Leopard is slow on my Power Mac G5

I finally got a few design projects out of the way and thought it would be safe to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I backed everything up installed the new system and have been disappointed ever since.

I’m using a PowerPC Macintosh and I’m finding that Leopard is slow! A dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 with 2 GB RAM running Leopard feels underpowered.

A day after upgrading my system, Adobe Photoshop CS2 wouldn’t work. For the first time ever I encountered this dreaded message.

I ponied up $199.00 and downloaded the Photoshop CS3 upgrade. The installer wouldn’t run. The Photoshop CS3 Beta that I installed earlier in the year was conflicting with the final release (even though I uninstalled the application after the beta expired).

I’m guessing that a lot of people ran into the same problems that I did because Adobe has a page on their site for the Adobe CS3Clean Script which removes any trace of a Photoshop CS3 Beta install. This software worked and allowed me to proceed with my Photoshop CS3 installation.

After the installation I clicked on my shiny new Photoshop CS3 icon and waited. I watched the icon bounce and bounce and then in stopped. Photoshop refused to start. Groan.

Instead of putting my fist through my Cinema Display I went for a Cocktail — Mac OS X disk utility software. Before this would work I had to download the Leopard-compatible version. More Leopard updates. Groan.

After a restart, running Cocktail, and another restart, my old G5 was happy again. Photoshop CS3 launched right away and I was back in business. This was a 3 hour ordeal.

Leopard seems to run a little faster now but I think my tired G5 will have to step aside for an Intel-based Mac Pro computer. I’m just not sure I’m ready for a 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro.

Posted in Apple and OS X Software at 2:35 PM