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What's your favorite PPC Mac?

Lil Chillbil said:
It was 2012 late may school was almost out, then the teacher came up to me and told me if I single-handedly installed ram and hdds, and updated the os x to tiger in tons of imac g3s and emacs. that I could take a couple home.



Some more senior members here may remember that one of the emacs drive bays were rigged by an ignorant kid so when you push the eject button the white door got flinged like a catapult into my forehead :p


I loved powerpc at that time, thought it was great nothing better than that summer of Power
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You are lucky! I'd love to have a job like that at my school. If only we had Macs...
 
I love all the old G3, G4, and G5 designs, but my favorite would have to be the Powermac G4 MDD. I think it's the best designed computer ever; it just looks fantastic from every angle. And my all time favorite Apple design feature is the way you can open the door and lower the motherboard, immediately giving you complete access to everything in the system. I fell in love with the MDD after watching Itsmynaturalcolour's youtube series on it: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB4EC18656C40367D
This inspired me to buy a dual 1.25 Ghz MDD which I'll be upgrading similarly to his. Any PowerPC fans should definitely check out his channel, he has some awesome stuff on there.
Other favorites:
G4 Cube- way ahead of its time. It was never officially discontinued, but some people speculated that it became the Mac Mini. I think it returned in the new Mac Pro.
Quad G5- astonishingly fast, geekbench scores are similar to some 2010 Macs!
iMac G3- It saved Apple and put an end to the ugly beige boxes
 
1. First on the list is the PMG5 Quad - the most powerful of the powerpc macs, fully maxed the RAM to 16GB, put in a work station card (QFX4500), upgraded it once to have SSD on RAID0. This thing still kicks some @$$.
2. PowerBook 1.67 15" DLSD/HR. Hires (1440x960), matte screen, good color reproduction, good audio, runs cool and quite, and the keyboard is just awesome and backlit too.

I really wanted to have the PowerMac Cube with the ACD and the USB pro speaker, just the whole set. I can't afford the TAM, so I just settle down with it. Extra-ordinary design from Ive, it is iconic and just ahead of its time.
 
God that's a tough one.

For towers, probably the Quad G5, followed closely by the G4 Digital Audio.

For laptops, the PowerBook G3 WallStreet, followed closely by the PowerBook G4 Titanium.

If you made me throw away all my PPCs but one I'd keep my Quad, so I guess that would be 1st place.
 
ConfusedBatman said:
And why? I hope we get some cool stories about you guys's favorite experiences with your Macs. I like the G3 iMac, I got it when I was 10 in 2005 from my Dad's friend, I had no experience with Macs, it came running OS 9, after looking some stuff up I downloaded an OS X Panther image and installed it, had some fun times with that machine. Cool bedside DVD Player, too. Sad part is, I got bored one day, opened it up, and fried the motherboard. You can't trust ten year olds with complex tasks like opening up an old computer, I tell ya.
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The 9600. No real story, just loved the "flip down" method of internal access, and how many slots it had for memory and PCI.
 
philz4life said:
You are lucky! I'd love to have a job like that at my school. If only we had Macs...
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My typing teacher, who also taught more "advanced" courses, asked a couple of us if we could figure out what was wrong with her Mac. The monitor was on, but with no picture. The Mac was plugged into a power outlet. I took a look at it and noticed almost immediately what was wrong...

Someone had taken the main logic board out, and replaced all of the connectors back into their respective sockets, but plugged into air.

Good laugh had by me, and a look of horror on the guy's face whose responsibility it was to manage all of the equipment in the school. Funniest thing I heard at that point was his statement that he "probably would not have figured out the problem so quickly."
 
I think these threads are great. Every time they pop up they make a good read. It is very interesting to me that us Mac owners have topics in which we get to explain how a computer that may be twenty years old still stands out and either still looks great to this day or is still in use in some capacity.

As far as looks go, I do not see many Windows PC topics about which old pentium box they thought was the best looking ;)

I love my G5 Quad the most, but as far as looks go, the G4 Cube looked amazing along with the Titanium PowerBooks and my trusty old G4 Sawtooth. There are simply so many past Macs that still look better than computers being designed today.
 
cmanderson said:
The 9600. No real story, just loved the "flip down" method of internal access, and how many slots it had for memory and PCI.
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I still have one of those. I also liked the 7300 of the same era. It unfolded in the same way that you describe. It didn't have as many expansion slots, but I liked the "desktop" form factor (back when "desktop" was a computer that you put your display on top of and others were called "towers").

I don't have the 7300 any more, but kept the 9600 as a dedicated OS 9 machine. It holds 1.5 gigs of ram (the most that OS 9 can use). It has a 1GHz G4 card, an ATA card, and a dual head Radeon 7000. OS 9 screams on it.

Either machine purchased new in February of 1997 could be kept on the cutting edge for several years with a plethora of G3 and G4 daughtercards coming out just around the corner. The 604e, for its day, wasn't exactly a slouch either. True that they were beige, but that just made them good candidates for art projects.

I guess my favorite PowerPCs of all time are the Sawtooth and MDD, although I have always admired the looks of the iMac G4.
 
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For laptops maybe the Pismo, for the looks, updates.
Although I am really found of the Pb G4 12'
As for towers maybe the G3 iMac for the looks and the G5 Quad for the Power.
 
Some government agencies are using PowerMac G4 as servers or for some kind of job. They do have intel macs, but for some reason they keep several Powermac G4 working 24/7
 
iBook G4

I still love my Book. The first time I saw it in the store I knew I would buy one. Next day went to Apple and brought it home. I still use it. Was my first portable. You never forget your first love ;)
 
towers: any powermac g4, they are very reliable and a lot of possibilities (less the MDD)

laptops: powerbook g4, last ones better, very realiable too and great desing,
 
Frost7 said:
For towers, probably the Quad G5, followed closely by the G4 Digital Audio.
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+1 for Digital Audio - is what I use and have used for many years now, which is probably why it's my favorite. Have done a lot of tinkering with it and am sure that's partly why.

Thought about getting the Quad G5 recently but opted against. Am sure it's a nice machine though.

(An aside about MDDs - used to use one at work that would sometimes freeze up in the middle of moderate to heavy Photoshop usage. Never did figure that one out. Nice design though.)
 
This is a tough decision...

But from all my PPC macs, the one I prefer would have to be the Cube... Excellent design, reduced desktop footprint, several upgrade options... it was underpowered at stock, but it is an excellent machine after some upgrades!

For laptops, I just love the 12' powerbook G4... it was my first mac (the original 867MHz version), which died on me, but did find a pristine 1.33 GHz model to remind me of the first one!
 
Best 1st impression - My daughter's iMac DV SE. I couldn't believe that 400Mhz G3 could run Windows 98SE faster on Mac OS9/Connectix Virtual PC than my Intel Pentium 3 500Mhz could run it natively.

Personal favorite - Power Mac G4 Quicksilver. That thing was gorgeous & so easy to work with. I have no idea how many times I had that case open. Sometimes just to look & admire the thought put into making it upgrade friendly.

Glad to say they both are still operational although they have been mothballed. I fire them up every once in a while just because I can.
 
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