Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >
Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >
Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply
ask a new question.
Eventually, the software "upgrade path" will come to a dead end for all Mac models.
In terms of user functionality and interface, Snow Leopard is not very different from Leopard. Apple will support Leopard with updates for at least as long as Snow Leopard is the latest Mac OS X version, probably longer, considering they just released updates for Tiger. If Apple had to end PowerPC support on some Mac OS X release, this is a good one to do it on because the user experience changes so little between Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Software support from developers will continue for at least as long, except that there is a trend to go Intel-only. That limitation is based on hardware, not the version of Mac OS X being used.
And there are some advantages to knowing that your version of Mac OS X will remain stable and mostly unchanged going forward. Use your PowerPC iMac for as long as it is useful in terms of performance, then get a new (or newer) Mac. From the user perspective, the purpose of the OS is to manage your hardware, manage your files, and run programs. Leopard does those things just fine; it does not suddenly become obsolete because Snow Leopard is released.
1. RAM.
2. Hard drive.
3. USB. Hard drives (not bootable), scanners, musical equipment, digital still camera, compressed video camcorders, printers, modems, fax machines, MIDI equipment.
4. Firewire. Hard drives, scanners, musical equipment, video camcorders compressed and uncompressed, file sharing with other Macs, target disk mode with other Macs, Migration Assistant with other PowerPC Macs.
5. Ethernet. Network hard drives, routers, modems.
6. WiFi 802.11b and 802.11g for wireless networking to AppleTVs, Apple Airport base stations, and numerous third party wireless routers.
7. Mini-Toslink. Digital audio 5.1 speakers systems, and multichannel digital audio input.
And that's just the iMac G5. PowerMac G5s have variety of PCI cards which can offer fiberoptic networking, extra SATA hard drives, and better graphics card support.
About the only thing you can't do with an iMac G5 and PowerMac G5s are native Windows support, and a few modern software packages, but most have older software counterparts. The question becomes what do you want to do with your computer? Is there a software out there that does what you need? If there is, there is no reason to let it sit and collect dust.
