Think of this as a warning if you're considering upgrading to Tiger on an iMac or iBook built before late 2001. I've seen a flood of machines come in since a good deal of our schools upgraded to Mac OS 10.4- and they all have the same fault. Yes, their firmware was updated. We do all the OS installs in-store here and update the firmware before going past 9.1.
So what happens?
Machines appear to function fine. They boot up happily into the OS and work as per normal. But they experience kernel panics, black screens or just blatant system lockups at random times, regardless of temperature, workload, application, attached peripherals... And once they're off, they don't turn back on. Generally waiting a few hours then trying again will make 'em come back to life.
BUT. With the clamshell iBooks, it slowly gets worse, and after a few days they never turn on again. Won't even get into Open Firmware.
Be careful with Tiger. I'm not saying you shouldn't use it, but it has killed about 8 known iBooks so far and made a truckload of iMacs unreliable machines.
Firmware updates are good, but don't appear to help this time. It's about time Apple stepped in and did something.
well, actually i made some similar experience, but with newer mac's like the last years 1,8GHz dual g5 machines or imac g5's. suddenly the mac's had hangups on a regular basis, also some kernel panics and other problems...
they worked fine and without any problems on 10.3, so the problem can't be on the hardware side.
it's a little bit frustrating to me. at least on my machine 10.4 works without any problems, no troubles so far!
Thats funny on my B&W g4 500 under 10.2 I had the most crashes and it lessend ubder 10.3 and under 10.4 I haven't had any yet..
I've used it on a variety of machines ranging from a Lombard 333 to my Aluminum 1.5ghz, and no issues so far. My clamshell 466 works like a top with it. Though, I replaced the 10gb hard drive that was dying. So far, on my Lombard 333, B&W 350, iMac DV 400, iBook SE 466fw, iMac 600 (at work), iBook G4, and PowerBook G4 1.5 no issues. Nothing so much as kernel panics or freezing. Though on older machines, bad ram and hard drives that are on their way out may be causes for these issues, exacerbated by 10.4 . Though I have a rule at home that if the machine is <400 mhz, it will not have anything greater than 10.2.8 installed on it. 10.3 and 10.4 run fine, but are kinda slow on these machines.
- iantm
That's 'cuz you are running a G4. If you try this on an early iMac or iBook, it would be a G3.
This is exactly why I have reverted my machines (I have one of both) back to 9.2.2 and am keeping it there! The only thing I will allow to run X is my wife's flatpanel/hemisphere iMac cuz it shipped with it.
I'd like to remind everyone that I'm referring specifically to iBooks 300MHz through 466MHz and all iMacs before G4, all having recently had firmware updates to 4.1.7 and 4.1.9 respectively.
Not all machines are afftected by this nasty disease, but the ones that are(at this point) can't be saved by firmware tinkering OR reverting to Panther(or OS 9 for that matter). If booted into OS 9 they exhibit similar behaviour, freezing up or going black-screened at random. It's beyond a software issue, it gets right into the logic board and stays there.
ok, so you think that it is a specific iBook issue. well, i didn't have any problems with iBooks, neither older versions (300MHz and above) or newer ones from 900MHz on. maybe it was only the production row out of a "faulty" series that your school purchased? nevertheless, didn't experience similar problems with iBooks, as stated above only with other macs.
...by the way, i don't have any suggestions on how to solve that problem either. seems you've tried everything possible to bring them back to life...
cheers, chris
* - crinckling sound as takes out tin foil hat and place back on head - *
Perhaps this is part of Apple's evil plans to force their loyal Mac fans to upgrade to a new machine and the forthcoming intelMacs. By spreading new OS that works like a deadly virus on older Macs, they force you to thin your herds and leave you with useless hardware. You will be forced to buy new stuff, or go back to the 68k world. tiger kills G3s, I bet X.5 will kill G4s. Mark my words, the end is nigh!!! The 68k's will rise again!!!!
I think the resale value of my Quadra 950 just doubled.
I have a PM 8500 or two that I can sell you for just under a grand 
(actually more like just under $100) but you get my drift.
* - takes hat off and returns it to shelf next to large mason jar containing succesful attempt at cold fusion - *
Twice nothing is still nothing. ;^b
--Peace
My B&W G3 and iMac DV are running Tiger just fine.
Seems to be stable enough on the internal fast IDE bus...
but on my SCSI card... I thought it was ok, but the install slowly deteriorated until it wouldn't boot. Same thing with firewire (using the XPostFacto beta)... weird problems, like the finder continually restarting itself... but it could just be XPostFacto a little buggy.
On my G4 12" DVI laptop, I have been experiencing some weird behavior, but better under 10.4.2... but still, some strange stuff... Safari crashing, other apps... I guess I'm waiting to test 10.4.3 before giving up and switching back to Panther.
I am a little annoyed at the bugginess of 10.4. It's like starting all over again! Panther was stable as a rock by 10.3.2, and by 10.3.8 it was so perfect (10.3.9 made some weird behavior in Safari, like when using the shift--arrows to jump between tabs... worked always in 10.3.8, but in 10.3.9 and in Tiger, sometimes you have to click on the page to get this to work right, and if one of your tabs has a fillable field, it gets hosed again, and you have to click on a neutral part of the page to get it to work again... annoying). For instance, as I type this, if I try shift--arrows to jump to another tab, it just doesn't work, until I click off this field... man... its slowing me down!
I'd be interested to hear of more problems people have with it on *other* machines, but I think we've heard enough "works fine on my ____" for now.
We got yet another now-flaky iMac in for repair over the weekend, but other than that the amount of them coming in has slowed to a trickle. I really have no explanation for it. It's possible that the sheer volume of iMacs and iBooks we've deployed to local schools over the years has meant that every single partially dodgy one ever built ended up in one or another and has now been effectively eaten by Tiger(fnarf).
I dunno...
maybe you heard of it already, there are some rumors in several forums going on but no consequent answer by apple so far. a lot of people are experiencing freezes since they installed tiger on their 1.8GHz single processor machines. one of our costumers also has this problem. it seems that either tiger is not working to 100% on these machines or that it's more critical regarding RAM... not sure yet, i'll keep an eye on it.
regards, chris
edit: take a look at www.g5freeze.com , explains the problems with tiger and g5's in particular... there is also a long list of mac owners having this problem (including serial no of their machines).