 512MB machine will feel faster if you add more memory but to say that Tiger needs 700MB before you open anything is just plain rubbish. Apple Certified or not, there is something wrong with your setup.
No, Tiger does not need more than 512Mb.
What we're saying is the speed increase is massive for a small ram increase.
A freshly booted 512Mb Mac will have that sort of spare RAM. But, visit a few heavily scripted web-sites, open and close a few Apps, it'll soon disappear.
From experience Panther runs better on 512Mb single processor G4.
If you're running Tiger with 512Mb I'd upgrade.
Just sharing my experiences.
What we're saying is the speed increase is massive for a small ram increase.
A freshly booted 512Mb Mac will have that sort of spare RAM. But, visit a few heavily scripted web-sites, open and close a few Apps, it'll soon disappear.
From experience Panther runs better on 512Mb single processor G4.
If you're running Tiger with 512Mb I'd upgrade.
Just sharing my experiences.
Just rebooted - 700mb free. But before that I only had 400mb free, despite no programs being opened (I closed them all). I just opened opera and closed it again, and ended up with 600mb free afterwards. So 100mb has just disapeared? Considering I only had 3 apps open before hand, 16mb free and 12gig paging file seems slightly unreasonable! I think I have a serious memory leak...
magic torch said:
No, Tiger does not need more than 512Mb.
What we're saying is the speed increase is massive for a small ram increase.
No, what you were saying, quite clearly, was that Tiger needs 700MB before you open anything. That's wrong.
magic torch said:
A freshly booted 512Mb Mac will have that sort of spare RAM. But, visit a few heavily scripted web-sites, open and close a few Apps, it'll soon disappear.
My Powerbook G4 at home has been "up" since the last apple security update. The figures for that are very similar to this machine, which has been up for a couple of days and in constant use. Yes, the amount of memory in use will go up over time but it is nothing like 700MB before you open anything and it is perfectly useable in 512MB.
magic torch said:
From experience Panther runs better on 512Mb single processor G4.
Well, your experience is different to mine then. For any given hardware configuration my experience is that each successive release of Mac OS X has actually been faster and more usable. Tiger runs faster than Panther. The only "need" I actually had to add memory to my Powerbook was to prevent swapping when running on battery and so that I could have a big memory cache when using Google Earth.
magic torch said:
If you're running Tiger with 512Mb I'd upgrade.
More memory is always better... it's not always necessary. Tiger will run perfectly well in 512MB. It will feel snappier in 1GB. Whether that is "necessary" depends entirely on your own preference.
magic torch said:
Just sharing my experiences.
Just correcting some misinformation by sharing MY experiences.
mefoster said:
No, what you were saying, quite clearly, was that Tiger needs 700MB
Did I?
Or was it someone else?
Edited to add:
Here are some Xbench results, carried out on a G5 1.6GHz with 768Mb RAM. Higher number is best.
I am not saying this is the definitive answer, but it does show where the differences between the OS. Tiger has been updated since these were carried out, so would perform better.
Jaguar
Panther
Tiger
Overall
122
130 (107%)
133 (102%)
CPU
118
118 (100%)
119 (101%)
Thread
72
76 (106%)
79 (103%)
Memory
199
214 (107%)
217 (101%)
Quartz
156
183 (118%)
198 (108%)
OpenGL
170
159 (93%)
158 (100%)
UI
140
210 (150%)
200 (95%)
Disk
94
92 (98%)
95 (104%)
>> Edited by magic torch on Thursday 11th May 13:15
I've always found:
www.lowendmac.com
useful for working out what you're old machine actually is, and what to do with it.
Then:
www.crucial.com
for a bit of memory (v. cheap, good service, v. helpful website with RAM chooser),
and:
www.apple.com/uk/macosx/techspecs/
To check Tiger will work on your machines.
If you've got to pay, I'd just go for Tiger, unless the machines are for second-tier work (e.g. print servers), and you can get a free Panther disk. Panther's fine, but there's an awful lot of upgrades in Tiger.
www.lowendmac.com
useful for working out what you're old machine actually is, and what to do with it.
Then:
www.crucial.com
for a bit of memory (v. cheap, good service, v. helpful website with RAM chooser),
and:
www.apple.com/uk/macosx/techspecs/
To check Tiger will work on your machines.
If you've got to pay, I'd just go for Tiger, unless the machines are for second-tier work (e.g. print servers), and you can get a free Panther disk. Panther's fine, but there's an awful lot of upgrades in Tiger.
magic torch said:
No, what you were saying, quite clearly, was that Tiger needs 700MB
Did I?
Or was it someone else?
Well, you agreed pretty strongly which is as good as.
magic torch said:
Edited to add:
Here are some Xbench results, carried out on a G5 1.6GHz with 768Mb RAM. Higher number is best.
I am not saying this is the definitive answer, but it does show where the differences between the OS. Tiger has been updated since these were carried out, so would perform better.
[results snipped]
Which pretty much confirms what I said about successive releases performing better.
To answer the original question, my advice would be to buy some extra RAM (more is always better and anyway it's a really cheap upgrade) and go with Tiger.
Thanks Mark.
If you read the posts I posted, you'll see that I said with that spec, I would suggest Panther, unless he wants to upgrade the RAM.
I didn't agree with the 700Mb thing, merely pointed out that Tiger benefits from a RAM increase. This is more the case than Panther, to which 512Mb seems like it's already been upgraded.
The figures show Panther to be faster relating to memory and UI. This means Tiger's user interface was significantly slower than Panthers, and which was better in the memory test?
To reiterate my original advice, go with Panther, or buy extra RAM. Which is nearly the same as you've just said.
Cheers
If you read the posts I posted, you'll see that I said with that spec, I would suggest Panther, unless he wants to upgrade the RAM.
I didn't agree with the 700Mb thing, merely pointed out that Tiger benefits from a RAM increase. This is more the case than Panther, to which 512Mb seems like it's already been upgraded.
The figures show Panther to be faster relating to memory and UI. This means Tiger's user interface was significantly slower than Panthers, and which was better in the memory test?
To reiterate my original advice, go with Panther, or buy extra RAM. Which is nearly the same as you've just said.
Cheers
m12_nathan said:
This is down to the Apps and not the OS.
Micro$oft are the worst from not releasing RAM. IMO.
LOL, yeah, 'cos XP takes 700Mb of RAM with nothing open...
I don't know does it?
I was talking about MS applications on the Mac,
My iBook - 167 Mb free, open and close Word and Excel and now:
89Mb free.
I dunno, where have I said 700Mb? Next time there's a Mac question on here I won't f
g bother PS in my opinion and experience I have found crucial to be the best for the Mac.
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