[Tsilou B.]

Has anyone had a chance to check if iLife '06 and iWork '06 do no longer work at all on G3 Macs or if the new requirements only mean that Apple thinks that G3's are simply too slow?

[mattmarshall]

I tried to instlal it on a G3, and it gave me an error saying I needed a G4.

Any way around it?

- Matt

[Tsilou B.]

If it's using an installer package, you could try Pacifist from

http://www.charlessoft.com/

to get around the check in the Installer.

[Tsilou B.]

Noone here who could test it on a G3?

I'm thinking about creating an Altivec emulator for G3s if it's really true that important applications like iLife and iWork do no longer work on G3s.

[hanxu]

mm, I think even if it works on G3, it will be very very slow, my pbook G4 1.5Ghz 1Gig ram just about to run iwork & ilife 06

[mjarski15]

hopefully I will try it in a couple of days, my friend is buying iLife '06 and I ask him if I could try it, to see if it works, before I buy it. Look at the sig for the G3 specs

[poocat]

It says no G3, but I'm about to try pacifist, so I'll post back.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Even with an Altivec emulator most iLife '06 apps would be impossibly slow. GarageBand is already fairly slow on a 2x800MHz G4. You'd never get anything accomplished in that app with a G3.

iMovie HD 6 and iPhoto 6 both make extensive use of CoreImage/CoreVideo. If you don't have a GPU that is capable of vertex-shading (I really doubt you'd have one in a G3), these apps are going to be slow also. iPhoto 6 isn't too bad with a GPU without vertex-shading *but* that's only because CoreImage drops to Altivec when you don't have one. Since the calculations only have to be done on still images in iPhoto, it's ok...but running iMovie HD 6 without such a GPU is suicide (even on my 2x800MHz G4.) Forget using CoreImage or CoreVideo effects in iPhoto 6 and (especially) iMovie HD 6 if you're going to use an Altivec emulator. And you can forget using iPhoto 6 and iMovie HD 6 altogether if Tsilou never manages to write the Altivec emulator.

Three apps simply won't work on the G3 unless an Altivec emualator is created...and these 3 apps are going to be impossibly slow *with* the emulator.

[poocat]

Ok. iPhoto works, BUT the edit window doesn't work, presumably because it depends (as Horsepoo!!! says) on CoreImage and Altivec/GPU acceleration. Having said all that, it's actually quite responsive, far more than 5. Looks better too, although we all know that style is a 4 year trend.

I didn't even bother trying to install the other apps, because I have no use for them on my laptop. But anyway, thought I'd let you all know that Pacifist will install iPhoto, at least, on a G3. Actually, now that I'm playing with it, it's fine. The edit window isn't important, cause I can just maximize the normal view, and that'll let me check the photos just fine. Sweet. Faster, no dedicated file structure necessary (FINALLY) and nicer looking. That'll do for the couple of months I need this G3 for travel.

[ben.mcguire]

So you can choose the apps you want to install?

[kcmac]

Originally Posted by ben.mcguire

So you can choose the apps you want to install?

You can select in iLife 05 as well. Click on the customize button during the install process. I kept everything but iPhoto off of our G3 iMac. Might try this as well with iPhoto 6.

[ElkAin'tMoose]

I've had good success with GarageBand 2 on an iBook G3 900MHz with 640MB RAM, using it for one-track input and simple editing/podcasting. Anyone have any success with GB3 on a G3 iBook? I've installed it with Pacifist, but it only bounces and quits. I was sort of hoping it might be a glitch in my system... I didn't care if it ran kind of slow; it would just be nice to use the same version of GB on my desktop and laptop.

[Spirit_VW]

iLife would not install on my G3 iBook, but after installing it on my eMac I did copy iWeb over to the iBook, and it runs fine.

iWork '06, though, didn't pop up any warnings and installed perfectly. Works fine.

[Tsilou B.]

So it looks like iWork '06 and iWeb run fine, while iPhoto 6 runs even faster on the G3 than iPhoto 5, but the editing mode doesn't work.
The other applications would probably really be too slow: GarageBand always required a G4 for software instruments (maybe the Podcasting studio could work on G3s), iDVD always required a G4 for everything and iMovie always required a G4 for HD movies (maybe it could theoretically work (slowly) with standard resolution movies).

So the question is: Are the editing mode in iPhoto 6, the Podcasting studio in GB and maybe iMovie 6 worth writing an Altivec emulator? Apple used to offer their own Altivec emulator for G3s before the G4s came out so that developers could adapt their applications to Altivec without having a G4 Mac. Of course, that was back in the OS 8.X days and so the emulator will only run in OS 8.X, but it shows that it should be possible to write something similar for OS X.

[msuper69]

Geez, just get a G4 already.

[Tsilou B.]

If you have a single G3 Mac, then it's probably a good idea to buy a G4, G5 or an Intel Mac. But if your family owns 5 G3 Macs which are only used for iTunes, iPhoto, word processing, surfing and e-mail (and everyone is happy with their speed), then it's a bit more expensive to buy 5 new Macs than to buy a family pack of iWork '06 and iLife '06.

[sgi02]

G4 Upgrades for oldworld Mac's are pretty cheap on eBay.

[sgi02]

G4 Upgrades for oldworld Mac's are pretty cheap on eBay.