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Apple downhill in quality since the PowerPC Days?

G51989

G51989

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Feb 25, 2012
2,530
10
NYC NY/Pittsburgh PA
This isn't any Apple bashing or anything, I've picked up a couple PowerPC's very recently,
I bought

A Dual 2.7gzh G5, 16gb of ram, 7800, SSD Hard drive with a 1TB storage drive.
Still have my Dual 1.8gzh G5 with 8gb of ram and a dumpster 5200FX.
Clamshell, G3, decked out with everything, Tangerine color.
Two MDD G4 towers, not sure what I'm doing with them yet
4 iMac G3s, 2 of which work. 50 bucks at a yard sale.
As well as a really decked out Pismo Laptop, PowerLogix Upgrade and all that ( I could write a 5 page story as to how I ran into this thing, and I probably will at some point ), with an After market battery, I use this thing every day.

All running 10.4, or 10.5.

I also very recently purchased a base model iMac, bumped the ram up to 8gb, by iMac, I mean brand new, running 10.7 I just thought it'd be a cool computer, plus the GF likes Macs, so it'll shut her up about my Gaming PC that " sounds like a freaking helicopter when we try to watch movies ", so Far I'm happy with it.

Couple of complaints, and the point of this thread. The build quality on this iMac is not as good as the G5 towers, its not as good as the G3 iMacs, and its not as good as the Pismo either. Despite it's metal case and glossy screen. It feels really really cheap compared to the older Macs.

And, 10.7. I don't know if its only me, but I have stabilty issues with 10.7, nothing to serious or anything. Just stupid stuff. I ravage the G5 towers all the time, and even snice I got the first G5 a few months ago, I don't think I've had a single issue with 10.4 or 10.7.

Is it just me? The Apple " experience " for me is greatly diminished on this new iMac vs the old PPC machines.
 
Carlanga said:
can you explain this "feels really really cheap"?
Click to expand...

It's hard to explain, it doesn't feel cheap in the way that like a 250 dollar emachine at Wal Mart feels, just compared to my G5 towers and my Pismo it just doesn't seem as well put together, its hard to put my finger on it, it just doesn't feel as nice.

10.7 just doesn't seem to be as stable either.

I don't regret this iMac or anything. Its nice. But Im gonna probably keep using my G5s as long as I can for my Mac Experience.
 
I have a latest 21.5 i5 iMac on a floor above me. But I really never fancy this new beautiful thing. There is something missing about these intel Macs, in my book it is called character. It is like looking at cars, a '12 mustang can be all shiny and powerful, but a '69 fast back can be more appealing, it is because it has a certain character to it.
 
I liked it when we weren't using off the shell Intel motherboards. I do think you're right. The PPC G5 stuff was built like a rock.

With Intel you really only get heavy duty when you're looking at Xeon stuff IMO which is why I want the Mac Pro to live on.
 
Didn't a huge batch of the G5's or G4's leak their coolant all over the place?

Guys, EVERYTHING from every manufacturer is built by Foxconn now, some just to better standards.
 
10.7 is a mess. I agree. I bought my MacBook Pro in December and had to reinstall it, which took AGES because of the slow Apple servers, because when I restarted it one time, it started to install an update that wasn't there to begin with. So it just hanged at the boot screen. Getting Mountain Lion will probably be a nightmare in the next month too.

I feel the same about the aluminum, but the stuff used in earlier Intel Mac models was a lot worse. So just know that it takes some time getting used to it.
 
LOL. Back in the day the PPC machines cost way more than an modern iMac and don't includes a monitor for a start. At least make a valid comparison - a Mac Pro for example.

As for the off the shelf Intel motherboards comment I'm not going to say anything. It's Apple, not Acer.
 
I haven't had experience with the iMacs, but I've found the build quality of the 13" MacBook Pros (which is all I've used for quite a while) to be very good and much better than some of the iBooks, which had repeated logic board issues for me. However, I feel like Apple is ignoring quality in its software and is completely allowing some pieces of software like iWeb languish. I feel like iMovie and iPhoto have become much less intuitive, and OS X is just much less polished. For a while I was so overwhelmed with wanting to continue liking Apple but feeling difficulty doing so with all that they were ignoring, but at some point I started letting it go and hoping maybe they'll do a lot of catch-up at WWDC. If things haven't improved with Mountain Lion, I may try contacting Apple to report outstanding bugs (which proved to be virtually impossible with Lion—I could never use the bug report form and was never contacted back from Apple regarding the bug report system not working).
 
I too seem to like the power pc macs better as well, I seem to think that since it is a power pc mac, it is a true Apple, not a dell, acer, gateway or what ever brand is printed on it... but truely designed by Apple. not saying the other brands are terrible, I have a very nice acer laptop that I use for stormchasing since for what ever reason the person who developed the radar program gr level 3 only designed it for windows. however for every day use I use my apples, if it is my laptop it is my recentally rebuilt flea market special, a g4 powerbook aluminum 1.33/512 ram running on leopard 10.5.8. got this powerbook at a flea market for $10.00.... had to put in a hard drive which i scavenged from my old first gen ti book that no longer works after meeting a iced tea. had to purchase the ram, and looking for a pc2700 1gb ram stick since this powerbook has a dead lower ram slot, the friendly people at the local apple store updated the software for me from 10.4.11 to 10.5.6 and now it is in service as my main laptop. works very nice with 512mb for ram, but can only be better with 1gb. so far only put $25.00 in it to make it work and use it for hours a day. :apple: rules!!
 
As someone who started using Apple machines again during the early OS X and PPC G4 days my opinion is that Apple machines have gotten much better design and build quality wise.

The 12" PowerBook, for instance, had a battery on the corner where one of it's rubber feet were. This design lead to the machine rocking on level surfaces.
 
My G3 iMac fell off a desk, NOTHING HAPPENED
My friends 27" fell of his desk (darn cats) and the screen broke, because it wasnt tempered.

Disclaimer: knocking Macs off stuff inst advised, and MAY CAUSE IRREPLACEABLE DAMAGE

ive also had a G4 and a studio display cartwheel off my desk (screen got nudged by cat) the only damage was a broken tab on the inside.

NOTE keep your cats away from your Mac!
 
As usual i'll take a different approach to the comversation. How I judge a company is by taking the first product the made and using that as the first benchmark and every one preceding is compared and if it is better than the original it sets a new standerd. Then the next product to top that sets the standard and so on and so forth Lets go back to 84' when the original Mac came out. it had 128k of ram and was prone to overheat. Compare that to the g5 imac and there you go a new standerd is set for the g6. if it had better stats then of course the company is improving.
 
vohdoun said:
How so? it's not for me but Safari 5.1 is annoying with it's auto reload.
Click to expand...

Well, for starters I have GUI issues. Sometimes I can't click on stuff and have to restart the app or even the computer itself. I am constantly repairing permissions for those kind of things. Never had that issue in the past.

I HATE the auto-reload too.

But what I also HATE, and which most of us agree is a feature we've ALWAYS wanted, but never realized the consequences of, is the ability to re open all windows whenever you logout/restart the thing.
 
Hmm.... this is true, sort of. I hate the glossy screens in the Macs, and strangely a G4 or G5 with the latest OS seems more amazing than a MacBook or MBP with the latest OS, even though the MacBook Air feels like an exception to me. They aren't really bad at all, and now Apple's looking to people so they buy the iPad, which can never be anybody's main machine and they just look bland and boring to me. Yes, you can get cases for it and stuff, but that's all on top of the original design of the iPad.
 
I never handled any PPC Macs, but I'm just wondering what kind of movies you're watching.

I'm watching Iron Man 2 on Netflix on my 2010 MacBook Pro. I have iTunes and a few other apps open, a few tabs on Safari, and Disk Utility doing a zero-out erase on a hard drive.

My fans are at 2500rpm. My 2006 MacBook would've been at 6,200 right when I started doing the erase.
 
davidg4781 said:
I never handled any PPC Macs, but I'm just wondering what kind of movies you're watching.

I'm watching Iron Man 2 on Netflix on my 2010 MacBook Pro. I have iTunes and a few other apps open, a few tabs on Safari, and Disk Utility doing a zero-out erase on a hard drive.

My fans are at 2500rpm. My 2006 MacBook would've been at 6,200 right when I started doing the erase.
Click to expand...

My Quad G5 could handle the same no sweat. Watching TV and Movie on Hulu desktop, iTunes open and downloading movies as well, 10 tabs open on Safari, ripping a DVD and saving to an external drive. CPU fans on the minimum, 970rpm, that is besides the fact that it is also a file server and shares wifi to my other devices and macs.

The fact is that the newer the machine the more horsepower it can produce, but sometimes it is not all brute force that matters, it is on how it performs given its age. AppleWorks open in less than a second, it is how the developers code an app that demands more horsepower, more eye candy the more resources it needs.
 
Count me in!

I cannot agree more! I still to this day regret selling my g5's and my DA533/dual. Those machines where absolutely brilliant! An amazing joy to use.
I now own a decked out 2011 mini running 10.7 and it is nice, but I have to say that this laptop (see my sig) is truly my go-to daily use mac. Aside from the fact that I am on the go a lot, I just enjoying using this PPC more. 10.5 is familiar, intuitive, and with 2 gigs of ram, it's plenty fast for everything I throw at it in a day.
A bit funny actually, that when I do venture out the local coffee shop or to my uni's library to get a bit of studying done in peace, a lot of the MBPro owners will come around with questions about my 'old bird'. I think it's funny that they are amazed I can get anything done with this ancient beast. But to be honest? I have used a 13" pro. It was okay, but the glossy screen was annoying, the keyboard? Meh.
While they are great computers, worlds beyond in quality of the competition, there is something to be said about the build and "character" of these PPC beasts. I love mine, and I am going to use it until it's no longer viable to my daily demands.
 
Jessica Lares said:
Well, for starters I have GUI issues. Sometimes I can't click on stuff and have to restart the app or even the computer itself. I am constantly repairing permissions for those kind of things. Never had that issue in the past.
Click to expand...

Strange, all I can say is I've never had issues like that. I've rarely ever touched disk utility or such to repair permissions. That's even with several OS upgrades and hard drive transfers.

For me Lion seems to be as solid as what 10.5.8 is on PPC. Though my only major gripe visually with the UI, I'm starting to hate the skinny scrollbars. I still prefer the aqua set before Lion.
 
I have never had an instance where I thought any Mac's have been "cheap". All the Apple products (at lest macs) have superior build quality, and beautiful hardware, which is a huge reason why I (and many others) chose a Mac. :apple:
 
G51989 said:
It's hard to explain, it doesn't feel cheap in the way that like a 250 dollar emachine at Wal Mart feels, just compared to my G5 towers and my Pismo it just doesn't seem as well put together, its hard to put my finger on it, it just doesn't feel as nice.

10.7 just doesn't seem to be as stable either.

I don't regret this iMac or anything. Its nice. But Im gonna probably keep using my G5s as long as I can for my Mac Experience.
Click to expand...

IMO nothing really feels as high quality as the PowerMacs/MacPros do. I still have my DP 2.7 LC albeit it's probably going to donate its case to a hot rod build in the near future. I love my 2010 Mini; the design is very nice and it has an optical drive the 2011 Mini lacks.

As for 10.7 I can't say I share the same opinion. Although, as you, I don't really have any data to back it up, 10.7 feels faster and more stable than its predecessors. To be fair about it, I have a Momentus XT in my Mini which does speed up normal day to day tasks. I would sum up my Mac experience over the years as a continual progression of functionality, speed and stability.
 
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