How did you get into PowerPC Macs?

[Altemose]

Yeah, big crocodile ones. The Quicksilver was another model that made me want to get a Mac. But then you knew that already.

It was my first Mac! Wow it was loud compared to my G5 though...

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Okay, looks like I get to be the first "back in my day" of the thread....

My first experience with a PowerPC Mac was when my high school bought two brand-new Power Macintosh 7100s for the yearbook, to replace the Quadra 700s we had been using.

This was at the very end of my senior year.

Although I *DID* get to experience non-Apple PowerPCs a few months earlier. I went on a field trip to SC93, the annual supercomputer conference that was taking place in my city that year. IBM had on display some of their early PowerPC systems. I knew Apple was coming out with them "soon" also, but to see them in person was great. They had the PowerPC ThinkPad 760 out, which didn't come out for at least another year.

I was mostly a PC user at home. I didn't own my first Mac until my last year of college, when my dad gave me a "hand me down" PowerBook 5300c. He had just upgraded to a PowerBook 1400cs thanks to a MacMall (or similar, I don't recall now,) contest. He won a "shopping spree" worth $2500. That got him a minimum-spec PowerBook 1400. So I inherited his PowerBook 5300c (which actually belonged to his work, but as he was responsible for disposing of retired computer hardware....)

As soon as I got back from college, I moved in to a cheap rental house with a friend, who had an old Macintosh SE he used as a serial terminal to Linux server. I don't remember where it came from, but I got a Macintosh SE/30. It started life as "the dining room computer" - it fit perfectly in to a cubby hole in the dining room next to the table, and worked fine for basic morning email-and-web browsing over breakfast. This would have been late 1998. That started both my desire to collect vintage computers, and my renewed interest in Macs.

It wouldn't be until 2003 that I got my first brand-new Mac, and switched to OS X as my primary OS.

My 'collection' of PowerPCs could be said to have started with the PowerBook 5300c. Other than that, I started "collecting" Macs in 1999, and probably got my first "vintage PPC" in 1999.

 

[repentix]

My PPC story began, when I saw a Powermac G4 whilst browsing my local electronics shop for psp games in 2013. I had never heard of PPC macs before and had never really cared for macs, because they were too expensive. I immidiately fell in love with it and bought it the same day for 40€, it was a 350 mhz agp graphite model (quite rare) and had 1 gigabyte of ram and a 32mb nvidia graphics card. Although it had 10.2.8 on it and I didn't have any software, it was and still is a great machine. I also found macrumors because of this machine.

I kept looking for mac's on my local craigslist and ebay and finally found a G5 with a lot of software for a good price in February 2014. It was a 2003 single 1,8GHZ with 8GB's of Ram and an FX5200, it came with the original booklet, user manual and reciept. I also got leopard with that machine and had finally found a good PPC machine which was usable day to day.

Now in 2014 I frequently find myself using my G5 instead of my intel hackintosh, because it feels better. I am still on the lookout for a PPC laptop, but here in Berlin they are quite overpriced and you really can't get a good deal on them. I probably will never own an intel mac, because I have got my hackintosh for that and because they ditched upgradebility alltogether with the new ones. I will however keep buying PPC's for a long time

I had been looking into laptops for school for a few weeks now and decided to buy a lenovo x240 instead of a macbook air, because of upgradibility.

I find it great that there are still people who care for these machines and keep them running instead of dumping them.

 

[Intelligent]

I was born when Apple used PowerPC and i(my parents, lol) bought an Apple Computer, so by logic it would be a PowerPC. My dad used 68k so when Apple transitioned to PowerPC, it was just like a processor transition like what would happen in 2006 when Apple transitioned from PowerPC to intel, no reason to stop buying Apple Computers because of a processor change. I have used PowerPCs ever since i was a little baby (i have pictures of when the iMac G3 had just been released). My first computer that was really my own was a iMac G5 which is also a PowerPC. Im not into PowerPC really, I'm just into Computers. But since the computers that i used all the way from birth to 2007 (early 2008, i got my first intel in april 2008) have been PowerPC i like them more than an average computer. Yes, i know that PowerPC is a processor, but the topic was about mac computers using PowerPC.

PPC has just been part of the natural progression from 68k to Intel.

This describes it very good, but PowerPC was standard when i was born so it was just a part of the PowerPC to intel for me.

bought it the same day for 40€
here in Berlin they are quite overpriced and you really can't get a good deal on them.

Haha, 40€ (i know that 40€ wasn't the price for laptops, but it shouldn't be much higher) and overpriced

Ive had PowerPCs laptops that costed around 3000€ haha. (No offense, i just thought it was funny)

 

[eyoungren]

I was born when Apple used PowerPC and i(my parents, lol) bought an Apple Computer, so by logic it would be a PowerPC. My dad used 68k so when Apple transitioned to PowerPC, it was just like a processor transition like what would happen in 2006 when Apple transitioned from PowerPC to intel, no reason to stop buying Apple Computers because of a processor change. I have used PowerPCs ever since i was a little baby (i have pictures of when the iMac G3 had just been released). My first computer that was really my own was a iMac G5 which is also a PowerPC. Im not into PowerPC really, I'm just into Computers. But since the computers that i used all the way from birth to 2007 (early 2008, i got my first intel in april 2008) have been PowerPC i like them more than an average computer. Yes, i know that PowerPC is a processor, but the topic was about mac computers using PowerPC.

I was in college when the 68k to PowerPC transition came. It was a real PITA! Unlike Universal apps, the devs provided you with two versions of their apps during the transition. The old 68k app and the new PowerPC (fat) app.

You might think that's great that you could get two apps and then install on both old and new Macs, but it really wasn't. If you lost the install disk(s) and your only installed version was the 68k app you couldn't move the app over to a PowerPC Mac and expect it to run. It would crash every time. The inverse was true.

Until things got evened out too, the fat apps were buggy and slow as hell. Unlike the Intel transition, this was a rough transition. It was fortunate for Apple that going to PC at the time was really not a viable alternative for Mac users.

 

[Intelligent]

I was in college when the 68k to PowerPC transition came. It was a real PITA! Unlike Universal apps, the devs provided you with two versions of their apps during the transition. The old 68k app and the new PowerPC (fat) app.

You might think that's great that you could get two apps and then install on both old and new Macs, but it really wasn't. If you lost the install disk(s) and your only installed version was the 68k app you couldn't move the app over to a PowerPC Mac and expect it to run. It would crash every time. The inverse was true.

Until things got evened out too, the fat apps were buggy and slow as hell. Unlike the Intel transition, this was a rough transition. It was fortunate for Apple that going to PC at the time was really not a viable alternative for Mac users.

Apple really handled the intel transition greatly, the Rosetta Emulator worked seamlessly. But how do you remember that if you started to use Apple computers in early 2000's? Did you have friends with Macs?

Another thing that i should is thats its very weird how so many people have gone backwards, how come you had modern computers but then started to use computers that are like 6 years old? Thats weird.
(not a response to eyoungren)

 

[Dr0ster]

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.

(Wow, I really write terrible English. Next time i'll write in Swedish and translate with Google instead. ^^)

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Apple really handled the intel transition greatly, the Rosetta Emulator worked seamlessly. But how do you remember that if you started to use Apple computers in early 2000's? Did you have friends with Macs?

Another thing that i should is thats its very weird how so many people have gone backwards, how come you had modern computers but then started to use computers that are like 6 years old? Thats weird.
(not a response to eyoungren)

Apple switched to Intel in around 2006. (1st Intel iMac came Jan 2006, and 1st MacBook a few month after that.)

 

[eyoungren]

Apple really handled the intel transition greatly, the Rosetta Emulator worked seamlessly. But how do you remember that if you started to use Apple computers in early 2000's? Did you have friends with Macs?

My mom bought her first Mac in 1995. I was 25. I was familiar with Apple all through my teens because of the Apple ][e. My best friends parents also had an Apple IIc in their medical office.

School had Macs as Graphic Design in the 80s and 90s tended to be Mac-centric. My first job in the newspaper industry had Macs. All subsequent jobs had Macs.

So, I was familiar with Macs for a very long time before I converted. I was just a PC person until 2003 is all.

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All I used it for was Lemmings and SimCity (and playing around with ClarisWorks).

You have NOT lived until you have beaten EVERY level in Lemmings on the Insane setting on an Amiga 1000! Superb sound, music and graphics. Had it hooked into my stereo and it was just cool!

 

[2984839]

I just wanted a laptop that was cheap and wasn't Intel to make into a very simple daily driver. ARM Chromebooks were out because they have a difficult time with BSD and Linux. Tadpole SPARCbooks are impossible to find, so they are out (I really want one though). Apple was the only one who made something that would work.

 

[nemesiswar]

My first Mac was an iBook G4 with Tiger that i lovedand i accidently spilled beer in and destroyed it from the insurance money i bought a iMac 2008 24" that i also liked just it felt different. In the summer of 2012 i heard of and got really interested in NG Amigas and after research ended up getting a Mac mini G4 to run MorphOS on, thats when i understood what differed the iBook G4 and the iMac 2008 it was PPC! From that moment i have gotten 2 Power Macs G5 (DP 2,0 and Quad) that i run both MorphOS and Leopard on and is loving it! I havent gotten as far as installing Linux on them and trying that out but i will get there in time.

Iam dreaming of newer PPC machines to play with.

 

[appleii.c]

As a kid, my first "real" computer was an Apple IIc (you never would have guessed that right??) so my transition to the mac was a natural one. After going through Apple after Apple I hated going to the local computer stores and feeling like I had to shop at the small dark corners in the back of the store for anything Apple related, AND it was 4 times as expensive for anything. So I tried the PC route. that didn't last long. Eventually I came back. one of my first Macs back was a Quadra model (I believe it was a Quadra 650). Dont recall if that was a powerPC mac, but the first powerPC I actually remember was a Power Mac 6200.

I've been through almost every type of Apple computer and device decade after decade. They've definitely kept me a satisfied consumer. I would love for it to carry on for a few more decades.

 

[Intelligent]

Apple switched to Intel in around 2006. (1st Intel iMac came Jan 2006, and 1st MacBook a few month after that.)

Det vet jag mycket väl .
The point was that people said they got a PowerPC in 2012, therefore it would be around 6 years old. The first intel mac was not an iMac, it was a Macbook Pro. We had that at home. Although the iMac was released at the same time (i think), The Macbook Pro was introduced first.

 

[Dr0ster]

Det vet jag mycket väl .
The point was that people said they got a PowerPC in 2012, therefore it would be around 6 years old. The first intel mac was not an iMac, it was a Macbook Pro. We had that at home. Although the iMac was released at the same time (i think), The Macbook Pro was introduced first.

I just did a fast wiki check, and wiki says that iMac was released Januari 10, 2006. Swedish wiki says that the MacBook Pro was announced at Macworld Expo Januari 10th and avalible in store in Februari.

About the remember Intel transition thing...you wrote "But how do you remember that if you started to use Apple computers in early 2000's?". If someone started to use Apple computers in early 2000's (~2000-2003) they should remember the change to Intel. But yeah, if someone used Mac for the first time long after the Intel change, they shouldn't remember it.

(Usch jag är trött. Borde sova. Engelskan blir bara sämre å sämre.)

 

[Ih8reno]

My first Mac was my 2011 Macbook Pro, but oddly enough I always wanted a white Macbook. A coworker who had inherited some old Macs from work gave me a white mac, but it wasn't a Macbook, it was an ibook G3. It wouldnt boot since the battery was dead and he didnt have the power adapter. I bought the adapter on ebay along with a battery and ram and maxed it out. Slowly I started looking in my area for other older macs and bought an iMac G5 and an emac. From there it blossomed. I just keep on collecting and love finding these old machines people don't want anymore, and then I fix them. My oldest is my Macintosh 128k upgraded to 512k but my personal favourite (so far) which I am using right now is my Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0. I maxed it out and then some (has a 120gb ssd) and I use it more for web browsing then even my pro. My collecting has amazed quite a collection, which I thin out every now and then to make space and I absolutely love the PowerPC Macs the best.

 

[Intelligent]

I just did a fast wiki check, and wiki says that iMac was released Januari 10, 2006. Swedish wiki says that the MacBook Pro was announced at Macworld Expo Januari 10th and avalible in store in Februari.

About the remember Intel transition thing...you wrote "But how do you remember that if you started to use Apple computers in early 2000's?". If someone started to use Apple computers in early 2000's (~2000-2003) they should remember the change to Intel. But yeah, if someone used Mac for the first time long after the Intel change, they shouldn't remember it.

(Usch jag är trött. Borde sova. Engelskan blir bara sämre å sämre.)

He didn't tell me about the PowerPC to intel transition, he told me about the 68k to PowerPC transition (yes Apple has done more than one transition) and that happened somewhere in early to mid 90's. Don't remember the exact year. I was convinced about the Macbook Pro thing, but i might be wrong, thats just what i remember and the human brain isn't always perfect .

I was in college when the 68k to PowerPC transition came. It was a real PITA! Unlike Universal apps, the devs provided you with two versions of their apps during the transition. The old 68k app and the new PowerPC (fat) app.

 

[abbeybound]

Since you got a new MacBook Air, what did you end up doing with the PowerBook?

----------

I gave it to my 10 year old brother. Passing the torch.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I was in college when the 68k to PowerPC transition came. It was a real PITA! Unlike Universal apps, the devs provided you with two versions of their apps during the transition. The old 68k app and the new PowerPC (fat) app.

You might think that's great that you could get two apps and then install on both old and new Macs, but it really wasn't. If you lost the install disk(s) and your only installed version was the 68k app you couldn't move the app over to a PowerPC Mac and expect it to run. It would crash every time. The inverse was true.

Until things got evened out too, the fat apps were buggy and slow as hell. Unlike the Intel transition, this was a rough transition. It was fortunate for Apple that going to PC at the time was really not a viable alternative for Mac users.

I don't recall any cases of 68k apps not running at all on PPC systems, other than EXTREME edge case ancient-never-updated apps. And "Fat" apps were far more common than "separate 68K and Fat" apps. Yes, there were a few developers who would do separate 68K and PPC apps, to save space, but Fat (aka "work on both 68K and PPC natively") were more common. The 68k emulator built in to the OS was slow at first, but with later OS updates, it became usable. (Heck, most of the launch OS 7.1.2 was still 68k code that ran emulated!)

 

[eyoungren]

I don't recall any cases of 68k apps not running at all on PPC systems, other than EXTREME edge case ancient-never-updated apps. And "Fat" apps were far more common than "separate 68K and Fat" apps. Yes, there were a few developers who would do separate 68K and PPC apps, to save space, but Fat (aka "work on both 68K and PPC natively") were more common. The 68k emulator built in to the OS was slow at first, but with later OS updates, it became usable. (Heck, most of the launch OS 7.1.2 was still 68k code that ran emulated!)

I have a copy of QuarkXPress 3.31 on my Mac IIci at home. It runs perfect on System 7.5. If I move it over to my 7200 or 6500 (including any additional install files) it fails to start.

The splash screen when you open it on the IIci says "68k" down towards the bottom right. In design school this was a major hassle as well. Some Adobe apps had issues.

 

[S.B.G]

I bought an iMac G5 over a year ago for $15 from a lady at work who bought it for $15 at Goodwill. The store thought it was an old TV that didn't work. Though, it did work part time, as the PSU was bad, but not totally gone.

After I bought from her, I rebuilt it with a new PSU, more RAM, SSD, WiFi chip and a new screen.

Then, I bought a PowerMac G5 on eBay and have been tinkering with it from time to time.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I have a copy of QuarkXPress 3.31 on my Mac IIci at home. It runs perfect on System 7.5. If I move it over to my 7200 or 6500 (including any additional install files) it fails to start.

The splash screen when you open it on the IIci says "68k" down towards the bottom right. In design school this was a major hassle as well. Some Adobe apps had issues.

There were a few, yes. But it wasn't a common thing at all. I don't know about Quark, I used Pagemaker back then, when it was still Aldus. (And I know it worked fine.)

 

[128keaton]

Okay, bit of a tale here. Back in 2009 (maybe earlier), my HP Pavilion's NVIDIA chipset crapped out on me, so I was on the hunt for a new laptop. Later that month, I struck up a conversation with a neighborhood friend who happened to be a video editor (he later gave me a Mac Pro, something that I've wanted since the dawn of time). We got to talking about Macs VS PCs and he said "you know what, **** pc, I have a PowerPC Apple Laptop that you can have". It was held together by ducttape and magic smoke, but it worked for the time being. This one, the case was weak and the right hinge was completely gone. It worked well for 5 months, then the backlight went out. I hooked it up to a monitor and treated it like a TAM until I got an Intel MBP 2 years later. 1 year after the purchase of a MBP, I was given an old PMG5 from a tech friend who's power bill had become too large and his house too hot. About a month later, a friend gave me a G4 Cube, and then a month after that I bought a Macintosh Classic off of craigslist, then a friend gave me an iMac G4 20" for diagnosing their Early 2008 iMac (which I later received as well!). Fast forward to today, I've bought/been given five more Macs! I used to be PC to the bone, but after realizing that Linux/Unix is much better, I realized my sins.

 

[hamis92]

About a month later, a friend gave me a G4 Cube, and then a month after that I bought a Macintosh Classic off of craigslist, then a friend gave me an iMac G4 20" for diagnosing their Early 2008 iMac (which I later received as well!).

I wish I had that kind of luck (emphasis mine)!

 

[bse5150]

Another thing that i should is thats its very weird how so many people have gone backwards, how come you had modern computers but then started to use computers that are like 6 years old? Thats weird.
(not a response to eyoungren)

I still use my Quadra 605 and Quadra 700 for games. Plus, they still make great distraction free writing machines. My PPC machine is presently packed away. I'll unpack it when I move on September 1, 2014. I still use it for games mostly and a little bit of IRC.

Mostly I use my Intel Mac Mini or my MacBook Pro for stuff like web browsing, iDVD, iTunes or other daily driver stuff. That is, when I'm not using my old Debian loaded ThinkPad T60.

 

[128keaton]

I wish I had that kind of luck (emphasis mine)!

Yeah, I tend to whine about my luck, but I now see how lucky I actually am.

 

[happyfrappy]

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.