Upgrading to Yosemite from Leopard
A friend gave me an older iMac® G4 (2007) with Leopard and I'd like to upgrade to Yosemite. What do I need and do?
1. Give up. A PowerPC G4 or G5 Mac can’t be upgraded past Leopard 10.5.8.
(120375)
4 replies
there is no 2007 iMac G4. Anyway, if your iMac is a "G3" G4 or G5, you can't upgrade to Yosemite, it's too old.
I you are unsure about the actual model (you do have a severe conflict between the processor type and the year you report) you can enter the serial number into this web site:
http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/
and it will translate the number into a model designator. You can also do "About this Mac" from your Apple menu to get this window:
If the "processor" line includes the phrase "PowerPC" as in the image, there is no way under the sun to run any Mac OS higher than 10.5.8. Is it IS a 2007 iMac, it may be able to run Yosemite but your will need to max out the RAM and performance could still be sluggish.
The only 2007 iMac that can run 10.10 is the mid-2007 (from August 7th) model. That said, upgrading it past 10.6.8 has these pitfalls:
Upgrading to Yosemite from Leopard