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Help a newer user optimize his PowerBook?

C

cammykool

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 24, 2011
212
25
Anaheim, California
The model of my PPC is a A1095 I see you guys using your PPCs as daily machines and they are all modded and decked out with icons and themes and such. . Mine has been decently upgraded with 1.5gb of memory and a 160gb drive. I have 10.5 on it. I use TFF have some programs on it like an old version of Spotify and Diablo 2. What else can be done to make one more usable in 2015 by way of optimizations or customizations. I may be asking much. I don't know. I'm a complete noob in the PPC community.
Thanks!
 
See the link in my signature if you want to optimize TenFourFox. Stock T4Fx tends towards conservative settings which are not as speedy.
 
eyoungren said:
See the link in my signature if you want to optimize TenFourFox. Stock T4Fx tends towards conservative settings which are not as speedy.
Click to expand...
Something I wanted to ask you: what programs do you use. I see screenshots of your dock full of stuff. And speaking of witch. How do you so heavily theme OSX?
 
cammykool said:
Something I wanted to ask you: what programs do you use. I see screenshots of your dock full of stuff. And speaking of witch. How do you so heavily theme OSX?
Click to expand...
For my main PowerBook G4 I use a few things.

The black menubar and windows comes from a theme called Black Mac OS X. That's a theme for Magnifique, which is a Leopard utility that lets you do this.

My icons/dock are an icon set from deviantart.com called Black Gloss 2.1. That can be applied with Candybar.

The three clocks are SimpleFloatingClock, an app which I duplicated twice so I could have three different instances of the clock. I just applied a transparent PNG for the clock face so all you see are the arms, which I colored white inside the app.

I have two Yahoo Widgets, Werewolf Monitor (the moon phase widget) and widescapeWeather which gives me my forecast.

The rest are Geeklets that I use in Geektool 3, which is a System Preferences pane that lets you put bits of info on the screen. Mainly shell scripts that call information, such as the weather, time, date, wifi info, etc.

Lastly, my desktop pic has a feathered black frame around the edges so it appears to meld into the menubar and the dock. I also cut out Audrey Meadows image and placed a PNG of her on the desktop using Geektool right over the desktop wallpaper so it appears that her head is in front of the black bar stripe I have at the top.

You can see my different Geeklets in this screen shot.

Lastly, I have Bowtie which only appears when I am playing music (because I have set it that way). Bowtie is an iTunes controller that you can use to control iTunes during playback. I'm using the Neon theme for Bowtie.

If you want the theme and icons: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/Black_Theme.zip
My desktop customizations (note some of this stuff might not work): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/Desktop_Customization.zip

System Preferences.png
 
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eyoungren said:
For my main PowerBook G4 I use a few things.

The black menubar and windows comes from a theme called Black Mac OS X. That's a theme for Magnifique, which is a Leopard utility that lets you do this.

My icons/dock are an icon set from deviantart.com called Black Gloss 2.1. That can be applied with Candybar.

The three clocks are SimpleFloatingClock, an app which I duplicated twice so I could have three different instances of the clock. I just applied a transparent PNG for the clock face so all you see are the arms, which I colored white inside the app.

I have two Yahoo Widgets, Werewolf Monitor (the moon phase widget) and widescapeWeather which gives me my forecast.

The rest are Geeklets that I use in Geektool 3, which is a System Preferences pane that lets you put bits of info on the screen. Mainly shell scripts that call information, such as the weather, time, date, wifi info, etc.

Lastly, my desktop pic has a feathered black frame around the edges so it appears to meld into the menubar and the dock. I also cut out Audrey Meadows image and placed a PNG of her on the desktop using Geektool right over the desktop wallpaper so it appears that her head is in front of the black bar stripe I have at the top.

You can see my different Geeklets in this screen shot.

Lastly, I have Bowtie which only appears when I am playing music (because I have set it that way). Bowtie is an iTunes controller that you can use to control iTunes during playback. I'm using the Neon theme for Bowtie.

If you want the theme and icons: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/Black_Theme.zip
My desktop customizations (note some of this stuff might not work): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1932210/Desktop_Customization.zip

View attachment 567310
Click to expand...

Nice stuff. I used to heavy into customization on Macs - but like to keep it a bit more subtle these days. Haven't both Bowtie and Yahoo Widgets more/less been abolished? I remember at one point using them and finding out later on that I couldn't anymore (on an Intel Mac).
 
Dark Void said:
Nice stuff. I used to heavy into customization on Macs - but like to keep it a bit more subtle these days. Haven't both Bowtie and Yahoo Widgets more/less been abolished? I remember at one point using them and remembering later on that I couldn't anymore (on an Intel Mac).
Click to expand...
Technically yes. But Yahoo Widgets is still functioning with both of the widgets I use (and they appear to get their data just fine). Bowtie is also still functioning. So I use them.

Both also function on my Snow Leopard MBP. But that is probably because I installed Rosetta. There's still some PowerPC apps I have on my MBP I need to get around to updating.

As for subtlety, you should have seen my first several iterations of my desktop!

What I have here is very much cut back. I had way too much going on that it got very very far away from simple.
 
eyoungren said:
Technically yes. But Yahoo Widgets is still functioning with both of the widgets I use (and they appear to get their data just fine). Bowtie is also still functioning. So I use them.

Both also function on my Snow Leopard MBP. But that is probably because I installed Rosetta. There's still some PowerPC apps I have on my MBP I need to get around to updating.

As for subtlety, you should have seen my first several iterations of my desktop!

What I have here is very much cut back. I had way too much going on that it got very very far away from simple.
Click to expand...

Okay, so it's basically a matter of having what is no longer available? That sounds about right, because when I clean installed my MacBook Pro with no backup, I decided I wanted to get into UI customization again and found that both Bowtie and Yahoo Widgets were no longer available so I was only able to use Geektool.

If I had known that I would have always kept my downloads. Oh well, although I'm pretty jealous of the weather widget. I used to use the same exact one and I love its layout and simplicity.

What Snow Leopard MacBook Pro do you have? I don't want to clog this thread, would you mind a conversation (PM)? I have one too and would love to chat.
 
cammykool said:
d6c04319843c914324e46aff93ba75bd.jpg


When I go to open Magnifique.
Click to expand...
Ignore it. I have no idea what the issue is, but I've had that same error every time I open Magnifique as well.

The app still works.

The app was originally for Tiger, so I suspect it may be looking for something that got moved in Leopard.

In any case, like I said - it still works. Just ignore that.
 
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eyoungren said:
Ignore it. I have no idea what the issue is, but I've had that same error every time I open Magnifique as well.

The app still works.

The app was originally for Tiger, so I suspect it may be looking for something that got moved in Leopard.

In any case, like I said - it still works. Just ignore that.
Click to expand...
I applied and rebooted. All of the finder toolbar text turned white other then the clock. But the bar didn't turn black. odd
http://imgur.com/2zpJ6yC thats what it looks like
 
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cammykool said:
I applied and rebooted. All of the finder toolbar text turned white other then the clock. But the bar didn't turn black. odd
http://imgur.com/2zpJ6yC thats what it looks like
Click to expand...
Use the Secrets prefpane or Onyx to turn off the transparency for the menubar (even if your Mac does not support transparency). Select either gray or white for the menubar and apply.

It took me about a year before I discovered that and I tried everything. Transparency has to be off on the menubar before the black will apply.
 
eyoungren said:
It took me about a year before I discovered that and I tried everything. Transparency has to be off on the menubar before the black will apply.
Click to expand...

Lol, when I read this I pictured a man sitting at a desk with a withered face, long freshly grown white beard, untrimmed fingernails and in the dark after 12 missed electric bill payments shouting "I'VE FINALLY GOT IT." to do something so basic as alter a menu bar in one setting change. ;)
 
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Dark Void said:
Lol, when I read this I pictured a man sitting at a desk with a withered face, long freshly grown white beard, untrimmed fingernails and in the dark after 12 missed electric bill payments shouting "I'VE FINALLY GOT IT." to do something so basic as alter a menu bar in one setting change. ;)
Click to expand...

And he has a dog running on a hamster wheel to power the G4 then.
 
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