Is OSX 10.4.9 Universal Binary ?

BimBam · #1 April 12th, 2007, 01:38 PM

I've made a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of my iMac Core 2 Duo's internal disk on a FireWire external disk, and I can boot my iMac from it without any problem. The System is OSX 10.4.9.

The question is : can I use my 10.4.9 external drive to boot an iMac G5 in order to repair its internal disk ?

In other words, are OSX 10.4.9, and the accompanying software (Disc Utility, for example) Universal Binairies ?

Thanks in advance !

**Captain Code** · #2 April 12th, 2007, 02:00 PM

No you can't do that unfortunately. I think with Leopard you will be able to but the installer disk installs either PPC or Intel versions of the OS.

webexplorer · #3 April 25th, 2007, 01:10 PM

I am very confused about Universal Binary. Does this mean that it works with PPC?

If it would have said that it is for Intel Mac computers, then they can install a software that only works with the Intel.

I am planning to upgrade a Grammarian Pro X for my PPC G5 desktop. But, I am afraid that it would screw up my OS X if the upgrade software is the wrong one.

I appreciate it that you explain it to me clearly. Thank you.

**Captain Code** · #4 April 25th, 2007, 01:18 PM

If it's universal it means the application bundle contains code to run on both PPC and Intel Macs.

nixgeek · #5 April 26th, 2007, 01:33 PM

Right now, the retail version of Mac OS X Tiger is only for PowerPC. The only Intel versions are the OEM discs that come with the Macs. Leopard should be able to install on both a PowerPC and Intel Mac. I'm not sure how they are going to do it, but I imagine it might detect your architecture and install the native version of the OS for your system.

As for a Universal Binary (UB), that only refers to applications and not the operating system. A UB application has the code to support both platforms (similar to "fat" binaries that were created during the 90s during the CPU transition from 680x0 to PowerPC). While this does tend to make the application larger in size, there are quite a few third party applications (TrimTheFat is one) that can extract the correct code for your architecture and remove the excess data, thus making the application smaller in size.