I don't think I can give advice on piracy, but I probably can say that OS X does not call home, and the family pack EULA doesn't cover machines that go away to college anyway.

Most (*almost all) Mac users who are aggressively against piracy, the type who freak out when I say I might not have paid for even the tiniest, most ancient bit of software, seem to turn the other cheek at EULAs that restrict you from using software on more than one computer, and will sometimes install the same copy of (for example) Tiger on eleven newworld machines they happen to have sitting around. (true story.)

Nor does it cover work machines, or machines you let students use at a K-12 school, if I remember correctly. So it's only really worth it if you have a big family, 4 or more, all of whom will be using a Mac, at home, for personal stuff, concurrently.

My personal experience with Tiger is limited on G3s to just the Pismo. It runs acceptibly there, but I'm not exactly impressed with the speed. Subjectively, I would say that Panter (10.3) was a little faster.

Peace,
Drew

I'm still using 10.3 on my Pismo, I don't really see the point in 10.4 at the moment, but it's not like 10.4 is impossible -- it was even usable on the Pismo. Although, it's a fast G3 with a relatively huge L2 cache.

On my G4 system, 10.4 felt, acted, and in general was much faster than 10.3 though.

Tiger is very fast on my G3, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be faster than Panther as it is more optimised code and the only new features that might drain performance, Dashboard and Spotlight, can be disabled if you like.

There is no serial number with OS X, so nothing to identify each copy even if it does talk to Apple (like in the OOBE sequence if you're online). I don't think it talks to Apple when you enter the iWork serial either, the serial is simply accepted by the setup wizard, and then it will only talk to Apple at the later point of running one of the apps for the first time and you choosing to register your details (presumably for spam, or so the Apple Police can come and find you if it sends the serial number back at that point and they find it's the same one that everyone else has) with them (you have to click "register later" about three times to get the option to "never register" - honestly, I can't imagine the outcry if MS were as invasive on privacy as this, sending your details to them without warning when setting up the OS, for instance!). Or at least I know it is possible to download the iWork '08 trial from Apple and then unlock it with any serial, regardless of how many times it's been used before (not from experience, you understand, I just, umm, heard this, umm, somewhere ).

O NOEZ!

It's not just about optimization though, even though Tiger might have more optimization, it's also got a whole heck of a lot more unnecessary stuff to make up for the "optimization." Even when they aren't loaded, dashboard widgets remain in memory, and the Spotlight, noble an idea as it is, really does reduce performance for those of us who are actually capable of organizing files on our computers properly.

And no, I don't want to spend any amount of time optimizing Mac OS X, I don't really think you should have to these days. So for me, it's 10.3 on the G3 system.

As I said, Spotlight and Tiger can both be completely disabled so that you benefit from the code optimisation without the extra overhead of the new features eg Dashboard can be prevented from loading completely so that there is no memory usage. I disabled Dashboard but kept Spotlight on my G3 and it works great (Spotlight doesn't seem to put much of a strain on once the initial indexing is done so I left it enabled - I even disabled the search indexing on my new C2D machine with Vista though, despite it being a very powerful system, as I so rarely use search in Windows and just don't need the indexing at all).

Sorry, I meant to say Dashboard on Tiger. As long as you disable Dashboard then memory usage should be similar - Dashboard is a real memory hog if you leave it on though, each widget open runs all the time even when Dashboard is hidden and uses up its own slice of memory. Apart from the addition of Dashboard and Spotlight and a few visual tidy-ups (I much prefer the Tiger menu bar, for instance), I can't really see any major differences between Panther and Tiger, certainly nothing else added that could bog down an older Mac. Tiger seems a sensible choice though as it has a lot more support these days, and shouldn't die too quickly as Leopard is so bloated that there's going to be a lot of Tiger users left out there who can't upgrade. I've seen Tiger on a clamshell with 320 MB and it seems fine. Have you tried cleaning the favicons? (it was mentioned here once before as a way of speeding up Safari on an old OS X installation).

My only problem with the "you can deactivate it" claim is that every time I've tried, nothing has come of my attempts to deactivate said things. Plus, why should I have to, in this day and age, go through with a terminal script to optimize my *Mac* ?

It's the main reason why Linux is unacceptable as a desktop OS for me. (that, and the lack of any real apps, like photoshop, final cut (or premeireprocs3/avid for windows) and inDesign, et al.

With the exception of my CS3 apps (which don't run in 10.3, and which I don't need on my laptop), the pismo runs everything I need, and the iMac picks up my creative apps.

Just a note, the Family Pack does allow college machines:

That's interesting. Does your Console.app report a bunch of errors for the system trying to automatically start Dashboard?

Peace,
Drew

Haven't noticed any problems at all. Not that there can't be any, but I sure haven't observed any problems. Only error messages in the console have to do with generic password in the keychain? Have no idea if they were there before, never look at the console.

My understanding of the family pack EULA is that it is for non-commercial use and the machines it is installed on must all reside at the same physical address. I seriously doubt, though, that anyone would notice if you had an illegal copy or else all the Macs out there sold on ebay with OS X pre-installed without a copy of the media would have been broken in an update by now.

No, it's just liscenses. Apple uses that nice term to make it seem friendly.

Just to show something of Apple's evolution in terms of severity, complexity and eventual relaxation in terms of System/OS/Application licences, I quote:

1993: Z030-4611-A (System 7 Pro & PowerShare)
'You may use the Apple Software in a networked environment so long as each computer in such environment is the subject of a license for the Apple Software; however, you may not electronically transmit the Apple Software from one computer to another over a network.'

1995: Z030-6934-A, printed in U.S.A. (AppleShare 4.1)
'This License allows you to install and copy the Client Software for use on an unlimited number of computers in connecton with the network services specied in your Client Documentation.'

1999: ZM033-1365-B, printed in Ireland
'This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled or Apple-licensed computer at a time. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time.'

2001: 1Z033-1727-A and 2Z033-1727-A, printed in U.S.A., Singapore and Ireland (Mac OS X)
'This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. This License does not allow the software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time.'

2002: 2Z033-1965-A and 2Z033-1965-B, printed in Singapore and China (Mac OS X)
ditto

2002: 2Z033-2043-A, Addendum printed in Canada (Mac OS X)
'This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household. By "household" we mean a person or persons sharing the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home or condominium. This license does not extend to students who reside at a separate on-campus location or to business or commercial users.'

2003: 2Z033-2301-A, printed in China and Canada (Mac OS X)
'This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. This License does not allow the software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time.'

2004: 2Z033-2458-A, Addendum printed in Singapore (Mac OS X)
'This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household. By "household" we mean a person or persons sharing the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home or condominium, but shall also extend to student members who are primary members of that household but residing at a separate on-campus location. This license does not extend to business or commercial users.'

2005: 2Z034-3166-A, printed in Singapore (Mac OS X)
'This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. If you use Setup Assistant to transfer software from one Apple-labeled computer to another Apple-labeled computer, please remember that continued use of the original copy of the software may be prohibited once a copy has been transferred to another computer, unless you already have a licensed copy of such software on both computers. You should check the relevant software license agreements for applicable terms and conditions.'

Even The Clones of the 90s get a passing reference, but you will especially notice the softening of attitude towards students on campus.