Just how far can we go?

[hamis92]

I'm looking for the A1261. That model is the last 17" MBP that retains the old AlBook style. It can run Mountain Lion and Mavericks and possibly, Yosemite, I don't know. We'll see. But I still love the 17" form factor. I hate the unibodys and if I can get an MBP that has as close a resemblance to my current 17" PB but can run the newest stuff, that's what I'm aiming for.

I have A1260 which is the last 15-inch MacBook Pro before the unibody form factor. It flies with SSD under Mavericks and runs Yosemite just fine (although my experience with that is on a HDD and I rarely boot there because I dislike the new look), so you should be good to go in that department

 

[eyoungren]

I have A1260 which is the last 15-inch MacBook Pro before the unibody form factor. It flies with SSD under Mavericks and runs Yosemite just fine (although my experience with that is on a HDD and I rarely boot there because I dislike the new look), so you should be good to go in that department

Awesome! Thanks!

I just much prefer the keyboard and looks of the Albooks and if I have to have an Intel Mac I'd rather it look as close to my PowerBook as I can. I also like the dichotomy of it as well. Is that a PowerBook running Yosemite or an MBP?

Of course the iSight is the tip off, but from other angles you just have to know what you're looking for. As the unibodys are ubiquitous now days it's actually something different.

I've had more people ask about our PowerBooks and iBooks when out then I've ever seen others being asked about the far more common MBPs.

 

[hamis92]

I know, I feel the same way about them.

 

[g4manimac]

I hear you. However, it's a little more complicated for me. If I absolutely NEEDED one for something right away I would do that, but I'm one of those people that has a specific model in mind and when I buy that's what I'm looking to get.

Fortunately, our tax refund in the new year is always a help, so I will probably pick up what I want then. I'm looking for the A1261. That model is the last 17" MBP that retains the old AlBook style. It can run Mountain Lion and Mavericks and possibly, Yosemite, I don't know. We'll see. But I still love the 17" form factor. I hate the unibodys and if I can get an MBP that has as close a resemblance to my current 17" PB but can run the newest stuff, that's what I'm aiming for.

I don't mean to sound flippant or as if I am disregarding your good advice. I'm not, I'm just letting you know what my plan has been for some time.

OHHHHH YESSS You are right the A1261 is an AMAZING machine and would be the optimal machine to maintain that classic look with great performance I personally had the 15-inch model Early-2008 Macbook Pro the last before unibody and I had the ssd in it but I sold it on eBay I posted the video in the listing showing it getting under 30 second boot times I wish I would have kept it.I have a late 2008 15 inch unibody now that runs yosemite and love it but I still use a mac mini g4 along with a powermac g5 1.6ghz single.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Definitely. Repairs are much better and I appreciate the "everything comes out the bottom" mentality rather than remove the top case then do this then that etc.

Yeah, I hate when 3|i†e g@m3®$, or any Windows/Windows PC fanboy thinks that unibody Macs are stupid, and that the user gets very little access to the internals. Heck, today's Windows laptops are the same as ever: Unscrew stuff on the bottom, lift off the keyboard, unscrew some more stuff, pull the bottom and/or top casing off... they fail to realize these things. These fanboys were arguing with me one day that Apple laptops are stupid because you can't readily remove the battery if the laptop gets wet. They were thinking that the laptop would short from a water spill, as their cheap and junky Windows laptops would have... I tried to explain that Macs are protected in this way and don't 'catch on fire' from a water spill. In fact, you can dump a bucket of water on a Mac and the only thing that will stop working will be the battery. Many non-Mac users think Apple hardware is just 'pretty', but there are advanced features (along with robustness) that keep one alive from the silly things that can kill a Windows computer. For example, short protection. I know someone who tripped over a USB cable while it was plugged into their Windows PC. It yanked it hard or something and shorted out the entire machine.

 

[weckart]

Fortunately, our tax refund in the new year is always a help, so I will probably pick up what I want then. I'm looking for the A1261. That model is the last 17" MBP that retains the old AlBook style. It can run Mountain Lion and Mavericks and possibly, Yosemite, I don't know. We'll see. But I still love the 17" form factor. I hate the unibodys and if I can get an MBP that has as close a resemblance to my current 17" PB but can run the newest stuff, that's what I'm aiming for.

I have a SR MBP and while I agree with you about the appearance of the AluBooks compared with the angular and cheaper looking Unibodies they also carry with them some debits:

a) SATA I. One port only. That means your HD speeds are going to be hobbled and SATA III drives may not play nicely (i.e. most affordable SSDs) because of

b) PATA - the SD is on a PATA to SATA bridge. If you decide to ditch the noisy SD for a second drive then your speeds are going to drop to PB levels. You can also forget about TRIM for any SSD you will put there - and you will because there is no sound dampening there for any mechanical drive. Even the whisper quiet Scorpio Blue drive I put there got on my nerves eventually with its amplified whirring. I had to take it out in the end. You might get lucky and find an optical bay replacement with a modicum of soundproofing but if that is no biggie to you there is still

c) The ticking time bomb that is the 8600M. Mine is still on its first logic board because I have always been overcautious with temperatures. Others who gamed and transcoded away have made several trips to the Genius bar. I think the replacement program has ended so any logic board failures are going to mean risking a session with an oven or searching for a logic board deal on eBay and doing without your MBP until you find one.

It also has to be said, the Unibodies are much easier to work on. Fewer fiddly screws to remove and lose or shear off and the keyboard is easier to remove but them's the breaks.

 

[eyoungren]

I have a SR MBP and while I agree with you about the appearance of the AluBooks compared with the angular and cheaper looking Unibodies they also carry with them some debits:

a) SATA I. One port only. That means your HD speeds are going to be hobbled and SATA III drives may not play nicely (i.e. most affordable SSDs) because of

b) PATA - the SD is on a PATA to SATA bridge. If you decide to ditch the noisy SD for a second drive then your speeds are going to drop to PB levels. You can also forget about TRIM for any SSD you will put there - and you will because there is no sound dampening there for any mechanical drive. Even the whisper quiet Scorpio Blue drive I put there got on my nerves eventually with its amplified whirring. I had to take it out in the end. You might get lucky and find an optical bay replacement with a modicum of soundproofing but if that is no biggie to you there is still

c) The ticking time bomb that is the 8600M. Mine is still on its first logic board because I have always been overcautious with temperatures. Others who gamed and transcoded away have made several trips to the Genius bar. I think the replacement program has ended so any logic board failures are going to mean risking a session with an oven or searching for a logic board deal on eBay and doing without your MBP until you find one.

It also has to be said, the Unibodies are much easier to work on. Fewer fiddly screws to remove and lose or shear off and the keyboard is easier to remove but them's the breaks.

Good points to know, thanks!

When the time comes it'll be eBay, so whatever drive comes with it will be what I get. If it's a lower capacity than what I have now then I will see about a new drive. Ultimately, a standard hard drive doesn't matter to me and noise I don't mind - or at least standard drive noise. I grew up in the era of the 286/386/486 so drive noise was just part of the deal and it's something I've always been used to. I hate when I can't hear a drive because I don't know sometimes if things are happening or not. One of the reasons I like iStat Menus, because at least I have a drive activity indicator. Something Apple never saw fit to put on any Mac.

As to repairs, well, I've been inside the 12" Powerbook, two very different 17" PowerBooks and two different TiBooks. I've replaced logicboards, LCDs and optical drives and the 17" Macs have always been the easiest to work on. So, should that be an issue I'd feel more comfortable on this type of MBP than a unibody.

As for CPU and logicboards, well, it would be filling the role of my current PB. Mainly web browsing and the occasional email or word processor use. Maybe a few photos in Photoshop. But nothing heavy. That would go to my PowerMac or my other PB. Only if it were something that I absolutely needed the Intel processor for and if that something forced heavy CPU usage would the CPU see that. Hopefully, that avoids most problems.

But, in any case, this is all what I say now. I don't own one of these yet so my story could be very different once I get one. I guess I will find out then.

 

[crammedberry]

Good points to know, thanks!

When the time comes it'll be eBay, so whatever drive comes with it will be what I get. If it's a lower capacity than what I have now then I will see about a new drive. Ultimately, a standard hard drive doesn't matter to me and noise I don't mind - or at least standard drive noise. I grew up in the era of the 286/386/486 so drive noise was just part of the deal and it's something I've always been used to. I hate when I can't hear a drive because I don't know sometimes if things are happening or not. One of the reasons I like iStat Menus, because at least I have a drive activity indicator. Something Apple never saw fit to put on any Mac.

As to repairs, well, I've been inside the 12" Powerbook, two very different 17" PowerBooks and two different TiBooks. I've replaced logicboards, LCDs and optical drives and the 17" Macs have always been the easiest to work on. So, should that be an issue I'd feel more comfortable on this type of MBP than a unibody.

But, in any case, this is all what I say now. I don't own one of these yet so my story could be very different once I get one. I guess I will find out then.

I feel the 8600M problems are a hit or miss more or less, with very bad odds. The majority of them end up having a problem and those that don't are on their way towards developing it. I have a 2.4Ghz early 2008 MBP with the 8600M. I was always told it was a ticking time bomb but I never watched the temperatures, I even overclocked the card on Windows in Bootcamp to get some better framerates on games. That thing got HOT! Well, I have been waiting for it to fail because of course I've always wanted tell people I'm roasting a MBP for dinner... haha, kidding. The computer is now nearly 7 years old. So 7 years of abuse in the Southern California heat exposed to 100+F temperatures and overclocking from my kid days - it's still alive. Maybe I'm lucky and maybe I pushed my luck, but that MBP will likely die of something else before it dies from the 8600M failing. Either way, I would never knowingly buy one myself as I know it's a game of luck and a ticking timebomb, just be ready to bake some motherboards as a worst case scenario.

 

[hamis92]

b) PATA - the SD is on a PATA to SATA bridge. If you decide to ditch the noisy SD for a second drive then your speeds are going to drop to PB levels. You can also forget about TRIM for any SSD you will put there - and you will because there is no sound dampening there for any mechanical drive. Even the whisper quiet Scorpio Blue drive I put there got on my nerves eventually with its amplified whirring. I had to take it out in the end. You might get lucky and find an optical bay replacement with a modicum of soundproofing but if that is no biggie to you there is still...

A valid point on the PATA bus for the optical drive. However, it makes no sense to replace the SuperDrive with an SSD anyway – if you create a dual-drive setup (SSD+HDD), the best practice is to put the SSD in the hard drive bay and the hard drive in the SuperDrive bay. That way you get the most out of both of the drives. Also, TRIM is definitely supported in the hard drive bay (use TRIM Enabler for that).

My Early 2008 has a 128 GB Samsung 830 Series SSD in the hard drive bay and a 750 GB WD Blue in the SuperDrive bay. Everything works superb, the system is very responsive and I honestly can't say the hard drive is any louder like this – I've compared. Of course if my wallet were fat enough, I would get just a giant SSD and skip the rotating storage altogether

Sorry that I continued the offtopic-ing...

 

[weckart]

My Early 2008 has a 128 GB Samsung 830 Series SSD in the hard drive bay and a 750 GB WD Blue in the SuperDrive bay. Everything works superb, the system is very responsive and I honestly can't say the hard drive is any louder like this – I've compared. Of course if my wallet were fat enough, I would get just a giant SSD and skip the rotating storage altogether

Sorry that I continued the offtopic-ing...

I did exactly that with a SanDisk in the HD bay and a WD 500GB in the OD bay and it ground my gears in the end. During the day it was no big deal for the reasons eyoungren mentioned but come the evening, things get quiet and you can hear every creak and whirr and the WD seemed sonically to harmonise in some way with its surroundings which made things worse. At least the SD only made its presence felt on boot up or waking from sleep. In the end, I upgraded the SanDisk with a Crucial M500 and returned the SD.

 

[Intell]

I did exactly that with a SanDisk in the HD bay and a WD 500GB in the OD bay and it ground my gears in the end. During the day it was no big deal for the reasons eyoungren mentioned but come the evening, things get quiet and you can hear every creak and whirr and the WD seemed sonically to harmonise in some way with its surroundings which made things worse. At least the SD only made its presence felt on boot up or waking from sleep. In the end, I upgraded the SanDisk with a Crucial M500 and returned the SD.

That's when you force the drive to eject and spindown when not in use.

 

[weckart]

That's when you force the drive to eject and spindown when not in use.

You have to keep remembering to do that and some apps like Disk Utility wake them up again. I have an iMac I am running on an ssd via TB. Even if I eject the internal HD it keeps spinning up and down periodically. Nobody has worked out yet why or how to stop this.

 

[Intell]

You have to keep remembering to do that and some apps like Disk Utility wake them up again. I have an iMac I am running on an ssd via TB. Even if I eject the internal HD it keeps spinning up and down periodically. Nobody has worked out yet why or how to stop this.

Just make a launch daemon eject it if it isn't mounted. Set it to trigger the eject command every 7 seconds or so. That way it won't be spinning for very long. That's what I've done with my Macbook. Works really well.

 

[eyoungren]

Just make a launch daemon eject it if it isn't mounted. Set it to trigger the eject command every 7 seconds or so. That way it won't be spinning for very long. That's what I've done with my Macbook. Works really well.

EJECT! EJECT! EJECT! Sounds like a fighter plane war movie Intell!

 

[crammedberry]

There are ways to do it in WebKit at least. I could try to write a script to force it to mobile if you guys wanted it. That kind of defeats the purpose of the desktop web though.

Well for some machines there isn't much of a choice though, but they can still be useful in "mobile" mode. I keep my iBook G3 around because it was my first Mac and basic web functionality is fine on something that old, I just never found a way to do that on the mac side. Trying to run the full modern desktop web on a 600Mhz G3 is impossible. I think it would be something nice to have on the mac side, so far I've just used this under Debian - see this short video.

 

[Altemose]

Well for some machines there isn't much of a choice though, but they can still be useful in "mobile" mode. I keep my iBook G3 around because it was my first Mac and basic web functionality is fine on something that old, I just never found a way to do that on the mac side. Trying to run the full modern desktop web on a 600Mhz G3 is impossible. I think it would be something nice to have on the mac side, so far I've just used this under Debian - see this short video.

Well it is just changing the default user agent. If you use Safari or Tiger WebKit then it is easy. I can look into TFF's procedure.

 

[eyoungren]

Well it is just changing the default user agent. If you use Safari or Tiger WebKit then it is easy. I can look into TFF's procedure.

T4Fx is like Firefox in that the user agent string is stored in settings (about:config). You can edit it and change it to whatever you wish.

Or you can use an addon, such as UserAgent Switcher and choose from a variety of user agents to suit your needs.

 

[iMacC2D]

Removed.

 

[Member2010]

linux

I've been using a G3 iBook running Debian for some time. The one thing I noticed was the up-to-date browsers available for PPC iterations of Debian, I can't speak for other Linux distros.
...
Debian offers many lightweight browsers, one of the reasons I switched over to it on PPC. The G3 doesn't have the power that TFF requires and I realized this when I handed the laptop off to my little cousins and they couldn't even run FaceBook on it. Debian however has browsers that are current for the PPC and I think that offers a different roadmap for those of us who still want to hang onto our precious PPC systems. Yes, Apple abandoned the PPC but it doesn't mean they are useless. I think Linux is the future for PPC macs once we hit that web wall on the Mac OS side.

Linux based operating systems would be a lifesaver for some of these computers. I gave this a try on the G5, but they unfortunately just do not play nice with the "GeForce FX5200 Ultra" turd base-level card that the machine comes with (and we won't even go into how difficult it is to upgrade to a different card). Significant fiddling with certain files from command-line mode is necessary just to get an image from the graphical interface of MintPPC or Ubuntu on the screen, and even then, the picture is distorted, there's no hardware acceleration to speak of, no flash player, and no sound. I'm not even a big Linux fan, but if it worked right, it would be like a PowerPC utopia - up-to-date software, up-to-date operating system, no obnoxious mouse acceleration, all sorts of good stuff. Alas, hardware compatibility ruins this possibility in many cases.

 

[Altemose]

Except doing so can kill an Apple computer rather easily. The Logic Boards corrode rather easily when liquid is introduced into the enclosure, and the extent of the damage can vary from an inability to charge all the way up to a complete death of the Logic Board. Once you remove the Bottom Case and see a powdery white-green corrosion residue everywhere indicating that the electronics have been exposed to liquid, it's extremely unlikely that the computer will ever live again.



The worst case I've come across is a 2010 Unibody MacBook (White Polycarbonate) with liquid damage around the power input circuit. One of the components was pulling more power than usual, making the thin wiring between the MagSafe board and the Logic Board hot enough to melt down and ignite the shielding around the cable. It's one of the few times I've actually seen a MacBook catch fire - albeit a very small one.



There are some PC notebooks that have built-in drainage channels in the keyboard. Those would fare much better in the event of a liquid spill.

ThinkPads have the drainage channels. Surprisingly, my only computer fires was a Dell Dimension 4600 in 2010 and a HP Compaq in 2014.

 

[weckart]

.There are some PC notebooks that have built-in drainage channels in the keyboard. Those would fare much better in the event of a liquid spill.

My Lenovo Thinkpad T61 has those. It came with Vista. I upgraded it to Lion. It is much happier now.

 

[crammedberry]

Linux based operating systems would be a lifesaver for some of these computers. I gave this a try on the G5, but they unfortunately just do not play nice with the "GeForce FX5200 Ultra" turd base-level card that the machine comes with (and we won't even go into how difficult it is to upgrade to a different card). Significant fiddling with certain files from command-line mode is necessary just to get an image from the graphical interface of MintPPC or Ubuntu on the screen, and even then, the picture is distorted, there's no hardware acceleration to speak of, no flash player, and no sound. I'm not even a big Linux fan, but if it worked right, it would be like a PowerPC utopia - up-to-date software, up-to-date operating system, no obnoxious mouse acceleration, all sorts of good stuff. Alas, hardware compatibility ruins this possibility in many cases.

Luckily I didn't run into many problems when I've tried it. Usually hardware acceleration works except my radeon 128 driver is so old it's been dropped from support. This is a computer from 2001 and the card was already old then. There is a way to go around that but I haven't tried breaking my head with it yet, I may try it later, although at 8mb of VRAM I don't see if there is much to be gained.

I know Debian has a 64bit PPC official version, hopefully they will work on making that install easier for you, it's been getting better over time. For 32bit ancient macs though it's a no-brainer. I can surf the web, send emails, all the basics on a 15 year old computer - something I didn't except 15 years back, so yes Linux is PowerPC utopia at least in my experience. You may want to try Debian with your G5, Ubuntu and mintPPC all gave me problems as well so I went with the "harder" install and that worked flawlessly.

 

[2984839]

Luckily I didn't run into many problems when I've tried it. Usually hardware acceleration works except my radeon 128 driver is so old it's been dropped from support. This is a computer from 2001 and the card was already old then. There is a way to go around that but I haven't tried breaking my head with it yet, I may try it later, although at 8mb of VRAM I don't see if there is much to be gained.

I know Debian has a 64bit PPC official version, hopefully they will work on making that install easier for you, it's been getting better over time. For 32bit ancient macs though it's a no-brainer. I can surf the web, send emails, all the basics on a 15 year old computer - something I didn't except 15 years back, so yes Linux is PowerPC utopia at least in my experience. You may want to try Debian with your G5, Ubuntu and mintPPC all gave me problems as well so I went with the "harder" install and that worked flawlessly.

The current version of Fedora is reported to work on G5s as well. They mainly test it on modern POWER systems, but their site claims it works on the G5.

 

[crammedberry]

I gave this a try on the G5, but they unfortunately just do not play nice with the "GeForce FX5200 Ultra" turd base-level card that the machine comes with (and we won't even go into how difficult it is to upgrade to a different card).

If you do get around to try Debian this is something that has worked with the nvidia cards that the macs have. The instructions are for squeeze but they work on wheezy.

http://www.debianuserforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2417&

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Except doing so can kill an Apple computer rather easily. The Logic Boards corrode rather easily when liquid is introduced into the enclosure, and the extent of the damage can vary from an inability to charge all the way up to a complete death of the Logic Board. Once you remove the Bottom Case and see a powdery white-green corrosion residue everywhere indicating that the electronics have been exposed to liquid, it's extremely unlikely that the computer will ever live again.

The worst case I've come across is a 2010 Unibody MacBook (White Polycarbonate) with liquid damage around the power input circuit. One of the components was pulling more power than usual, making the thin wiring between the MagSafe board and the Logic Board hot enough to melt down and ignite the shielding around the cable. It's one of the few times I've actually seen a MacBook catch fire - albeit a very small one.

There are some PC notebooks that have built-in drainage channels in the keyboard. Those would fare much better in the event of a liquid spill.

Ah, yeah. I have seen that happen before. As for the fire thing, that is really unusual. I never liked those unibody ones though. I wonder how a regular 2006-2009 MacBook would have held up in that situation. While water damage can vary, I have seen a test done on a MacBook Air where it was completely doused in water. Everything still worked except for the battery. But in terms of the battery shorting out, it's more of something one would have to worry about with a Windows PC... same goes with tripping over a USB device. xD Although short protection in that case can also vary between types of computers.