PowerPC Macs - Are They Still Useful?

[Trippynet]

From the fold mark, I'd say it's those square sheets you get in public bathrooms. They'd fit OK.

[itsvince725]

I honestly kinda love the G3 beer dispenser...

[cinenate35]

I can't stand this. What the fuck is wrong with you people ? "What can I do with a G5 ?"

Well, you could spend thirty seconds with your favorite search engine and find several thousand programs that run great on a G5. You know, little-known ones like PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Mickeysoft Word ... well hell, just about nothing, I guess. May as well throw it away, can't possibly do any kind of useful work on anything less than 64 gbytes of memory and a 16-core 5 ghz cpu. I mean, like your work is so demanding. I guess your after-hours job is doing cfd for Hyundai's shipbuilding division, down there in mum's basement. Right after you finish that free-energy magno-hepadynetic clostromotron that will power the planet on a single cup of peanut butter.

Oh wait ! I have an idea ! Let's put Loonix on it ! Loonix, the operating system that survives on one, count 'em ONE (semi) functional program ! Woo-hoo babe, now we're cookin' with gas ! Penis hard as a rock, stroke faster ! Squeeze harder ! Ooh ooh !

Shee-it. This is retarded. There is no consumer software, none, that actually needs or uses anything more capable than a G5. If this is your answer to "what can I do with a g5" then maybe you guys should get a job waxing cars. Maybe you could handle that.

That is the best thing I've read all year.

[guardian452]

I guess your after-hours job is doing cfd for Hyundai's shipbuilding division, down there in mum's basement. Right after you finish that free-energy magno-hepadynetic clostromotron that will power the planet on a single cup of peanut butter.

This entire website's M.O.
Or at least, it used to be. Those Good Old Days...

[bifo]

iBook G3 800mhz makes probably the most powerful and compact OS 9 machine out there. I keep one around for running classic programs, since they're all abandonware now and that includes a lot of games and media apps that work perfectly well. Same reason i keep an old dell c600 around to run win98.

[ClassicHasClass]

You could use a 1GHz TiBook. Those will still run 9.2.2. I have an 867MHz and a 1GHz TiBook, and they're great mobile OS 9 workstations.

[robespierre]

You could use a 1GHz TiBook. Those will still run 9.2.2. I have an 867MHz and a 1GHz TiBook, and they're great mobile OS 9 workstations.

That's the most powerful laptop that can boot OS 9. (The best desktop capable of booting OS 9 is the G4 1.25 GHz MDD.)
But all PowerPC macs can run the Classic environment in OS X 10.4.11.
The vast majority of programs work in Classic; the only one I remember that benefitted from booting OS 9 was SuperCollider 2/3.

[josehill]

But all PowerPC macs can run the Classic environment in OS X 10.4.11.

Not exactly. Only G3/G4/G5 machines officially could run OS X. Machines based on the 601/603/604 PowerPC CPUs were limited to various versions of the classic MacOS. (Sure, there were patches and workarounds that would let OS X run on some of these older PowerPCs, but I don't think anyone would find that to be much fun, especially if trying to run Classic on top of OS X.)

The closest thing to it that is true is that all PowerPC Macs that support OS X 10.4.11 or earlier versions of OS X or MacOS can run some version of the classic MacOS, either directly booting into a supported version of the classic MacOS or by running the Classic environment in a supported version of OS X.

(Sorry: I didn't mean to be pedantic, but hey, this is a vintage computing forum. Are there groups with higher percentages of pedants than vintage computing forums? )

[ClassicHasClass]

The vast majority of programs work in Classic; the only one I remember that benefitted from booting OS 9 was SuperCollider 2/3.

Sure, they'll work, and that's why 10.4 is my preferred version of OS X on PowerPC. But OS 9 on the raw metal is a lot faster, and some apps don't work quite right in Classic (mostly games).

Classic is still heaps better than any emulator, of course, not least of which being the excellent system integration.

For the record, I run SuperCollider 3.4 on 10.4, and I intentionally bought an MDD new back in the day because it could still dual boot. It has a Sonnet dual 1.8GHz G4 in it now.

[robespierre]

Interesting! Have you tried SuperCollider 2? I think 3.4 was a total rewrite and wasn't the same codebase as 2/3.0alpha.
I just remembered that another program that didn't like Classic was TC Spark. And certain graphics applications had funky display redraw issues (Illustrator, etc). It can certainly be advantageous to be able to boot into OS 9.