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So whats the PPC community's two cents on the new announcements?

alex_free said:
But I could never buy into new Apple, they run a network request if you have internet on every executable you run. And if their server is hammered (like it was earlier apparently), you program just hangs! How is that ‘privacy’? How does that ‘just work’?
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You can turn it off though. IIRC simply disabling Gatekeeper in the Terminal will do it, but if not, this absolutely will. Apple has been locking stuff down a lot to be sure, but on the Mac they still give you the tools to turn it off.

My problems with modern macOS are:
  1. General glitchiness/instability.
  2. A visual design that lacks contrast. Big Sur is a big improvement on this front, but it's not quite sufficient, and it wastes lots of screen real-estate.
  3. Lack of backwards compatibility with older software, in a world where newer software is largely crappy Electron apps and crappy ported iOS apps.
  4. Constant "privacy" prompts when using Apple Events, accessing certain directories, recording the screen, etc etc.
Despite all of that, I still think I'd choose macOS over any other "modern" platform. I use Windows to play video games, and every time I need to do something semi-complicated I'm reminded of how much I dislike that UI. Linux is probably better than Windows, but I don't like dealing with package managers.

Mavericks, however, is better than all of those options, and I'm happy to hang out here for a long time. I recently had a shop in California swap the motherboard of my 2015 Macbook Air with one from a 2014 Macbook Air, so I could put Mavericks on it. 😌
 
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alex_free said:
The announcement to me is tempting, I agree with the arm switch. But I could never buy into new Apple, they run a network request if you have internet on every executable you run. And if their server is hammered (like it was earlier apparently), you program just hangs! How is that ‘privacy’? How does that ‘just work’? The Apple has fallen too far from the tree...

Also, I have a strong suspicion that in say 10-20 years more PowerPC Macs will still be around then gen 1 arm macs. Sounds crazy, but think about this.

Your storage is all soldered to the motherboard, and storage doesn’t last forever. Once that soldered storage starts getting errors unless your brave enough to rip apart your glued together arm Mac and go at it with a soldering iron your SOL. On the other hand, my 21 year old HDD in the clamshell is still running, just very loudly. And that can at least be replaced.
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I agree and this is really not emphasized enough. People have this weird idea that SSDs don't fail. Yet at work, we're replacing failed SSDs on a routine basis (granted, we run them hard). Seems like at the 5 year mark is around the time we start seeing failures. Figure about 7-10 years for the average consumer. It's utterly unacceptable that my laptop will be junk in 10 years, with no chance of even replacing the failed part, which I why I will not buy one of these, regardless of how fast they are.
 
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Wowfunhappy said:
I recently had a shop in California swap the motherboard of my 2015 Macbook Air with one from a 2014 Macbook Air, so I could put Mavericks on it. 😌
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Even funnier, the 2014 MBA is actually a 2013 with a slightly faster CPU.
 
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Eriamjh1138@DAN said:
I want to see a PPC emulator for the M1.
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qemu-system-ppc*

Wowfunhappy said:
Well, and the 2015 MBA is just a 2014 MBA with a slightly faster CPU.
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Yes but as you say, the CPU and GPU are incompatible with our beloved Mavericks.

At some point (when they're no longer eye-wateringly expensive) I want to try hacking Mavericks onto a 2014 5K iMac. The CPU is Haswell so no problem, but what about the GPU...?
 
Tratkazir_the_1st said:
Wow, if all this is true - Apple tries to surpass even Win10 espionage :D. Again - Stallman was right from the very beginning about closed source h/w & s/w.
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7FEF5911-4DFA-401E-B258-0BADC721C493.jpeg

I can imagine a completely closed system without ports.🙂 The money is in the Store, not outside.
 
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wm2 said:
I can imagine a completely closed system without ports.🙂 The money is in the Store, not outside.
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Pick your poison and vote with your wallet, I guess. BTW, BS' default wallpaper makes me think of drugs every time :p
 
Amethyst1 said:
At some point (when they're no longer eye-wateringly expensive) I want to try hacking Mavericks onto a 2014 5K iMac. The CPU is Haswell so no problem, but what about the GPU...?
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You won't get 3D graphics acceleration. :( http://netkas.org/?p=1331

---

If you're willing to go the Hackintosh route, one thing I'd really like to see someone do is get Mavericks on a modern Ryzen processor. That probably sounds crazy, but the thing is, a custom 10.9.5 kernel for Ryzen was created some time back.

Last fall, I very briefly had what I assume was the most powerful Mavericks computer to ever exist. I bought the then-just-released 16 core Ryzen 3950X, and proceeded to set it up as a Mavericks Hackintosh using that custom kernel. And it... kind of worked—I was able to boot up without graphics acceleration, and I spent a few hours running benchmarks and casually browsing the internet.

The problem was graphics acceleration. I'd bought a GTX 780 for this project, as it's among the most powerful Mavericks-compatible graphics cards (I'm using it without issue in my current, Haswell-based Mavericks Hackintosh). When I used the card on Ryzen... it's not that graphics acceleration didn't work, because it was definitely working, but the entire machine became inexorably slow when it was enabled. I'm talking 30-60 seconds to open a new Finder window. The console showed many instances of a very strange error: NVDA: Channel Timeout!

My guess is that the custom kernel has some sort of bug that screws with the nVidia drivers, either for all nVidia cards or just Maxwell cards. What I didn't try—and wish I'd tried—was switching to an AMD card instead; something like the Radeon HD 7790. Sadly, I didn't have any AMD cards to test with, and I didn't have time to order one—Microcenter gave me a 7 day return window for the Ryzen 3950X, and I didn't want to keep the $750 processor unless I was sure I could get Mavericks running. But it makes me sad, because I do think it would have worked!

Edit: These kernels appear to have disappeared from the internet, so I actually went ahead and uploaded them to the Macintosh Garden. In addition to Mavericks, there's also one for Snow Leopard! https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/custom-kernels-ryzen-processors
 
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I agree that battery life is going to be the killer feature on these. It'll be interesting to see how fast they get can away from Intel. I wasn't around for the ppc-intel switch but from what I've read, the PPC era was pretty much over by 2009 and most had switched to Intel. Anyone else know how long it took for PPC to be mostly 'out of circulation' so to speak?

They are pricey and I'm cheap though, so maybe I can pick one up to play with in 6-10 years😀.
Amethyst1 said:
IMHO it's either Snow Leopard, Mavericks (I know some think it's a POS), or Mojave, depending on what your needs are.
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Personally, I might replace Mavericks with El Capitan or Sierra. It seems like those were the last 'good' releases before they started getting buggy, like High Sierra right after release. Plus, El Cap is the last version of MacOS that's officially supported on most of the C2D machines. I totally agree on Snow Leopard and Mojave though.
 
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AL1630 said:
I wasn't around for the ppc-intel switch but from what I've read, the PPC era was pretty much over by 2009 and most had switched to Intel.
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My biggest problem was the lack of H.264 support. I switched because better GPU, more RAM etc., not because higher Intel Geekbench. But these mobile GPUs were terribly problematic. Like the 2011 MBP series. In my eyes, the last good era was in 2012. The user friendly nonretina Macbooks, the 4x Mac Mini, the Mac Pros, and a good GTX iMac. The mobile market has rewritten everything. Today, we are running with “hand computers” that can be used to make phone calls.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
IMHO it's either Snow Leopard, Mavericks (I know some think it's a POS), or Mojave, depending on what your needs are.
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I believe Snow Leopard is more the perfection of Leopard on PowerPC. Had PowerPC been able to run Snow Leopard that would have been a nice ending to that hardware. But as an OS for Intel it was simply transitional IMO.

rampancy said:
Wha? People hate Mavericks? It ran like a dream on my MacBook Air. It was the first time I'd done a major OS update without doing a backup and clean reinstall, and it worked perfectly. It was probably one of the only times in my experience where an OS update actually boosted performance on my hardware. I fricking loved Mavericks...at least, for all of what felt like the five minutes that I used it before Apple released Yosemite.
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I hated it. Oh, the OS itself was fine, but because Apple wouldn't get with the program when it came to SMB2 they introduced a bug into Finder that every 24 hours affected my work in InDesign. The SMB2 bug caused server connections to drop after 24 hours. This would cause InDesign to quit out immediately when working on files on the server. The ONLY solution was either a reboot of the Mac OR connecting via SMB1 (CIFS). The whole point of SMB2 was a faster connection so the fact that you had to default back to SMB1 to get things to work when there wasn't a problem before was very irritating.

Yosemite fixed the bug and I ditched Mavericks as fast as I could.
 
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It's inevitable that you see Apple adopting ARM. Computer technology is basically on a stand still. There isn't the major innovations you see during the early computing years of the 80s and 90s. All we are seeing now are basically the same computer technology made to become more efficient. The movement of expandability into oneness. Every components like CPU, GPU, RAM and storage are now on 1 chip so it can function as one entity rather than separate entities. The upside to this is more efficiency which we are seeing as faster speeds while consuming less power/wattage. The downside is that, it will become more specialized, more appliance like which incidentally was what Steve Jobs envisioned computers would become. An throwaway appliance which you can't or not cost effective to service. So if an M1 fails, then you need to buy a brand new computer. Good for Apple, because it forces people to adopt forced obsolescence and I think people will be more receptive to this idea once we know newer computing power helps bring new software innovation.

Right now, AI is the new flavour in software implementation. In fact, both my Mac Pro and my Windows 10 desktop are running AI software that helps improve my digital images as well as video enhancements which were not possible without modern hardware. And I see that the M1 has a 16 core Neural engine which some software developers are going to take advantage of it for AI based software. I see that as the future where you have more computing power for AI based software which will help enhance our daily productivity.

I don't see Apple M1 being the only child on the block. I see Nvidia and its ARM acquisition as the next contender marrying ARM and its graphics/AI architecture to provide a competitive edge against Apple. And Windows will go on the next flavour adopting ARM. I think I will see perhaps Intel and AMD joining forces. Intel stuff is already dated and the Core i series will eventually be eclipsed by both Apple silicon and whatever Nvidia comes out with its own ARM chip + Nvidia GPU power. This will happen and it seemed that is the trend where computing power is moving towards.
 
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I'll say one thing - the transparent menu bar looks great in conjunction with Tiger's Aqua Blue - however, that impossibly hard to read grey date & time (unless it's clicked on) is driving me mad! ARGH!

aquabs.png
 
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I haven't read through all the posts but I'm very excited about it.

I got on with Apple in 2006, my first Mac was a 2006 CD MacBook. It was fun when it first came out but quickly felt outdated, especially when I upgraded to a 2010 MBP in 2013.

What I love about this announcement is that Apple is now only held back by Apple. For a while, I was watching every keynote I could find. It was fascinating how they explained how Apple's CPUs were designed for more efficiency than Intel's and how that benefits the end users. Once they switched to Intel, this stopped and it was mostly about how OS X performed.

My prediction is AMD and Intel are going to really need to double down on R&D to at least get the same performance and efficiency out of their chips than what Apple can produce. Many have said this, but Apple is thinking what they can do inside the box while AMD/Intel are still chugging along with the same setup I had in 1997.

I really wish Apple would come out with an inexpensive MacBook, less than the Air, and maybe a slower chip. But this would be a way for others to be willing to switch to Apple. I know many that have iOS/watchOS devices but couldn't spend another $300 for a MacBook, so they bought a Toshiba.

My other prediction is the higher level Macs will have multiple M1 chips, maybe an M^2. Double the power, double the I/O. Mac Pro? M^4. Maybe add on a G1 chip for graphics (gaming!?) to really boost power, if the M1 can't handle it.

Looking back at everything Apple has been working on you can see they've been planning this out for years. I think Metal and 64-bit was key to making this happen.
 
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davidg4781 said:
My prediction is AMD and Intel are going to really need to double down on R&D to at least get the same performance and efficiency out of their chips than what Apple can produce. Many have said this, but Apple is thinking what they can do inside the box while AMD/Intel are still chugging along with the same setup I had in 1997.
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I don't think Intel/AMD should be buried. Jobs also buried, then switched.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
It's not going to happen. More than 90 percent of personal computers are PCs ie AMD or Intel. And the current Windows on ARM machines are all but laughable.
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Now everyone thinks Apple is giving something for 700$ that will kill everything. Everyone believe this really? :)
 
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