Quote Originally Posted by P G View Post
MorphOS is now available for the Mac Mini G4. Have any of you tried it out yet? If yes, what do you think? If no, are you considering getting a Mac Mini to run MorphOS?
I've been considering getting one for some time because you can hack Amiga OS 4 to run on them, and now that MorphOS2 is actually officially released it could be interesting.

1) Is a Mac Mini G4 up-to-date? I'm then thinking of the newest OS for Mac and general software. Will it run Leopard properly if the machine has 1GB of RAM?
Nope. Apple abandoned the PPC CPU range last year and switched to the same Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs as PCs. Therefore no new Mac PPC software is being developed or supported any more. The same is true of Mac OSX itself. New versions are only being developed for Intel Macs now.

I don't actually know if Leopard has been released for PPC or not. Tiger was, and that would run fine on a Mac Mini.

2) If I'm going to buy such a machine, I'm going to use it for office work related to one of my jobs, some gaming, P2P and emulation. Will it be sufficient for this?
Simple answer is no. Macs have never been very well support for gaming. You won't find that many commercial games for the Mac compared to PC. Maybe 2% of PC releases ever saw a Mac release, and even then many were things like Myst and Sim City. You can get Torrent and other P2P clients for the Mac.

You can get office suites for PPC Macs. Microsoft Office has been available for years, but is a much older version than the PC releases, as M$ are not that interested in the Mac market.

3) Emulation, as mentioned above, is a bit important to me. Is the Mac Mini G4 capable of emulating the same platforms as the PC?
Again, nope. Mac emulation is far behind that of the PC. It has about the same level of emulation available as Linux, and shares ports of many of the same emulators such a UAE-X and MAME. Amiga emulation is no where near as good for one, being based on a version of UAE from about version 0.8. Maybe even less.

4) I would like to dual-boot MorphOS and Leopard if possible. Does anyone know if I can run AmigaOS 4 stuff via MorphOS and if it's any good when it comes to running legacy Amiga stuff (68K)? I remember Buleste writing something about the fact that it is a bit limited.
I don't think MorphOS and Amiga OS 4 are compatible in any way. However you can hack Amiga OS 4 into working on a Mac Mini so you can try running the actual OS and its software.

5) How much should I expect to pay for a Mac Mini G4?
Probably going up as we speak thanks to MorphOS and a new found interest in the PPC Mac Mini from the Amiga community. And make sure you look for one made before February 2006, because after this point they switched to Intel and these won't run MorphOS.

Also remember that you can't dual boot Windows and Mac OS X as standard on a PPC Mac. This is only possible on the newer Intel Macs, because they are basically just PCs in Mac cases.

Have a look at the wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini for a full run down of the Mac Mini specs and each revision. If you want a PPC G4 Mac Mini then one of the past made between October 2005 and Feb 2006 look like the best to look out for.