Personally I don't think CD's are worth buying unless you need Xcode from SL as CD's can only run snow leopard, they cost double the price (in most cases) than a high end PBG4. Yes they'll be leaps & bounds faster than the G4's but you can get everything you need from a laptop in a 1.5 or 1.67 PowerBook.
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Buying PowerPC Macs In 2012
- Thread starter Goftrey
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Personally I don't think CD's are worth buying unless you need Xcode from SL as CD's can only run snow leopard, they cost double the price (in most cases) than a high end PBG4. Yes they'll be leaps & bounds faster than the G4's but you can get everything you need from a laptop in a 1.5 or 1.67 PowerBook.
There's a lot of good stuff to be had in Snow Leopard, though. Slightly better application support. Multi-touch (a huge one for me!). UI tweaks. In short, having a Mac with Snow Leopard has seriously spoiled me, but I don't miss most of that stuff on my PPC Macs because they don't have Magic Mice or Magic Trackpads. You can't miss what you don't have, I suppose.
It really comes down to how much computer do you really need. In most cases, not that much really.
I have an intel macbook with Lion that I use when I traveling, but I still miss my powermac G5. When I am home I don't touch my macbook anymore. If not for winXP on Parallels that I use for work I would not even bring it on my business travels and would continue to use my 15" PB.
It depends on how hard you're looking and how long you're willing to wait for a bargin. You'd probably be surprised to find a lot of CD MBPs are going for less than $400. Just check completed auctions, a lot of good working systems for under $400 and some even in the low $300.
Snow Leopard is a great OS, it's fast, has and will continue to get great app support. Possibly the biggest upgrade is things like video playback, flash, etc will all be seamless while with a PB you'll constantly be having to spend time and effort just to make things work, if they will at all. To me it's worth the fairly small premium.
So what you're saying is we should pay more for an unsupported Intel system vs and unsupported PowerPC system based soely on the fact that Snow Leopard is "better" and video playback is "better"? I see no point in buying any pre 2008 MB/MBP over a powerbook being that they'll lose support when Mountain Lion hits this summer so they'll all be unsupported.
The thing is that powerpc is unsupported long time ago, intel doesn't.
Even if mountain lion doesn't support those mb/mbps there is a lot of life in 10.6/10.7, devs work now for a minimum of 10.6 not 10.4 or 10.5 (wich are the ones that run on powerpc).
And having new flash plugins, updated browsers and power to watch a video without problems (sorry I'm getting relly frustated with my powermac g4 + coreplayer) is a real bonus.
They are different worlds in terms of "unsupport".
everything you said could be said for Leopard and Tiger..
I know Safari for PowerPC is really old I mean it's 7 whole months since it's release, and iTunes 10.6 well that was never released for PowerPC right? Ya know I heard 10.5 is going to stop working next year, the same with CS4, VLC, Core Player, Firefox 3.6, Handbrake, Mac the Ripper, Flash 10.1, and all those other PowerPC programs.
If you basis for judging the value and usability of a computer is it's ability to play YouTube video's then yup a G4 isn't for you, though my daughter plays Facebook games on her G4. Believe it or not some people neither watch YouTube or play Facebook games.
There is no difference between unsupported and unsupported, Apple is culling the herd period. I would take a 15" or 17" G4 over any prior to 2008 MB/MBP because I know what I'm getting and the workarounds and support are well known.
everything you said could be said for Leopard and Tiger..
I know Safari for PowerPC is really old I mean it's 7 whole months since it's release, and iTunes 10.6 well that was never released for PowerPC right? Ya know I heard 10.5 is going to stop working next year, the same with CS4, VLC, Core Player, Firefox 3.6, Handbrake, Mac the Ripper, Flash 10.1, and all those other PowerPC programs.
If you basis for judging the value and usability of a computer is it's ability to play YouTube video's then yup a G4 isn't for you, though my daughter plays Facebook games on her G4. Believe it or not some people neither watch YouTube or play Facebook games.
There is no difference between unsupported and unsupported, Apple is culling the herd period. I would take a 15" or 17" G4 over any prior to 2008 MB/MBP because I know what I'm getting and the workarounds and support are well known.
yes I know that there is a lot of life in Tiger and Leopard.
Apps won't stop working and I know about the "you don't need always the latest version".
I don't talk about usability...if I didn't believe a g4 wasn't usable this days I wouldn't waste my time doing the FAQ on my sig, I wouldn't waste time searching for the right versions of some programs and archieving it for the future.
Maybe our opinions differ because of the cost of the machines in our countries.
Here in Portugal a 12' G4 1.33GHz Powerbook (1.25Gb ram, a 120gb hdd and +- battery) goes for about 170eur, a Macbook (2Gb ram,120Gb hdd) goes about 250-300 deppending on the generation, I guess for the difference it worths having newer versions of software,more processing power,more ram etc, although I do prefer the form factor of the 12 G4.
About 15' machines, here 15' powerbook g4's are scarce and I guess they go for about 300eur..a macbook pro 1st gen would go for 350-400 while the 2dnd gen (those with the nvidia 8600m) go for 400-500 (500 for a mint one with 4gb,320gb hdd), again I guess the difference is worth.
All of this because this thread is about buying powerpcs in 2012.If in my country like in other countries most of powerpcs were given of for low cost, I'd say, go with powerpc!
Sent from my Powermac
yes I know that there is a lot of life in Tiger and Leopard.
Apps won't stop working and I know about the "you don't need always the latest version".
I don't talk about usability...if I didn't believe a g4 wasn't usable this days I wouldn't waste my time doing the FAQ on my sig, I wouldn't waste time searching for the right versions of some programs and archieving it for the future.
Maybe our opinions differ because of the cost of the machines in our countries.
Here in Portugal a 12' G4 1.33GHz Powerbook (1.25Gb ram, a 120gb hdd and +- battery) goes for about 170eur, a Macbook (2Gb ram,120Gb hdd) goes about 250-300 deppending on the generation, I guess for the difference it worths having newer versions of software,more processing power,more ram etc, although I do prefer the form factor of the 12 G4.
About 15' machines, here 15' powerbook g4's are scarce and I guess they go for about 300eur..a macbook pro 1st gen would go for 350-400 while the 2dnd gen (those with the nvidia 8600m) go for 400-500 (500 for a mint one with 4gb,320gb hdd), again I guess the difference is worth.
All of this because this thread is about buying powerpcs in 2012.If in my country like in other countries most of powerpcs were given of for low cost, I'd say, go with powerpc!
Sent from my Powermac
I haven't paid to much attention to the price of PB vs MB/MBP either here or in the states..
We don't need official Apple support with the info in your sig, that combined with some developers is call support..
There is IMHO zero benefit to buying early MB/MBP's now sine in July they'll be in the same boat as PB's and PB's are at least different.
There are a couple PowerBooks I'd trade my wife's former now my '10 MacBook for, especially now with the Hackintosh running and stable.
Except the early intels are way more powerful...? Not saying PB's are useless, but if you're going to spend the money wouldn't you want the most bang for your buck performance wise?
It would be like buying for about the same cost a G4 over a G5, or a G3 over G4, or a 604 over G3, list goes on and on...
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As someone else said here there are levels of support.
Snow Leopard will continue to be supported for awhile by developers, I think it will be supported for a long time by 25-40% of the Mac userbase for the next 2-3 years. I see it a bit like XP, a lot of people just don't want to upgrade because let's face it.. Lion and even Mountain Lion don't seem to be producing must have features while increasing system specs.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/...takes-06-share-of-all-mac-os-x-traffic/42195/
Right now it's at around 50% of the marketshare of Mac users. That's not because of system requirements, or price, it's because people like the stability, reliability, performance of SL.
Define "way" more powerful? without a benchmark..
Until 08 you were limited to 3GB Ram, 2GB for the higher end PB's
CoreDuo was not the big jump that people think it was, especially of high line PB's
10.6 is the last for CoreDuo, Lion is the last for the early C2D therefore unsupported.
because not everything is about performance, I like this white macbook far more that my former MBP because it's easier to use on the train, the screen is not über reflective. The SNB core i5 is about 80% more powerful than the C2D but I can't tell when I use it. Most people rarely use more that 10% of their CPU power until such time as they run into flash or transcode a movie or music..There are only so many DVD's to rent and rip and songs to torrent. If you are doing this stuff in great quantity you're most likely not doing it on you lap with an aluminum computer.
Notebooks are for on the go, word processing watching movies, storing the pic's you just took etc. not a primary machine, an extension. I will agree that there are folks out there that use a laptop as a primary machine but they are not on macrumors trying to figure out whether to buy a PB or MB/MBP. They own the fastest bada$$ed notebook they can get.
The place I draw the line PowerPC vs Intel is 2008+ Mac Pro's I would buy a quad G5 over 1,1 or 2,1 MacPro's there just isn't enough benefit left in buying early MP's for the cost.
This is why I built the Hack.
Hey Just wondering, Whats your G5 Specs? I have a Dual 1.8ghz Just sitting here And I Seriously have no idea what to do with it.
SATA port A drives a SATA optical with litescribe
SATA port B has and OCZ Agility 3 120GB
Top PCI X slot has a cheap SATA 2 RAID card with 4 ports 2 ports are for TB HD 's in RAID 0 the other 2 are for an eSATA plate.
next PCIX slot has a USB card in it.
Next is blocked by the eSATA
Graphics is a 6800GT (Flashed)
8 GB RAM
7,2 Dual processor at 2GHz
2 Samsung B2430H's on a Desk Mounted VESA Mount.
Apple Wired keyboard and Kensington Track Ball
Easy - an intel can run Snow Leopard. It becoming officially unsupported by Apple when Mountain Lion comes out doesn't matter, I really don't understand why you keep bringing that up. Even Leopard which is "unsupported" still gets occasional minor software updates in the form of Safari or iTunes.
It's still a newer OS with access to more current software. That is more power. Snow Leopard has the largest installed base among Mac users, so regardless of whether Apple "supports" it there's still going to be a large amount of current/new software for it in the forseeable future, unlike Leopard.
Say you're looking for an app that does something specific. These days it's harder and harder to find one that is still PPC compatible. Not impossible, but it definitely can be more of a chore. Getting a 1st gen intel eliminates this chore, so even if the 1st gen intel runs at a user-perceived identical speed to a high end G4/G5, the intel still wins for this point alone.
You can access the App Store, iCloud, and run the latest iLife apps...this is the more "power" the average user looks for, not whether their machine boots .01234873 seconds faster with a CD versus G4 or whether iTunes launches in 1 bounce instead of 1.834923 bounces.
I agree you have to be smart about when you do your heavy lifting
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I do everything you say with Leopard..
with the exception of the app store and ilife 11 though 09 is PowerPC there is nothing that can be done with Snow that cannot be done with Leopard. I own and use computers with everything from 10.4 to 10.8 DP2..there all great lion excepted..
You can't do any of those things, iLife 11 requires 10.6.3 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4163
App Store - no go.
iCloud you didn't even mention.
That's none of the things I mentioned specifically.
iTunes makes money for Apple via the iOS App store and regular iTunes store, so its in their best interest to keep iTunes up to date for as many people as possible. Safari on the other hand doesn't generate revenue. Sucks for sure for those of us that use PowerPC systems as daily drivers.
I know, I said you didn't mention it
I did..I said with the exception of ilife 11, and the app store
Agreed, the only thing that that our AMD C series netbook really does better than our 1.2 G4 iBook is decode video and Flash playback. It does do that better by a long mile though.