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Why are people still buying powerpc's and macbooks?
- Thread starter macuser1232
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Because people like them. I've asked myself this question since a similar thread was posted a few months ago and I think I finally have an answer. Speaking, of course, only for myself: The G4 with Altivec is the first computer that did everything that I dreamt of as child that I would one day be able to do with a computer. It's hard to break the emotional bond that is built under such circumstances. When something comes along that fulfills your wildest dreams, you tend to think very highly of that particular thing. I do have newer machines, both Linux and Mac, but PowerPC continues to meet nearly all of my needs and is still the computer that I spend the most time on.
My feelings exactly, and congratulations on an informative, easy to read post.
It's not often anymore to see a post of more then one line with good spelling, grammar and punctuation, all which lead to an easy to follow post.
The Intel transition quickly deflated the used market value for the PowerPC Macs, even the G5 towers. So they are relatively cheap, and as long as you run older software they still offer good performance for many tasks.
50 bucks???
Really?!
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I mean it depends on the price. But if its like 699 then you might as well get an HP Pavilion!
I'd take a G5 Mac over a windows machine (XP has its own issues and 7 has a UI like a yacht (big and shiny, but hard to navigate)).
OS X has undergone a lot of innovation since 10.1 (the oldest I've ever installed) but the user experience has remained the same (or gotten better).
And some people like to think different
OS X has undergone a lot of innovation since 10.1 (the oldest I've ever installed) but the user experience has remained the same (or gotten better).
And some people like to think different
Yeah, I was looking at a older Dell at this computer shop near where I live, normally I wouldn't go to a shop, but this place has tiger direct prices. Women needed a new computer, so I bought her because I am so nice ( plus, dating 3 years lol, known her for 10 ) a Dell something, I don't even know what model it was, 8 gigs of ram, some random Nivida PCie16X video card, think it might be a NV400? Pentium D 3.2gzh, running windows 7 for 270 dollars, which I thought was a fair price, so I saw the G5 tower collecting dust under a shelf under a bunch of PCs for sale.
Me: Is that a G5?
Guy: Yeah, Dual 1.8 g5 want it?
Me: How much?
Guy: Well Mac's are pretty useless. 50 bucks?
Me: Sold.
Because they work. I like my G3 B/W which I use at home everyday. Plus my software is PowerPC only. It runs great, dual boot, quiet, looks good and cheap to run (electric) compared to Intel architecture. It may not run YouTube vids or have the latest browsers, I don't care as long as I can do what I want with the software I have.
I fall into a Macbook and PowerPC category so I'll try to answer this the best I can.
Everybody I know that doesn't game or do anything remotely processor heavy like audio or video tends to keep their machines for a VERY long time. I know people that are still using generic Dell P4 towers. These are the people that don't need much, know they don't need much, and are more likely to just buy an older Mac and be happy with it.
Although my needs have grown exponentially since I got my Macbook in early 08 I can understand why theres still a market for them. Lets face it, they are pretty attractive especially my the black ones like mine.
My next Mac will most likely be a 2011 i7 Mini, one of Apple's budget machines and I plan to get the most out of it for as long as I can.
What does bother me though is the people that try to upsell the pre-MDD G4s to people and claim them to be ultra amazing super-deluxe machines.
Everybody I know that doesn't game or do anything remotely processor heavy like audio or video tends to keep their machines for a VERY long time. I know people that are still using generic Dell P4 towers. These are the people that don't need much, know they don't need much, and are more likely to just buy an older Mac and be happy with it.
Although my needs have grown exponentially since I got my Macbook in early 08 I can understand why theres still a market for them. Lets face it, they are pretty attractive especially my the black ones like mine.
My next Mac will most likely be a 2011 i7 Mini, one of Apple's budget machines and I plan to get the most out of it for as long as I can.
What does bother me though is the people that try to upsell the pre-MDD G4s to people and claim them to be ultra amazing super-deluxe machines.
Just sold my G5 quadcore Power Mac today. I had too many inquires to count on craigslist. People still want them....I just needed an Intel or I would have kept mine. Probably shouldn't have sold it actually....I felt like Jim Irsay letting Peyton Manning go.
Because there's just something about it that is just fun. I've owned a few Intel Macs and know they're technically more "up to date" but there's just something so awesome about firing up an old 466MHz Clamshell iBook G3 and showing people that an 11 year old Mac can get on Facebook.
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That's a shame.
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That's a shame.
That's a shame.
Yes, it is. My new MBP is nice, but there was just something about that 50lb hunk of aluminum. It's was a piece of art.
I picked up a couple of old Macs this week. The first was a Powerbook 1400 that the owner didn't know if it worked, he didn't have the power adapter. Plugged in an old yo-yo adapter and it fired right up. A blast from 1997, 15 years later, still running well. Hearing the chime, and the hard drive starts spinning up, and then the screen comes alive, that's fun to me.
My original 1984 Macintosh and SE both still run great and are knocking on 30 years old. 30. It's almost impossible to even find a dead Windows PC from the 80's, forget finding a working one, but you can find old Mac's and Apple II's that are still running strong all day long. It's similar to the video came consoles from the late 70's/early 80's. Atari's are pretty rock solid and keep on working, decades later, but what are the chances of an Xbox 360 or PS3 still working 30 years from now? Even if a working Xbox 360 survived 30 years, Xbox Live would be long gone. But you can get a 30 year old Mac to run on the Internet. Some Mac websites were hosted on Mac SE's, there might even be a couple left still running off an old SE being used as a server.
I also picked up a Tangerine iBook, the original 300mhz model. I always wanted one. Tonight I installed a dual boot of 10.3 and 9.2.2 and it's surprisingly fast, including surfing the web, as long as it's not asked to multi-task.
That's the one thing that has always amazed me, how fast some of these ancient machines still feel. Tiger on my Pismo laptop is extremely fast at the 'blistering' speed of 400 mhz. I had a 1.33 Ghz iBook a couple of years ago running Tiger, but the Pismo feels much faster.
My daily driver is a 2011 Mac Mini Server, but as wonderful as that Mac is, the old ones have more charm. It's fun watching the old keynotes were Steve Jobs introduces them, and while I could never afford any of them when they were new, today most aren't worth $100. I use them for a while, keep the ones I love, and pass the rest on to family/friends or end up selling them, but just because something is old doesn't mean it has no value and can't be useful.
My original 1984 Macintosh and SE both still run great and are knocking on 30 years old. 30. It's almost impossible to even find a dead Windows PC from the 80's, forget finding a working one, but you can find old Mac's and Apple II's that are still running strong all day long. It's similar to the video came consoles from the late 70's/early 80's. Atari's are pretty rock solid and keep on working, decades later, but what are the chances of an Xbox 360 or PS3 still working 30 years from now? Even if a working Xbox 360 survived 30 years, Xbox Live would be long gone. But you can get a 30 year old Mac to run on the Internet. Some Mac websites were hosted on Mac SE's, there might even be a couple left still running off an old SE being used as a server.
I also picked up a Tangerine iBook, the original 300mhz model. I always wanted one. Tonight I installed a dual boot of 10.3 and 9.2.2 and it's surprisingly fast, including surfing the web, as long as it's not asked to multi-task.
That's the one thing that has always amazed me, how fast some of these ancient machines still feel. Tiger on my Pismo laptop is extremely fast at the 'blistering' speed of 400 mhz. I had a 1.33 Ghz iBook a couple of years ago running Tiger, but the Pismo feels much faster.
My daily driver is a 2011 Mac Mini Server, but as wonderful as that Mac is, the old ones have more charm. It's fun watching the old keynotes were Steve Jobs introduces them, and while I could never afford any of them when they were new, today most aren't worth $100. I use them for a while, keep the ones I love, and pass the rest on to family/friends or end up selling them, but just because something is old doesn't mean it has no value and can't be useful.
I cannot remember the name of the law but "software gets quicker slower than hardware gets faster". Has all to do with software bloat.
Before graphical interfaces we had DOS on 5.25" floppies (they were really flexible) and having a complete word processor with spell checker sitting on a single 360k floppy.
I remember windows NT 3.1 with something like 20 odd 3.5" floppies to be loaded. Simialrly OS/2 with 26 floppies. Or even Windows 3 on Dos with Word and Excel on 10 floppies and using DOS which came on initially tow and later three 3.5 " floppies.
Software has certainly become very bloated and shoving that data in and out of the CPU takes time.
Before graphical interfaces we had DOS on 5.25" floppies (they were really flexible) and having a complete word processor with spell checker sitting on a single 360k floppy.
I remember windows NT 3.1 with something like 20 odd 3.5" floppies to be loaded. Simialrly OS/2 with 26 floppies. Or even Windows 3 on Dos with Word and Excel on 10 floppies and using DOS which came on initially tow and later three 3.5 " floppies.
Software has certainly become very bloated and shoving that data in and out of the CPU takes time.
My Dual 1.8 G5 kind of reminds me of my 69 Camaro. ( Z28, built 350, 4 speed stick, bright orange with black stripes. Mint condition ), its not something that I can use every day, and as a modern car its pretty terrible, but as far as being cool goes, its pretty awesome. Thats exactly how I view my G5.
They're dirt cheap these days, they are fantastic light internet/music/chatting/movie playing machines, they've got some heart in them and they look stunning.
