[pendragon]

Is this requirement based on some operational necessity or is it merely that Apple wishes to phase out support of the older machines?

In that vein, were one to remove their hard drive from a legacy machine (such as a Lombard), install it in a current/approved/compatible machine, and then installed Tiger on it, would it work when replaced back in the Lombard, e.g., is the issue with the install procedure or does it relate to something else?

[siMac]

[Hi I'm Ben]

Maybe because it shouldn't be installed on those machines because it's too slow but some people will eventually Find a work around and install it on there anyway because they're presistant and they'll pretend it works just fine when it's slow as hell and their machine should have been retired to OS 9 a long time ago.

[OptimusG4]

Meh, the same reason they required built in USB for Panther.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by OptimusG4:
Meh, the same reason they required built in USB for Panther.

Not really. Built-in USB was an easy way to tell which machines used the New World architecture. Old World machines didn't come with USB. The difference between a USB machine and a non-USB machine is huge - it's a whole different architecture. The built-in FireWire, though, seems a bit arbitrary, because there's not really that much of a difference between a FireWire machine and a non-FireWire machine.

Heck, on some machines, Apple had FireWire as an option on different variations of the same model. Take the first batch of slot-loading iMacs, for example. FireWire was an option that separated the different variants of the same model. The difference between the low-end iMac and the mid-range iMac DV was as follows: A 50 MHz faster processor, a 20 MHz faster backside bus, a DVD-ROM instead of a CD-ROM drive, a 4 GB bigger hard drive, and FireWire ports. Not a dramatic difference by any means.

Not that I'm upset much at this, of course, since Macs without either a built-in CD burner or FireWire ports are basically useless anyway.

[Mediaman_12]

Perhaps it's an attempt to just weed out the older slower Mac's.
It's seams a dumb segregation though. The Yikes! G4's had onboard Firewire but only have a 350mhz processor and really struggle with Panther. Yet there is also faster G3 iMac's with onboard Firewire too.

[Brass]

As with any other manufacturer, Apple does not want to support machines that are ancient. They need to draw the line with what machines will be supported with each release of the OS.

However, being the user-friendly computer company, Apple does not wants to make it easy for users to determine if their computer is supported or not. So instead of giving a technical description of what is really required to run Tiger, or just a long list of supported and unsupported machines, they've provided a quick easy way for even most novices to instantly dertermine if their machine is supported or not.

This method of defining support almost certainly excludes some models of Macintosh that will in fact run Tiger perfectly well, but "built-in FireWire" is the most convenient way for Apple to draw a line that novice users can compare withe their Macs.

So, in summary: Apple are willing to exclude some old Macs from the list of supported machines, in order to make the list trivially easy to to define an interpret even though those Macs may run Tiger fine.

[tooki]

Use the existing Tiger Requirements thread, k!

tooki