What about Panther on old G4's

Scott_Bernard

El flaco de la loca mac
I have a G4 350 (see my signature) and I'd like switch to OS X
I work with Photoshop, Illustrator and Cinema 4D and jaguar just doesn't work for me...
So what can I expect of Panther?

Thanks for your help :)
MACOSX.COM is very helpfull for me !!!
 
ppl generally say, that it's the fastest os for at least G4 machines. But this has a cost: lot of ram. If ram is not the limiting factor for your machine (as I see you have enough) it should be the better os for your work.
 
I have an iMac G3 with a 600mhz clock and 256mb of ram, and if I can live with 10.2 (I even do a little photoshop and can play medal of honor just fine at all the low settings), Your machine will be fine running panther. In pre-releases panther seems to be incredibly fine tuned, most people have noticed panther is quite a bit faster.
 
Apps are a lot more responsive in 10.3 on my G4 400. OS 9 menus and apps scream along on this machine UI wise but after using OS X for so long, OS 9 seems so antiquated.
 
If Jaguar "just doesn't work" for you, then neither will Panther. If "Mac OS X just is too slow" for you, then even with the speed enhancements, Panther won't be good for you. It's still OS X and works differently than OS 9, if that's your reference. If you get your work done better/faster in OS 9 than in Jaguar, then I'd stay there.
 
Well, sorry to say, but you CAN'T expect OSX Jaguar/Panther to run as fast as OS 9 on a 350MHz G4(if that's what you are asking about). I run it on a 400MHz G4 and that is my only Mac that I use all the time(besides the 9500 mail server running OSX!).

While all/most the UNIX things in the system run screaming fast because there is no GUI, the Aqua GUI is much more complicated so it's going to run slower.

With newer G4s and G5s this isnt as much of an issue so you can't really expect Apple to cater to 4+ year old machines.

Panther does improve some things in application performance, but the UI is always going to be slower on the same machine compared to OS 9's UI.
 
Still, I think you _should_ get used to OSX's sluggishness in UI, as in productivity, Panther more than makes up for it. You seem to have enough RAM on your Yikes!, too. I'd give it a go. Try to adapt to OS X and forget about what you knew about OS 9 for a while. It's worth it.
 
Yea, you are right... is a new OS
a new interface and a new way to work...
I must acept that...

Thanks a lot for your information :)
 
I think that every person that claims that OS X "just doesn't cut it" on their machine should, at least, TRY the new versions of OS X coming out... this isn't Windows, where every release actaully slows down (like from NT to 2000 to XP). The speed bump from 10.0 to 10.1 was phenomenal, and, likewise, 10.1 to 10.2... I see nothing BUT speed increases from 10.2 to 10.3. It's clear that Apple has discovered a lot of bottlenecks in their implementation of UNIX and is fixing/speeding up those processes with every release.

Would you tell someone disappointed with the speed of OS 10.1 to just forget about 10.2?
 
Hehe... mas o menos... a little here and there, enough to find a beer, a broad and a bathroom... ;)

I used to live in Cuernavaca, Mexico, but haven't had the need to speak Spanish since I went to Cancun four years ago...
 
from what i have heard panther should speed up every mac accross the board, as long as u nice quantity of RAM (osx loves ram lol).

Bueno, lo que te quiero decir, es que panther es mas rapido que jaguar (30-40% mas rapido segun dicen). Mientra que tengas RAM estas bien maestro no te calentes. Aunque un "update" al procesador no le haria mal. Yo soy Argentino tambien, pero hace un tiempo que vivo en Miami, tengo una powerbook de 12, y tambien estoy esperando panther. Chau.
 
Sebaz: Bien...

I find Jaguar slow to work with on my iMac, but it is still useable. The main reason I don't use it is because my Classic environment has a hole in it, and I use a good bit of Classic-compatible applications which run better in OS 9 anyway. But I would expect Panther to run much more quickly on my system than Jaguar. And I would expect it for yours as well.
 
Sebaz, que alegria encontrar un argentino en el foro :) y ademas maquero :)
Realmente espero que esa bendita pantera me deje usar photoshop, illustrator y algunas cositas mas, la verdad, es que no anda tan mal Jaguar, pero no se justifica hacer el cambio ahora ya que el OS 9 corre muy bien en mi Mac. Por otro lado, no me quiero desactualizar, pero si usar X significa que mi Mac sea como mi vieja PC... NO WAY!!!
En X tengo que esperar que una orden se ejecute para hacer lo siguiente, OS 9 me tiene que esperar a mi :)
Como sea, si sos argentino sabras que aca las Macs no cuestan lo mismo que alla, asi que, por el momento seguire trabajando con OS 9 y de tanto en tanto probar el OS X para ver que tal esta...
Gracias por la data :)

ElDiabloConCaca, I hope you understand me... Me gustaria saber para que usas tu Mac, y como te responde OS X especialmete en Photoshop e Illustrator. Porque tenemos Macs similares y yo quería ponerle un upgrade de 500 Mhz...

Arden: Muy bien... :) I agree with you, some apps just don't work well in 10.2, perhaps things change in 10.3 :)
 
si mira, como vos decis, 9 va a ser much mas rapido que cualquier version de X, porque X con todo el GUI y esa cosa es mucho para el procesador para que aguante. Quedate con 9, para hacer cosas importante, tu trabajo, u usa panther para ser cosas no "tan" importante. Eso lo que pienso yo...bueno che cuidate chau.
 
Well, let's see... my Spanish is a bit rusty, but I think you're asking me what I like to use my machine for, specifically if I use PhotoShop and Illustrator, and you have some similar Macs to mine that you'd like to upgrade... whew! I'm still in the slow-spanish-speaking phase where I have to translate in my head -- it doesn't come naturally yet, but with practice it will... ;)

Anyways, yes, PhotoShop and Illustrator run fine on this machine. I'm not saying they're speed demons -- Illustrator leaves me wanting a little more speed sometimes, but both are VERY usable. Here's some advice: if you have Illustrator, make sure you update it to the very latest version (by searching on versiontracker.com) because the initial release has SEVERE speed problems. I believe the current version is 10.0.3. PhotoShop runs as expected, not blazing fast, but usable.

I'm torn on recommending a 500MHz upgrade to you and telling you to save for a new machine. I didn't see much of an "in-your-face" speed boost by going from 400 to 500MHz, but I can tell there's some "behind-the-scenes" speeding up going on. Filters are faster, encoding music is faster, but as for the UI and "perceived" speed, there's not much increase. Sonnet Tech. has a 700 and 1000MHz ZIF upgrade, but they don't work in the G4 Yikes! machines yet -- only beige G3s, but I email back and forth with a gentleman named Scott there, and he says they're definitely working on getting both those upgrade to work in a G4 Yikes! machine... how long until that is? No one knows...

If you've got the cash to spend, go ahead and upgrade to 500MHz. owcomputing.com has a 500MHz upgrade for around $260, but I went with Sonnet just because I've had good experiences with their products (I also have an ATA/100 card running two more hard drives from them, and it runs flawlessly and fast!).

Next step for me is a G5. I've been saving for a while, and have a while to go, but I think that's the next step -- no more upgrades to this machine.

I'll have to disagree with sebaz on his statement, though... I find OS X MUCH more stable than OS 9, and I would rather do my important stuff in OS X rather than 9 simply because of the "trustworthiness" of it. The speed decrease in the UI from 9 to X isn't much of a factor to me -- yeah, it takes me a millisecond or two longer to do something in X, but I'm good at navigating the UI of both systems -- I'm not one of those people who goes searching through the menus and what-not looking for what I need -- I know where the stuff is I need and I go directly to it. I wouldn't say my productivity has decreased in X from 9, and I wouldn't say it takes any longer either. I'm sticking with X from here on out. No more 9 for me. If you stick with outdated technologies, you're bound to be MORE disappointed than if you jump on the train and follow the new technologies, even if that means using it on an underpowered system. The speed of OS X is catching up now, and I think that there will be no need to go back to 9 once Panther is released.
 
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