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yes i know that , i live in reality , ....just wishful thinking in a ideal world no children would have to die from starvation , and we would have no poverty at all and no wars on this planet and still new PPC Mac's and money would be something we have to look for in museums :D
 
ok. thinking now really of getting rid of the intel iMac again and getting a Mini G4 1.5 ghz instead, it just feels wrong to keep something that killed ppc Mac development , chrismacguy is right you cannot support both and look in the eyes of my powerpc mac's , i really feel like a trader
 
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ok. thinking now really of getting rid of the intel iMac again and getting a Mini G4 1.5 ghz instead, it just feels wrong to keep something that killed ppc Mac development , chrismacguy is right you cannot support both and look in the eyes of my powerpc mac's , i really feel like a trader

^This statement is almost over the top in its stupidity.

If you're going to willingly restrict yourself to old, slow hardware running what is rapidly becoming a dead platform, good luck to you, the rest of the world isn't quite that delusional.

PS. it's traitor, not trader.
 
As far as I am concerned, Apple now uses Intel, for now. Who knows time will come they would go back to PPC. PPC ain't that dead.

Anything can change, the world is round and keeps on spinning. Technology will always be technology no matter how old it is.

Is there anybody here that knows the "real" score why Apple left PowerPC? As far as I know, IBM/Motorola could not deliver the volume and Intel is cheap, that is why of the switch.
 
As far as I am concerned, Apple now uses Intel, for now. Who knows time will come they would go back to PPC. PPC ain't that dead.

Anything can change, the world is round and keeps on spinning. Technology will always be technology no matter how old it is.

Is there anybody here that knows the "real" score why Apple left PowerPC? As far as I know, IBM/Motorola could not deliver the volume and Intel is cheap, that is why of the switch.

Motorola and IBM couldn't deliver a series of mobile G5 chips for laptops.

Frankly, the performance of the G4-based laptops compared to the Intel offerings at the time was absolutely embarrassing.

Everyone and their mother knows this.

And in order to get decent performance out of their G5 workstations, Apple eventually had to go to the extreme of devising a liquid cooling system.

Do you think any manufacturer wants to go through the added expense of designing and shipping a liquid cooling system, having to deal with additional support liabilities when competing chips get similar performance using a simple head spreader and fan? No.
 
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Motorola and IBM couldn't deliver a series of mobile G5 chips for laptops.

Frankly, the performance of the G4-based laptops compared to the Intel offerings at the time was absolutely embarrassing.

Everyone and their mother knows this.

And in order to get decent performance out of their G5 workstations, Apple eventually had to go to the extreme of devising a liquid cooling system.

Do you think any manufacturer wants to go through the added expense of designing and shipping a liquid cooling system, having to deal with additional support liabilities when competing chips get similar performance using a simple head spreader and fan? No.

that is only half true , as my 2.3 dual core G5 is still air cooled , and apple could have asked freescale as their G4 would have been as fast as the intel core duos , but apples main problem was they did not want to pay money for good processors , they did want to get cheap processors and in quantities neither motorola or ibm or freescale could have produced them for the price apple was willing to pay , and apple did want windows to run natively on their Mac's to get more consumers in the boat
and this 3ghz barrier thats always taken as a excuse means the i7 which has only 2.8ghz is worse then a pentium 4 with 3.6 ghz isn't it ...yes if you believe apples arguments from back then it really is as it has a lower clockspeed

and freescale had processors around ..their G4 ok they renamed it in e600 could have been a ideal laptop processor
or their dual core MPC864x would have been a fantastic processor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_e600 and its a fact that these "g4" can easy keep up with the older G5 and newer core duos and did not have to fear core 2 duo's
so dont believe everything apple says , apple will say everything as they want to make profit and do not really care about best quality, all they care is what does it cost us to build and can we still sell for the same price keeping our profit margin
and who would trust a company that not even a half year before the transition proved that their G5 processor Mac's can outperform intel's , only to change their mind telling the opposite a couple month later to sell intels inside

and morph os nearly exclusively made to run on G4 Mac's it proves you dont need to improve hardware , improving the OS is more important , sorry to bring it up again shows that it was not in apples interest to improve OSX for the PPC platform as already with panther they knew they will go intel soon , so making improvements to really gain speed on the PPC Mac's was not in apples interest
as they had like steve said worked on getting osx running on intel processors since the first OSX and that was in 2001 cheetah ? so why would a company try to get their OS running on hardware they never would intend to use , officially they denied it back then and worked behind closed doors for 5 years and then suddenly everything they had said in the past became untrue to convince people to buy intel based mac's
...i say it with the words of winston churchill "never trust a statistic you did not forge yourself "

so it would not surprise me that apple today is working on getting osx running on via processors or amd processors , whoever maybe is getting cheaper in the future ,only to announce that intel was just not good enough ....
 
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Won't leopard run on it? I'm sure I had a leopard security update in the last month or 2 (unless I imagined it)? So it hasn't really been abandoned.

All the software you bought still works?

The only way I see it is that over time security may become an issue. What about all the people who bought PCs with XP that won't run windows 7? You just have to limit where you go on the web and use a firewall. That's the fault of the hackers, spammers, and malicious people out there.

If CS5 doesn't run on it then that's the fault of Adobe. If you're wanting to run a new program that wan't designed for your hardware/software configuration then that upgrade means the whole system if that's important to you, and the cost of the upgrade includes the computer.

It's a sad fact, but millions of computers, phones, ipods, and other tech are scrapped every day that work perfectly fine. It's peoples desire for the latest and greatest that makes them worthless. There's no reason I couldn't still use Windows 3.1 on my old computer. Sure I'll get Lion, but I bought my MBP for SL, not Lion, so I wouldn't be any more jealous if I couldn't run lion than I would be of people who have shiny new hardware.

From the opposite perspective, many don't want their OS and apps full of legacy support and code.

Maybe this all seems easy for me to say as I have an i7 MBP, but if you knew the time it took me to save for this, and the frustration I had with my previous hackintosh and PC then it's not like it's easy to just buy one. I even looked at buying old PPC Apples off ebay while saving, and decided it wasn't worth it in the long run, and I'd be better off with a cheap PC and XP/Vista/Win7.

It's a sad world of technology. I can get really quite depressed when I see perfectly working computers that were once great going into skips and landfill. Equally, everyone wants the latest computer/laptop/iphone/car/etc, that they survived perfectly well without before. It's people's desire for new that drives this all. :(

As Bill Gates said, "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
 
Given that I saw nothing in Leopard to tempt me to upgrade from Tiger, and even less in Snow Leopard, I don't feel left behind at all in terms of Mac OS. Seeing the attention Apple pays to iToys, the cynic in me says that Apple pays almost as much attention to Mac OS PPC as it does to Mac OS Intel these days - very little.

I am looking at eventually either switching to a Mac Pro (being a Power Mac user, I couldn't downgrade to a laptop, an all in one or a whatever the mini's supposed to be) or going over to the PC world. It would be a sad day to leave Apple behind, but it's not the same Apple as when I was an old school fanboy, and to be honest the iToy revolution seems to have brought with it a really clueless, nasty, belligerent, arrogant ****** type fanboy - makes me not want to be a part of the Apple community any more.

And to those who like to wear the exorbitant price of Apple machines as some kind of badge of honour that makes them superior to the plebs, how about a system where Macs are priced closer to what they're worth (ie, $1000 less for the Quad Core Mac Pro) but with an added snobbery option where you pay extra (double the price?) to have a "I'm considerably richer than yow*" engraving, so you still won't get associated with the great unwashed? Can't say fairer than that.

* = Harry Enfield (UK comedian) reference for all non-UK folk
 
i agree to that apple has changed a lot over the years and not to the better , but to be a fairer to leopard and snow leopard , time machine is a great way to keep a backed up system , but there had been no reason that it could not have been made into tiger , the rest of leopard an snow leopard is just a more flashy GUI orientated towards windows users
and for me tiger is still the best OSX , and when i see what this LION looks i fear the worst for apples future , its going more and more direction windows and most people who switch to Mac today only switch because of the unibody design and never really use OSX instead they install windows anyway , so as its a majority of new users only using windows to play games how long will it make sense for apple to even continue to develop OSX..after all it could increase profits if they would ditch OSX for good and they would only lose a couple of old customers who bought a Mac to seriously use it for work and quiet a lot of those still use PowerMac's and PowerBook's
i mean take them as cars , you have two choices either get a volkswagen beetle (the original) it brings you to and from work in a discrete way or get a modern Porsche for the same trip to and from work if you need to show off
and faster does not automatically mean better and more comfy
 
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i agree to that apple has changed a lot over the years , but to be a fairer to leopard and snow leopard , time machine is a great way to keep a backed up system , but there had been no reason that it could not have been made into tiger , the rest of leopard an snow leopard is just a more flashy GUI
and for me tiger is still the best OSX , and when i see what this LION looks i fear the worst for apples future , its going more and more direction windows , just a matter of time before apple decides OSX needs a registry too

I guess you can use carbon copy cloner, superduper or even Tri-Backup (paid) to achieve similar results to the time machine..
 
I guess you can use carbon copy cloner, superduper or even Tri-Backup (paid) to achieve similar results to the time machine..



yes i use super duper for that as all my Mac's run OSX tiger , i only meant that it was a good idea of apple to implement that feature of backing up the system into osx , but i could not understand why that was not possible in OSX before leopard ,i mean super duper works since jaguar on Mac's , so is nothing new
 
If CS5 doesn't run on it then that's the fault of Adobe. If you're wanting to run a new program that wan't designed for your hardware/software configuration then that upgrade means the whole system if that's important to you, and the cost of the upgrade includes the computer.

Yup, that's one factor in my disappointment. I know Adobe and Apple have fallen out of love with each other, and so it's unfair to put all the blame onto Apple.

I can get really quite depressed when I see perfectly working computers that were once great going into skips and landfill. Equally, everyone wants the latest computer/laptop/iphone/car/etc, that they survived perfectly well without before. It's people's desire for new that drives this all. :(

Ah, me too. I actually have two old CRT monitors I need to take to the tip, and whenever I go I find myself thinking about all the stuff that could be repaired, if it wasn't vastly more cost effective nowadays to bin it and buy new stuff. (But, I don't quite buy the idea that we all innately 'want' this stuff; supply-led demand has become a force to be reckoned with in the last couple of hundred years.....)

It would be a sad day to leave Apple behind, but it's not the same Apple as when I was an old school fanboy, and to be honest the iToy revolution seems to have brought with it a really clueless, nasty, belligerent, arrogant ****** type fanboy - makes me not want to be a part of the Apple community any more.

I'm too much of a fan of mac OS to ever switch, but I have certainly suffered because of some of their crazy proprietary hardware policies. It makes me envious of PC owners who can just nip down to Maplins and spend a tenner on a new plug, rather than be faced with an exorbitant repair bill for something minor and straightforward.

And to those who like to wear the exorbitant price of Apple machines as some kind of badge of honour that makes them superior to the plebs, how about a system where Macs are priced closer to what they're worth (ie, $1000 less for the Quad Core Mac Pro) but with an added snobbery option where you pay extra (double the price?) to have a "I'm considerably richer than yow*" engraving, so you still won't get associated with the great unwashed? Can't say fairer than that.

Ha! Nice idea.
 
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Given that I saw nothing in Leopard to tempt me to upgrade from Tiger, and even less in Snow Leopard, I don't feel left behind at all in terms of Mac OS. Seeing the attention Apple pays to iToys, the cynic in me says that Apple pays almost as much attention to Mac OS PPC as it does to Mac OS Intel these days - very little.

I am looking at eventually either switching to a Mac Pro (being a Power Mac user, I couldn't downgrade to a laptop, an all in one or a whatever the mini's supposed to be) or going over to the PC world. It would be a sad day to leave Apple behind, but it's not the same Apple as when I was an old school fanboy, and to be honest the iToy revolution seems to have brought with it a really clueless, nasty, belligerent, arrogant ****** type fanboy - makes me not want to be a part of the Apple community any more.

And to those who like to wear the exorbitant price of Apple machines as some kind of badge of honour that makes them superior to the plebs, how about a system where Macs are priced closer to what they're worth (ie, $1000 less for the Quad Core Mac Pro) but with an added snobbery option where you pay extra (double the price?) to have a "I'm considerably richer than yow*" engraving, so you still won't get associated with the great unwashed? Can't say fairer than that.

* = Harry Enfield (UK comedian) reference for all non-UK folk

I do agree about the current state of fanboihood. Yet you must not forget that the PowerMAc you got there cost like 3000 dollars at the date of its release.

Besides I would never think of Mac Pro being overpriced THAT much. 300-400 dollars tops considering their classic widely copied built quality.
 
Many different thoughts..

Any computer is what you make it.

10.5 is still equal to or better than any other OS by MS or anyone else so I am fine for a few years with it being my max OS. I even prefer 10.5 over 10.6. My girlfriends new MacBook Pro is my latest project to maintain as she always somehow tends to mess things up. After 14+ hours using 10.6 over 3 days or so I found myself missing 10.5. Can't explain it but I just prefer 10.5 and find 10.6 to be not that much faster at all. My good friend with an 8 core Mac Pro also prefers 10.5.

10.4 can get by for many more years with Safari 4 support of HTML5. It's still much better than any Mac OS before it and MUCH better than XP or Vista.

Ubuntu is still an option on PowerPC even though they dropped support. There are still a small group of PowerPC geeks out there porting the x86 to G3-G5 PowerPC releases. Just google "PowerPC Ubuntu".

The PowerPC market is certainly not dead. There is still a G4 upgrade market with G4 7447 and 7448 upgrades still made by NewerTech. Virtually every console on the market uses a PowerPC/RISC chip of some sort. The e600 CPU by Freescale (motorola) is still rapidly used for industrial computing type systems. The G4 7448 is virtually identical to the e600 and shares the same core.

I still truly feel that PowerPC/RISC is a superior architecture. In the 2002-2005 time span the PowerPC makers IBM (G5) and Freescale (G4) simply were not researching and investing enough money into the technology. Because of this the speed increases in new CPU's were paltry and mobile chip development in particular suffered. The quad G5 at it's release time was plenty powerful enough but Apple had the huge burden of only having a G4 7447a to put in the PowerBooks.

Shortly after Apple stopped using PowerPC CPU's in late 2005 IBM introduced the Power series chips and Freescale the G4 7448. I think the 7448 could have actually saved PowerPC at Apple if it came out sooner. A single 1.8GHz only consumes about 16 watts vs. about 38 watts on a 7447 at the same speed. The 7448 is also 30-45% faster, has double the cache and runs considerably cooler. It also has a reengineered altivec core. So you could have a dual 2GHz 7448 in a PowerBook and it not use any more power than a single 7447. It would also be approx. 2.5-3x faster than the PB G4 1.67GHz 7447 which was the fastest Apple PowerPC laptop ever made. The 7448 is also only 90nm vs the 130-200nm size of all G4's before it.

Please share thoughts on these thoughts..
 
Shortly after Apple stopped using PowerPC CPU's in late 2005 IBM introduced the Power series chips and Freescale the G4 7448. I think the 7448 could have actually saved PowerPC at Apple if it came out sooner. A single 1.8GHz only consumes about 16 watts vs. about 38 watts on a 7447 at the same speed. The 7448 is also 30-45% faster, has double the cache and runs considerably cooler. It also has a reengineered altivec core. So you could have a dual 2GHz 7448 in a PowerBook and it not use any more power than a single 7447. It would also be approx. 2.5-3x faster than the PB G4 1.67GHz 7447 which was the fastest Apple PowerPC laptop ever made. The 7448 is also only 90nm vs the 130-200nm size of all G4's before it.

I think the lacking performance of the PPC processors was just a comfortable and well timed excuse. He has been planning to jump on the Intel train ever since he came back to Apple. Nothing would have changed his decision, especially considering the cost of the PowerBook G5 would in NO way be comparable to the current line of the MacBooks. Not to mention PPC would not fit into their scheme of upcoming iPhones; the PPC platform would have required MUCH MUCH MUCH more focus - a thing Apple does not have for their OS not to mention an additional line of niche processors. Intel is a safe bet commercially. Unfortunately. :(
 
I still get angry over this issue of Apple hanging old technology out to dry. It seems that until we as a species can find a different way, then we are doomed to choke on the garbage we create, and the resources we stupidly use up - in our quest for short term thinking and profits. Apple's idea, thinking how green they are, is such a sick joke on all of us that buy into this idea and acceptance of planned obsolescence.

I'll use my G5 until I can no longer use it to access the internet. When that time comes, I'll make sure that I purchase the most cost effect device just for that limited purpose since my G5's software would still be able to do everything else that I require. The saving grace in all this is the internet still has a vested interest in shilling to the lowest common denominator so they will want you to be hooked up no matter what - with whatever can still run to keep you buying stuff. So maybe this day might not come for a very long time yet and my G5 will last me another 10 years.

Mike
 
Despite what I've said about Apple, I don't get angry with them for no longer supporting PPC - they've moved onto a different architecture, for better or worse, and supporting the old will be a lot of work for little return. That's fair enough.

Plus, I bought my G5 after the switch (just before the Mac Pro came along) in full knowledge of what was going to happen - I don't need the latest and greatest, as long as it's an upgrade on what I have. My G3 iMac was getting very sluggish (it never really liked OS X) and the G5 was a world of difference. Plus the G5 was discounted at 33% off, which priced it in the middle of the iMacs. Well, an Intel laptop on a stick or a PPC "proper" computer: my choice was easy.

And the G5, with what I run on it, is still easily fast enough for my needs and I run it constantly on "reduced", so at 2.0Ghz instead of 2.7Ghz. The only thing it can't do well is run 1080p WMV (MKVs, AVIs and whatnot are not too bad, Apple's 1080p Movie trailers are not so good but not as bad as WMV). I'll use it until it breaks, by which time Apple may have abandoned OS X as we know it, all locked down with App Store ***** and no more terminal, X windows and all the other stuff tinkerers like me like to play with.
 
And the G5, with what I run on it, is still easily fast enough for my needs and I run it constantly on "reduced", so at 2.0Ghz instead of 2.7Ghz. The only thing it can't do well is run 1080p WMV (MKVs, AVIs and whatnot are not too bad, Apple's 1080p Movie trailers are not so good but not as bad as WMV). I'll use it until it breaks, by which time Apple may have abandoned OS X as we know it, all locked down with App Store ***** and no more terminal, X windows and all the other stuff tinkerers like me like to play with.

Remember, Tim Cook is now in charge and he will be the next official CEO of Apple most likely. So I doubt your predictions about the total lockdown of iOS/Mac OS X will hold any truth in future. :) Tim Cook may be a follower of Jobs but he ain’t half as concerned with ease of use through locking things down.
 
Many different thoughts..

Any computer is what you make it.

10.5 is still equal to or better than any other OS by MS or anyone else so I am fine for a few years with it being my max OS. I even prefer 10.5 over 10.6. My girlfriends new MacBook Pro is my latest project to maintain as she always somehow tends to mess things up. After 14+ hours using 10.6 over 3 days or so I found myself missing 10.5. Can't explain it but I just prefer 10.5 and find 10.6 to be not that much faster at all. My good friend with an 8 core Mac Pro also prefers 10.5.

10.4 can get by for many more years with Safari 4 support of HTML5. It's still much better than any Mac OS before it and MUCH better than XP or Vista.

Ubuntu is still an option on PowerPC even though they dropped support. There are still a small group of PowerPC geeks out there porting the x86 to G3-G5 PowerPC releases. Just google "PowerPC Ubuntu".

The PowerPC market is certainly not dead. There is still a G4 upgrade market with G4 7447 and 7448 upgrades still made by NewerTech. Virtually every console on the market uses a PowerPC/RISC chip of some sort. The e600 CPU by Freescale (motorola) is still rapidly used for industrial computing type systems. The G4 7448 is virtually identical to the e600 and shares the same core.

I still truly feel that PowerPC/RISC is a superior architecture. In the 2002-2005 time span the PowerPC makers IBM (G5) and Freescale (G4) simply were not researching and investing enough money into the technology. Because of this the speed increases in new CPU's were paltry and mobile chip development in particular suffered. The quad G5 at it's release time was plenty powerful enough but Apple had the huge burden of only having a G4 7447a to put in the PowerBooks.

Shortly after Apple stopped using PowerPC CPU's in late 2005 IBM introduced the Power series chips and Freescale the G4 7448. I think the 7448 could have actually saved PowerPC at Apple if it came out sooner. A single 1.8GHz only consumes about 16 watts vs. about 38 watts on a 7447 at the same speed. The 7448 is also 30-45% faster, has double the cache and runs considerably cooler. It also has a reengineered altivec core. So you could have a dual 2GHz 7448 in a PowerBook and it not use any more power than a single 7447. It would also be approx. 2.5-3x faster than the PB G4 1.67GHz 7447 which was the fastest Apple PowerPC laptop ever made. The 7448 is also only 90nm vs the 130-200nm size of all G4's before it.

Please share thoughts on these thoughts..

1) NewerTech's own marketing material touts that their drop-in G4 replacements only brings the performance of those machines up to the level of a 2006 Intel iMac. They are touting the ability to make your eight or nine year old hardware to perform like five year old hardware. It also states that those processors are "sold out" and if you google around, those processors haven't been available through them for over two years.

At the end of the day, you have an aging machine that is still fine for basic tasks as long as it is capable of running, but it will increasingly struggle to handle modern web content and it is no longer worth investing substantial sums of money into.

2) In my opinion, using a Mac is all about the Mac experience and to me that means running Mac OS. Resorting to running a fringe platform like Morph OS unless you specifically want to play with an Amiga-like OS or resorting to buggy hacked together builds of Ubuntu on aging mac hardware seems like a pointless exercise. If you want to run Ubuntu, officially supported builds will run far better on dirt cheap, generic PC hardware and you will have a far wider selection of software packages to choose from.

3) Having the 'theoretically' better ISA is totally irrelevant, real world performance counts for everything. The X86 ISA has supplanted many, many, 'theoretically' superior architectures due to the enormity of the engineering resources behind it which have allowed it to continually improve and overcome its initial shortcomings. A large part of this is the aggressive way in which Intel and AMD have continually pushed the envelope in terms of fabrication technology, allowing their chips to jump a performance lifecycle or two head of the competition.

There was a rough performance parity between x86 chips and the late G4/early G5 offerings but IBM and Motorola soon faltered, IBM encountered manufacturing difficulties and Motorola refused to invest anything further into the platform because it wanted to leave the chip fabrication business entirely. For a period of around to 2-3 years, the offerings from both of these companies became stagnant and since the x86 manufacturers were in fierce competition with each other (intel vs AMD), x86 chips eventually leapfrogged Power PC in performance.

It was the tech industry equivalent of running a race, leading the pack for a while, only to stumble and by the time you recover, your opponent has already lapped you.

A bit more on IBM.

IBM was supposed to have 3ghz and notebook parts ready within the first year of the G5's launch.

IBM completely blew up Apple's product timeline and forced Apple to push multiprocessor configurations before the computer industry was really ready for it, frankly before complier technology was there to support it, and forced them to develop OEM liquid cooling systems. The bottom line is that when a business partner, in this case a hardware supplier fails you that badly, to the point that it forces you make design changes that compromise the reliability of your products and undermines the competitiveness of your entire product line, it is really difficult to blame Apple for ditching IBM.
 
IBM completely blew up Apple's product timeline and forced Apple to push multiprocessor configurations before the computer industry was really ready for it, frankly before complier technology was there to support it, and forced them to develop OEM liquid cooling systems. The bottom line is that when a business partner, in this case a hardware supplier fails you that badly, to the point that it forces you make design changes that compromise the reliability of your products and undermines the competitiveness of your entire product line, it is really difficult to blame Apple for ditching IBM.

I agree. And you must think that Apple would have let IBM know of their internal x86 OS X builds, that they had contingency plans.

I'm sure in their labs they have OS X builds running on Mac Pro rigs with AMD processors in them too.

Perhaps if they ever completely abandon the Mac for iToys they'll release OS X to the world and we'll be able to buy HP, Fujitsu, Dell OS X machines ...
 
1) NewerTech's own marketing material touts that their drop-in G4 replacements only brings the performance of those machines up to the level of a 2006 Intel iMac. They are touting the ability to make your eight or nine year old hardware to perform like five year old hardware. It also states that those processors are "sold out" and if you google around, those processors haven't been available through them for over two years.

You need to look at the OWC site macsales.com so see the ones they have for sale. OWC owns NewerTech and does not update that specific site. I just bought a single 1.8GHz 7448 in late 2009. They have 3 options currently with single 1.6GHz 7447a, dual 1.6GHz 7447a and dual 1.8GHz 7448. Here is a direct URL: http://eshop.macsales.com/search/MaxPower+G4


At the end of the day, you have an aging machine that is still fine for basic tasks as long as it is capable of running, but it will increasingly struggle to handle modern web content and it is no longer worth investing substantial sums of money into.

I'm not a GHz chaser. I love this older PowerPC hardware because of both how well it operates and it's longevity. I use it for everything I do and never feel like I don't have enough power. Keep in mind that I have invested 1000+ into this tower along with buying 2 spare Sawtooth G4's to have spare parts in the future. I would much rather have spent that 1000+ on making my G4 last as far into the future as possible than some crappy generic hardware.


2) In my opinion, using a Mac is all about the Mac experience and to me that means running Mac OS. Resorting to running a fringe platform like Morph OS unless you specifically want to play with an Amiga-like OS or resorting to buggy hacked together builds of Ubuntu on aging mac hardware seems like a pointless exercise. If you want to run Ubuntu, officially supported builds will run far better on dirt cheap, generic PC hardware and you will have a far wider selection of software packages to choose from.

That is where we clearly disagree most. I don't want generic boxes with even more generic parts in them. Myself and a few other geeks out there appreciate how PowerPC hardware functions and was made. I like to feel I am running the hardware I feel is best rather than what I have to use by default because the industry tells me I have to. I will take RISC over CISC for as long as I possibly can.

Motorola/Freescale has certainly not lost interest in making PowerPC/RISC CPU's as they currently make at least 5-6 different chips for that architecture. These chips are used mostly for industrial use. The G4 7448 is still made and has other markets besides G4 upgrades. The e600 core it uses is quite advanced. Also, as I mentioned already the 7448 could have easily solved the PowerBook G4 performance woes.

IBM are a much better PowerPC maker now than ever. The 3 big game consoles (PS3, xbox, wii) all have IBM PowerPC chips.

The high end core and power chips they make for the research and super computing markets exceed the performance of anything intel makes. PowerPC/RISC is still the high end of the market like always pretty much. There was just a downslide in the tech in the early to mid 2000's that has now recovered and then some. The only trouble for me and other RISC fanatics like myself is that Apple abandoned the architecture while it was having that weak stint. I really wish they had of stuck with it.

All I can do now is amerce myself in PowerPC goodness till my stockpile of hardware is gone. Thanks to how well it's made and having all my spare hardware.. that will be decades.

IBM completely blew up Apple's product timeline and forced Apple to push multiprocessor configurations before the computer industry was really ready for it, frankly before complier technology was there to support it, and forced them to develop OEM liquid cooling systems. The bottom line is that when a business partner, in this case a hardware supplier fails you that badly, to the point that it forces you make design changes that compromise the reliability of your products and undermines the competitiveness of your entire product line, it is really difficult to blame Apple for ditching IBM.

I forgot to comment on this..

It was Motorola that brought multiprocessors to Apple first. Not IBM. The G4 chips were pretty much all Moto. just as the G5 was all IBM. After the G3 the 3 companies pretty much stopped developing chips together where as before that every single chip was worked on by all 3.

The dual 604e 8600/9600 in 1997 and then dual G4 450 and 500 in fall 2000 were officially Motorola chips. As already mentioned all G4 chips are Motorola/Freescale.

The first multiprocessor Mac with IBM CPU's was the G5 tower.

A short history on who made what since the 603 PowerPC:

603,603e,603ev - Mostly IBM

604,604e - Mostly Moto.

G3 - Both but predominantly IBM
(above 3 were all co-engineered by all 3 companies to some level)

G4 - Motorola/Freescale only

G5 - IBM only
 
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You need to look at the OWC site macsales.com so see the ones they have for sale. OWC owns NewerTech and does not update that specific site. I just bought a single 1.8GHz 7448 in late 2009. They have 3 options currently with single 1.6GHz 7447a, dual 1.6GHz 7447a and dual 1.8GHz 7448. Here is a direct URL: http://eshop.macsales.com/search/MaxPower+G4

I'm not a GHz chaser. I love this older PowerPC hardware because of both how well it operates and it's longevity. I use it for everything I do and never feel like I don't have enough power. Keep in mind that I have invested 1000+ into this tower along with buying 2 spare Sawtooth G4's to have spare parts in the future. I would much rather have spent that 1000+ on making my G4 last as far into the future as possible than some crappy generic hardware.

Just a little off-topic, with the money you invested in that G4, wouldn't be better to buy a G5 or a more modern G4?
 
Just a little off-topic, with the money you invested in that G4, wouldn't be better to buy a G5 or a more modern G4?

I have owned and used every single G4 tower over a 10+ year gap and from that experience have chosen the Sawtooth as the best overall for a few reasons. This is not just personal experience. I also spent that 10+ years so far researching other peoples experience. So my experience comes from a wide range of data and info I have compiled over these years:

1. It has the most reliable and well made hardware off them all. The PSU's especially on the other models (Gigabit Ethernet and MDD in particular) tend to die a lot sooner. When PSU's die they often like to take logic boards and CPU's with them. I use the stable Sawtooth PSU connected to state of the art voltage stabilization/conditioning that I have in my UPS.

2. The Digital Audio and Quicksilver are pretty reliable but only allow 1.5GB RAM vs. 2GB in all the rest including the Sawtooth. When you're living in the 1.5-2GB range the extra 512MB helps a lot more than the faster bus or AGP on later models. 2GB is 33% more than 1.5GB. Physical RAM translates to real world performance more than faster bus or agp.

3. G5's are all starting to die left and right these days it seems so it's too big a risk for me.

4. The 100MHz bus is not near the burden I ever thought it would be because I have a 7448 in it with 1MB of on chip full speed L2. This Sawtooth I have with it's current config (in my sig.) is even faster than the dual 1.42 MDD I used to own. Even with the Sawtooth's AGP 2x vs 4x on later G4's and 8x on G5's my mac uses core image and almost all of the 256MB vram in my geforce 6200 to draw enough capability out of it to outperform many with 4x/8x AGP and a Radeon 9800. just compare my graphics tests to later G4's and even single G5's to see. The 7448 helps with the 2D graphics speed a lot also.

Here are 2 xbench results of my system which hold their own against any other G4 or G5. In some aspects the 7448 is actually faster than a G5.

Running 10.4.11: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=442130

Running 10.5.8: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=501544
 
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I have owned and used every single G4 tower over a 10+ year gap and from that experience have chosen the Sawtooth as the best overall for a few reasons:

1. It has the most reliable and well made hardware off them all. The PSU's especially on the other models (Gigabit Ethernet and MDD in particular) tend to die a lot sooner. When PSU's die they often like to take logic boards and CPU's with them. I use the stable Sawtooth PSU connected to state of the art voltage stabilization/conditioning that I have in my UPS.

2. The Digital Audio and Quicksilver are pretty reliable but only allow 1.5GB RAM vs. 2GB in all the rest including the Sawtooth. When you're living in the 1.5-2GB range the extra 512MB helps a lot more than the faster bus or AGP on later models. 2GB is 33% more than 1.5GB. Physical RAM translates to real world performance more than faster bus or agp.

3. G5's are all starting to die left and right these days it seems so it's too big a risk for me.

4. The 100MHz bus is not near the burden I ever thought it would be because I have a 7448 in it with 1MB of on chip full speed L2. This Sawtooth I have with it's current config (in my sig.) is even faster than the dual 1.42 MDD I used to own.

Here are 2 xbench results of my system which hold their own against any other G4 or G5. In some aspects the 7448 is actually faster than a G5.

Running 10.4.11: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=442130

Running 10.5.8: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=501544

Thanks for the great answer :D
If only cpu upgrades were cheaper...
 
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