Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What keeps you on the PPC platform?

M

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 24, 2011
1,144
62
United States
I am very intrigued by those of us that still use the PowerPC platform even though it has been for the most part left behind by Apple. I browse this forum quite often (but rarely post) and really find it neat how people continue to use their G3s, G4s, and G5s to this day. So I thought I would ask for friendly discussion - what keeps you using the PPC this day in age when all of the new software and hardware is for Intel? Is it the nostalgia? Using something different? Performance? A hobby/interest? Or simply because you don't see the need because the PPC platform meets all of your needs?

Thanks
 
Mostly money. I simply don't have the money to buy a new Intel Mac. That and the fact that my PPC Macs fulfill my daily uses except for Netflix and a few games. I use my Core2 Duo Dell laptop for that.
 
Two reasons for me. The first was that way back in 2003 I was in design school. I saw a student come in with a 17" PowerBook. From that day on I wanted one bad. In 2009 I got my chance on eBay when my TiBook died. What was cool is that even though the screen died and I ultimately replaced it later on I managed to score another 17" on eBay about three months later. Once I got the screen replaced in the first one I realized that I had bought both the first 17" PB model made and the LAST 17" PB model made.

The second reason was (is) price. You can find a "damaged" PB on eBay for less than $250. Unless you find a completely trashed MBP of the same size (17" for me) or with a dead logic board you won't find anything meeting that price point right now on eBay.

I already had all the apps from my TiBook so it was a simple matter of installing my drives to the new PBs because my drives were larger than the ones that they came with.
 
ive actually just joined the PPC platform, had a c2duo MBP and upgraded to the 2010 unibody version last year but after a slight accident it died so without a computer in the house i saw a emac on gumtree snapped it for up #10 GBP,
its a 1ghz model with 60gb hdd and had 368 ram just upgraded to 512 until i can afford to max it out . thinking of swapping the hdd to a 320gb one ive got in a cheap windows machine ive just built to get me by for a day or so.

quite happy so far with it actually.
 
I'm on the PowerPC platform for a number of reasons, 1 being I don't have a grand to splash out on a MBP, although I love them, 2 being I love PowerPC! They seem to have a character, and feel about them that you don't get with Intel, we have a little community on here of PowerPC users that share their experiences and questions. I think that PowerPC is a lot more 'friendly' than Intel... If you know where I'm coming from? I will probably stay on the PowerPC platform for years to come. PowerPC love right here :p

----------
Lwllis said:
ive actually just joined the PPC platform, had a c2duo MBP and upgraded to the 2010 unibody version last year but after a slight accident it died so without a computer in the house i saw a emac on gumtree snapped it for up #10 GBP,
its a 1ghz model with 60gb hdd and had 368 ram just upgraded to 512 until i can afford to max it out . thinking of swapping the hdd to a 320gb one ive got in a cheap windows machine ive just built to get me by for a day or so.

quite happy so far with it actually.
Click to expand...

I have the same eMac! They're great little machines, I don't know how you coped performance wise though going from a C2D MBP to a 1ghz PPC G4 eMac. Great little machines though. I love mine!
 
The two big reasons for me are price and form factor. The two computers I use the most are easily my PowerMac quad core and 12" PowerBook. Both are fantastic systems and until the Air came around, a Apple laptop with such a small footprint could not be found with an Intel chip. Its still a plenty fast laptop for me. The G5 because even a used Mac Pro is too much for me to drop on a computer these days. I've also still got a ton of native PowerPC software from years past which runs great on these machines.
 
Goftrey said:
I'm on the PowerPC platform for a number of reasons, 1 being I don't have a grand to splash out on a MBP, although I love them, 2 being I love PowerPC! They seem to have a character, and feel about them that you don't get with Intel, we have a little community on here of PowerPC users that share their experiences and questions. I think that PowerPC is a lot more 'friendly' than Intel... If you know where I'm coming from? I will probably stay on the PowerPC platform for years to come. PowerPC love right here :p

----------



I have the same eMac! They're great little machines, I don't know how you coped performance wise though going from a C2D MBP to a 1ghz PPC G4 eMac. Great little machines though. I love mine!
Click to expand...

its not been to bad, i only got a mac because a friend of mine got one in 2007 and i got my first the same time ( because it looked cool i guess) and i got the 2nd as a replacement for my first. i only ever used it for iwork reading pdf's and light itunes and internet use. so im hopeing this eMac will be okay for a while. how does your fair with Leopard? im installing tiger on mine as we speak. fingers crossed
 
One thing I always thought was neat (although this is really old PPC technology) was the electric eject feature on the older floppy drives.
 
Character I guess. There is something in the PPC platform that I cannot describe. Compared to latest Intel Mac offerings, PPC's are slower in terms of speed whether it be CPU clock or memory clock.

They still serve its purpose, gets the job done. They are not the coolest looking compared to their Intel brethren but they have character. Most especially the ones that have scratches in them.

One more thing, they are "different", and because I "think different".
 
monkeybagel said:
I am very intrigued by those of us that still use the PowerPC platform even though it has been for the most part left behind by Apple. I browse this forum quite often (but rarely post) and really find it neat how people continue to use their G3s, G4s, and G5s to this day. So I thought I would ask for friendly discussion - what keeps you using the PPC this day in age when all of the new software and hardware is for Intel? Is it the nostalgia? Using something different? Performance? A hobby/interest? Or simply because you don't see the need because the PPC platform meets all of your needs?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Design- the iMac g4 is beautiful and nothing has matched it. I have an intel mac (air) but i love the g4.
 
wrinkster22 said:
Design- the iMac g4 is beautiful and nothing has matched it. I have an intel mac (air) but i love the g4.
Click to expand...

Yeah - I completely agree. That machine was not made long enough IMO. It was something like no one has seen before and was a pleasure to operate with the floating monitor.

----------
Nameci said:
Character I guess. There is something in the PPC platform that I cannot describe. Compared to latest Intel Mac offerings, PPC's are slower in terms of speed whether it be CPU clock or memory clock.

They still serve its purpose, gets the job done. They are not the coolest looking compared to their Intel brethren but they have character. Most especially the ones that have scratches in them.

One more thing, they are "different", and because I "think different".
Click to expand...

Do you have any other computers besides the PPC machines?

I have two PPC G4s but I think at least one of them has problems - and it's the one I like as it is a dual 500Mhz. It hangs up after using it a while. Mouse still moves but the OS will not respond. Also the built-in GbE adapter seems to be shot. I put a PCI Ethernet card in it and it does function but continues to hang after under a load.

I would like to get an MDD or G5 Quad (that is in good working condition) one day...
 
monkeybagel said:
Yeah - I completely agree. That machine was not made long enough IMO. It was something like no one has seen before and was a pleasure to operate with the floating monitor.
Click to expand...

It was slow, frail, hot, expensive to build and inefficient to package.
 
I have a recently bought black macbook. I bought it for the kicks of trying out Lion. But with all the "gloss" of Lion I kept coming back to my PPC's.

My G5 dual core is my productivity computer (for work), my 15" PB is my travel computer (the screen size and resolution is just awesome). And besides on the PB the fans are not running constantly compared to the macbook that the fans idle at 1800rpm.

The macbook runs hotter than the PB.
 
Money, though my G5 tower meets all my needs. If I had the cash though, I'd be getting a maxed out 15" MBP as my main computer.

----------
monkeybagel said:
It may not have been reliable - I never owned one for any extended period, but they did look neat. I had a new one back in the day for a little while.
Click to expand...
My G4 lasted about 8 years until the LVDS cable died.
 
For me it boils down to cost. I have a 13" MBP with 8gig RAM and a 256MB SSD. I use that as my main system. I bought my G5 because, for the 250 bucks i paid for it, its awesome. I use it for iChat, mail, web browsing, and to hold my fairly large iTunes library. It runs those items right there for me wonderfully.
 
For me it's a very multi-layered thing. I will just list a few random reasons as it's hard to mesh them all together.

-I have a thing for PowerPC hardware (mostly the G4 and not at all the G5)

-I have been computing so long that I literally feel the need to challenge myself as much as possible. Using G4's forces me to be very efficient and in the end this is a very practical and rewarding way for me personally to compute.

-Since the 80's I have been a BSD guy and in the 90's got into Macs. PowerPC hardware (esp. 604-G4) is some of the most stable ever made and with that obviously has amazing longevity. So for me to combine PowerPC hardware and OS X which is Mac OS and BSD in one is the perfect combo.

-As far as towers go the 8600, 9600, all the G3's and G4's (other than a few bad MDD's) are all still very usable systems and all built and last like tanks.

I will add more later but for now thats it.
 
Lwllis said:
its not been to bad, i only got a mac because a friend of mine got one in 2007 and i got my first the same time ( because it looked cool i guess) and i got the 2nd as a replacement for my first. i only ever used it for iwork reading pdf's and light itunes and internet use. so im hopeing this eMac will be okay for a while. how does your fair with Leopard? im installing tiger on mine as we speak. fingers crossed
Click to expand...

Yeah it's fairing okay I suppose, there's a bit of screen tear on the dock if you have magnification on but I don't have magnification on anyway, apart from that, it runs as well as Tiger considering all of the features Leopard has compared to Tiger, I'm going to bump the RAM up t to 1gb to make it smoother but it's great!

I would highly recommend upgrading to Leopard if you're on Tiger at the moment as there's a load more features, eye-candy and it's still supported for most applications (for now... :rolleyes: )

----------
zen.state said:
For me it's a very multi-layered thing. I will just list a few random reasons as it's hard to mesh them all together.

-I have a thing for PowerPC hardware (mostly the G4 and not at all the G5)

-I have been computing so long that I literally feel the need to challenge myself as much as possible. Using G4's forces me to be very efficient and in the end this is a very practical and rewarding way for me personally to compute.

-Since the 80's I have been a BSD guy and in the 90's got into Macs. PowerPC hardware (esp. 604-G4) is some of the most stable ever made and with that obviously has amazing longevity. So for me to combine PowerPC hardware and OS X which is Mac OS and BSD in one is the perfect combo.

-As far as towers go the 8600, 9600, all the G3's and G4's (other than a few bad MDD's) are all still very usable systems and all built and last like tanks.

I will add more later but for now thats it.
Click to expand...

Great answer dude. Totally agree with everything you said there :p
 
Basically because I love the design of my PowerBook and it still meets my needs. And i have a bit of nostalgia for the PPC era I think the most beautiful designs came from that time, mainly the iMac G4.
 
For me, mostly, it's the physical design of the machines. Sure, Apple has all this shiny aluminum stuff now that looks very modern and whatnot, but nothing they offer these days comes even close to the pure beauty of the PPC era. Try and find any computer on the market today that looks like the clamshell iBook G3, the iMac G4, or the PowerBook G4. That's right, nothing. But you see tons of MBP look-alikes, as well as other Apple designs. I admit, there were a few competitors back in the day that tried to emulate the PPC design, but for the most part they failed miserably. Put a MBP and a high end HP laptop next to each other, it's hard to tell the difference.

Another thing is, Apple no longer offers any computer I would consider purchasing. They all either have something wrong in the cosmetic design, or hardware design that I just can't overlook. The MacBook was the last machine I would have thought about buying, and they took that away. So, they no longer have my business.

But, even if they had something I liked, I sure as hell can't afford a new Mac anyway. Not even close.

And finally, as others have said, there's just something about those old machines, a feeling you get from looking at and using one that just doesn't happen with the new offerings. The PPC Magic, as I call it. I still get more of a thrill from turning on and using my eMac than I do playing around on all the new machines at an Apple store. I don't know if it's really just the looks, the different processor, nostalgia or what, the new machines just feel cold and hard in comparison to the loving warmth of the past.

I own a few retired PPC's, and my eMac which I still use everyday. I hope to never have to replace it, it's built like a tank, so at the very least it should last a while yet to come; but should that day come, you can bet I'll be getting another PPC, perhaps an iMac G5 or a similar PowerMac. And I suppose when the PPC platform becomes unable to cope with the simplest tasks I require, I'm getting a PC unless Apple has done something to bring back the magic. With the iPhone and iPad being their main priorities, of which I have zero interest in, I can't see that happening. Such a shame, to see what was once unique and full of life become neglected and left on the side of the road to die. :( Cost of progress I suppose...
 
efficiency
till the day i die the number 1 reason i will keep a powerpc mac around is efficiency, not personally but OS wise. after a while on my mbp things start to get slow, the os starts to bog down, and random stuff starts to happen that make computing...less than fun. however on all the ppc macs i have owned, i could leave them running for weeks on end (with sleep wakeup cycles) running various tasks and never once would they bog down and start pi**ing me off.

and the fact that i like to tinker, and its a lot cheeper to buy a bunch of ppc macs ;)
 
Cassie said:
I still get more of a thrill from turning on and using my eMac than I do playing around on all the new machines at an Apple store. I don't know if it's really just the looks, the different processor, nostalgia or what, the new machines just feel cold and hard in comparison to the loving warmth of the past.
Click to expand...

I feel exactly the same way, I tried to say that in my post but it was hard to explain, the Intel machines have no character, charm about them, they are simply computers, they do not appeal to me in any way, if a Macbook Pro fell out of the sky right now, I'd sell it and get a 1.67ghz PowerBook and a quad core PowerMac G5. I love PowerPC, I have almost a passion for PowerPC (sounds cheesy I know... :D )
 
For me... I like getting a lot / seeing other people get a lot of use out of older (or slower, netbooks fall real well into this category) machines. Most people seem forced into upgrading or buying more than they want when they really don't have to for most of their needs. (I fall into this category, having had to buy a MacBook Pro for college when my iBook G4 and MDD were serving, and continue to serve me just fine most of the time. Sure, I love the MBP, but I can't help but feel like it's just too much from time to time.)

I often hear a lot of "hey, your computer's old" from some people I talk to - I just shrug it off. Shouldn't let others' opinions on your computer force you into getting something you don't want, after all!
 
Bloodstar said:
I often hear a lot of "hey, your computer's old" from some people I talk to - I just shrug it off. Shouldn't let others' opinions on your computer force you into getting something you don't want, after all!
Click to expand...

I don't hear that fortunately. I hear "what is that," or "nice Mac." The cool thing is that the PBs are so close in form factor to the early MBPs that most people assume I have an MBP.

I even got a nice comment on my TiBook/400 about two years ago when I was using it.

I don't worry about being out of date. My Macs get noticed because of their size and the fact that I am often pulling both of them out wherever I am.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back