The Argument For PowerPC

[Dronecatcher]

If I had a £1 for every time I see a post/comment/thread along the lines of "don't get an old computer - waste of money, you need at least a Core 2 Duo/Quad/iCore....blah blah blah"
I'm still with PowerPC and I'm loving it - I've recently upgraded my machines and I've now got the fastest PowerPCs Apple ever made - a Quad and the high end Powerbooks in all 3 sizes - total cost £160. I find it remarkable/absurd that I can buy a superbly crafted laptop virtually made entirely from metal alloy which still stands head and shoulders above most production laptops now for £40. I acknowledge they're slow compared with Intel but they fit all my requirements - there's literally nothing I do with a computer that leaves me cursing I use vintage hardware. Yes, more money spent would make me more future proof but I'm ok for now and that money saved is spent wisely elsewhere.
I'm not a PowerPC Puritan by any stretch but evaluate what your needs are and judge your budget - use that money wisely

 

[eyoungren]

When someone can prove to me that PDFs made on an Intel Mac are superior in quality and construction to PDFs made by the same/similar apps on a PowerPC Mac then I will surrender the argument.

If you understand that the concept behind PDFs is for documents to print exactly the same no matter what device they are created on or used on then you'll understand how absurdly stupid the pro-argument for Intel Macs over PowerPC Macs are.

No one has yet to been able to make this argument to me because they know it's impossible.

 

[MultiFinder17]

Well put mate! Same reasoning stands behind my usage of a PowerBook in my classroom - it does what I need, it's inexpensive, and if it goes missing, it's cheap to replace.

 

[Dronecatcher]

When someone can prove to me that PDFs made on an Intel Mac are superior in quality and construction to PDFs made by the same/similar apps on a PowerPC Mac then I will surrender the argument.

With you on that - The amount of help I gave to designers on Intel when I passed on projects was embarrassing. The better analogy is music - if you're of that age, does the fact that all of your favourite tunes from the 90s/00s were made on PowerPC make them any less? Would they have been better tunes on an i7?

 

[eyoungren]

With you on that - The amount of help I gave to designers on Intel when I passed on projects was embarrassing. The better analogy is music - if you're of that age, does the fact that all of your favourite tunes from the 90s/00s were made on PowerPC make them any less? Would they have been better tunes on an i7?

Exactly!

It's the same, no matter what device it comes from.

 

[RedCroissant]

I can tell you that just based on my experience selling "modern machines" in Best Buy that some of the bottom end AMD A6/8 machines or even the celeron/atom-based machines are considerably less reliable than a PPC Mac and I sometimes recommend going to Craigslist or eBay to find a Powerbook or iBook over buying a Lenovo Ideapad for $179. After all, I would prefer a 15" powerbook G4 with 2GB RAM and a 80GB HDD with good WiFi and BT with expandability and I/O awesomeness over an 11" pseudo-chromebook.

 

[gooser]

they're cheap, stylish, repairable and upgradeable. upgradeble in ways we don't even know of yet. example: when ppc's were made ssd's were unheard of yet. now they are a common upgrade. and even hard drives......multi tb hard drives weren't around. now on some new models you can't even replace a hard drive, replace a dead battery, or upgrade memory. the things i use a computer for haven't changed much in the last 15 years.

 

[tevion5]

With you on that - The amount of help I gave to designers on Intel when I passed on projects was embarrassing. The better analogy is music - if you're of that age, does the fact that all of your favourite tunes from the 90s/00s were made on PowerPC make them any less? Would they have been better tunes on an i7?

Being home from college over the winter I've been surprisingly productive music wise. I'm away from my Logic Pro X setup and my good gear. I've been getting by using an old USB interface hooked up to a piano and dynamic mic along with my G5 Quad running Logic Pro 9.

It's handled everything really really well. Never stutters. It takes a bit longer to bounce but I don't mind waiting at the end. Never misses a beat even when I have tons of complex midi tracks all with heavy effects.

All these demos were produced fully PPC:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lbh5xqqxyv5xlym/Table Tilt.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yii1ophojsu8m2j/Inner Circle.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vwtgv2jgop60q2v/Red Snow 1.mp3?dl=0

Wouldn't sound any better if it was produced on 12 Core Mac Pro. (Although having my proper Mic and Interface would be nice. Can't blame the G5 for that!)

 

[Dronecatcher]

All these demos were produced fully PPC:

They're excellent! Are you a fan of Cult With No Name? Red Snow in particular reminds me of them.

 

[tevion5]

They're excellent! Are you a fan of Cult With No Name? Red Snow in particular reminds me of them.

Thanks very much! I must finally get around to releasing something this year.

I'm afraid I'm not, but I'll look them up! I thought Red Snow ended up sounding coldplayish in the chorus which I had mixed feelings about xD

 

[996085]

I didn't see any argument for PPC Macs. Aside from a possibly lower cost I cannot see any argument for PPC Macs...at least nothing other than "I like them". PPC Macs are cool but the only argument I can see for them is their (possibly) low cost.

 

[bse5150]

Hey, if PPC machines do everything you want to do on a computer, then more power to you.

 

[maflynn]

[MOD NOTE]
Stop with the bickering, a number posts were removed as they had no redeeming value

 

[MysticCow]

celery/atom-based machines

FTFY I never did like Celery Processors.

And yeah, there's a lot I can do on my PPC Macs, so they are still in use. Ragnarok has not come just yet for me. I'm even looking at grabbing up a G4 mini for a MorphOS box.

 

[RedCroissant]

Just the fact that I can do things on my $200 PowerMac G5 Quad that one of those machines cannot do (and yes I know that chrome won't run on my Mac). I just don't understand why manufacturers are making things now that don't have the capabilities of machines a decade older.



As an example, Best Buy had a special sale on another Lenovo laptop that didn't have bluetooth. And some of the machines being sold now can't even connect to the 5GHz band as well. I personally think that says quite a bit about the newer generation of machines.

 

[bobesch]

My first PPC machine had been a Cube in 2014 because I liked the style an wanted to catch up history of the early OSX (since I only used Windows/Palms until 2009). Then I found out, how many things I can do with this legacy machine and some more PPC followed. The iBookG4 is my daily companion for Email, Office, PDF, collection data, Fax, webDAV and fully integrates into my home (mac) and office (win) environment.
There are a few tasks, when I need and prefer to use a (much) faster intel-machine: Scan&OCR for paperless office (in combination with ScanSnap1500) and working with movies and photos. (Even if I could use a PPC for a lot of those thinks too, but that would be much more time consuming.)

 

[996085]

Just the fact that I can do things on my $200 PowerMac G5 Quad that one of those machines cannot do (and yes I know that chrome won't run on my Mac). I just don't understand why manufacturers are making things now that don't have the capabilities of machines a decade older.



As an example, Best Buy had a special sale on another Lenovo laptop that didn't have bluetooth. And some of the machines being sold now can't even connect to the 5GHz band as well. I personally think that says quite a bit about the newer generation of machines.

There is nothing wrong with the older systems other than software has grown unwieldy making them obsolete. I find it astounding I am unable to view the web without having a fast computer, fast Internet connection, and a modern browsing platform. I've been using the web since the early 90's and the web of today offers little over what was available back then. What I find ironic is despite having multicore processor systems with GB of memory and a 50Mbps Internet connection I still find myself waiting when browsing the web. We really need to get back to the basics instead of the fluff.

With that said: Get off of my lawn!

 

[Dane D.]

I my experience going all the way back to the 6100 "pizza box", they just work. The build quality was excellent, the only issue we had was low-quality Maxtor HDs. The HDs seem to die within a few years of use. My home rig is the B/W G3 in signature. Never have had an issue, everything still works. I have legacy software I still use for many tasks. Is it slow, yes for video like iMovie and audio when working with many tracks in Audacity but for graphical work it is respectable. Page layout apps like Quark 4.1 and InDesign CS2 it is really no different than Intel units. Besides I like to be different and they look nice compared to the vanilla PC boxes.

 

[bunnspecial]

When someone can prove to me that PDFs made on an Intel Mac are superior in quality and construction to PDFs made by the same/similar apps on a PowerPC Mac then I will surrender the argument.

If you understand that the concept behind PDFs is for documents to print exactly the same no matter what device they are created on or used on then you'll understand how absurdly stupid the pro-argument for Intel Macs over PowerPC Macs are.

No one has yet to been able to make this argument to me because they know it's impossible.

Back when I was in graduate school, I remember scrambling at the last minute with my advisor to put a poster together. "Poster" in this sense means a 3'x5' or larger research poster used for a conference presentation. As was standard for our research group, we were working in Powerpoint. I was using PPT 2011 on my MBP, and he was using PPT 2010 or maybe 2013 on his Windows laptop.

In any case, after about three revisions he rather bluntly told me to get rid of a certain block of text, and I could figure out what the heck he was talking about. It wasn't until I opened it on one of the lab computers running Windows that I saw what he was talking about.

The funny thing was, though, that this particular "hidden" block of text didn't appear on the PDF that I generated from either system.

Needless to say, when I finally sent the "approved" version to the print shop I sent it as a PDF(as I always do when sending "final" drafts of documents anyway). But, as you said, the beauty of a PDF is it looks and prints the same regardless of where it was generated. Pick your poison to generate it-Word, Powerpoint, CorelDraw, InDesign, Quark, Photoshop, Latek, etc-what you see is what you and what will print.

 

[eyoungren]

Back when I was in graduate school, I remember scrambling at the last minute with my advisor to put a poster together. "Poster" in this sense means a 3'x5' or larger research poster used for a conference presentation. As was standard for our research group, we were working in Powerpoint. I was using PPT 2011 on my MBP, and he was using PPT 2010 or maybe 2013 on his Windows laptop.

In any case, after about three revisions he rather bluntly told me to get rid of a certain block of text, and I could figure out what the heck he was talking about. It wasn't until I opened it on one of the lab computers running Windows that I saw what he was talking about.

The funny thing was, though, that this particular "hidden" block of text didn't appear on the PDF that I generated from either system.

Needless to say, when I finally sent the "approved" version to the print shop I sent it as a PDF(as I always do when sending "final" drafts of documents anyway). But, as you said, the beauty of a PDF is it looks and prints the same regardless of where it was generated. Pick your poison to generate it-Word, Powerpoint, CorelDraw, InDesign, Quark, Photoshop, Latek, etc-what you see is what you and what will print.

Yes, like many things there are some inconsistencies.

For instance, QuarkXPress 4.11 cannot generate PDFs. You can generate postscript code or an EPS file and then use Distiller to get a PDF. But the end result is a PDF - whether generated from Acrobat Distiller or any other program.

Now the differences in apps, as you noted, sure. QuarkXPress 4.11 on an OS 9 G4 is not going to allow dropshadows (natively) or transparency like InDesign CS4 on my Intel MP at work will. Likewise, you ran into the same problem. But again, the end result - what you can produce is what matters.

And ultimately, whether we are talking PDFs, music, spreadsheets, Power Point presentations or any other type of work - as long as PowerPC is meeting the requirements of the job then who cares what platform the work was done on?

 

[bobesch]

At times when I used Win98SE or WinXPpro I didn't think about using PDF at all, since additional software was necessary to get this job done. When I started to use a Mac in 2009 I was amazed about printing into PDF or even Scan into searchable PDF's. Together with the convenient options of backups (TM,SD!,CCC) this made me start with my paperless office. The positive experience made me transfer the PDF-routine "back" to my office (with Win2008-server due to critical business-software...)
When I've got my first PowerPC in 2014 I was quite amazed, that with Tiger/Leopard/PPC all these nice routines had been already present a decade ago. And the results and usability with spotlight, tagging instead of OCR and capable progs for paperless office had been there too.
With a faster i7 a lot of journals and other papers go the PDF/OCR-way too now and can be searched and viewed on the PPC with ease. (even if some of the journals might be available over the web - to have offline-search at hands is quite a nice thing, especially if you happen to sit in a black spot...)

 

[SkyBell]

I do very much enjoy my eMac; and my PowerBook G4 when I find the time to pull it out. To be honest however, I have gotten to the point where I really only find myself using my PPC machines when I am in the mood; my Core i7 HP laptop has spoiled the hell out of me with speed and compatibility.

But that doesn't mean my old Macs are done for yet; even though I have now become accustomed to Windows 7, I still find OS X Tiger to be the most beautiful and functional OS ever made, and there's nothing quite like the feeling of doing something with an "obsolete" machine that the world says can't do it. Long live PowerPC!

 

[roadbloc]

Wrote all three of my books (soon to be four) on my iMac G4. It's a trooper.

 

[Hack5190]

Although a Javascript based Ransomware was recently discovered (www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransom32-is-the-first-ransomware-written-in-javascript and blog.emsisoft.com/2016/01/01/meet-ransom32-the-first-javascript-ransomware). Traditional ransomware and viruses are distributed as an executable. The odds of a hacker building a universal binary is extremely slim considering PPC support in Xcode. So add another potential benefit to using a PPC.

 

[bobesch]

Although a Javascript based Ransomware was recently discovered (www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransom32-is-the-first-ransomware-written-in-javascript and blog.emsisoft.com/2016/01/01/meet-ransom32-the-first-javascript-ransomware). Traditional ransomware and viruses are distributed as an executable. The odds of a hacker building a universal binary is extremely slim considering PPC support in Xcode. So add another potential benefit to using a PPC.

Fully agree with you. That is it, what let me allow people to plug-in their USB-sticks for beamer presentations into my iBookG4 without any fear or remorse ...