The Information Super Highway could easily be called the Misinformation Super Parking Lot. Or, Junk Yard. One thing is for sure, Matt Freestone doesn’t know squat about Macs. He says Mac users have to buy new Macs to run OS X Leopard. How old is your Mac?

In reading one of the most poorly written, illogical and unreasonable articles about Macs vs. Windows PCs, or Leopard vs. Vista, I came away with two thoughts.

First, some people shouldn’t be allowed to write about that which they do not know. Second, old Macs seems to run Leopard quite well (contrary to poor Matt’s assertions to the contrary).

Matt is just on a rant, low on medication, or high on something other than facts and research. ”How many users do you know that own a 3 year old Mac, and install Leopard on it? The silence is deafening.”

Sigh. No, Matt, it’s not. Many, many, many Mac users with non-Intel Macs run Leopard just fine. Without a clue, Matt only makes his ignorance look worse.

Matt must have something crawling in his shorts at night to come up with beauties like this one: ”All the Mac OS’s through it’s life cycle have been hardware dependant.  In other words, for the most part, you bought a new PC to get the new Mac OS.”

Fortunately, the Information Super Highway has traffic cops. What Matt doesn’t know and didn’t bother to find out is that Macs back to slower than 1Ghz run OS X Leopard as well or better than OS X Jaguar.

Ron has a 1Ghz PowerBook G4 which started life as Jaguar, went to Panther, then Tiger, now runs Leopard. He swears it runs better than ever and has never crashed using Leopard.

Matt continues, ”Mac OS’s have never been designed with backward compatibility (hardware wise) in mind.” I’m beginning to think there is something to euthanasia.

Wait! Just when you thought your head had cleared, Matt continues anew: ”How many Mac users have wanted to install Leopard on a 3 year old Mac, and if they do, how many complain about it’s performance?  They don’t because they knew it would be horrible.”

Alright, so Matt can’t get a clue at a Free Clue Festival, but we can excuse him because there have been budget cuts which affect the disadvantaged.

In the meantime, give due consideration to something buried deep within Matt’s premise of new operating systems running on old computers, specifically, Mac OS X Leopard running on an old Mac, pre-Intel, PowerPC variety, perhaps a Mac that started life on Jaguar, or Panther, or Tiger.

How does your old Mac run now compared to the previous or original Mac OS X?

I have the same experience as Ron. My 1 Ghz PB G4 runs awesome with Leopard. Actually, it runs better, since Airport is more robust.

I did try to shoehorn Leopard (with some free utility) into a 2002 lampshade iMac (800 Mhz). It did install and I was excited. The performance was far better than I expected. But then I started getting strange disk error messages that shortly led to the computer ceasing to function. That was 10.5 and since we are nearing 10.5.3, I think it’s worth giving it another go. Just for fun.

Out of all the 2002 iMacs we bought, every single one of them is running just fine as we pass them down to other family members. How long do hard drives last? One has a nearly dead PRAM battery, but I’m way out of AppleCare.

I read that article and kept wondering, how bad does this guy have to trash Apple in order to make Vista look better? Amazingly, the entire article was false. Now he just looks inept and Vista still sucks.

I have Leopard 10.5.2 running smoothly on a PowerMac G4 Cube with its original 450MHz processor. According to its serial no., it was produced in the first week of November 2000, making it 7 1/2 years old.

I’ve upgraded the RAM (to 1.5GB for ~$80), hard disk (160MB 7200RPM for $54) and video card (to a Core Image-supported nVidia Geforce 6200 - Mac-flashed for $77) and use it in the bedroom (where a silent computer is welcomed) for email (Mail.app), web-surfing (Safari and Firefox), office apps (Office v.X, NeoOffice, Microsoft RDC), iTunes and iPhoto. I’ve also used iMovie HD (v5 and v6) but I do most video editing and DVD burning on faster Macs. With the faster video card, Time Machine, Front Row, and DVD Player work perfect.

I’ve considered dropping a faster CPU in it, but for now it does the basics fine. If I start using applications that need a faster processor (I keep meaning to try out Garageband and iChat), I’ll spring for a faster CPU.

Leopard is also running happily on these other systems in my house:

2003 eMac 1GHz
2001 PowerMac G4 867MHz w/64MB video card
2000 PowerMac G4 450MHz w/32MB video card

Seriously, what an idiot. I have a 722MHz G4 which runs Leopard better than it ever ran Jaguar, or Panther, or Tiger, and I think it came with one of the original OS X’s, code named Kitty or Puma or whatever cat was popular back in the day.

Matt knows not of what he speaks but his web site probably got a few extra hits.

The poor guy probably doesn’t understand that whenever Apple releases a new ‘cat’ that those tens of thousands of people standing in line the first weekend of the release aren’t there to buy new Macs. They’re in line to buy the new cat to put on their old Macs.

Pity us, Matt.

I also have it running on a PM G4 450 from 00.  Runs fine.  My response to Matt would be what about Vista?  Seems to me I have heard it doesn’t run well on new hardware, much less stuff that is 7 years old.

Uh oh, we may have overloaded their server with replies. Perhaps its running vista. In any case, it took forever for it to accept my little tidbit. Was interesting to see Matt was trying to defend himself many times, calling us Apple Fanboys. He’s afraid of the facts.

I posted this info to Matt’s comments section.  But, apparently his version of open and free discussion requires that he read the comments before they are allowed to appear.

I run Leopard on a 2001 PowerMacG4 733 (Digital Audio).  It runs fine.  Machine was my primary one until last fall when I “inherited” my son’s 2007 MacBook Pro and repaired its busted screen.  Now the PMG4 serves primarily as an easy to manage family file server.  It runs rock solid.  With the stock gigabit Ethernet, file sharing performance is awesome.  But performance is still good enough to meet many needs when I leave the MacBook Pro downstairs.  Other Leopard features (screen sharing, Time Machine) are gravy.

With regard to overall longevity of various Macs and newer OSes.  I’ve run OSX (10.3) on many G3 machines that were supposedly inadequate.  These include a Rev B iMac (1998) and an original clamshell iBook (1999).  Maxing out the machine with memory from third party suppliers goes a long way toward getting acceptable performance and useful longevity from any Mac.

With regard to Vista (installed on a PC that shares keyboard and screens with the PMG4 and MacBook Pro)… Microsoft still doesn’t get it when it comes to simplicity and elegance.  Many human factors have still eluded Vista’s designers.  The implementation of “User Account Control” as a supposed security enhancement is so poor, I’ve had it turned off for months.  Control Panels and dialog boxes remain poorly organized and crowded with unnecessary options.

Matt should stick to writing on subjects he knows.

Its interesting that in the comments he doesn’t actually address the comment that someone is posting.  All he does is remark about how he is stirring up the apple fanboys...there are a lot of posts from people running Leopard on old hardware, and he just ignores that fact.  I would like to know how many people are running Vista (the whole vista, not just bits of it) on 3 year old hardware.  At least with Leopard you get the whole OS not some bits and not others…