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What's your most HATED PowerPC?

M

MysticCow

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 27, 2013
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We certainly love our PowerPC Macs or else none of us wouldn't be around in this forum.

However, now is the time to take the gloves off. Which PowerPC Mac do you just love to HATE?

For me, the prize has to go to the Yikes! G4 tower. It was little more than a G3 with a ZIF-ed G4 upgrade. How I wish Apple would have waited until the AGP graphics model was ready to roll. Plus, the AGP models took 2 GB of RAM under OS X and 1.5 under OS 9, more than the Yikes could ever take.
 
It was certainly strange that they released the Yikes at the time given that it looks to have shipped only a month before the Sawtooth and it would have been a poor buy if you hadn't known that it would soon be outdated, though these days I reckon it's kinda interesting as it must be pretty rare given that it was on sale for only a few months, and it was the first of the long-lived G4 line.

If talking about underpowered PPCs, the low-spec "late 2004" single 1.8 GHz G5 always looks very disappointing.

Some of the "G2" boxes are probably the less interesting/characterful of the PPC range and the confusing mixture of model names/slightly-differing systems doesn't help; the "four quadrant" rationalisation of the range and introduction of bold designs was a very good move at the time.
 
This is an easy question to answer. My most hated PPC is the 5200 and the G3 AIO. The former was underpowered and ugly, while the AIO was just ugly.
 
647156 said:
If talking about underpowered PPCs, the low-spec "late 2004" single 1.8 GHz G5 always looks very disappointing.
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I have to disagree here.

My boss bought that Mac in Feb. 2005. I used it till it died in mid 2012. Then I replaced the logicboard/CPU and my coworker has been using it since. We put out two newspapers every week.

It handles everything we throw at it very well. It's even got 1GB of ram more than my MacPro. And it's been on and running 24/7 since we got it.

Sure, I wish my boss had sprung for a dual that year. But this model is pretty good. And that's that I'm not partial to the G5s.
[doublepost=1453770845][/doublepost]For those here who know me, believe it or not the iBook or iMac (or G5 for that matter) are not hates. I don't like them, but I don't hate them either.

My object of hate is the LCII.

I know that's not a PowerPC Mac, but it's the only Mac that draws my hatred out of all the models Apple has ever made.

I had to use those POS computers in Graphic Design class and they were just never up to the task.
 
Mine has to be an old ibook g4 I used to have. I did everything to repair it from a freezing issue. Changed hard drives, ram, wifi cards, repasted cpu etc... In the end I took out the parts i could reuse and ripped it apart. Great stress reliever let me tell you!
 
The iMac G5 never really did anything for me, neither did the iBook G3 Snow. Both were designs of the future, but looking back on them from today, they just don't fit in.
 
The 8500 because it's impossible to work on without breaking something.

The Powerbook G3 "Mainstreet" would be a close second-it's slow enough(even by late 1990s standards) to be a joke. My Kanga is faster and has a better screen too.

I actually sort of, kind of like the G4 Yikes!, although it makes no apologies about the fact that it really just a reskinned B&W. I think Apple sort of acted "dirty" over the B&W, too, since somewhere in the OS 9 upgrade sequence you are required to apply a firmware patch to it that locks it out from using a G4(although this can be overcome).

Interestingly enough, in OS X, the Yikes! shows up as a PowerMac G3. Also, it's the only computer Apple shipped with a G4 that can't use a plug-and-play install of Leopard.
 
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bunnspecial said:
I actually sort of, kind of like the G4 Yikes!, although it makes no apologies about the fact that it really just a reskinned B&W. I think Apple sort of acted "dirty" over the B&W, too, since somewhere in the OS 9 upgrade sequence you are required to apply a firmware patch to it that locks it out from using a G4(although this can be overcome).

Interestingly enough, in OS X, the Yikes! shows up as a PowerMac G3. Also, it's the only computer Apple shipped with a G4 that can't use a plug-and-play install of Leopard.
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It's also completely incapable of Target Disk Mode. It can mount disks from Macs in TDM, but it can't do TDM itself.
 
My Performa 550. Very limited and super slow. The case is also very, very, fally-apart-y
 
Never overly fond of the 52xx/62xx series. Mostly underpowered, poorly designed, and all around awful Macs. As I type this my own 6200 is trying to send files to my Powerbook 180 because I don't want to connect up any other serial/Ethernet Macs.
 
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My least favorite design was by far the tray loading iMac G3s. The darn optical drive routinely got stuck on the two that I have seen and I just hated seeing the door there. The slot loaders are much preferred in my mind.
 
Altemose said:
My least favorite design was by far the tray loading iMac G3s. The darn optical drive routinely got stuck on the two that I have seen and I just hated seeing the door there. The slot loaders are much preferred in my mind.
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Agreed. Its what it should've been in the first place. Lets also not forget how atrocious the name could've been. MacMan? Really, Steve?

Another iMac related story. My dad was recounting the time when he worked at IBM. He worked with them from 1995 - 2004 doing god knows what. He likes talking about staying up late and playing Descent with a joystick made out of a ball mouse and various office supplies. His co-worker bought a Bondi Blue iMac new, just to see what the 'enemy' was like. Jokingly, he brought in his Rowenta Surfline Iron (Google if you don't understand the reference), which we just replaced last year.
 
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Some of the early PowerBooks had great qualities, but the machine specific RAM and low RAM capacities are a PITA. I've got some great PowerBooks like my 240MHz 3400, but the fact that it caps out at only 144MB of ram and it costs a fortune to pull that off really sucks. Same with my 5300. I love many things about them, but memory sucks. Never had much love for the weight and hinges on the PDQ books or the loud and clumsy case the beige desktop G3s had. Put in a CD and the case would rattle and buzz like crazy. Spent a lot of time smacking the top of mine to shut it up lol. Lastly, the iSight G5 iMacs kind of drove me nuts. Yeah it got a little skinnier, but the redesign turned the easiest to service iMac of all time into a machine that suddenly became VERY difficult to work on with all the latches, emi shielding, and torx screws.
 
I posted something similar a while ago. Even then my opinion has not changed. I brought home a performa 5200CD a year ago that i rescued from my work place. My co worker usually rips apart machines for Caps and what not. Even it with 40mb of ram ran horribly slow in system 8.5 and even picking up the darn thing resulted in the sides cracking. That had apparently been an issue since day one of these machines. They had an outdated bus, slow and cranky old things.
 
not machine specific but any mac that didn't have a way of hooking up a firewire drive to it. and that still holds true today.
 
556fmjoe said:
Whenever I have to get to the hard drive of my 12" PowerBook, it becomes my most hated device.
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I love this one. I had to replace the optical drive twice in mine! typically the drives and the disk drives are so easy to swap out. Not with this machine. you have to take it pretty much completely apart to get em out.
Which brings me to...


My answer might be a bit controversial. I've really grown to dislike the Aluminum series of PowerBook G4s.

I recently got rid of a 17" hi-res and I listed my 12" on ebay today. Had an intel version as well
  • Incredibly low screen brightness even when on max
  • Very prone to dents/dings/scratches. I'd have moments of panic even dropping a pen on it.
  • Flimsy top case assembly never seemed to fit perfectly
  • Pitting in the palmrests was common
  • keys wore off really easily
  • Not sure what it was exactly but they sure seemed to underperform
What they did well:
  • The backlit keyboard. dang it looked good.
  • The double-hook clamshell latch was solid
On the 17" powerbook from rabidz7 on overclock.net:
I call the High-Res / Late-2005 PowerBooks G5s because they use the Freescale 7448 / 7458. A single Freescale 7458 has the performance of a single IBM 970, which is what Apple named the G5. Apple crippled the Late-2005 PowerBooks. They lowered the 200MHz FSB to 167MHz, shut down the GPU x16 PCIe bus, lowered CPU speed to 1.67GHz even though it was built for 2.0GHz and up, shut down the 2nd core on the die (I'm not sure about the second core, the CPU does have two PLLs, leading me to suspect that it is two CPUs in one package, but I cant prove it), disabled 85% of the cache, and closed half of the 64-Bit FSB.
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Just a bit yeah. He's permabanned from MR. If you've got a few minutes to spare try searching his post history here. Just don't drink anything while you do, otherwise it'll end up all over your Mac.
 
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JRDN said:
Haven't heard of him other than seeing that post. Bad reputation?
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Him and the two or three other accounts he created later on to try and get around the ban.

He's on twitter too.

He always wanted a picture of my 17" PB's logicboard. I was never about to open the Mac up just to give that to him when pictures of any 17" PB are prevalent across the internet.

Overclocking and installing the impossible is his obsession.
 
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