[Pro] fastest mac for Snow Leopard..?

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1

Due to ongoing (and loving) attachment to and heavy use of Freehand, I can’t extend beyond OSX 10.6.8, Snow Leopard.

Anyone know what the fastest Mac is that would support Snow Leopard ? Obviously we’re talking about buying a used machine here! Preferably a MacMini.

Thx
Hugh

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Hi Hugh,
The two things I would consider if I were in your shoes are;

  1. Install Snow Leopard (or Snow Leopard Server) as a virtual machine in Virtual Box, Parallels etc and run this on a new machine. You’d need to check the performance of the application as it could be a deal breaker but if you can give it as much ram as you dare and a fast enough machine it should be OK.
  2. Consider keeping your old Mac and use something like VNC screen sharing to open up and use Freehand on the old machine over your local network. It won’t be as fast as a new machine but shouldn’t be too much slower than using the Mac you already have.
    Regards,
    Tim.

On 8 Dec 2015, at 15:41, hugh email@hidden wrote:

Due to ongoing (and loving) attachment to and heavy use of Freehand, I can’t extend beyond OSX 10.6.8, Snow Leopard.

Anyone know what the fastest Mac is that would support Snow Leopard ? Obviously we’re talking about buying a used machine here! Preferably a MacMini.

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Hi Tim,
Thanks for the suggestions!
Don’t want to go in over my head…so which is the easier solution to implement?
The only thing about keeping my old Mac and VNC sharing is that the old Mac is a 24" iMac…!!! So not very space saving :wink:

cheers
Hugh

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What would be very nice would be to run the iMac screen from a modern MacMini - with the ability to dip back into the Snow Leopard iMac whenever required.

Not sure if that’s possible, though?..

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On 8 Dec 2015, at 15:41, hugh wrote:

Due to ongoing (and loving) attachment to and heavy use of Freehand, I can’t extend beyond OSX 10.6.8, Snow Leopard.

Anyone know what the fastest Mac is that would support Snow Leopard ? Obviously we’re talking about buying a used machine here! Preferably a MacMini.

It’s unlikely to be a MacMini unless you put an SSD into it. The native drives tend to be 5200 rpm laptop ones. The Mini can also be restricted in the memory department.

David

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Hi Hugh,
If you’ve Macs that support it then you can use Target Display Mode to display the new Mac’s screen on the old iMac;
Use your iMac as a display with target display mode – Apple Support (UK) https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204592

Assuming the old Mac still runs Freehand at a reasonable speed and you don’t need to sell it to partly fund the replacement then you may be better off keeping it as your dedicated Freehand machine.

If you know someone with who would be willing to let you use their new Mac to try it out you could load a portable 2.5” HD with El Capitan, Virtual Box, Snow Leopard and Freehand and boot the Mac from this drive to see how fast the application runs under virtualisation. If it is no faster than your existing Mac then you’d be best keeping the iMac.
Regards,
Tim.

On 8 Dec 2015, at 16:46, hugh email@hidden wrote:

What would be very nice would be to run the iMac screen from a modern MacMini - with the ability to dip back into the Snow Leopard iMac whenever required.

Not sure if that’s possible, though?..

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It’s unlikely to be a MacMini unless you put an SSD into it. The native drives tend to be 5200 rpm laptop ones. The Mini can also be restricted in the memory department.

David

Hi David, not sure I understand? You mean the tech spec would be too low to run Parallels or drive an external screen or something?
I run Freehand on an old Macbook, too, and performance is perfectly adequate.

Hugh

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On 8 Dec 2015, at 23:17, hugh wrote:

It’s unlikely to be a MacMini unless you put an SSD into it. The native drives tend to be 5200 rpm laptop ones. The Mini can also be restricted in the memory department.

David

Hi David, not sure I understand? You mean the tech spec would be too low to run Parallels or drive an external screen or something?
I run Freehand on an old Macbook, too, and performance is perfectly adequate.

The mini has always been lower performing. Current models do have Fusion or SSD drives, but only the top model has a faster processor than my 2009 MacBook Pro. The web site doesn’t say what the memory options are, but the specs shown for the speed tests show 8GB, so there is a choice. Less than 8GB is a waste of time if you’re running Parallels for serious work. The emulated SL will need lots.

What Apple push in the mini specs are the small size and the energy efficiency. The first you want. The second doesn’t really fit with the primary use being emulation of another OSX. Unix can be light and efficient (I used to run Unix on a machine with 20MB disk and 1MB memory - it would run in 256KB); although it is based on Unix, OSX is not. It has a lot of extra stuff that uses a lot of resources.

David

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Hi David,

My thoughts are that I’m maybe not as ‘cutting edge’ as you are! - my Macbook is a white 13" core duo from 2006, for example. It largely does the job although it’s a mite heavy! The iMac is 2007 vintage. (so Tim, I couldn’t use it in Target Mode, alas)

To be honest, I don’t need the latest and greatest, it would just be nice to have a little all-round speed improvement - hence wondering what the fastest mac that would run Snow Leopard. One of the crippling issues with the older Macs is 4gb max RAM. You have to be patient at times!

Think I might stick with the iMac, which is where most Freehanding gets done, and it’s got a great screen. But oh for a bit more RAM…
I may look out a 2ndhand Air for email/browsing portability.

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Hugh,

Before you paint yourself into an ever decreasing corner I would seriously take a look at Affinity Designer.

Affinity Designer: award-winning graphic design software

Like you I’ve used Freehand extensively in the past and still have loads of (pre 2005) legacy .fh9 files. Affinity Designer opens these (just change/add the suffix to .eps).

…and the app behaviour is not that far removed from Freehand like paste inside a shape. And they just added multiple art boards today.

–

David Owen

On 8 Dec 2015, at 15:41, hugh email@hidden wrote:

Due to ongoing (and loving) attachment to and heavy use of Freehand, I can’t extend beyond OSX 10.6.8, Snow Leopard.

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I agree with David. Very impressive and inexpensive software. Same goes for Affinity Photo (currently on sale in MAS).

You might be able to find a 20% coupon for Affinity Designer on one of the cash-back site like TopCash, that’s how I got mine (buying it through the MAS).

Todd
Office (Chicago): 312.212.3955
Community: https://creativ.space
https://xiiro.com

Before you paint yourself into an ever decreasing corner I would seriously take a look at Affinity Designer.

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Hi David,

Thanks for the tip - looks kind of interesting (horrible web site, though!)
Would give it a free trial…except I can’t :wink:

A group of us largely use Freehand for drawing maps (entirely (non-commercial). Freehand is effectively free these days, and it’s a nicely simple stripped-down interface, an attribute which has largely been lost since its demise. It would be interesting to see if Affinity has the keyboard shortcuts which make Freehand so fast to use.

Hugh

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Try test driving the Beta…

And yes there’s plenty of keyboard shortcuts.

I would consider the cost at (Now only £29.99) effectively as near as dam-it free.

–

David Owen

On 9 Dec 2015, at 17:33, hugh email@hidden wrote:

Would give it a free trial…except I can’t :wink:

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David,

Thanks for the link, but remember…I’m on Snow Leopard! :wink:

I would consider the cost at (Now only £29.99) effectively as near as dam-it free.

So would I…not sure about my mates, though :wink:

Hugh

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Maybe one of your friends can install it and you can test it that way?

Todd
Office (Chicago): 312.212.3955
Community: https://creativ.space

Thanks for the link, but remember…I’m on Snow Leopard! :wink:

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Sorry I assumed you had kept old machine just for Freehand.

My old Mac’s all died so I had to move on.

–

David Owen

On 9 Dec 2015, at 18:01, hugh email@hidden wrote:

Thanks for the link, but remember…I’m on Snow Leopard! :wink:

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Hi David,

No, the old machines are still working ok for me, would just enjoy a little speed hike - hence the thread title. I’ve no great desire to be climbing up to Yosemite or El Cap :wink:

Seems there are a couple of 2010 MacMinis (the 2.4ghz and 2.66ghz aluminium ones) which shipped with Snow Leopard but can run the lastest OSX if need be . Wonder if a disk partition couldn’t run both OSX on the same mac, then?

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