I’d like to let out a big sigh, followed by a big thanks to my beloved PowerMac G5 dual 2.0 machine. I bought it almost 3 years ago to the day.

Aperture 1.5 brings it to its knees.

It’s not a matter of memory — I have 2.5 GB, which I monitor closely via Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor’s dock icon. It can show 25% free memory while I wait for Aperture to complete simple tasks (although under very heavy load Aperture can grab all of that reserve). Aperture’s slugishness is entirely CPU-bound.

Aperture 1.1 wasn’t a fast application on my PowerMac, but it was faster than 1.5, and the difference is just enough to really bug me. I see spinning beachballs all the time now.

I’ve restarted, updated to OS X 10.4.8 (required to install the Aperture 1.5 update), and offered 128 MB ram chips to the gods in smelly burning sacrifice ceremonies, to no avail.

Unless a CPU upgrade comes along for the G5 PowerMac line, I think this signals the beginning of the end of my G5 as my front-line machine. I was hoping I’d see 5 years out of it.

I was planning to replicate my image-processing environment onto my new refurb MacBook anyway, so I’ll soon have a handy comparison when the move is complete. Perhaps Aperture 1.5’s Intel-nativeness will make it fast enough on the MacBook to lure me away from the G5 and its two 1280×768 monitors.