[Rcovell]

A friend I've written about recently has ordered her new iPad 4 and an Airport Express.
I understand we can set up her wi-fi with just these two devices.

When she was ordering, she was assured by the sales person that the iPad was compatible with her old Power PC iMac G4 running Panther.
She was told that the USB cable was all that was needed to connect the iMac and iPad and she could freely move data back and forth between them.
(I assume she's referring to the Lightning cable connector, does it have a USB connector on the other end? Can this cable be used to connect to a computer and transfer data at all? I just thought is was used to 'sync' to the computer, if possible, with the proper OS.)

I don't believe this to be true. I don't think that the iPad 4 is compatible at all with this old computer and it's OS.

Can anyone back me up?

Thanks, Bob.

This post has been edited by Rcovell: 18 December 2012 - 10:01 PM

[smax013]

Rcovell, on 18 December 2012 - 09:57 PM, said:

A friend I've written about recently has ordered her new iPad 4 and an Airport Express.
I understand we can set up her wi-fi with just these two devices.

When she was ordering, she was assured by the sales person that the iPad was compatible with her old Power PC iMac G4 running Panther.
She was told that the USB cable was all that was needed to connect the iMac and iPad and she could freely move data back and forth between them.
(I assume she's referring to the Lightning cable connector, does it have a USB connector on the other end? Can this cable be used to connect to a computer and transfer data at all? I just thought is was used to 'sync' to the computer, if possible, with the proper OS.)

I don't believe this to be true. I don't think that the iPad 4 is compatible at all with this old computer and it's OS.

Can anyone back me up?

Thanks, Bob.

From the Apple site here:

Quote

Mac: OS X v10.6.8 or later

Thus, you will not be able to sync the iPad with iTunes on that computer unless you upgrade to Snow Leopard, but Apple lists an Intel processor as a requirement for Snow Leopard. Thus, there will be no syncing of that iPad with the Mac.

You potentially can still CHARGE the iPad using the Mac's USB port (I forget if a PowerMac G4 has a USB port that will charge an iPad).

You don't necessarily need to sync the iPad to a Mac. You could use iCloud to back up the iPad and just leave it as an "unsynced" iPad.

[Rcovell]

Thanks for the reply. I saw the same thing on Apple's website.

I don't expect her old computer/OS will have anything to do with the new iPad.
She's only a few days away from getting the new iPad, so I guess we'll get confirmation then.

Happy Holidays!

Bob.

[icerabbit]

Seconding Smax.

If it is PPC, you will not venture beyond 10.5.8 and thus not get the necessary iTunes to run, I think.

iTunes 10.7 would be required for the iPad 4 because, as far as I know, iTunes versions go hand in hand with the product releases and their support.

The tables on this wikipedia page may give you some additional details and facts: http://en.wikipedia....version_history

As you probably know, one can run an iPad perfectly standalone though (we never sync our advices) and do some third party document syncing via dropbox and the like. I don't know that there would be a solution if music had to be transferred though. And, backing up would be an issue as the cloud will only give you so much data. Though of course with only one device 5GB would last a while.

[smax013]

icerabbit, on 23 December 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

As you probably know, one can run an iPad perfectly standalone though (we never sync our advices) and do some third party document syncing via dropbox and the like. I don't know that there would be a solution if music had to be transferred though. And, backing up would be an issue as the cloud will only give you so much data. Though of course with only one device 5GB would last a while.

"Documents" (i.e. PDFs, Word files, Excel files, etc) can certainly be synced by Dropbox, but also by any number of other third party apps on the iOS system.

For music, you might be able to find a third party application for use on the computer that might allow syncing of music files.

And backing up to iCloud may or may not be an issue. I believe that iCloud backups do NOT include your music & movie/TV shows & apps bought through the iTunes Sture since you can download them again...but I could be wrong. I have never used the iCloud backup...I still use iTunes to sync/backup the "old fashioned way" (except by WiFi now).

[Rcovell]

With no support from her iMac, my friend will be using iCloud's free 5 gigs for her backup.
But, she won't do music, pictures or videos, so the 5 gigs should last forever for her.

Appreciate all the thoughts.

Bob.

[Rcovell]

Today was the day to meet with my friend to set up her new wi-fi network as she's received her new iPad and an Airport Express.
Setup was a breeze and was accomplished with just the iPad and the AE.

After we played on the iPad for a bit, we hooked up the Lightning cable and plugged the USB end into her iMac G4 running Panther.
Nothing happened. It just didn't register anything.

So, our expectations were correct, Panther and a G4 iMac don't support iPad gen 4.

Thanks for all the input.

Bob.