Best of Apps for PPC

canhoto · Mar 30, 2011

Since there are some companies beginning not to support PPC on their most recent software releases (like Mozilla with Firefox 4), or never have supported other than Intel (like Google); since I'm sure (like many of us) that PPC macs, with the correct upgrades, can work as modern desktop computers for main purposes, and that Apple is quitting PPC just to press people to upgrade to brand new hardware, I suggest that we make a list of best of software running, with updated versions, on PPC, or from companies intending to keep Universal or PPC support, on several categories. Preferably, open source or free software, but also proprietary when there's nothing better.

I begin with a suggestion:

For multimedia playing, VLC Player

zen.state · Mar 30, 2011

Hallivand · Mar 30, 2011

An optimised TenFourFox is a must

iWork '09 is still PPC native, not sure about the status of OpenOffice and Co. though.

Bean word processor is actually very capable, and still Universal Binary.

iLife '09 >

Messenger 7.0.4 (In my opinion better than the new 8, looks atrocious)

aMSN as an alternative, very good.

Surprisingly Google Earth is Universal Binary too

For games, my personal favourites, Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Battlefield 1942 and Command & Conquer Generals

Generally, one to two versions behind the most up to date propriety software (i.e Office, Final Cut Studio, iLife, Logic Pro) are PowerPC native or Universal Binary.

Though software is rapidly drying up

canhoto · Mar 30, 2011

zen.state said:
I will just make it easy and show a screen cap of my apps folder as I would obviously recommend what I use.

You know you can have Vuze instead of Transmission? (Just a suggestion)

zen.state · Mar 30, 2011

canhoto said:
You know you can have Vuze instead of Transmission? (Just a suggestion)

Haha yes. I hate Vuse/Azureus. I have everything I have because it's what I prefer for it's purpose. In 18 years as a Mac user you tend to find favs.

Joshuarocks · Mar 30, 2011

zen.state said:
I will just make it easy and show a screen cap of my apps folder as I would obviously recommend what I use.

Hi, just in case the mods erase this thread, can you email me a .jpg of all the apps you have, so I can find out what most of them do? I certainly would like to get as many good and useful apps as I can for my PM G5 Quad and PB G4 1.67.

Thanks Zen,

Josh

76ShovelHead · Mar 31, 2011

Mactubes is a must for watching youtube videos. As someone already posted, you'll want TenFourFox. Fluid for making "Applications" out of websites and AppCleaner as it deletes all files associated to an application when you want to uninstall it. Adium, Skitch, OnyX, and Transmission are all i can think of at the moment.

Joshuarocks · Mar 31, 2011

Kennywayne3295 said:
Mactubes is a must for watching youtube videos. As someone already posted, you'll want TenFourFox. Fluid for making "Applications" out of websites and AppCleaner as it deletes all files associated to an application when you want to uninstall it. Adium, Skitch, OnyX, and Transmission are all i can think of at the moment.

Do we have any developers or programmers i this forum? We can all try to keep the PPC alive by developing our own programs.. this is an idea, or possibly an OS thats even more powerful than Mac OS X.

While I love my mac pro to death, my 1st love is to my PowerPC macs and I will do everything in my power to keep them alive for a while longer.

76ShovelHead · Mar 31, 2011

Joshuarocks said:
Do we have any developers or programmers i this forum? We can all try to keep the PPC alive by developing our own programs.. this is an idea, or possibly an OS thats even more powerful than Mac OS X.

While I love my mac pro to death, my 1st love is to my PowerPC macs and I will do everything in my power to keep them alive for a while longer.

I completely agree. What made a Mac a Mac was it's unique hardware. Now it's just as generic as any other computer. Performance may have boosted when they shifted Architectures, but just look at the Power6, it could beat any Intel on the Market. If only they stayed with them. These PPC Macs are still solid performers, and you can't just throw them away. I had my G3 iMac 266 as a Server for a while, running sharepoints in OS X Jaguar with only 96 MB of Ram and it did it's job well.

As far as development goes, I'm just waiting for the day someone ports a Net Book os like Joli OS to the PPC Architecture. It would make these machines so much more usable. Joli OS would be perfect for my iMac G3.

skinniezinho · Mar 31, 2011

Hallivand said:
An optimised TenFourFox is a must

iWork '09 is still PPC native, not sure about the status of OpenOffice and Co. though.

Bean word processor is actually very capable, and still Universal Binary.

iLife '09 >

Messenger 7.0.4 (In my opinion better than the new 8, looks atrocious)

aMSN as an alternative, very good.

Surprisingly Google Earth is Universal Binary too

For games, my personal favourites, Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Battlefield 1942 and Command & Conquer Generals

Generally, one to two versions behind the most up to date propriety software (i.e Office, Final Cut Studio, iLife, Logic Pro) are PowerPC native or Universal Binary.

Though software is rapidly drying up

YOu can try Libreoffice, it is the "new" openoffice, and it has ppc versions

zen.state · Mar 31, 2011

Joshuarocks said:
Hi, just in case the mods erase this thread, can you email me a .jpg of all the apps you have, so I can find out what most of them do? I certainly would like to get as many good and useful apps as I can for my PM G5 Quad and PB G4 1.67.

Thanks Zen,

Josh

You have a jpeg of all my apps right in the very message you quoted. I'm confused..

Flip2gig · Mar 31, 2011

For your G4 PowerBook I recommend;

ATIccelerator
G4 Fan Control

Good Apps in general;

Adium
Apimac Timer
AppZapper
Audacity
Aurora
CleanArchiver
Coconut Battery
Cyberduck
EasyCrop
FacebookSync
FFView
Flip4Mac
Free Ruler
Geometry X
Genesis Plus
Google Earth
Google SketchUp
HandBrake
Jumpcut
KisMAC
MacTheRipper
Microsoft Office 2004
Monolingual
Nestopia
OnyX
Paintbrush
Perian
Phoenix Slides
RemotePad
Senuti
Shades
Snes9x
SuperDuper!
The Unarchiver
TinyAlarm
Toast
Transmission
VLC
xPad

Cox Orange · Apr 3, 2011

@ Zenstate:

why do you have two versions of EyeTV? I have 2.5.3 installed, did you stay with Vers. 2 by reason or just not try Vers. 3?

zen.state · Apr 3, 2011

Cox Orange said:
@ Zenstate:

why do you have two versions of EyeTV? I have 2.5.3 installed, did you stay with Vers. 2 by reason or just not try Vers. 3?

It's 2.5.3 and 3.02. I prefer 2.5.3 for playback and recording as it uses less CPU. For editing though 3 is far better so I have it around just for editing. I would say the editor in 3 is 100% better than 2.

cyberghoser1 · Apr 3, 2011

is there any memory app that will help in memory management automatically? I saw something like turbomem, but i'm not sure if it will help at all.

zen.state · Apr 3, 2011

cyberghoser1 said:
is there any memory app that will help in memory management automatically? I saw something like turbomem, but i'm not sure if it will help at all.

OS X already has great memory management. The problem you have is you only have 640MB. You should really upgrade to the max. of 1.12GB.

The best memory management is to keep multitasking to a minimum. I wouldn't run more than 3 apps at once with 640MB.

cyberghoser1 · Apr 3, 2011

zen.state said:
OS X already has great memory management. The problem you have is you only have 640MB. You should really upgrade to the max. of 1.12GB.

The best memory management is to keep multitasking to a minimum. I wouldn't run more than 3 apps at once with 640MB.

Yeah you're right i already ordered 1GB PC2700 sodimm stick to max the ram out, i hope to see some little improvement.

zen.state · Apr 3, 2011

cyberghoser1 said:
Yeah you're right i already ordered 1GB PC2700 sodimm stick to max the ram out, i hope to see some little improvement.

Compared to 640MB I promise you will see an improvement.

BTW.. how did the Leo install go? What does the graphics info say?

cyberghoser1 · Apr 3, 2011

zen.state said:
Compared to 640MB I promise you will see an improvement.

BTW.. how did the Leo install go? What does the graphics info say?

Well i took the advice to wait and install max memory then i will install it, i'm sure it will display software and not hardware accelerated, that's for sure!

mark-mcd · Apr 18, 2011

MS Office v.X runs really well on an older G3 with OSX - feels just as fast (if not quicker) than 2008 on my Intel and looks minimalistic and modern! There is very little info on it as it's quite rare I believe but worth finding a copy.

OrangeSVTguy · Apr 18, 2011

One of my favorites was iStat Menus. Always had it installed on all my macs. I do believe it's not free anymore but look around for an older free version.

adcx64 · Apr 19, 2011

I use camino in my iBook (see signature) with leopard and the Internet couldn't be better

JaguarGod · Apr 20, 2011

adcx64 said:
I use camino in my iBook (see signature) with leopard and the Internet couldn't be better

I would have to agree. I really like Camino and have used it for years. The G5 optimized version is great on my Quad. I even block flash animations and only turn them on when I really need to.

I hope they keep supporting PPC.

JaguarGod · Apr 20, 2011

I would also have to add one of my favorite programs for the Mac.... Cheetah 3D. The current version is robust and the fact that it built specifically for Mac is great. Oh yeah, and it works very well on the PPC side. Also, the price has been reduced from $149 to $99 so if you have the money and would like a really well crafted 3D modeling and animation package that looks as good as it runs, pick it up.

I know there are other modeling programs that are free like Wings 3D and Blender, but I would definitely recommend trying Cheetah 3D for yourself and deciding whether it is worth your hard earned cash.

chrismacguy · Apr 20, 2011

Joshuarocks said:
Do we have any developers or programmers i this forum? We can all try to keep the PPC alive by developing our own programs.. this is an idea, or possibly an OS thats even more powerful than Mac OS X.

While I love my mac pro to death, my 1st love is to my PowerPC macs and I will do everything in my power to keep them alive for a while longer.

As a developer, I can say that a new OS is just about out-of-the-question, because Open-Firmware is incredibly buggy in Macs, and persuading an OS to boot off it is a real pain. Taking parts of a currently-working Linux distribution and keeping it up to date however is possible.

As far as applications go, unless the apps are open-source, youd have to develop from scratch, and so many new technologies simply don't exist on the PowerPC platform, that keeping PowerPC up-to-date is a struggle. I think Browsers is about the only area where PowerPC Development will continue for the forseeable, the other areas are where it will all fall down.

Best of Apps for PPC

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