Connecting iMac G4 PowerPC to iPad

Question

Connecting iMac G4 PowerPC to iPad

Excuse me if there's a thread for this somewhere.

I searched but couldn't find anything relevant.

Asking on behalf of a friend.( Yes, there actually IS a friend..

not my lame way of saying I'm too embarrassed to admit there's

something I dont know 🙂 )

I don't have an iPad and the iMac in question is the old

model that has a dome base with the monitor connected by

a rod. I believe it was called the 'Sunflower' model for

some reason. As an Intel iMac owner with no iPad, I'm

clueless on this. His sys specs are..

Mac OSX 10.4.11
Processor 800Mhz Power PC G4
Memory 512 mb sd Ram

His problem is connectivity. When he uses the cable that

came with the iPad and connects to the ancient iMac, he

can't get iPad to charge. That's not a big problem cos' he

can plug the iPad into the electricity socket and charge

that way. What he really wants to do is transfer MP4 media

and MP3s' from the iMac to the iPad using said cable.

Can he do that? I told him that after connecting one to

the other I would expect to see the iPad icon on the iMac

desktop as an external device, but he says nothing shows.

Any info would be gratefully received.

Thanks.

Posted on Oct 31, 2012 12:08 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

King_Penguin

Level 10

334,144 points

Oct 31, 2012 12:18 PM in response to Comfortably Numb

The iPad doesn't mount as a drive, so it won't appear in Finder or on the desktop. In terms of charging, from here :

The fastest way to charge your iPad is with the included 10W USB Power Adapter. iPad will also charge, although more slowly, when attached to a computer with a high-power USB port (many recent Mac computers) or with an iPhone Power Adapter. When attached to a computer via a standard USB port (most PCs or older Mac computers) iPad will charge, but only when it's in sleep mode

To be able to use iTunes on his Mac to sync content to the iPad he will need to update his OS X version (I'm not an expert on Macs so I don't know if that is possible with that model) - 10.5.8 is the minimum I think (the new iPad 4 requires 10.6.8+)

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Answer 2

Ralph9430

Level 7

21,732 points

Oct 31, 2012 12:23 PM in response to Comfortably Numb

The USB ports on most computers do not provide enough power for efficient charging. Therefore one gets the Not Charging message. The best way to charge the iPad is yo use the charger that came with the iPad and plug it into a known good wall outlet.

iTunes on the computer is used to transfer music, photos, books, PDFs and documents to an iPad. The current version of the iPad operating system is iOS 6 and this requires iTunes 10.7 on the computer. An iMac running OSX 10.4.11 (Tiger) will not run that latest version of iTunes. The oldest version of the Mac OS that iTunes 10.7 will run on is OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Your friend will have to find out if his older iMac can run Snow Leopard but I suspect not.

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Answer 3

Ralph9430

Level 7

21,732 points

Oct 31, 2012 12:31 PM in response to Comfortably Numb

After I posted I noticed that King Penguin had also posted so I took a look at that post and read the OP again. Unfortunately the iPad will not connect to any Mac running OSX 10.4.11. If the iPad has iOS 5.1.1 or lower on it you can connect it to an older Mac running Mac OSX 10.5.8 (Leopard) and iTunes 10.6.x.

Unfortunately OSX 10.4.11 (Tiger) is the latest version of Mac OSX that a G4 Power Mac with an 800 MHz processor can run.

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