future limitations of PowerPC Macs?

Tiger is becoming less and less supported. Firefox is ending support for tiger in the next revision (4). Apple has not added anything for over a year (or two) now for tiger.

Now I think Leopard is the only way to be on a PPC if you want to run anything current. Eventually many others will phase out any support for Leopard, as most game makers already have.

The lack of support by the Mac App store is another nail in the coffin.

I'd give Leopard another 2 years maximum, and Tiger is already on its way out. Panther is long gone (try finding a current web browser for it).

PowerPC is a diminishing market. Apple has continued to support PowerPC with Leopard, as Safari 5 and iTunes 10 are both available for PPC. However, when Leopard reaches its EOL status, I doubt there will be any further development for this platform. I'm not as worried about the web app angle, at least not for a few years. Web apps tend to be written toward a lowest-common denominator specification, so I can't imagine Safari 5 and Firefox 3.6 will leave you high and dry for at least a few more years.

Aside from some PPC enthusiasts or businesses that must run legacy applications and have not ported to Intel, I doubt that we will see much more development for this platform. I think of my dog's groomer as a good example: for years, they had a G4 Power Mac (Yikes, I believe), running OS 9 and an ancient version of Filemaker Pro. It had all of the customer data in it, and ran fine, performing only the tasks required of it. The last time I took my dog in, however, a shiny new iMac was sitting in its place, running Snow Leopard and a new version of Filemaker. I asked the owner (who is a Mac-head herself) why she switched, and she responded although the G4 was still running, she was worried about the machine dying, given its age. For her, more than the software, it was the age of the hardware that was a concern. As these machines get older, more things will break, and although some of us LOVE to tinker and have no problem diagnosing faulty RAM or a bad HDD, a lot of people just want a machine that works, and have no interest in repairing a 5-6 year old computer.

Personally, when Leopard no longer receives security updates and application support (Safari, iTunes), I'll probably look to replace the G5 iMac with something newer.

I've mostly just read stuff, rather than tried, but maybe somebody has tinkered with some of these:
ppc builds of linux distros. the browser versions would be current. early g4 probably needs graphics card upgrade. need at least 512mb ram
beos? i think the newer versions were x86, and they were circa 2000 (some enthusiast patches extended a couple years, i think). so, ppc builds are even older? so, you'd have to like beos.
aros? afaik, project has still not reached official release. i don't recall much that i read.
morphos. payware kin of aros.

KítscheñÇinqµe said:

morphos. payware kin of aros.

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That's an interesting option. Turn your Mac into an Amiga

on the browser site is a great option and that is
TENFOURFOX
it made even youtube running stutter free at 240p on my iMac G3
all it needs is OSX tiger as thats what this browser is made for NOW not 10 years ago , these guys there are great , because it gives even a old G3 iMac the use back Apples safari and mozilla denies it
so far no crashes whatsoever as its beta software, that gives hope that not everybody out there seems to think PPC architecture is only good for the dump , its still possible to surf the web, watch dvd's or downloaded movies , use office ...use older photoshop ,what more do you want from a computer ...honestly most people surf the web when the computer is in use , its only Apple who wants you to believe you absolutely need a intel processor ... to open google

what happened to THINK DIFFERENT Steve ?

MacHamster68 said:

on the browser site is a great option and that is
TENFOURFOX
it made even youtube running stutter free at 240p on my iMac G3
all it needs is OSX tiger as thats what this browser is made for NOW not 10 years ago , these guys there are great , because it gives even a old G3 iMac the use back Apples safari and mozilla denies it
so far no crashes whatsoever as its beta software, that gives hope that not everybody out there seems to think PPC architecture is only good for the dump , its still possible to surf the web, watch dvd's or downloaded movies , use office ...use older photoshop ,what more do you want from a computer ...honestly most people surf the web when the computer is in use , its only Apple who wants you to believe you absolutely need a intel processor ... to open google

what happened to THINK DIFFERENT Steve ?

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I agree, PPC is not yet dead. Still alive and still kicks some @$$!

Nameci said:

I agree, PPC is not yet dead. Still alive and still kicks some @$$!

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You also have a Dual 1.42Ghz G5 and a 2Ghz G5 some of the better PPC processors. My 800 and 867 PowerPC Macs are on their way out to useless.
Even with maxed out RAM.

try camino as your browser,mactubes for utube...

if you consider most people basically use computers for internet...ppc mac offer great value ....if you max them with ram,newer harddrives and a few tweaks....they run just great.

why overpay the apple tax for something like a macbook pro just to surf the net?...or overpay for some win comp that leaves you open to virus,spyware,keyloggers just to surf the net.

ppc= great value safe internet computers win win....

macgeek18 said:

You also have a Dual 1.42Ghz G5 and a 2Ghz G5 some of the better PPC processors. My 800 and 867 PowerPC Macs are on their way out to useless.
Even with maxed out RAM.

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Well, I really try to look for them. They are great value for the money.

Nameci said:

I agree, PPC is not yet dead. Still alive and still kicks some @$$!

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My 3 year-old MacBook is faster than the G5 listed in your sig (according to the benchmarks, at least). Don't get me wrong, I love PPC Macs and the G5 was an amazing machine.

But the notion that PPC Macs still have significant performance in today's world is just misleading. Any Mac you can buy new today is faster than the fastest PPC Mac ever was.

iThinkergoiMac said:

My 3 year-old MacBook is faster than the G5 listed in your sig (according to the benchmarks, at least). Don't get me wrong, I love PPC Macs and the G5 was an amazing machine.

But the notion that PPC Macs still have significant performance in today's world is just misleading. Any Mac you can buy new today is faster than the fastest PPC Mac ever was.

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Not necessarily. A G5 quad will smoke the current mini and macbook in CPU-heavy apps, but otherwise, PPC is a good bit slower.

iThinkergoiMac said:

My 3 year-old MacBook is faster than the G5 listed in your sig (according to the benchmarks, at least). Don't get me wrong, I love PPC Macs and the G5 was an amazing machine.

But the notion that PPC Macs still have significant performance in today's world is just misleading. Any Mac you can buy new today is faster than the fastest PPC Mac ever was.

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Your 3 year old mb is a core duo machine am i right? while the ppc g5 is a single core machine. Dual cores makes a difference. But compared to machines of its age it is still better. Maybe it is just me. But in terms of build quality, they are much better than PC's, IMO.

I recently got my first "new" PPC Mac in a long time, a Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8GHz (June 2004). This thing, with it's 2GB DDR and ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128MB graphics card, keeps up with nearly any of the newer PCs that I've used. I used to have a self-built AMD Athlon 64 X2 2GHz system with 3GB DDR2, Radeon HD 4650 1GB, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and my G5 performed far better than it. So far, the only PC that I've used that can best my G5 in my opinion is my friend's Asus G73 gaming notebook.

Nameci said:

Your 3 year old mb is a core duo machine am i right? while the ppc g5 is a single core machine. Dual cores makes a difference. But compared to machines of its age it is still better. Maybe it is just me. But in terms of build quality, they are much better than PC's, IMO.

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You are correct. It should be noted that whatever benchmarks say, a Dual 2.0+ G5 is still, in terms of performance (real-world) is pretty close to a 2.0 C2D (Heck Id take a Dual 2.0G5 over my 1.83CD iMac anyday)

There will [For at least 5 more years] be Linux...

From Wikipedia:

Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), released on 19 April 2007,[36][37][38] was Canonical's sixth release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 7.04's support ended on 19 October 2008.[39] Ubuntu 7.04 included several new features, among them a migration assistant to help former Microsoft Windows users transition to Ubuntu, support for Kernel-based Virtual Machine, assisted codec and restricted drivers installation including Adobe Flash, Java, MP3 support, easier installation of Nvidia and ATI drivers, Compiz desktop effects, support for Wi-Fi Protected Access, the addition of Sudoku and chess, a disk usage analyzer (baobab), GNOME Control Center, and Zeroconf support for many devices.[15][40] Ubuntu 7.04 dropped support for PowerPC architecture.

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Many people think that Ubuntu Linux does not support PPC, but in fact it is a community-supported version. I am running the latest release (10.10) on my iBook G3 and it is blazing fast.

I think the future of PPC Macs lies in the hands of Linux. As for web standards, Firefox works on PPC Linux. A little slow, but it has HTML5!

Nameci said:

Your 3 year old mb is a core duo machine am i right? while the ppc g5 is a single core machine. Dual cores makes a difference. But compared to machines of its age it is still better. Maybe it is just me. But in terms of build quality, they are much better than PC's, IMO.

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Just as a technicality, it's a Core2 Duo. But, yes, it's a dual core. Not all G5s were single core... the latest generation of G5s were dual core processors, making the dual processor G5 a quad core machine!

You're absolutely right, for it's age, the G5 is a fantastic machine.

iThinkergoiMac said:

Just as a technicality, it's a Core2 Duo. But, yes, it's a dual core. Not all G5s were single core... the latest generation of G5s were dual core processors, making the dual processor G5 a quad core machine!

You're absolutely right, for it's age, the G5 is a fantastic machine.

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Just to clarify my imac g5 is a single, so it definitely could not match a same ghz intel c2d machine. but for being a g5 and running leopard it still is a snappy computer with respect to current standards.

Besides that, c2d were more recent than g5's. a p4 is a match with the g5's.

Nameci said:

Besides that, c2d were more recent than g5's. a p4 is a match with the g5's.

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OR rather - no match for the G5s - My friends single 1.6 G5 can for pretty much everything outperform the DELL 2.8P4 I used to keep kicking around to code on - just no comparison.

See my signature.

Eventually, yes it will no longer be feasible for most people to use PowerPC machines as their daily workhorse. How many people do you see still using their 68k Mac? Yep, that's PowerPC not too far from now.

But, as others have pointed out, for the time being, late model PPC machines are still quite useful. My own workhorse is my 1.42 GHz eMac. Running Tiger. I couldn't be more pleased with this setup, it's fast, simple and easy. Eventually, I will have to do away with it, I'm sure, as Apple progresses further and further away from the architecture.

But, for now at least, PPC still has a flicker of life in it.

Cassie said:

See my signature.

Eventually, yes it will no longer be feasible for most people to use PowerPC machines as their daily workhorse. How many people do you see still using their 68k Mac? Yep, that's PowerPC not too far from now.

But, as others have pointed out, for the time being, late model PPC machines are still quite useful. My own workhorse is my 1.42 GHz eMac. Running Tiger. I couldn't be more pleased with this setup, it's fast, simple and easy. Eventually, I will have to do away with it, I'm sure, as Apple progresses further and further away from the architecture.

But, for now at least, PPC still has a flicker of life in it.

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not a flicker imo, but still more life left on it...

Furure PPC:

I don't know of any computers that are perfect. Or operating systems. Or even web browsers.

As for the future of PowerPC macs, it all depends on the people who use them and what they do with them and what they want to do with them. If people are still interested in their PowerPC macs, then there will be communities of people and also software developers.

The main concern is the hardware. If the logic board fails, then I would not know what to do. I don't think there are any replacement logic boards. I still use Mac OS 9 mostly. It does more than what most people think. All iPods except for the 1st generation "can't" connect to it, there isn't a Safari Browser, there isn't any known equivalent to Flash Player, and I am not sure how to connect some printers and scanners to it. That is about it. Whatever else that Mac OS 9 can't do, I would not know because I have never done any of that. I use computers for file storage, organizing, online backup, web browsing, typing, scanning, printing, ..... not much that I use them for. I am impressed with Mac OS 9. I know that it is 10+ years old, but it is still impressive to me that you can fit an operating system on an 800 MB hard drive with a less than 233 mhz processor. (and with faster processors and more RAM, Mac OS 9 is even faster!!) It is the most stable compared to anything else that I know of. It is simple. It is also built on a microkernel. There is After Dark, iText, and a-Dock.

....with Classilla web browser. I think the people behind Classilla are also designing something I think it is called Ten Four Fox.

So I use the simple, fast, no-nonsense operating systems compared to others.

For those on Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard (not any reason to have earlier editions of OS X ) there is Camino browser, and that TenFourFox.

I am only 22 and so I don't have that many systems yet. I only have G3s, 1400, and an IBM with Windows XP. I do not bother installing Mac OS X on the G3s. I don't like Windows anything, but I have it for work-related "needs".

I will get G4s, G5s, and intel later, but I will never throw away my older systems... and I am much more likely to get an Amiga/Amiga Clone with Amiga OS and its spin offs before I get newer macs. And I won't be using the newer macs more than the older macs. The newer macs are overpriced, and Apple has more interesting things. They have iPods, iPads, iPhones, QuickTime, iTunes, iTunes Store, iOS... I will use new macs for sync-ing ipods for example.

So I don't think that there will be a complete end to PowerPC Macs, unless they all break. And then that would mean that the Apple hardware, even the PowerPC, is not as reliable as they say. There may be some things that the hardware and software can't do, but I have not seen any computer system that can do anything and everything, efficiently.

Nameci said:

Besides that, c2d were more recent than g5's. a p4 is a match with the g5's.

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The Pentium 4 is a closer match to the G4 than the G5.

In-Correct said:

If the logic board fails, then I would not know what to do. I don't think there are any replacement logic boards.

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One word: eBay.

The newer macs are overpriced

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So were the older Macs. In fact, Apple's pricing is better now than it was. The original iMac was $1,300, while the current iMac is $1,200. That's only $100 difference, however once you factor in inflation the cost of the original iMac rises a decent amount.

The only reason PPC Macs are affordable now is because they're old. There's nothing wrong with that either.

iThinkergoiMac said:

The Pentium 4 is a closer match to the G4 than the G5.

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Technically, yes. Chronologically no. Technically the G5s match were the relatively short-lived Pentium D series...