Post your Best And Worst Apple machines!

[comda]

Greetings!

I've been a fan of apple computer systems since my Grade 6 teacher showed me his indigo Imac G3 and his Machintosh Classic. Im in First Year university and have used/acquired some Power PC macs since then and ive had some great machines and some not so great.

My Favorite machines where the Imac g3's. I currently own 2 DV models. Tangerine and Indigo. These machines are 400, and 350Mhz but seem very fast.
I also own a Beige Power Macintosh G3 (desktop) running 233Mhz and i was surprised how fast the damn thing booted despite its small CPU in both os 9.2 and 10.2.8.

My least favorite machine was the Macintosh Performa 5200CD. I acquired this one free over the summer and was quite disappointed. Just lifting it the casing cracked and from other users this was an issue since new, being apples "low end mac" its terribly slow under os 8.5 and offers next to no upgrades. I still have it. Boots right up. Just for some reason the CD-ROm drive opens at start up and when pushed closed it opens again.

SO tell me. What are your best favorite Power Pc macs to use and your worst!

 

[gavinstubbs09]

My worst by far was my iSight 17" iMac G5. Super unreliable with many lines down the screen and after baking the board twice I was able to get 2 months out of it. I didn't like the machine much.

Best? This goes to my dual 1GHz QuickSilver. Only problem it gave me was the PCI cards preventing it from booting which was an easy solution to fix. The G4 keeps going!

 

[bunnspecial]

If we are including all Apple computers(and not just PPC) it would have to be my late 2011 13" MBP with a Core i5. As much as I love PPC computers, that computer runs circles around even the best PPC computers and it's not even a top spec model.

It's also been(relatively) reliable, although I have needed a new trackpad, new hard drive, and a couple of new chargers-fortunately all were covered under Applecare.

My best PPC machine is my 2.0ghz Dual Core G5, although my most used one probably remains my dual 1.0ghz Quicksilver. I've also been getting a lot of mileage out of my 15" DLSD Powerbook lately, too(it's been my main work laptop for the past 3 weeks, and is what I'm typing this from now).

In terms of worst-I'd probably give the title to either of my MDD G4s, both of which are cantankerous and are often difficult to start(although both are relatively stable once running).

My Macintosh SE also gets an honorable mention, as none of the internal drives(floppy and HDD) work. The iMac G3(Rev A tray loader) that I've never actually successfully booted should go in that category also.

 

[weckart]

Hard to say which one of my PPCs is my favourite. Possibly the Wallstreet because of the keyboard.

Least favourite: Maybe my PB 15" DLSD because of the keyboard. Yuck.

Two keys still don't work after cleaning - probably shorted as there was clearly soft drink spilt on it. On the hunt for a new one.

 

[Ih8reno]

Best new(er) Mac is my early 2011 Macbook Pro 2.3ghz i5 with 8gb ram and 120gb sad.

Best classic mac is either my Quad Power Mac G5, Power Mac G3 B&W 400 or my Power Macintosh 6500 250. Love em all and can't decide

Worst Mac is my Macintosh iici I received for free, was kept in a basement and smells of mildew and wont boot...oddly enough I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Back in 2004, my dad bought four iMac G5s when they came out... The iMac G5 was definitely one of the most unreliable modern Macs, or Mac in general. I used mine until 2010, when I upgraded to a G5 iSight, and the HD in it died just from sitting... then from more sitting, the GPU failed. As for my brother's G5, some caps on the motherboard leaked. My mom's G5 died some years later, and the replacement iMac G5 she got died years later as well. I am not sure about the 4th one we originally got, but I am sure it died as well. I do have a now-dilapidated TiBook, which fried itself in my bag, and I have a couple other Macs that are badly-functioning, but I'd say the iMac G5 just takes the cake for being such a stinker.

My best (as in fastest and newest) Mac is my 2009 2.26Ghz (4GB RAM) MacBook Pro 13", which my dad handed down to me in 2012. I didn't use Intel Macs until that time, and I wasn't even a PowerPC enthusiast at the time either! In fact, if I had not asked my dad for the MacBook Pro, I probably would have used my iSight iMac G5 as a main machine until recently.

In terms of coolest Macs, I have an original Macintosh, a Cube, etc. Of course, my main PowerPC Mac (PowerMac G5) has to be mentioned!

 

[poiihy]

Best PPC i/we have is Powermac G4 466Mhz. Built-in speaker seems to be damaged but that is all. Condition is rather good compared to my others.

Worst is the 700MHz iBook G3 with the graphics card problem. nuff said. that thing is a nightmare.

We only have 3 PPCs. They all are about the same age as me.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Best PowerPC? Tossup.
1. 12" PowerBook G4 - my first brand new Mac ever. Before that, I owned many used ones, mostly "just obsolete" by the time I got them. This was my first brand new Mac. Got it a couple months after the introduction, immediately before leaving on a two week vacation. (As in: packed up the car to go on a driving/camping vacation, and stopped at the store on the way out of town.) The optical drive died about an hour and a half in to the trip, negating the usefulness as a mobile movie-watching machine...
2. Power Mac G4 Cube - bought used well past new-ness as a collector's item. Best just due to Cube awesomeness.

Worst PowerPC? No contest.
PowerBook 5300c. I have owned four of them. All four failed in some way. Two had the hinge failure the model was famous for while still under warranty, and were fixed. Two more failed after the warranty expired (including the extremely long extended recall.) Two had display issues (one that was warranty fixed, one that wasn't, but the display issue started before the hinge failure.) One just plain died. Two had power connectors that popped loose (another common problem.)

 

[bse5150]

Best PowerPC:

G4 Mac Mini, 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, Combo Drive

Best Non-PowerPC:

2011 MacBook Pro i7 2GHz, 4GB RAM, 500 GB HD, Superdrive

Worst PowerPC:

Performa 5200/75 Nuff' said.

 

[Alimar]

Worst: 17" PowerBook G4 (2003)
Best: 27" iMac i7 (current)

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Best PowerPC:

G4 Mac Mini, 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, Combo Drive

Worst PowerPC:

Performa 5200/75 Nuff' said.

I feel you on horrible PowerPCs... I have the PowerMac 4400/200. It's said to be one of the most hated Macs out there. It's so much like a Windows PCs that it has those Windows PC-like problems. (OS fails to install every time... IDK why) By the way, you are lucky you have that Performa; that case design is not too common.

 

[Starfighter]

The worst performing Mac I own is a iMac G3 (500 MHz, the "Snow" one) and the best is a Power Mac G5 (dual 2 GHz).

 

[MysticCow]

The worst performing Mac I own is a iMac G3 (500 MHz, the "Snow" one) and the best is a Power Mac G5 (dual 2 GHz).

Just for curiosity's sake, is the G3 running 10.4 or 9.2.2? Because that's a nice one for 9.2.2 to run.

 

[Starfighter]

Just for curiosity's sake, is the G3 running 10.4 or 9.2.2? Because that's a nice one for 9.2.2 to run.

Both!

 

[bunnspecial]

I have four working G3s-a beige desktop, a B&W tower, a 500mhz Indigo iMac, and an 800mhz iBook.

All have the maximum version of OS X they will officially support(10.2 on the beige, 10.4 on the others), but I generally only use them in 9.2.2. I find them much more useable, although admittedly throwing a bunch of RAM at them(I have 1gb each in the B&W and in the iMac) makes a big difference. I need to get a 512mb stick for my iBook(I have a 256 in it now) and I'm hoping that will pep it up a little bit.

 

[grahamperrin]

Roundup

Not all of this fits with 'best and worst' but here goes …

My dad ran a personal mac repair business back in the late 90's and early 00's. He also worked as a mac tech for the U of South Carolina. I have a picture of me, four or five years old in 99 or so, posing with a PowerBook 1400.

We owned about a dozen Performa computers from various years, my favorite was the 200 (Classic II) which actually had a 68k. I ended up breaking this one somehow, I haven't been able to afford or find a classic mac since. Another favorite that I still use is the 630CD, 68LCk40, 36mb of RAM. The Performa 6300 was my first foray into the PPC world, at the age of 10 or so. I had a great time with it, not realizing it was probably one of the worst PPC macs ever made.

At the age of 11 I was having a ball networking Performas and building the biggest SCSI chains I could. Up until last week, a PowerBook G4 1.5 12" was my daily driver, but being 19 and in college, I finally bought a current computer, the MBA. Even then, I still have a Mac mini G4 sitting on my dorm desk, ready to spring to life at a moment's notice. Then of course, there's always sheepshaver

It suprises me that alot of people here have had their first PPC experience when Apple had went Intel.

Anyway, my experience with PowerPC Macs is when my dad came home with a Performa 5200 back in the days. I hated it. All I used it for was Lemmings and SimCity (and playing around with ClarisWorks). After a while, we got a PC (and i could play all the cool games my friends was playing).

After that, I got myself a PowerMac G3 second hand. Then it just went off.

(in correct order. My latest Mac at the bottom)
PowerBook (xx00cs (don't remember what version))
PowerMac G3 Wallstreet
PowerMac G5 Dual Processor
PowerBook G4 Aluminium
PowerBook G4 Titanium
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver
PowerMac G5 Dual Core

(and some PCs in between)

The main reason to all these changes, and why the only computer I have left is the PowerMac G5 Dual Core, is because i've had personal problems, moved alot and have lost all my belongings more than one time.

Don't think I would use PowerPC if I had an Intel Mac. But well...I don't have an Intel Mac and don't have any plans on getting one either. I was actually planning on getting a MacBook somewhere after the G4 Alu, and then I was planning on getting one after the Quicksilver. But for some reason, I didn't get one. Anyway, it has nearly becoming a thing I have, to have PPCs when it comes to Mac. …

Division on forums of older Mac users vs younger(PC generation) is where the latter group never understood community is how/why Apple survived the dark years. In my opinion when MacAddict got renamed to MacLife & killed off their forums to promote their Twitter account--most older 680xx/PowerPC user base often avoided forums or flip between various smaller "friendly" forums. Most whippersnappers never encountered SCSI ID settings, manual memory allocation of programs pre-OSX, SoftWindows/VirtualPC or PC compatibility cards(Intel/Cyrix/NexGen 5x86 CPUs). An old childhood friend who thought I was odd for being the only PC to Mac user in our group of friends during the late 90s had later bought an Intel Mac nearly ten years later... why? He got fed up with Windows and Linux lacked the big name software developers of OS X & Steamplay(before Linux support) made the switch easier.

My early childhood we used pre-PowerPC Macs & Amigas, High School we had PowerMac 7200/90 as the main Mac Lab and later they deployed a few extra 7200/90 or 7200/120 models to certain teachers as their pre-PPC Macs died(mostly pizza box Performas). Most amusing thing about my childhood, the old Apple II machines were so reliable most science teachers kept theirs & demanded any surplus Apple II & printers from the scrapheap as they took a heat beating & kept on working... Performas typically overheated often before summer break

First Mac would be my parents first purchase of a PowerMac 7300/180 w/Pentium 233Mhz PC Compatibility card... snappy but the PC compatibility was a joke, Window-ed mode you hit graphics corruption with some software/games and full-screen mode was awkward as switching between OS 8+Win95 had nasty mouse lag until you shutdown Windows. More or less we were smart to move on and get an iMac G3 before early PowerPCs w/SCSI HDDs became ancient relics which needed pricey IDE HDD controller cards as SCSI HDDs became harder to buy.

As far as my first personal Mac, when I did editor work for a digital magazine(dotcom era) I had a compact Wallstreet era PowerBook G3... then for university I moved to a 12" PowerBook G4 as it had the best battery life and as a student it was more value for the dollar than other PC options.

… "We don't ship junk" - Steve Jobs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAo8gnUCWzE

Macintosh Performa came close to killing the company.

Off topic, but, I owned a Performa. The price/performance was dismal. However, the OS was great, and the Apple programming model was so much better than PC. Even at their worst they made the PC seem clunky and frustrating.

Then Jobs came back and the world changed.

… Anyone remember the bloodletting when Steve came back to Apple? He first killed off the non Apple hardware running Mac OS.

Then he killed off the needlessly duplicated Performa/Quadra lines. …

My favourite whilst in use: probably the last one that was purchased for me, because it was the most powerful. If I recall correctly, an early Power Macintosh G4.

In retrospect: my favourite is probably the Power Macintosh 9600/200MP . Internally it's not as beautiful as G4 and G5 towers, but the hardware was probably longer-lasting.

I managed many other types of Mac at my place of work, but amongst the PowerPCs I used daily: those two are outstanding in my memory.

The worst? I'm not sure. But I recall thinking 'ugh' when I first took delivery of a Macintosh that was less than beautifully packaged. Probably a Performa.

 

[MysticCow]

The worst I ever had was my iBook G3. It lasted forever, but finally succumbed to the video card failure. It happened (and I kid you not) one month after the program officially ended.

As for the best, I'm torn. I have a 700 MHz G3 iMac that still works, a 733 MHz G4 that still works, and a dual 2.0 GHz G5 that still works on the PowerPC side of things.

If I can transfer an OS 9 install over to the G4, then I'd have to say the G4 would be my favorite. If I were forced to choose, and considering this is close to winter, the G5 would be my favorite.

 

[GameFreak348]

My worst one was my 12" PowerBook G4 1.33 Ghz, 768MB ram, NVIDIA FX 5200 Ultra. The powerbook just wouldnt turn on, after i fixed it i had to install 10.3 and then the cd drive broke. I cant do anything with it now and I dont want to replace the DVD.

the best one was my ibook g4 14" 1.42 Ghz, 1.5 GB Ram, Radeon 9550 which i recently got. I replaced it with my retina macbook pro because its much more fun to use and i love the keyboard

 

[roadbloc]

The best, by a long way, has to be the iMac G4. Had once since the beginning of highschool and 11 years later it is still going strong. Wrote my 3 books on it.

The worst has to the 20th Anniversary Macintosh. I dunno if it was the hardware or the software that made it suck, but whenever I used it it was slow, unreliable, generally enjoyed crashing and for the most part was about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

 

[catzilla]

Worst daily driver PB 1400C back in '98, luckily replaced with a Wallstreet and resold quickly.
Currently has to be a 7100.
Best is my MDD FW800 1.25, still sees frequent use.
I've never owned a G5.

 

[LordeOurMother]

my best is 2.3 ghz dp g5 with 8 gb of ram. cant go wrong with it.

my worst is my 1 ghz powerbook g4 with 1.25 gb of ram.

 

[InuNacho]

Worst: LCII, pizzabox designs sound cool so long as you don't add anything to it. Way back when, ours literally burned itself out because of a 030 add-on.

Best: Tossup between the 500mhz sawtooth or if allowed in this thread my 09 mac pro.

 

[Goftrey]

Of the computers I've owned;

Worst PowerPC: DP 1.42GHz PowerMac G4 MDD. Was unbearably loud, was incredibly fidgety when it came to booting with PCI cards installed, and was just a really problematic Mac in general. I could've got unlucky, as I know loads of people who absolutely adore their MDD's, but I just didn't make that connection. I guess I've always been more of a G5 guy.

Worst Intel: 1.6GHz original MacBook Air. What a God-awful computer. Horrendously crippled with a shockingly slow Core 2 Duo processor, and even more shockingly slow Intel graphics, paired with an iPod Classic grade 1.8" PATA hard drive. It constantly ran at 90 degrees celcius+, even when browsing Google and was all in all a terrible, almost unusable computer.

Best PowerPC: PowerMac G4 Cube. I absolutely adore this thing. The incredible design was way ahead of it's time, and the fact that it was pretty much as upgradable as any full-sized G4 tower of the time is just mind-boggling. I've got an SSD, an upgraded processor, an upgraded GPU and a SATA hard drive in mine - all of keeps ice cold with only one 80mm fan cooling the lot. Genius design.

Best Intel: My 13" late-2010 MacBook Air. What a difference 2 and a half years makes. This MacBook Air spits out everything I chuck at it with ease. In such a small, light, yet solid form factor, it edits videos, plays video, and even games while keeping everything relatively cool. A great successor of the legendary 12" PowerBook G4.

 

[tevion5]

Best: Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro 2.3GHz.
My first Mac, purchased brand new.

1. Powers my recording studio since I got it.
2. Recorded over 100 tracks without issue in Logic 9, X and ProTools 9.
3. Runs my minecraft server.
4. Hosted my website.
5. It's my desktop publishing machine all through secondary school.
6. Produced numerous school videos.
7. Seen 5 versions of OSX.
8. Survived having an entire bottle of water leak all over it by simply drying off.
9. It's hands down the most reliable machine I've ever used.

Worst: 1997 Power Macintosh 8600/250.
Picked this up for 20 bucks for the purpose of an intermediary between my old and new world ROM Macs, by writing 800K disks and using LocalTalk connectors.

1. Takes an absolute age to boot Mac OS 9.2 (9.1 is even slower).
2. Clicking anything before it has fully booted causes further delays. Never can tell when it's really ready.
3. Likes to randomly crash for no reason. Far more often than anything else I own.
4. Unpredictable compatibly with PCI cards.
5. Door mechanism is lovely on paper but a scraping mess in practice to open.
6. Pretty loud.

That said, it still hosts my FTP server, whenever its not freezing spontaneously.

*In fairness, many of these issues are as much to do with Classic Mac OS than the computer itself.

 

[bunnspecial]

Worst: 1997 Power Macintosh 8600/250.
Picked this up for 20 bucks for the purpose of an intermediary between my old and new world ROM Macs, by writing 800K disks and using LocalTalk connectors.

1. Takes an absolute age to boot Mac OS 9.2 (9.1 is even slower).
2. Clicking anything before it has fully booted causes further delays. Never can tell when it's really ready.
3. Likes to randomly crash for no reason. Far more often than anything else I own.
4. Unpredictable compatibly with PCI cards.
5. Door mechanism is lovely on paper but a scraping mess in practice to open.
6. Pretty loud.

That said, it still hosts my FTP server, whenever its not freezing spontaneously.

*In fairness, many of these issues are as much to do with Classic Mac OS than the computer itself.

The slow booting sounds like it could be from a failing hard drive. I had similar issues with my 7100 until I replaced the hard drive.

The 7100 won't run OS 9, but now takes about 30 seconds to boot into OS 8. My 8500 will boot into OS 9 in about the same amount of time.