Well now it's public, I guess I can talk about this Leopard issue myself. Unfortunately, owners of earlier G4s need not apply - it's now specced for 867Mhz and up only. It's a shame (I've got an old G4-400 that I would have upgraded, but will now leave running Tiger), but not really that big of a deal - especially as - hmm.... I think I better keep that comment to myself for now (NDA).

I know it's a long way in the future, but I find myself wondering what the hardware requirements of OS X 10.6 will be in a couple of years' time. Intel only? 64-bit only? (My guess would be the latter, but probably requiring at least a high-end G5). I'm reminded of the 68k to PPC switch, and the years of universal binaries. Given that the underpinnings of OS X (i.e. NeXTSTEP) have long been intended for portability, I suspect that we're going to be in for a few years of Universal Binaries yet, but that Intel switch is coming, and my guess is that G5-based Macs are going to be looking like dinosaurs a lot more quickly than, say, the G3 and G4 did.

Meantime I'm going to quit buying old Macs for server use. I've still got a G4 that's doing sterling service, but when the time comes, it'll be replaced with a cheap secondhand Intel Mini (or equivalent). My days of buying and selling old Macs are, I think, over - at least for now. I can see too many ways of catching a cold - PPC Macs are, I'm sure, going to continue to plummet in price. I'm just glad that I sold my G5 for a decent figure before they hit rock bottom =]