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Is it worth investing in PPC Macs?...Still?

A friend gave me an old PowerMac G4 (733MHZ). I didn't expect to ever own another PPC (I sold my iBook G4 during the initial Intel Transition) It's not the fastest thing in the world, especially compared to my MacBook Pro. That being said, it's not a bad machine. It does basic tasks and is a nice little desktop to fiddle around on. I feel like having a PPC Mac puts you in a whole different category of mac user! :D
 
mire3212 said:
I have to disagree with continuation of PPC just because the architecture is not only dead, but was also very inefficient and never got better, even in the G5.
Click to expand...

Just a bit clarification on this point. IBM has continued on with the PPC architecture (POWER is 100% backward compatible with the G5) and released the POWER7 in Feb in the year. The POWER7 smokes the Intel Nehalem/Westere chips.

For example, the 2x6core 2.93Ghz Westmere chip does 297/197 in SpecInt_rate/specfp_rate

http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html

A 2x8 core 3Ghz POWER7 chip does
520/434 in the same benchmark
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/servers/ps700series/perfdata.html

The top end 2x8 core 3.8Ghz POWER7 does
652/586
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/780/perfdata.html

Note that fp_rate in this chip is ~3X that of the Intel chip.

Performance per watt of the POWER7 is also better as the 3.8Ghz 8 core chip is a 200W chip while the 6 core Westmere chip is 95W. The POWER7 3.8Ghz uses about 2x more power but is more than 2x faster.
 
I have a couple of PowerPC Macs that I use quite a bit. There is my eMac desktop, which is the 2005 version (1.42 GHz G4 processor, 1.5 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, SuperDrive and ATI Radeon 9600 graphics processor with 64 MB VRAM). It is my main computer, and while it may not even be as fast as a Windows 7 machine of today, let alone an Intel iMac, it still is a very good, responsive computer, and in some ways outperforms my brother's Dell Pentium 4 computer. I have Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard installed on it, as well as iLife '09 (I even got iMovie '09 working on it without much hassle!)

There is also my aluminum 15" PowerBook G4 I just recently got, to replace my dead HP Pavilion notebook. (It has a 1 GHz G4 processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 60 GB hard drive, SuperDrive, and ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics with 64 MB VRAM.) So far it's a pretty good notebook computer, but it does need a few upgrades (it doesn't even have a battery right now!)

Incidentally, both can play YouTube videos pretty well.
 
I still have my Powermac G5 Quad which I love and has been very reliable. Still runs everything I throw at it very well.

I used to have a Powerbook G4 1.67Ghz, but have sold it ~1.5 years back for a 13" Macbook 2.4Ghz unibody aluminium. It was just not fast enough for my needs.
 
I'd say so yes : I have 8 Macs myself five of them being intel the rest are PowerPC, I Love apples older tech, just seems interesting I collect them. :D I mean I use my eMac & Quicksilver G4 as secondary systems with my MBP being my main system
 
10.4 to 10.5 UPGRADE or not to

Hello peeps,
hope am in the right forum,cant seem to start new post or thread or whatever its called.
I bought iphone 4 yesterday and have,to my consternation found that i cannot sync/activate my new phone on my old machine.To activate i require 10.5 or later.My machine is a 10.4 of which the hardware overview is:

Machine Name: PowerBook G4 15"
Machine Model: PowerBook5,8
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.5)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.67 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.9.5f3

The question is can i upgrade to 10.5 online or by buying a disc? Dont think i can afford or really want to buy another machine as this one works just perfectly for me,apart from iphone4 sync ofcourse.
So what do you wise people say,upgrade possible or do i just return the phone?
 
you need to buy a disc unfortunately , look up ebay or craiglist , or some other websites who sell software for Mac's ,as apple does not sell leopard 10.5 any longer
 
Cheers MacHamster68, for your speedy response.So there will be no problem upgrading my machine to a 10.5 with disc ?
 
afrodiziyak said:
Cheers MacHamster68, for your speedy response.So there will be no problem upgrading my machine to a 10.5 with disc ?
Click to expand...

I run 10.5 on my 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook with no problems. You might want to get more RAM though.
 
Have just found Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard on amazon could this work or do i have to get the 10.5 seeing as i'm a 10.4 at the mo ?
 
MacHamster68 said:
hmhmmm yea a hackintosh is not as easy as it sounds , as its not just taking your osx leopard or snow leopard disk and putting it in the drive and pressing install ;) i think the easiest to install to ,if we could talk about easy are the netbooks

and thats the main reason why i never bothered about a hackintosh ,
there are always things that go wrong , ethernet or sound , or usb ,or whatever not working until you find the right cards or swap the motherboards
and then the matter of getting the right bootloaders and things like that have put me of totally
its just not as easy and plug and play as on ppc Mac's
ok parts are not that easy to get in some cases for ppc Mac's , but used and fully working ppc Mac's are just a click away at ebay or craiglist or other sites and as they are at a all time low now its the best time , they wont get cheaper as cheaper would mean the seller has to give you money if you buy one :D
Click to expand...

I tried many times to make a hackintosh but none of my attempts got me anywhere. People talk about it being easy but its really not especially if you dont use the exactly right hardware.
 
raysfan81 said:
I tried many times to make a hackintosh but none of my attempts got me anywhere. People talk about it being easy but its really not especially if you dont use the exactly right hardware.
Click to expand...

People talk about it being easy because, well, it is easy. Follow the instructions, use the proper hardware and really the only way it could be easier was if Apple had an official distro for PCs. Admittedly though, its not for everyone.
 
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