I expect my machines to last well over 3 years - one lasted nearly 9. And how's this for modern OS on old hardware?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-7-Pentium-II,8110.html
While I am not personally affected by the G5 drop, I do feel it is a shame that things have come to forced obsolescence. My May '07 MacBook won't take full advantage of SL and I suspect the next OS will force me to upgrade my hardware.
Never mind - I'll keep this MacBook going until it is totally dead and see what's up for sale then. No new Apple hardware anytime soon...
That Tomshardware.com story was quite interesting. I have a similar one...
I used to buy used Powermac Beige G3s dirt cheap, the 233MHz kind, rehab them, install MacOS X TIGER on them and sell them on Ebay! Given all the time it took to do this, it wasn't worth even doubling my money and was more a geek challenge and labor of love, but almost every Beige G3 I bought ran TIGER in a very stable manner as long as there was 128mb or more of memory & the hard drive was of sufficient size (in some cases it required 2 of those old hard drives). I sold almost all of them with Dual boot capability too, both MacOS 9 and MacOS X. People were completely amazed they could get a working Mac running OSX for less than $400 back then!
Wow have times changed.
Now, Snow Leopard doesn't even run well on the oldest INTEL Macs according to lots of the posts here and PowerPC is completely thrown under the bus.
No wonder the % number is only 18%.
From what I've read here, I don't expect it to climb quickly either unless Mac sales increase lots more.
Apple really bungled the whole Snow Leopard deal from start to finish, no doubt.
And to the fanbois here, the reason people are posting about Windows 7 is exactly because of what I just posted above.
While Microsoft is expanding support and compatibility, Apple is restricting support and compatibility and ticking off some long-time G5 owners who spent $2000-$3000 for their presumably powerful Macs.
Remember Steve Jobs' famed PowerPC "Megahertz Myth" reality distortion field sales pitch?
Well guess what? Most of the people who bought into that sales pitch probably won't be buying Snow Leopard whether they own an INTEL Mac or not if they still own a powerful Powermac G5 or iMac G5 too.
I think many people feel like they got conned, and even those who don't feel that way are disappointed to say the least at no G5 support in Snow Leopard considering how powerful these machines are and how recent they were sold by Apple, not to mention they're more powerful than many of the early INTEL Macs.
And to those who say, oh Apple needs to concentrate on just INTEL & PowerPC is dead, I'll say this... Apple has more cash reserves than most companies in the world right now. To screw over their loyal customers at a time when many don't have the money to buy a new computer is just beyond low.
Apple embarrassed Microsoft with MacOS X Tiger and to some extent MacOS X Leopard.
Microsoft has embarrassed Apple back with Windows 7 in comparison to Snow Leopard considering the Win7 compatibility and support.
PS: I can't wait for somebody to call me a troll, tick tock, tick tock...
