The ******tification of the internet killed PPC.

[DearthnVader]

I don't want to get off on a rant here, but I kind of do!

******tification has a meaning outside of the sense I'm really using it here, but let me pharse a new meaning from it as it applies to PPC Macs.

As I see it the web is not anymore useful today than it was 20 years ago. I'm just looking to read the text, see the pictures, watch instructional videos, and use email. Our PPC Mac's could do this back in the day, sure the videos were not HD or UHD but that's really a limitation of the drivers we have for our video cards, not PPC itself.

If we had drivers for newer, but no where near new, video cards most the that video sub processing is done on the GPU not the CPU. A 400Mhz G3 is fine for UHD if you can offload to the GPU, the screen is connected to the GPU.

I miss the days when I did not need to cancel 5 popups and video popovers just to read the text I wanted to read.

Tech tends to push more tech, the internet is a bunch of sloppy coding requiring you to buy newer hardware so they can spy on you and push intrusive ads to try and sell you on some product or service. That is the ******tification.

I don't expect to be able to run LLVM's on my PPC Mac's, just use the internet and an email client.

 

[pipetogrep]

This holds true for all older hardware, not just PPCs. You can still do what you want within specific contexts, however. I don't expect to use a 20 year old machine as my daily driver anymore, but I can use it for things like coding in python and looking up the docs required to do that in something like Netsurf. Granted, this requires an alternate OS, but the options are there.

With that, I can still get emails, find ways to play videos, or even use it as a thin client to run my web browser on another more modern machine (Windowed via x2go) while using the older hardware for that specific purpose that I want it for.

Is it ideal? No? Has the web been encrapified? Yes. Is that why we can't use PPC hardware today? Partially, but that doesn't mean we can't still do things our beloved hardware.

Finally, if you want to feel of the old web, use things that are in hobby mode or haven't been commercialized. There's the Gemini protocol. There's Gopher, and the Matrix protocol. Basically anything that has a financial incentive behind it (the modern web) is going to be ruined and there's no avoiding that, so try to avoid those things and you'll probably have much more fun.

 

[Slix]

Absolutely. The internet on older devices would be still very possible if it weren't for lazy developers, adding new features that just use bloated javascript, dozens of ads, and high resolution images when they don't need to be. Some sites are still usable on "modern" browsers on PPC or early Intel Macs, but anything recently "updated"? It's impossibly slow for no reason. I remember using iCloud mail on the web in 2012ish on an eMac G4, which had basically all the same features as the modern version, but that one won't even open on a lot of semi-recent browsers anymore. I could use my 2nd gen iPod touch for full, desktop websites with no issue in 2010. I keep this in mind when working on my own website, and I try to make features work on as many pieces of hardware as possible. It's really just a shame, because so many devices were put out of use because bigger tech companies wanted to make their platforms online less optimized and slow.

 

[TheShortTimer]

As I see it the web is not anymore useful today than it was 20 years ago.

Yes, nowadays it can often feel like trying to swim through oil just to achieve basic tasks from yesteryear.

I miss the days when I did not need to cancel 5 popups and video popovers just to read the text I wanted to read.

Me too. There's a (legit) VOD site that refuses to allow visitors to browse through the content without an eternally present window that plays a film or TV episode - and it cannot be closed or minimised. It's reminiscent of Winston's telescreen in 1984 whose audio could be reduced in volume but never muted.

Eventually I gave up and avoided the site.

Tech tends to push more tech, the internet is a bunch of sloppy coding requiring you to buy newer hardware so they can spy on you and push intrusive ads to try and sell you on some product or service.

The only way it will stop is enough people object to the needless obsolescence of their hardware but I can't ever see that happening, unfortunately. Consumers largely grumble but little else.

 

[for this]

Since money is on the internet these days. Those ads, scripts, etc., are all for making money. Internet is a commodity today. Everybody is using it including the Taliban, unlike, say 20 years ago.

It's absurd that my main reason for upgrading a computer is just to be able to use current internet browsers. Not because it's too slow for my work.

 

[thewireless]

the Matrix protocol

With the Matrix protocol, are you referring to the communication protocol for real-time communication? Do you know of any clients compatible with Tiger or Leopard on PowerPC? Alternatively, can this be achieved through a plugin for Adium, even if it means losing end-to-end encryption (E2E)?

 

[sparty411]

The irony is, you could totally get away with using an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 from 2003 as a daily driver. Windows XP has forks of current Chromium, as well as recent Firefox (68ESR?) and that's just on Windows. PPC Macs suffer from the unholy duo of being woefully under powered for their time, and having a very short period of software support.

This holds true for all older hardware, not just PPCs. You can still do what you want within specific contexts, however. I don't expect to use a 20 year old machine as my daily driver anymore, but I can use it for things like coding in python and looking up the docs required to do that in something like Netsurf. Granted, this requires an alternate OS, but the options are there.

With that, I can still get emails, find ways to play videos, or even use it as a think client to run my web browser on another more modern machine (Windowed via x2go) while using the older hardware for that specific purpose that I want it for.

Is it ideal? No? Has the web been encrapified? Yes. Is that why we can't use PPC hardware today? Partially, but that doesn't mean we can't still do things our beloved hardware.

Finally, if you want to feel of the old web, use things that are in hobby mode or haven't been commercialized. There's the Gemini protocol. There's Gopher, and the Matrix protocol. Basically anything that has a financial incentive behind it (the modern web) is going to be ruined and there's no avoiding that, so try to avoid those things and you'll probably have much more fun.

 

[davisdelo]

PPC Macs suffer from the unholy duo of being woefully under powered for their time, and having a very short period of software support.

I don't find that to be the case at all

 

[MBAir2010]

I'm using Monterey and M1 Macs now well last week and every website wants to notify me or needs my email.
YouTube takes forever to load th Oviedo and stops on the iPad 2023
THIS NEVER HAPPENS on my early intel MacBooks the air 2010, the pro 2012
using sea lion, Firefox and water legacy classics.
ALSO I streaming the Newcastle Tottenham match on the Air M! that stops while the MBP'12 is streaming the same match, same website fine.
now every time I download a clip, movie or cat video, my tv program loads that without asking.


seems tome that todays'  products are made for  now us anymore.

I might toss these M1s in a box as I did all summer,
shame though since they are great computers,
just horrible annoying communist software

 

[maître]

I certainly share your grief, but at the same time, thanks to the tools we have today, all of the important stuff is still accessible. You can still download YouTube videos and access digital libraries like the Internet Archive and so on.

I love Mac OS X on PowerPC because it's code base is so capable, complete with the power of hardware, being enough at least, it feels like you can do anything on these machines. And the fact I can't just slop on some clickbait makes me appreciate that even more.

 

[barracuda156]

There's the Gemini protocol. There's Gopher, and the Matrix protocol.

Which client supports Matrix on PowerPC btw?

 

[barracuda156]

The irony is, you could totally get away with using an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 from 2003 as a daily driver. Windows XP has forks of current Chromium, as well as recent Firefox (68ESR?) and that's just on Windows. PPC Macs suffer from the unholy duo of being woefully under powered for their time, and having a very short period of software support.

You can have a reasonably modern browser on powerpc – on Linux and possibly *BSD.

The only problem of macOS on powerpc is that no one is doing anything for it. Which is partly a consequence of Mac users avoiding Open-source, GitHub and all that “geek stuff”. In result developers got an impression that platform is dead, and support was gone.

P. S. G5 were way ahead of their time btw; do you refer specifically to PowerBooks with “underpowered”? G4 is slow, yeah.

 

[Arctic Moose]

The security aspect hasn’t been mentioned. Sure, there is a ton of crap also, and nobody is less happy about it than I am, but older systems do also suffer from lacking hardware and software support for modern encryption.

Would it be nice if this wasn’t necessary? Sure, but this is not the world we live in. It wasn’t in 1993 either, it is just that the stakes and incentives for having your telnet, ftp or hotmail password sniffed in transit were not as high.

Before you could deface a website, now you can steal millions in bitcoin.

 

[barracuda156]

The security aspect hasn’t been mentioned. Sure, there is a ton of crap also, and nobody is less happy about it than I am, but older systems do also suffer from lacking hardware and software support for modern encryption.

Modern encryption is supported, it is just slower than on modern systems.

 

[Bug-Creator]

P. S. G5 were way ahead of their time btw; do you refer specifically to PowerBooks with “underpowered”? G4 is slow, yeah.

G5s were a down-tuned server chip, sucking enough power they would feel comfortable in a modern Intel based gaming PC.

They didn't advance much over their short live span and as such their (Intel) replacements had no problem outperforming them.

Even compared to the later G4s they don't have that much to offer, higher clocks, multiple core/CPUs and more RAM, clock by clock they barely pushed the needle and W by W (which counted more in the PowerBooks) they were useless.

Just as with every PPC from 601 to 970fx you could find cherry picked benchmarks saying the were superior to x86 of the day, or the other way round.

Every once in a while either Intel, AMD or Motorola/IBM would roll out a chip that would clearly hold the crown for a few months, but thats all.

Take a high end 2005 x86 PC, Hackintosh it or install a decent Linux and you will find no difference to a G5 running OSX or also Linux.

 

[pipetogrep]

Which client supports Matrix on PowerPC btw?

Good question. I was assuming that there would be a CLI compatible client that would work. I just went looking but MacPorts seems to be having a difficult time right now.

 

[m1maverick]

Just as with every PPC from 601 to 970fx you could find cherry picked benchmarks saying the were superior to x86 of the day, or the other way round.

It was my understanding that Apple moved to Intel because of the difficulty of scaling PPC.

 

[weckart]

It was my understanding that Apple moved to Intel because of the difficulty of scaling PPC.

I think there was a bit more than that. Compared with the x86 market, the consumer PPC market was tiny and IBM wasn't really on board with providing consumer level processors at a similar price to Intel's offerings. Whether or not you could physically scale PPC was one thing. Being able to compete with Intel was another.

 

[barracuda156]

Good question. I was assuming that there would be a CLI compatible client that would work. I just went looking but MacPorts seems to be having a difficult time right now.

View attachment 2412034

If something in C/C++/Python exists, we can add it to MacPorts. I am just not aware of the situation. (If Python, it obviously should not require Rust.)

 

[barracuda156]

It was my understanding that Apple moved to Intel because of the difficulty of scaling PPC.

The decision was more “political”. It was claimed that IBM did not offer a laptop-suiting chip, but Cell was already there.
Apple lost in performance and niche following, but gained generic WinPC crowd.

 

[Bug-Creator]

The decision was more “political”. It was claimed that IBM did not offer a laptop-suiting chip, but Cell was already there.

Not sure if Cell would have been a good laptop chip and even if it would have needed SW support almost as deep as the x86 move.

The reality is there was no 3GHz G5, there was no G6 on the horizon and the closest thing to a laptop chip would have been the P6T which at the time wasn't ready and would have been a big gamble.

 

[barracuda156]

Not sure if Cell would have been a good laptop chip and even if it would have needed SW support almost as deep as the x86 move.

The reality is there was no 3GHz G5, there was no G6 on the horizon and the closest thing to a laptop chip would have been the P6T which at the time wasn't ready and would have been a big gamble.

First MacPro was in 2006 and had 3.0 GHz only in the top config, first MacPro to cross 3 GHz was in 2009.

Power6 was introduced in 2007 (up
to 5 GHz). Yeah, a bit later, but Power CPU get more performance on the same frequency.

 

[barracuda156]

As for Cell, FreeBSD did it, surely Apple had incomparably more resources to adapt MacOS to run on Cell.

 

[Bug-Creator]

First MacPro was in 2006 and had 3.0 GHz only in the top config

IBM had promised Apple to get 3GHz on the G5.

Power6 was introduced in 2007

G5 were based on Power4 so a "G6" would have been Power5 which shipped in 2004.

As for Cell, FreeBSD did it,

So? How far were binaries compatible, how much effort was needed to get the full Cell performance into apps that had been written for plain PPC. Not an expert, but I kinda remember every game dev complaining about the PS3, how hard it was to get good results and how code couldn't be shared even with the XBOX360 despite that being a 3 core PPC.

Sounds like a hard to get working technological dead end solution that was only "good" for a short time.

 

[Amethyst1]

First MacPro was in 2006 and had 3.0 GHz only in the top config, first MacPro to cross 3 GHz was in 2009.

But it did 3 GHz right from the beginning; top config or not doesn’t really matter. And the 2008 was the first to exceed 3 GHz.