How many PPC Mac's are still in use?

[Macinposh]

Dont know in what area of business you work in.

But in photo business,about 90% of peeps I know, still work somehow with the PPC machines.
Especially a lot of laptops are on the road (12" PBs/iBooks...they are worth their weight in gold due to their matte display and small size..).
A lot of peeps allso work with their computers as even Eos1MKIII/Eos5MKII sized files dont get that much benefit from the newer machines and you get your work done on the G5s just fine.
But still,lot of G5s as fileservers or whatnots around.

Peeps working with 31/39/50 mp cameras and doing hard core photoshopping have transfered to intel though.

 

[bootedbear]

5 active PPC machines in my household.

 

[Wrock]

PPC G4 tower still in use. This thing has been a workhorse for the longest time. The G5s are still good machines. With the economy the way it is, the older machines are going to be held onto a little longer than they ordinarily would be.
If you think your app will respond decently on PPC, then go for it. I think you mentioned that you already had an installed userbase?

 

[cherry su]

My Mac mini G4 (almost 4 years old!) is serving my personal website. I upgraded the RAM to 1GB.

 

[Mr. Giver '94]

iMac G4 Cube
Mac Mini PPC
G3 'Gumdrop' Teal
G3 Gumdrop Light blue
G3 Clamshell iBook Grey
G3 Clamshell iBook Blue
TiBook


(not all mine, just what's in my house)

 

[cmaier]

Heck, it might even drop Core Duo support.

Extremely unlikely.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I still use my 12" PowerBook G4 as my main laptop; I wish Apple would come out with something in the 12" form factor again, it's such a great wee little 'Book.

I also just upgraded my desktop to one of the new minis; the little bugger is replacing a dual 500MHz G4 tower that was quite happily running Leopard. This all is totally ignoring the 500MHz PowerBook G3 that I lend to friends when they need a laptop for something for a few days, or the Power Macintosh 6500/225 that I use as a dedicated Classic machine. The PowerPC is far from dead.

Hell, I still have on my desk and use often an 8MHz 68000-powered Macintosh SE for taking notes

 

[dukebound85]

Extremely unlikely.

why, coreduo is 32bit and there have been rumors snow leopard will be 64bit only

 

[cmaier]

why, coreduo is 32bit and there have been rumors snow leopard will be 64bit only

I'm pretty sure they said it will be both 32-bit and 64-bit; people have misinterpreted the fact that when running on 64-bits it will finally mostly actually use 64-bit binaries in the OS.

For example: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/17/myths-of-snow-leopard-2-32-bit-support/

 

[eXan]

iMac G4 Cube ...

O_O What's that?

 

[Carl Abudephane]

.

 

[jjahshik32]

i-Mac G5, bought four years ago, still going fine.
Yeah it sometimes drags a little, but not so that it bothers me. I have over 25,000 songs in iPhoto and that still opens and operates in a very snappy manner, and I have almost 30,000 photo's that I currently only use iPhoto for, and that too hardly lags at all, even though the last nine thousand have been RAW files.
Photoshop CS2(although nothing too heavy)is working fine as well.

Whoa~!! How do you put songs in iphoto!?!

 

[MacVidCards]

I'm pretty sure the OP was asking how many of you are willing to PAY for new software for your old PPC.

In addition to my 2 Intel machines I have a small fleet of PPC's. (I was about to become single again if I didn't reduce the Armada down to a Fleet....I'm sure it was an empty threat but I sold off a group of them just to be sure)

I do my paying work on the Intel machines, the PPC ones are more of a hobby/ obsession. My point being that I while I still have a soft spot for PPC, my software/upgrade investment dollars are basically all toward Intel.

So while it may be fun to use a 68K machine to slideshow photos for Aunt Matilda or a Digital Audio to run iTunes in your basement Rec Room, the chances of most of you spending actual MONEY on new software is what the OP was asking.

 

[MadisonTate]

The ROMinator, among others, is right. I'm trying to determine whether it's worth the effort and cost of support. It's a commercial product. Although it wouldn't be that difficult to continue building the product for PPC, and the performance would be adequate, that doesn't mean we could actually sell any copies/updates on those platforms. Support does have significant costs, along with QA for the PPC versions. If a bug is discovered, all it takes is for one user to report it and we would need to invest any reasonable effort to fix the problem. It's not acceptable to ship it and say "if it works, good for you..."

It does seem a shame that there are Summer 2006 machines that will be effectively EOL (end-of-life) when Snow Leopard is released. I was thinking there might be enough paying customers to keep the platform alive. I would love to prove management wrong, but this doesn't seem promising.

Thanks to everyone...

 

[The Mad Hatter]

Let's see...

1. A Dual-800 G4 (w/ FW 800 card) acting as a server.
This one is going to be replaced by a new Mini.
2. A Mac Mini 1.5 G4 (the silent upgrade JUST before the switch to Intel).
This one is going to be replaced by a Mac Pro, and go to the kids.
3. A PowerMac Pro G4 (it was replaced by a MacBook Pro 2.5 Intel)
This one went to my Mom.
4. A Pismo PowerBook Pro G3 (I keep this one around in case I ever need to
go back to System 9, or need a floppy drive.)

That's about it... well except for maybe my Power Computing Power Tower Pro... but that one is missing in action (never let a family member borrow a computer.)

 

[yoyo5280]

G4 Macmini

 

[Mr. Giver '94]

O_O What's that?

Sorry I mislabeled it. It's actually a PowerMac G4 Cube. It's basically the predecessor of the Mini.

 

[GGGUUUYYY]

Had a G4 466 Mhz PPC a month ago which was getting a little slow

Got a Single processor 1.25 Ghz PPC now... for my needs it suits me fine.

 

[Loopy C]

Until the dust settles on the 2009 Mac Pro my PB 17" will remain to be main machine and after inevitable upgrade will remain a valuable machine in that many of my favorite 'esoteric' audio app's will never probably never run on Intel or Leopard (given most don't even exist as downloads or being developed).

Along with a 2007 iMac, I also still have a G4-based Protools rig (24 Mix cubed) AND a Power Computing 'Power Tower' running!

 

[AlexMaximus]

my MDD g4 monster ...

Had a G4 466 Mhz PPC a month ago which was getting a little slow

Got a Single processor 1.25 Ghz PPC now... for my needs it suits me fine.

Have a G4 MDD 1,42 with Raptor 10K SATA Startup drive, verax PSU silence kit and SilenX case fan.
My Radeon 9600 256 will be replaced now by a Nvidia 7800 AGP monster next month.
You wouldn't believe it how great this machine does it's job.

I'll never sell it ever !!!!!

 

[iSaint]

My daughter's G4 iBook and my G4 Powerbook are still our primary computers. I had my Powerbook upgraded with a 250g hard drive. It does all I need it to and then some!

 

[Zisa]

I know this is a basic question, but I am a relatively new computer user with only a few years of experience and have never experienced a transition like this.

I know with dropping PPC support - I'll be out of the loop for new software - but what does this means for my ability to use the internet, send files to peope with broad based formats such as Tiffs, Jpgegs - e-mail? Will printers still be able to output my Photoshop print files?

I'm happy with my G5's performance using the software I have. Should I be overly concerned if Snow Leopard drops PPC?

Mike

Hey - I still have my PPC laptop and Power Mac. I have no intentions of replacing them until they die. To go slightly at a tangent, I am glad I paid the premium for my PowerBook 1.5 (G4) five years ago as it is still going strong with Leopard and iWorks 09.

In answer to your question, IMHO - no, unless you fall in love with Snow Leopard and want to use it's features.

 

[michael.lauden]

i'd probably say if someone 2 or 3 years back switched to Apple they would keep their PPC. Macs are meant to run for the long haul and don't need to be upgraded as much as PC's do.

with that being said, there is an enormous amount of difference between a PPC chip and per say... a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip on a more advanced chipset.

 

[cryonicjim]

iBook g3

Still using an ibook g3 for os 9 games. yay star wars pod racer

 

[bjeadeh]

PPC for me

I have 3 G4's in various forms, and they are all doing well for what they do. My dual core 1.42 FW800 Power Mac was upgraded with a new video card and runs the latest Final cut pro studio. My original 550 Mhz g4 power mac bought in 1999, was able to be upgraded, which we don't really see any more, with a sonnets processor chip to 1Ghz and is still doing great for digital photography. My G4 Powerbook was given to my child who uses it for school, surfing the internet and using Microsoft office 2008. All three of these computers can run the latest Adobe CS with no problems, all can record multi-channel audio in Logic Pro and Pro Tools, all are completely maxed out with ram affordably, and they all can network together with video conferencing.

BTW, my newest MacBook Pro just took a dump where the Windows partition decided to destroy my Mac partition. So it's not working at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice computer, and there are many improvements over my very old PPC's, but with it come problems in other areas. Just ask Bill Gates. He won't even look at an Intel based Apple, discourages people about buying an Apple, doesn't even make computers, and he even bought the company a few years back. Thats messed up.