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Downgrade to Tiger??

I was wondering if anyone with the Air has tried "downgrading" to Tiger & how it effects performance?

Leopard IMO is a bit of a pain & a resource hog, especially on slower machines. I bet Tiger would run circles around Leopard on the Air & make it much more snappy & usable. Anyone know for sure? Thanks.

MacBook 1.83GHz Core Duo w/ 802.11n, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 15, 2008 7:46 PM

18 replies

Feb 16, 2008 7:00 PM in response to Community User

Kerry Bailey wrote:
I didn't start the sarcasm. It just seems to be a common theme on these boards, especially when there's even a hint of someone who is GASP displeased with an Apple product.


Actually, yes, you did. As you so helpfully pointed out, what I posted was already covered, meaning you got your answer. While the poster you responded to may have been making light of the situation, you felt it necessary to escalate it and be a smarta$$ to put him in his place. Good job.

And I should "find this stuff out for myself"? What are we all doing here then?? Isn't this forum for exchanging information & ideas?? You know, thats kind of what forums are usually for.


Yes, you should. There is a search function on these forums. Your question of downgrading to an earlier OS is in no way novel or earth shattering. And it doesn't matter that your question is about a Macbook Air; the general concept and restrictions apply to any recent Macintosh.

And maybe you can afford to blow some money on a MBA to test these things out, but I cant, so I was wondering if anyone here has even tried it. And no, genius. The magical Google doesn't have any answers to this question, thanks for the tip.


Why would I blow money on an MBA to test something you're interested in? Don't need an MBA, nor do I even want one. Now you're telling us you don't have the machine is question -- You don't even have an MBA, yet you're already assuming it won't run Leopard to your satisfaction? Give me a break.
And yes, there are potential solutions on Google. Just because it doesn't explicitly apply to the MBA doesn't mean you can't learn anything from them.

BTW, everything you went over has already been discussed, so why even chime in?? Oh, thats right, to put me in my place. Good job.


LOL....

Feb 16, 2008 11:25 PM in response to Duffy

Kerry,

I asked this same question a few days ago, and I DO have a MBA. My issue was the USB incompatibility of a particular device.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1396267&tstart=30

I got the same answer as you did on this forum...as in--Don't try it. I don't feel like going against the wisdom generated by the Apple support site with my brand new $1800 MBA. Squawk Squawk! I'm chicken, I admit. I'll wait until some else blazes the trail...hacks the necessary drivers or something and comes back to tell us all on how to do it. And I'm not holding my breath...

Leopard is actually pretty snappy on this machine. I haven't had any other USB issues other than the one I mentioned in my thread. I even used an WD passport I had laying around (journaled, of course) for the Time Machine backup drive, and that worked ok. Transfering pictures on some generic SD reader went ok, too.

If your reason to back grade to Tiger is to get a performance boost, again, I'm pretty happy with Leopard on this thing.

But...could I partition the puny 80g drive and install Tiger on the partition? Ir really do want to get my iCap working.

Feb 17, 2008 12:11 AM in response to LLSIII

Thanks for the insight. I have no doubt Leopard runs pretty well on the Air, but I wanted to see how it performs against Tiger. Tiger is a bit more light weight & is better at memory management on "slower" machines as I understand it.

Only thing I truly have against Leopard is its still in its "beta" stage & I personally find it a bit buggier than any other version of OS X I can remember at this stage of development (well, except for Cheetah/Puma YIKES!). I do have some design issues with it, but thats more nit picky. But, I like the MBA hardware, just not in love with Leopard yet. So, Tiger on the Air would be good for me.

Anyways,you could partition your internal drive if you wanted. Or better yet, partition one of your external USB drives & install a C2D MacBook recovery version of Tiger on that & try to boot from it. At least you'll know if its even possible.

Downgrade to Tiger??

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