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New Tinker Toy: Power Mac G4 MDD
- Thread starter gavinstubbs09
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Hmmmm. I have never owned an Intel Mac. But I've had a Mac since 2001. And at work I used a G5 professionally for 8 years and it's one of three PowerPC Macs that get used daily at work.
If I could keep up in the industry using PowerPC Macs I'd go back to the G5. Not a big fan of the Intel Mac.
So is it still a challenge if you live it every day because you don't own an Intel Mac at all?
Hmm. I could do that with just my G5. I don't really need my three G4 Macs. Everything works fine for me on my Dual 2.0: web, email, Photoshop, video recording, movie conversion, disc burning, iTunes, 2 TB of space to use, two operating systems, network via wi-fi and wired connections, text editing, PDF management, and desktop/website publishing.
I could do that with my G4 Dual 1.25 as well, though there is less RAM. The Dual 1.0, I get iffy, as there's some hidden gremlin in the machine that I can't tease out yet.
Heck, I could, and did, get by with a G4 400 MHz for several months without major problems.
PPC for life, lol.
I think I could also use my PB without many if any problems at all, but I would get frustrated since it is the slowest computer I own. My cellphone and tablet are both much faster in general use, this tablet came with some kind of video editing software and maybe I could try some kind of video encoding benchmark to get some numbers, four ARM cores against one PPC 
With Dual G5 machine there would be no problem in terms of speed.
With Dual G5 machine there would be no problem in terms of speed.
Not for you
I can't tell you how much I agree with you, I really don't like the newer Intel macs. I'm fine with older Macbooks, but not the new stuff as much. I feel like people look down on me for using an old iBook, but honestly, I would rather have it than a new Intel iMac. It's like coming home to an old friend, after using i5 Windows 7 machines at school! I really love PowerPC.
I suppose if there was a forum where using a PowerPC wasn't a big deal it would be here
There is one Mac Pro. A 2011 Intel Xeon Quad core. But it's not even a year old in our shop. I took the opportunity when the logicboard on the 1.8Ghz (SP) G5 died to get my boss to buy it. I did not want an Intel Mac, but I work as a Graphic Designer for a weekly newspaper. The nature of my business is one of constant change. There is and always will be a "new" program and I need to be able to open ANYTHING a customer sends us.Are you using anything other than a G5 at work and at home, if not, you win!
That said, I worked on the G5 from Feb. 2005 to June 2013. My coworker is now using it and all her issues of the Mac being "slow" have dissappeared. We have one other G4 350 PCI running Tiger with 192mb ram that serves as an Applescript server. And my coworker's former G4 is a 450 AGP. Again, we have the Intel Mac only because the G5 cannot run any apps higher than Adobe CS4, Acrobat 9 Pro, Suitcase Fusion 3 and QuarkXPress 8.5.1.
At home though there are ZERO Intel Macs. Everthing I have is either a PowerBook or a PowerMac. That's because they were inexpensive. A $100-200 PowerPC Mac versus a $600-700 dollar low end Intel Mac. When you live paycheck to paycheck the difference is huge.
So, yes, at home PowerPC is used for everything.
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I've had the opposite experience. My main Macs untl I got the QS are my two 17" PowerBooks. I don't care how old they are, people stare with envy/appreciation when you pull one of those out of your bag. When you pull both of them out you get admiration.Not for you
I can't tell you how much I agree with you, I really don't like the newer Intel macs. I'm fine with older Macbooks, but not the new stuff as much. I feel like people look down on me for using an old iBook, but honestly, I would rather have it than a new Intel iMac. It's like coming home to an old friend, after using i5 Windows 7 machines at school! I really love PowerPC.
Not that that's why I use them. It's just the 17" PowerBook has always been one of the Macs I've wanted. I have had several people ask me about them over the years and they make a great way to talk to people about Macs and PowerPC. So far, I've never gotten someone looking down on me.
Be proud. You own a piece of classic Mac history that no one else does and you know how to make it dance! And compared to some of the iCrap that's out there now the iBook shines!
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Yep! With the exception at work of the not even one year old MP it's been some sort of PowerPC since 1999 when I first started in the newspaper industry.You use PowerPC Macs for all your "home" computing? You qualify.
Here's the crunch, if you're employed you have to be realistic about these things, and it is not possible to have an exclusively PPC-only life. My employer needs me to use a pc for specific programs, and some of the functionality I need from a computer I cannot get easily on a g5 (I've looked). I think it is interesting if you can exclusively use a powerpc, but these days it is a potentially risky aspiration as you could be seriously lacking in terms of productivity.
When I pull it out of my backpack, people stare and I'm just like, "This is a PowerPC, son. Recognize."
I do agree, the 17 inch PB looks waaaaay better then half the new Apple notebooks out there right now. I like the old style backlit keyboard a lot better, too.
I hear you. And had the G5 not died last year we would still be PowerPC only. What we do is the same thing we've always done. The same way, every week. Ads, pagination, classifieds, legals, etcetera.
Based on what we do we could go back to 2004 when I was hired. Everything we do now could be done with QuarkXPress 6.5, Suitcase X1, Office X and Acrobat 6 Pro. But, I push and have pushed over the years because I find it incredibly frustrating to be confronted with a document I can't get open.
I'm the one person in the entire shop that has the ability to open just about anything and that's only because I've taken advantage to get what I can when I can. Just covering my bases.
I do all my work on this MP in Adobe CS4 and Acrobat 9 because I have to stay equal with the programs that the G5 can run. And the MP has 1GB less in ram than the G5!
My point is that the Intel Mac isn't necessary for what we do. But I may need it's additional capacity to do certain things in rare cases. It's that exception that had me weedle it out of my boss.
Home is a different story. As I said, no Intel Macs at home. Right now I'm on day three of Toast 10 doing encoding to burn a blue ray movie to disk. If that was my bread and butter though that would not be acceptable.
My dad really really wanted to buy my G5 off me when he got his iPhone 5s, and I would have loved to have him use it, but that turned out into lending him my Mac Pro. It would have been excellent to have him use PPC but he wanted it all to be tied together with his phone and stuff, and he had 2 important fiance applications for his business (Stubbswelding Rocksliders) for Windows that weren't even compatible with Windows 7. That journey ended up into him getting a 2009 iMac with Parallels so everything worked.
But, had he just wanted a home computer and didn't need those 2 programs, he would have been set with my G5!
But, had he just wanted a home computer and didn't need those 2 programs, he would have been set with my G5!
Me too, and it's really not much of a challenge! But I only have an iBook G4, and am hoping to pick up a PowerBook G4 soon!
Me too, and it's really not much of a challenge! But I only have an iBook G4, and am hoping to pick up a PowerBook G4 soon!
Aluminum Power! I am buying my BlackBook back off one of my friends but my plan in the near future is to get a 17" PBG4. Never seen one, never owned one!
I would love to get a 17" because of the big beautiful screen, faster processor, and backlit keyboard, but in reality I'll probably be getting a 12 or 15". I did see a guy on craigslist who was selling two PBs in great condition for $50, but he had a broken charger and couldn't test them. He didn't say what size or anything, but it might just be worth a shot!
I bought a 17" PowerBook G4 for my Wife quite a few years back. I loved it! It was like having a desktop anywhere you needed it. We sold it a few years back and I would love to have it back now.
That's my repeated question.Me too, and it's really not much of a challenge! But I only have an iBook G4, and am hoping to pick up a PowerBook G4 soon!
How can it be a challenge if you don't know anything else?
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You're in for a treat! I have two, the very first model produced and the very last model produced. Both are awesome!
I got incredibly LUCKY on my DLSD.Those last of the PB 17" 1.67 DLSD are really hard to come by...
The seller was a college student. He dropped the Mac on the corner and because of the superficial case damage went out and got an Intel Mac.
His eBay auction (this was early 2010) said NOTHING about this Mac being DLSD. It only mentioned that it was 1.67Ghz and none of the bidders asked questions.
So, I thought when I won the auction that I was getting the standard res 1.67ghz. I was VERY pleasantly surprised to find that it was a DLSD.
I think the seller figured that out some time afterwards because there seemed to be some sense of regret in his communications with me. I paid about $250 for the Mac. Had it been known it was a DLSD then the auction could have gone much higher as all the damage was superficial.