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Technologies keeping PPC alive

W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
I have a PB G4 which is my primary portable machine, used for note taking, web surfing and music production etc. If all goes to plan, my intention is to keep it through my four years of study. It occurred to me today that thanks to some well-established technologies, that really doesn't sound too far fetched.

IMO, I think it all boils down to:
  • USB 2.0
  • 802.11x
  • HTML5

I haven't really seen USB 3.0 being utilized much yet beyond storage. All peripherals and accessories these days are still USB 2.0 and a decent chunk of them still work fine on our PPC machines without any other drivers.

My PB was actually the first laptop I had - so until then I had only ever needed a wired connection. I still find it cool that you can go to most places, sit down and relax, and have an internet connection. Everything revolves around the internet these days, and a working semi-modern wireless connection really aids these machines in continuing to be useful.

Hand-in-hand with this is HTML5, which is dethroning flash in favor of a more open web standard. Thanks to the likes of TenFourFox, AuroraFox, Stainless and (I could go on forever) all your other favorites, we have up-to-date browsers capable of accurately rendering the latest websites without any compatibility issues. Included in this is are all the HTML5 APIs and media goodness (WebGL, WebSockets, workers etc.).


What other technologies do you feel are keeping our PPC Macs running all these years later?
 
Firewire.

It's old tech now, but thirteen-fourteen years ago the PowerMac G4s came with it standard. It's a technology that's taken for granted now and because it was standard to begin with (at least in the G4s) those Macs (like the two I have at work) are still relevant now.
 
Open source software. It may not be a hardware or technology thing, but its the only thing keeping PPC OS X viable. Leopardwebkit: Open source (the webkit is, even if Safari isn't). Tenfourfox: Open source. Everything else we use that is closed source is yesterday's news. That's not a bad thing, Office X works just fine for me, and runs as well as it did in 2002. Google Earth 4.3 works as well today as it did in 2008. Photoshop 7 is all the Photoshop I'll ever need.

Apple has abandoned us to the wolves (literally), if Tim Cook had his way we'd all be hammering away on Airs and Pros, not a Powersomething. We're getting by on security by obscurity, but for how much longer?

Now extend that logic to the operating system....
 
eyoungren said:
Firewire.

It's old tech now, but thirteen-fourteen years ago the PowerMac G4s came with it standard. It's a technology that's taken for granted now and because it was standard to begin with (at least in the G4s) those Macs (like the two I have at work) are still relevant now.
Click to expand...

Imixmuan said:
Open source software. It may not be a hardware or technology thing, but its the only thing keeping PPC OS X viable. Leopardwebkit: Open source (the webkit is, even if Safari isn't). Tenfourfox: Open source. Everything else we use that is closed source is yesterday's news. That's not a bad thing, Office X works just fine for me, and runs as well as it did in 2002. Google Earth 4.3 works as well today as it did in 2008. Photoshop 7 is all the Photoshop I'll ever need.

Apple has abandoned us to the wolves (literally), if Tim Cook had his way we'd all be hammering away on Airs and Pros, not a Powersomething. We're getting by on security by obscurity, but for how much longer?

Now extend that logic to the operating system....
Click to expand...

I definitely agree with the both of you and the OP of course. The things is that the main thing that is being overlooked in regards to technologies keeping the PPC alive is not just the stuff that has been around since the beginning or middle of PPC but what has come around after PPCs were no longer made. iOS(in my opinion) along with other mobile OSes has given PPC a longer life-span than hardware that's been around for 10 years. I say this because to make a PPC machine(or any machine for that matter)useful and for it to maintain its usefulness in the modern technological age, the internet(and the ability to surf it) is essential. The OP was right when they said that HTML5 was a big one.

The reason I think mobile OSes have done that is because new browsers have been released that utilize the User Agent tool to make your desktop/laptop look like an iOS device that makes it much easier to utilize HTML5, decrease page load times, and increase internet productivity for what is or should outdated technology. <----The reason I say this is because my machine is a single core CPU that is currently ~25% as powerful as most other laptop CPUs. The fact that it has survived this long(and made it to me intact and still completely useful) is thanks to the web and the advent of mobile computing.
 
I don't have anything to add but I agree that open source software and some backwards compatible hardware technologies make sure that those machines can still be used with some modern equipment and environments, they are of course slower compared to modern machines.

Of course companies will eventually lose interest even though PPC machines would have enough power and have required hardware features (like USB 2.0-port). I just recently got new 3G modem made by Huawei, it does list OSX 10.5 as compatible OS, I wonder if that includes PPC version as well.
 
+1 for Open Source. I am working on building FreeCAD for my Power Macs. If it was closed source, using it would be impossible.
 
USB 2.0... yeah, I've never met a Mac that couldn't deal with it, even it was old and could only run at 1.1 speeds. USB 3, a bit different, it seems a bit buggy sometimes.

HTML5 is... I dunno, much better than Flash, I'll say that.

FireWire is great, it's the ultimate cable for troubleshooting and dealing with any faulty/iffy/important Mac [that has an FW port.] I still have the ~11 year old FireWire 400 meter long cable that came with my original iSight. It's proven even more valuable and useful than the iSight itself.
 
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