iLife 06 on G3s
by Nate
It’s easy to get iPhoto 6 and iWeb installed on your G3 by copying the iLife install package to your desktop, showing the package contents, and removing this code from the Distribution.dist file using textedit:
// Rule out insufficient hardware
if ( !hasAcceptableHardware() )
{
my.result.title = system.localizedString('TITLE_INCOMPATHW');
my.result.message = system.localizedString('ERROR_INCOMPATHW');
my.result.type = 'Fatal';
return false;
}
iPhoto 6 works great on my fast G3 (1GHz) upgraded mac (still no advanced editing features though). iWeb as well (and it does have the advanced image editing features enabled, but they’re dog slow…)
However, Garageband 3 and iMovie 6 refuse to launch! They bounce in the dock a couple times and then stop bouncing. iDVD gives the same “cannot find required hardware” message.
This is aggravating. It’s pretty likely that these apps could run on a G3, although slowly. (The image editing features of iPhoto are present in iWeb and Preview and work very slowly). Anyone know how to get them to work? It seems very unlikely to me they completely revamped the Garageband and iMovie code for iLife 06 to make them actually require a G4.
As the Mac platform is moving away from AltiVec, it would be stupid to load Garageband and iMovie with AltiVec code…
January 19th, 2006 at 13:14 CET
Nate, imovie for sure and certainly Garage Band requires Altivec-enable processor, so that’s the reason why they do not launch.
January 19th, 2006 at 17:05 CET
Can anyone check whether the apps had similar problems (ie not running on G3s) in the previous versione in iLife ‘05?
January 20th, 2006 at 01:23 CET
Well they worked fine in iLife 05…
(yes)
January 20th, 2006 at 17:16 CET
Yeah, I have a G3 and really want iLife 06′, but can only get iWeb and iPhoto to work… Bit cheesed off…
January 21st, 2006 at 08:11 CET
Nate, are you ur that iLife 05 runs natively (I mean without a hack) on a G3?
because I am sure that iMovie uses Altivec.
January 21st, 2006 at 08:58 CET
I am absolutely sure. Only iDVD didn’t work.
January 25th, 2006 at 20:59 CET
iMovie 05 works great on Pismo.
January 29th, 2006 at 06:03 CET
No question that iLife ‘05 was 100% compatible with a G3 (except iDVD), no hacks necessary. Some features work BETTER with Altivec, but I could use every app with no problems, including iMovie…
iLife ‘06 are the first consumer Apple apps to cut off the G3… And this really blows…
February 1st, 2006 at 19:13 CET
I’m running iLife 06 on a G4-upgraded Pismo, and it works fine … mostly. iPhoto works great, as does almost everything else. Only thing that doesn’t function is the real-time previews in imovie. In fact, transitions and effects don’t work at all in imovie. I assume this has something to do with “Core Video” and the graphics card in my Pismo?
Anyway, the rest of ilife runs fine, including iDVD.
G4/500mhz Pismo
512mb RAM
OSX 10.4.4
February 6th, 2006 at 17:47 CET
You say advanced editing doesn’t work. Are cropping and redeye removal considered “advanced editing” or do they work? Thanks.
Nick
February 23rd, 2006 at 07:45 CET
Cropping and redeye removal work.
March 9th, 2006 at 15:03 CET
Success: iLife 06 on a G3
It’s possible. Here’s what you need: 2 Macs, at least one of which has a DVD drive.1 6-pin to 6-pin firewire cable. You may think you have one, but I bet you don’t. Roughly $30 at Best Buy if you’re
March 15th, 2006 at 17:38 CET
I tried and used iLife 05 just fine on a G3 400Mhz B&W with 512MB Ram.Sure, some apps like iMovie or iDVD is pointless on a machine like that, but it still works even if really slow.
Interesting to note is that all editing functions in Photoshop CS2 and Photoshop Elements 4 works just fine on a G3 400Mhz B&W. haha
Funny how those extra menus don´t show unless you have a much faster cpu.
Silly Apple. :p
March 26th, 2006 at 01:47 CET
I want to try installing iPhoto 6 on my fathers G3 iMac 700, he only wants access to the calendar building tool as an extra to the iPhoto version he currently has.
does anyone know if this tool is available if i hack the instal code and get iPhoto 06 running?
thanks
Rich
April 13th, 2006 at 14:29 CEST
Try using pacifist to extract the iPhoto 6 installer. (look it up on versiontracker, too busy now)
April 16th, 2006 at 06:00 CEST
I copied the enitire DVD contents to the internal hard disk of my iBook (G3, OS X 10.3.9)
and edited iLife 06.mpkg/Contents/Distribution.dist to comment out the block
of code. Then I double clikced the iLife 06.mpkgs icon. The installer, after
running a script, still says it cannot install the software to this computer. (No
specific reason given.)
I even commented out the line calling installationCheck() function, but the
result is the same.
What else should I check?
(I also tried installing the iPhoto package only using Pacifist but the iPhoto didn’t run. OS claims some files are damaged. Pacifist could not find any files damaged.)
April 16th, 2006 at 19:18 CEST
Actually, iPhoto, installed using Pacifist, did work… somewhat, after I renamed it to something else. I don’t understand why.
But it’s very fragile. I aborts itself when I double-click on a photo, or when I tried to load a book (which I don’t remember creating one). I feel it is too fragile to keep my only collection of photos. I’m backing up to the older version.
May 7th, 2006 at 00:35 CEST
How do I show the package contents? No matter what I do, it sez ‘bad hardware, bad, bad’
May 26th, 2006 at 10:38 CEST
this is great information but with one issue
apple removed the distrubution file out of the installer now in ilife o6 but by using pacifist i found some neat tricks
1.you can use the instruments and jams that are ilife 06 in the garageband installation in garageband 2 in life 05
2.idvd works on g3 but needs a piece of hardware??? to run even though i have a dvd burner installed weird??
3.itunes and quicktime screwup your machine if you extract them with pacifist
4.iphoto works but with some things disabled due to procesor restricktions.
someone needs to figure out how to get garageband working on the g3 and get passed apples dumb idea for software because if i photo in ilife 06 runs on a g3 then it tells you that apple just wants to sell people new computers at 1300 dollers a piece and dont give a flying %^&^%& about the 1 million customers that have a g3
March 16th, 2007 at 22:31 CET
I had to delete the following lines as well. Not sure why no one else did.
June 24th, 2007 at 09:53 CEST
what is the point, why not just use ilife 05.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:36 CET
@ G3iBook900:
I had to delete that other part too.
February 7th, 2008 at 01:57 CET
I can run iMovie and Garage Band, but I get the same “Hardware can’t be found” thing for iDVD.