PowerBook Can’t Run Aperture? Give Lightroom a Try

Lightroom I’ve been somewhat keeping up with Lightroom but haven’t really given it the attention it deserves. I’ve finally got around to giving it a closer and really like what Adobe is doing with it. In my opinion, it’s the most Mac-like application Adobe has developed. It feels like it was designed for the Mac yet keeps its own identity or feel to it — instead of completely relying on Apple’s or their own UI precedents.

Here’s a few reasons why I think it’s worthwhile for just about everyone to try Lightroom out:

  1. It’s intended for people with Digital SLR who already are or may want to start using camera RAW.
  2. Since Lightroom is a public beta, it’s essentially free for a limited time while Adobe solicits development feedback.
  3. It actually runs fine on a PowerBook G4. For some reason I didn’t think it would but I was pleasantly surprised to find out it runs just fine on my li’l champ, a 12″ PowerBook.
  4. Oh, and now with the new beta, it natively runs on Intel-based Macs as well.

So go download a copy of Lightroom beta 2 now and see for yourself.

2 Comments

Court Rye  on August 25th, 2006

Hey thanks! I just purchased Aperture (didn’t open it thankfully) and found out that my little PowerBook G4, which is the highest version before the switch to MacBooks and is stocked with the best hardware available, can’t run Aperture because the graphics card isn’t powerful enough :( Here are the requirements for Aperture so no one else buys it by mistake! Apple also has a neat little system checker on their website to verify if your system can run it, go here to check it out: http://www.apple.com/aperture/specs.html Well, here I come Lightroom!

Minimum System Requirements

* One of the following Macintosh computers:
      o Mac Pro with a 2GHz (or faster) Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor
      o Power Mac G5 with a 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5 processor
      o iMac with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5 or Intel Core Duo processor
      o MacBook Pro
      o 15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4 with a 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor
* Mac OS X version 10.4.6 “Tiger” (or later)
* 1GB of RAM
* Display with 1280-by-854 (or higher) resolution
* One of the following graphics cards:
      o ATI Radeon X600 Pro or X600 XT
      o ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition
      o ATI Radeon X850 XT
      o ATI Radeon X1600
      o ATI Radeon X1900 XT
      o ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro
      o ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
      o ATI Radeon 9600, 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650
      o ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600
      o ATI Mobility X1600
      o NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE or 6600
      o NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL
      o NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
      o NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
      o NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
* 5GB of disk space for application, sample projects, and tutorial
* DVD drive for installation

George  on August 26th, 2006

Thanks Court for the additional information.

Yeah, I got a chance to try out Aperture 1.1 last week at my local Apple Store. While the UI is gorgeous in true Apple fashion, I was pretty perplexed by the stutters and beach balls that kept occurring. Especially considering that I was trying it out on a brand new, top-of-the line Mac Pro. Quite puzzling indeed. I seriously hope it was something wrong with the configuration of the Mac rather than Aperture. But I can’t say for sure.

Leave a Comment