Honest question for PPC Mac owners

Quu said:

Ya it's just you.

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Guess I have gotten very lucky then.

Lets keep it friendly

My honest experience (and loved EVERY mac I've had....) :-

iMac 1.25Ghz 20" - Faultless

Powermac MDD 1.42Ghz Dual - PSU Failure

Mac Mini 1.42Ghz - Faultless

PowerMac G5 2.3 Dual Core - Faultless

Powerbook 1.67Ghz DDL High Res etc (one of the last) - Faulty headphone socket from new, otherwise nothing until I smashed it to pieces at an airport when it fell out my bag and landed on the marble floor in Paris.

Macbook Core2Duo (Aluminium) - Faultless and after a couple of years on the road (well plane actually) hard slog at work now currently on 24x7 hooked up to a TV running as media server and BBC iPlayer Server - Faultless

MacBook Pro i7 2Ghz 2011 - Faultless

wobegong said:

Lets keep it friendly

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No worries. I didn't read Quu's comment as insulting and my reply was not meant to be either.

Quu said:

Ya it's just you. Remember Intel Macs only been out 6 years. My original 17" MacBook Pro bought in June 2006, Still going strong. No issues.

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I was very lucky. When I got my iBook in mid-2010, it was clear that it was gently used. It looked brand new and everything worked great until after about a year of constant use first the DC-in board and then the AC adapter failed. After making minor repairs and upgrades, my machine is a sweet piece of work and powerful enough to handle everything I throw at it.

I was very happy to find this forum and learn that many others were enjoying their PowerPC Macs. I was fortunate to have been brought up on the Amiga and then the Mac, both in graduate school. I still believe that, in their own way, those machines represented a "golden age" in personal computing. They were so much fun to use and play with that their several critics relegated them to the status of "toys." Computers were supposed to be difficult to use, exclusive to the technically astute and the strong of heart.

In the 1980s, a friend of mine who taught music composition at Julliard, used an early Mac for his work. He had an Apple tech come in a couple times a week to teach him how to use music apps and synthesizers. I sat in on a couple of sessions and was truly fascinated. Soon after, I bought an Amiga 1000 and loved it. Switched to Mac when the dismal handwriting was on Commodore's wall.

For me there is, and always has been, something like personality on early Macs and PowerBooks. Even my iBook feels like a quantum leap from those early days. And Intel Macs just don't have that "it" factor.

In many ways, current Mac hipsters bring so much criticism upon themselves. Early Mac users just loved using their Macs; current iPad/iPhone users (no, not all) seem to love that other people know they have them.

I continue to use my powerPC machines because I own a lot of powerPC software and games. Also, compare my G5 to a "modern" computer:

My powerPC has dual 2.0 ghz CPUs. A modern machine pretty much has quad core, but there were Quad 2.7, which are on par with a modern machine. Mine has 16gb RAM. A modern computer comes standard with 4Gb, a 8gb upgrade is commonplace. I run an ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb. New machines usually have some sort of integrated video, mine will out perform it. You can get pretty much any video card you want for a new windows box, but the 512mb Radeon x200? Is still a pretty decent card. On to hard drive, mine is running a sataII hard drive, I think it runs in sataI mode, but it will accept any SSD compatable with sata bus. There is still a bottleneck, but a new machine will still use platters and usually the drive is the cheapest they can get. So as far as hardware is concerned, my G5 is at least on par with a new windows machine, even better than the $400 models you get.

On to software, I can run photoshop, logic pro, final cut, iTunes, watch Netflix and amazon instant video and cloud player. Many games Rct, zt, sc, C&C. Just to name a few. Don't forget adobe pro along with bridge and dream weaver. Office, iLife, iWork. Okay so software wise they are on par, albeit my software is a little older, it still does the same thing.

Well,it appears my 7 year old machine is a better buy than a new windows machine off the shelf. My G5 out performs both my 2011 MBP and my 2012 MBA when it comes to photoshop and FCE4. It even outperforms my 17" windows laptop with a C2D and 4gb ram.

These are the reasons I keep using my powerPC machines.

G5 Quad

I'd like to also add that the G5 Quad, and along with that the Dual-core G5's are no slouches whatsoever. They are still very much used and still have a lot of horsepower for demanding tasks.

My G5 Quad rips through Flash and I can watch 1080p and 4096p videos on youtube without hesitation. The PowerPC architecture is a much better and cleaner architecture compared to x86.

I love my Mac Pro also, but I love more so my PowerPC macs.

Zeke D said:

My powerPC has dual 2.0 ghz CPUs. A modern machine pretty much has quad core, but there were Quad 2.7, which are on par with a modern machine. Mine has 16gb RAM. A modern computer comes standard with 4Gb, a 8gb upgrade is commonplace. I run an ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb. New machines usually have some sort of integrated video, mine will out perform it. You can get pretty much any video card you want for a new windows box, but the 512mb Radeon x200? Is still a pretty decent card. On to hard drive, mine is running a sataII hard drive, I think it runs in sataI mode, but it will accept any SSD compatible with sata bus. There is still a bottleneck, but a new machine will still use platters and usually the drive is the cheapest they can get. So as far as hardware is concerned, my G5 is at least on par with a new windows machine, even better than the $400 models you get.

On to software, I can run photoshop, logic pro, final cut, iTunes, watch Netflix and amazon instant video and cloud player. Many games Rct, zt, sc, C&C. Just to name a few. Don't forget adobe pro along with bridge and dream weaver. Office, iLife, iWork. Okay so software wise they are on par, albeit my software is a little older, it still does the same thing.

Well,it appears my 7 year old machine is a better buy than a new windows machine off the shelf. My G5 out performs both my 2011 MBP and my 2012 MBA when it comes to photoshop and FCE4. It even outperforms my 17" windows laptop with a C2D and 4gb ram.

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A G5's computational abilities are not the same as a C2D or newer chip. Neither is a 2007 and a 2012 C2D clocked at the same speed. An early C2D running at 1.86Ghz running Leopard can playback a 1080p h264 video in QuickTime without a problem. Where as a faster clocked G5 will likely struggle when playing back the same video in QuickTime on Leopard. If a G5's computational abilities would be a 1, then an current C2D's would be a 3 or a 4. The i3/i5/i7 series would further increase the gap upwards of 10. There was never a 2.7Ghz quad as well.

The top of the line GPUs available for PowerMac G5's have since been eclipsed by the Intell HD 4000 series and all but a few have been outperformed by the Intell HD 3000 series. Not only in raw pixel driving power, but in support of graphical abilities such as OpenGL and DirectX support. The ATI 2400 out preforms the X800 quite nicely and the GeForce 7800 GT by a small yet noticeable margin. And the Intell HD 3000 vastly out preforms the ATI 2400.

PowerPC Macs cannot playback Netflix at all as it requires Silverlight 2 or higher, which is Intell only.

I feel like it is a more "pure" Apple experience because they designed the hardware and the software. Not to mention I love the design of my PowerBook G4 more than the current models, and even the first MacBook Pros (the webcam and IR sensor on the front make it look too busy).

Its the experience too, sure its 6 years old, but I can still do just about everything I would need to. Its also my only machine that has a working version of photoshop. With a new battery and airport extreme I get several hours to do whatever I want away from my desk too, and even play Minecraft.

I think there are couple reasons why people still use PPC macs:

One might be that they have old PPC software which of course wont run on new Macs and they are also not willing to buy Intel Mac with a version of OS which includes Rosetta PPC emulator, either because they are not willing to spend money or because Rosetta might have some performance or compatibility issues. They simply have PPC machine which runs PPC apps.

Reason number two could be that they hold nostalgic value for machines which truly were different including the processor architecture. PPC vs. Intel was "big war" and now Apple is using "PC processors" so there is a bit of that nostalgic difference missing. In this same category I would count hobbyists who like to kinda collect different type of hardware.

Reason number three would be price. PPC macs are cheaper in general and if you can't spend much money but still demand a Mac, PPC is the cheapest way to go. Sometimes you get usable machines for free.

Jethryn Freyman said:

I don't know, I just don't know enough on the hardware side, but the fact is that current Intel Core processors totally and utterly crush even the highest clocked G5s as far are CPU power goes.

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That's true that the latest Core i-series CPU's from Intel are amazing. But the PPC CPU's, especially the G4's, were so far head and shoulders above anything Intel was making at the time it's still amazing today. For example, while I use my newer Intel Macs for daily use, whenever I fire up my G4 Gigabit Ethernet, which is the first version, only 1 CPU and 400 MHz, it shocks me how fast it still is. For one, there are no 400 MHz Windows PC's still working, but that 400 MHz Mac seems every bit as fast as any Windows PC that was a single core up around 2 GHz or even more. I had a Sony Vaio 3GHz Pentium 4 PC for a short while (don't ask) and that G4 Mac was equal or faster on many tasks. Perhaps not in every benchmark, but in real world feel and use, it's still fast enough to do most things today, the problem is that developers have moved on and you can't find current apps for it. We are a throw away society. Something new and slightly faster comes out and we're supposed to junk perfectly good items because that's what everyone else does. And they call us crazy.

The design of the G4 CPU was superior to the Pentiums and Celeron's, regardless of the speed. To a casual computer buyer, comparing a 400 MHz Mac's specs to a 1GHz or faster Windows PC at the time seemed like Apple was ripping everyone off, until you actually used the machines side by side and realized that the specs were a worthless comparison.

And another thing. . . I used to love unpacking each new PowerBook, firing them up and getting right to work. Always a joy. I was a registered Apple software developer for a few years around the turn of the century, so I got new PowerBooks at a discount. We weren't allowed to sell them for at least a year, but Apple didn't really track such things.

I remember when the 300MHz Wall Street was first released. There was a woman on eBay who was given one but didn't have any need for it. She sold it to me at a $500 discount. What a beautiful machine. DVD???!!! Unreal.

I have a G4/400 Sawtooth that I used as a main machine for a while last year, mostly because my logic was that if I used it, I wouldn't get distracted off somewhere on the Internet because most modern pages didn't load properly or were very slow (it was on 10.2 with 1.5 gigs of ram). That didn't work, as I got caught up in the many awesome games created for OS 9 (namely Deus Ex). Also, reddit still loaded well so that was a no-go.

Other than that, PowerPC macs have been a hobby. Parts and machines are cheap, even free if you have the right connections (I was given a collection of 14 machines in April, it was awesome ) and so I just like to tinker with them. The design is also great, I love the sunflower iMacs and the PowerMac G3/G4 design.

Devix

edit: just wanted to say that the PowerMac belonged to an artist before me so it had photoshop/upgraded gpu which worked surprisingly well.

I will say that today, 11 years later, my 466MHz Digital Audio G4 is capable of some pretty amazing feats with cheap upgrades. Upping the memory to 1.25GB, adding a PCI USB 2 card, and a Core Image capable GPU [Radeon 9600 XT 128MB] makes it a damn good Tiger machine, and even under Leopard the GUI is fluid and it can do most things my dual G5 can do, albiet with a much lower performance limit.

I've got multiple PPC macs, but also multiple Intel macs. I only use one PPC mac with some regularity - an upgraded Cube. I think they are just the coolest looking Mac ever. I think the mini is a sad child of the Cube and the NeXT cube. I keep the other PPC macs going because they are fun to work with and 'tinker' with, and as many have said, it's low cost.

I learned how to use computers and program in basic on an Apple II+ in high school. Got to college and every thing was PC, so I spent the next 20 years using IBM, Compaq, Gateway, etc. MS Windows Vista made me consider Apple. I never cared for System 9, 8, etc. But in 2006 I got my hands on a NeXTStation and explored that. I was blown away by the fact that 1991 technology was so much more advanced that what MS Windows was doing in 2006! THAT made me consider a Mac with OS X, and I made the switch in 2007 with 10.4 on an Intel MacBook Pro. So, I came back to the Apple world with an Intel mac. However, as I learned more about the Apple 'ecosystem' over the past several years, I find the PPC macs more and more appealing. Yes, the functionality is not necessarily better than Intel Macs, but the DESIGN! I mean, the G4 line is just beautiful, especially with the consistent look from the tower, to monitor, keyboard, speakers, mouse. A lot of thought went into those designs, and under the hood they are still impressive performers, especially in the context of their time. And beyond the G4 tower, there is nothing so unique as the Cube and the G4 iMac! I'm keeping one G4 iMac just because the design is so unique. I only turn that Mac on about once a year, but I can't bring myself to 'surplus' it! For my tastes, the move to the G5 designs was a bit more utilitarian and less about the beauty of the form.

So, looking at today's lineup, it's clear the Mac Pro is still the G5 case design. I use one with a 27" monitor as my main office Mac. I love it. I also have a 2010 MBA, and love that too. Love the design AND functionality. Apple struck gold when they put SSDs in all the MBAs. However, I often wish there was a way to 'upgrade' a G4 tower/iMac/Cube to 'modern guts' so that they'd perform equal to my Intel macs. Then we'd have the perfect balance of performance and outstanding design!

cocacolakid said:

The design of the G4 CPU was superior to the Pentiums and Celeron's, regardless of the speed. To a casual computer buyer, comparing a 400 MHz Mac's specs to a 1GHz or faster Windows PC at the time seemed like Apple was ripping everyone off, until you actually used the machines side by side and realized that the specs were a worthless comparison.

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Well I wouldn't praise them too much:

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/05_may/features/cw_aeshowdown.htm

It is of course great if a processor is a bit faster when running at the same clock speed, but not when that processor architecture cannot scale high enough and still costs as much or even more.

I'm currently surfing on Dual G4 1.42GHz and for some time I have considered doing a YouTube review of this machine against Athlon XP2800+ -machine to see how well it compares in couple basic tasks, encoding, Geekbench etc. One pretty obvious thing is that the Athlon XP has much better software support. Still, these are nice machines and something different than PC's.

Zotaccian said:

Well I wouldn't praise them too much:

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/05_may/features/cw_aeshowdown.htm

It is of course great if a processor is a bit faster when running at the same clock speed, but not when that processor architecture cannot scale high enough and still costs as much or even more.

I'm currently surfing on Dual G4 1.42GHz and for some time I have considered doing a YouTube review of this machine against Athlon XP2800+ -machine to see how well it compares in couple basic tasks, encoding, Geekbench etc. One pretty obvious thing is that the Athlon XP has much better software support. Still, these are nice machines and something different than PC's.

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Read this:

http://www.oocities.org/imac_driver/cpu.html

cocacolakid said:

Read this:

http://www.oocities.org/imac_driver/cpu.html

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Looks like a page filled with Apple's marketing pictures and made by a fan.

Zotaccian said:

Looks like a page filled with Apple's marketing pictures and made by a fan.

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Actual tests show the G4's destroyed the Pentium 4's. As the previous link showed, but here's a video of it in action. Unless facts are just marketing too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKF9GOE2q38

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AsKhUL90a0

I'm not sure if you are serious, but if you are, please do not consult Apple if you want to ask if Apple machines are better than competitors. If you checked the link I posted earlier, you saw that a PC with a similar or even lower price and equipped with two Athlon XP's absolutely destroyed the Mac. AMD labeled its processors equivalent to 1.8GHz P4 and I am pretty sure that if you could put two of those in a PC, it would also be faster than that Dual G4 1.0GHz.

Zotaccian said:

AMD labeled its processors equivalent to 1.8GHz P4 and I am pretty sure that if you could put two of those in a PC, it would also be faster than that Dual G4 1.0GHz.

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One of the reasons would be the crippling bus speed on G4's, only the late PB's had DDR and even then it was a pure marketing ploy by Apple as actually the bridge was still SDR. Meanwhile AthlonXP's and Pentiums had been using DDR for a long time at full speed (333Mhz if I remember rightly whilst the last PB G4 was half that and PowerMac and iMac G4's even less....

Just to show that whilst liking Apple and having a PPC as my main machine I can still be objective....

Yeah, especially the Pentium 4 could actually use the available memory bandwidth because of its insanely (at that time) fast FSB. G4's 167MHz FSB is probably limiting quite a lot especially when two processors have to share it. Apple also avertised L3 cache as "new type and even faster type of cache" when in reality it is slower because it is not inside the CPU chip but instead located on a CPU card and hooked to its own slow bus. People of course did not understand this, just looked the amount.

I'm currently posting by using this Dual G4, it is quite nice machine and did not cost that much, but I'm well aware of its performance level.

Don't use my Ppc Mac much anymore. The lack of gaming support has pretty much done it for me. Still works fine with wc3 and I use it to play that still quite a bit as with D2.

I just don't have the desktop real estate to have a powermac and Mac Pro side by side anymore.

Also rtcw still rocks on the Ppc

wobegong said:

One of the reasons would be the crippling bus speed on G4's, only the late PB's had DDR and even then it was a pure marketing ploy by Apple as actually the bridge was still SDR. Meanwhile AthlonXP's and Pentiums had been using DDR for a long time at full speed (333Mhz if I remember rightly whilst the last PB G4 was half that and PowerMac and iMac G4's even less....

Just to show that whilst liking Apple and having a PPC as my main machine I can still be objective....

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Yes AMD machines were clocked slower as well and managed to match/beat the intel options.

Dewroo said:

What keeps you attached to your PPC mac?

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Three things.

• The nostalgia
  When I realized computers were interesting and maybe even my future I worked with macs in school - so the interface in OS X (and OS 9 for that matter) makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
  
• An alternative
  I have always wanted to steer away from obvious choises just because they are obvious. It feels good to not (at least not directly) give money to Microsoft/Intel. I do this in most areas of my life which sometimes leaves me feeling a bit... I don't know - it feels a bit like I make things harder than they have to be just because I don't want to just accept things as they are.
  
• The limitations
  The hunt for a good application that both fit my needs and the abillity of my hardware is very fun. It makes me happy. As with all situations you become the most creative under limitations and restrictions - which a PowerPC-processor is a good example of. I mean okay, there is a lot of possibilities, but not as many as with a modern computer with intel. There it's mostly "what does everyone else use? ok let's go with that" - where as for PPC, it's more like "what do I actually need?" and then comparing, testing options and finding out for yourself what suits your needs.

But most of all, for me it is all about being unique. I don't know but I like being unique, so that's why I've got a powerpc

I actually don't need gaming, since I have an Xbox 360 and the only game I play is MW3.

My ibook is my main work laptop.