Why I Still Use an Old PowerPC Mac in 2020
A classic PowerPC Mac from the early 2000s might just boost your productivity.
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Why I Still Use an Old PowerPC Mac in 2020
- Thread starter mmphosis
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No hate, love PowerPC Macs, but this article basically touts the PPC iBook as a glorified text editor and fails in any cases where workplace communication is required.
That sounds negative, so I’ll wrap this up with a joke I recycled,
Apparently you can’t use “ beefstew” as a password.
It’s not stroganoff.
That sounds negative, so I’ll wrap this up with a joke I recycled,
Apparently you can’t use “ beefstew” as a password.
It’s not stroganoff.
iHate articles like this. Demeans the hard work and minor miracles that make PowerPC still usable in 2020. Might as well say: " I use a typewriter for content creation, as it's distraction free, then I scan in my written document to my modern mac and optical character recognition software, admittedly with some needed editing and correction, does the rest."
He could also turn off wifi on his modern mac, or unplug his router.
He could also turn off wifi on his modern mac, or unplug his router.
Well that's an easy one. Those older cards do not support anything newer than WEP for security, so trying it with an open or WEP-secured 2.4 GHz network should work fine.
... because it's written by someone who 1) doesn't know how to make the best out of a PPC Mac and 2) did something that noone cares about but felt the need to write about it nonetheless. Sorry for being so negative about the article - I just fail to see the point of it.
OMG I totally agree. With everything you just said.
It's a shallow article. The author is probably aware that there's more to this but isn't interested in exploring that avenue because that was never the intent of the article.
It's a nothng-burger, because as has already been pointed out, it's easy just to shut off WiFi.
To be perfectly fair, thanks to these iBooks' and PowerBooks' glorious, superior keyboard, and the lack of TenFourFox on 10.3 and below, they do make great writing machines.
As it happens, they also make excellent (usually period-correct) everything else machines if TFF is not an option.
I don't think it's the fact that the author chose not to use it as an Internet-enabled computer that pi$$e$ everyone off, but that he simply blew it off due to his own ignorance before it ever had a chance to show him what's possible. He even left Wi-Fi on after he decided it to be a no-go, which was another symptom of inattentiveness given that you can easily just shut it off if you aren't going to use it, which both saves battery life and cuts down on EMF waves.
And what really sucks is that in all his newfound wisdom, he appeared to take a stab at Macintosh Garden without even bothering to know more about it than seemingly a first glance, falsely impressioning other people who read this.
Ultimately, it's the type of "can't-be-bothered" people as the author and these incessantly popular YouTube personalities that see these particular machines as a mere fragment of their beloved childhood, and are incapable of Internet use, and no more good than a glorified typewriter or fancy shelf decoration. Of course, the trendies take notice and then proceed to hike up prices and glamorize these things of the wrong qualities, which is like a slap in the face to us here at the forums, the folks at Macintosh Garden, and even the OS 9 Lives people.
The Internet is an endless abyss of information. Incredibly, we live in an unprecedented time of our lives where any data you yearn for can be acquired in less than a split second. Would it really take so much effort for these types to inquire to the endless abyss of information all that they can do with their weapon of choice so that they may maximize their use of it and also paint said weapon of choice in a more informed light to readers and watchers so that they themselves may make informed decisions instead of blurred and emotive ones?
I don't have anything against the author, in fact he appears to write well. However, it isn't a very nice thing of him to do to declare conclusions about a subject to a public audience when there remains effortlessly found information on the Internet that directly contradicts his drawn conclusions, meaning he did not put much effort into this particular piece as a writer of pieces, the effects of which just ends up hurting everybody in the end.
As it happens, they also make excellent (usually period-correct) everything else machines if TFF is not an option.
I don't think it's the fact that the author chose not to use it as an Internet-enabled computer that pi$$e$ everyone off, but that he simply blew it off due to his own ignorance before it ever had a chance to show him what's possible. He even left Wi-Fi on after he decided it to be a no-go, which was another symptom of inattentiveness given that you can easily just shut it off if you aren't going to use it, which both saves battery life and cuts down on EMF waves.
And what really sucks is that in all his newfound wisdom, he appeared to take a stab at Macintosh Garden without even bothering to know more about it than seemingly a first glance, falsely impressioning other people who read this.
Ultimately, it's the type of "can't-be-bothered" people as the author and these incessantly popular YouTube personalities that see these particular machines as a mere fragment of their beloved childhood, and are incapable of Internet use, and no more good than a glorified typewriter or fancy shelf decoration. Of course, the trendies take notice and then proceed to hike up prices and glamorize these things of the wrong qualities, which is like a slap in the face to us here at the forums, the folks at Macintosh Garden, and even the OS 9 Lives people.
The Internet is an endless abyss of information. Incredibly, we live in an unprecedented time of our lives where any data you yearn for can be acquired in less than a split second. Would it really take so much effort for these types to inquire to the endless abyss of information all that they can do with their weapon of choice so that they may maximize their use of it and also paint said weapon of choice in a more informed light to readers and watchers so that they themselves may make informed decisions instead of blurred and emotive ones?
I don't have anything against the author, in fact he appears to write well. However, it isn't a very nice thing of him to do to declare conclusions about a subject to a public audience when there remains effortlessly found information on the Internet that directly contradicts his drawn conclusions, meaning he did not put much effort into this particular piece as a writer of pieces, the effects of which just ends up hurting everybody in the end.
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At the risk of repeating myself - this also popped up on r/vintageapple - the author seems to have sold the same article twice, because the original version appeared in The Register a month ago:
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/07/dyspraxia_and_the_ibook/
The text isn't exactly the same but it's essentially the same story. Are The Register and How-To-Geek owned by the same publisher?
Curiously the original article talks about a G3 iBook, even though the pictures show a G4, and How-To-Geek's coverage has a picture of a PowerBook.
As for the idea of using old laptops as writing machines, I tried exactly the same thing with an old TiBook, but it's extremely difficult to write anything of substance unless you have some way of checking facts and dates. Whenever I write something in anger I end up with lots and lots of tabs spread across two monitors. And also bottles of pee, because nappies simply don't work.
What happens is that you kid yourself you'll write the outline of a piece and then put in the nitty-gritty details later on, but it always falls apart. I recently wrote a lengthy blog post about the Mac Mini for which I needed to know (a) the launch price of the G4 Mac Mini in the UK (b) when was FireWire "a thing" (c) how widespread was the Core Solo outside the Mac Mini range (d) what differentiated the 2011 from the 2012 models (e) did the G4 Mini predate the announcement of the Intel transition or not (f) what was the state of the PC small-form-factor market prior to the Mini (e) did the iPhone cripple the Mini's development, or not (f) if the iPhone had never existed, was the Mini Apple's last great hope etc. The list is massive.
For the record - and entirely off the top of my head - the answers were (a) £499 (b) 1999-2012 (c) a couple of cheap laptops and almost nothing else (d) relatively minor internal tweaks plus the option of quad-core processors (e) yes (f) dismal (e) looks like it (f) I have no idea what "Computer Apple" planned for the future, but the transition to services was well under way already (j) although some Luftwaffe fighters could outpace the Mosquito they didn't have the endurance to overhaul it in a tail chase (k) digital versatile disc.
I mean, modern journalism is essentially rewriting press releases, for which you at least need access to email, or alternatively it's reporting on people being angry on Twitter, for which you need a modern browser and always-on internet so that you don't miss anything.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/07/dyspraxia_and_the_ibook/
The text isn't exactly the same but it's essentially the same story. Are The Register and How-To-Geek owned by the same publisher?
Curiously the original article talks about a G3 iBook, even though the pictures show a G4, and How-To-Geek's coverage has a picture of a PowerBook.
As for the idea of using old laptops as writing machines, I tried exactly the same thing with an old TiBook, but it's extremely difficult to write anything of substance unless you have some way of checking facts and dates. Whenever I write something in anger I end up with lots and lots of tabs spread across two monitors. And also bottles of pee, because nappies simply don't work.
What happens is that you kid yourself you'll write the outline of a piece and then put in the nitty-gritty details later on, but it always falls apart. I recently wrote a lengthy blog post about the Mac Mini for which I needed to know (a) the launch price of the G4 Mac Mini in the UK (b) when was FireWire "a thing" (c) how widespread was the Core Solo outside the Mac Mini range (d) what differentiated the 2011 from the 2012 models (e) did the G4 Mini predate the announcement of the Intel transition or not (f) what was the state of the PC small-form-factor market prior to the Mini (e) did the iPhone cripple the Mini's development, or not (f) if the iPhone had never existed, was the Mini Apple's last great hope etc. The list is massive.
For the record - and entirely off the top of my head - the answers were (a) £499 (b) 1999-2012 (c) a couple of cheap laptops and almost nothing else (d) relatively minor internal tweaks plus the option of quad-core processors (e) yes (f) dismal (e) looks like it (f) I have no idea what "Computer Apple" planned for the future, but the transition to services was well under way already (j) although some Luftwaffe fighters could outpace the Mosquito they didn't have the endurance to overhaul it in a tail chase (k) digital versatile disc.
I mean, modern journalism is essentially rewriting press releases, for which you at least need access to email, or alternatively it's reporting on people being angry on Twitter, for which you need a modern browser and always-on internet so that you don't miss anything.
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As I mentioned on Reddit, it comes down to (to me) a lack of self-control. As @z970mp mentioned, the author didn't want to be bothered to do any research. I believe the author also didn't want to be bothered with controlling his own distractions.
It's a very simple thing to just not install apps that distract you. To put the phone away somewhere else, to switch off Wi-Fi, etc. But then that wouldn't have lent itself to the topic of the article I suppose.
For me, when writing, I need a connection. thesaurus.com alone is one of the major sites I use and without being able to access it things grind to a halt.
I'm sorry, but my 700mhz eMac can handle TenFourFox. It can also handle Leopard Webkit even better. That's saying a lot, considering you have to work around the fact that Leopard won't install on as slow a cpu. Ignoring I literally use my PMG5 as a windows and ftp file server, these computers are still so much more than glorified typewriters, and I can't imaging writing without being able to fact check anything I'm unsure about. Most of what I write requires that, and the internet is vital to that sort of thing.
The writer could do the same thing with any laptop, and in some, they could literally remove the wifi card, and do so easily, if they wanted it to be hard to connect to the internet. None of this is actually about the usefulness of a ppc mac. It's actually celebrating how old technology hasn't aged well.
The writer could do the same thing with any laptop, and in some, they could literally remove the wifi card, and do so easily, if they wanted it to be hard to connect to the internet. None of this is actually about the usefulness of a ppc mac. It's actually celebrating how old technology hasn't aged well.
Well…here's a thing.
When writing using my MacPro, I will often have my 17" PowerBook open to the websites I need for information. So, using a G4 to access that info through a web browser kind of puts the lie to "distraction-free" because it can't access the internet.
Yeah…
Once you get the feel for a dual screen setup, you can never go back.Well…here's a thing.
When writing using my MacPro, will often have my 17" PowerBook open to the websites I need for information. So, using a G4 to access that info through a web browser kind of puts the lie to "distraction-free" because it can't access the internet.
Yeah…
Legit though, I've done literally the same between my Ryzen desktop and my MDD, even though the MDD is connected to its screen through a kvm switch, and the Ryzen desktop has more than enough power to do everything on its own. There's something to be said for using two screens with seperate computers that don't share anything.
Beyond that, if you really want a distraction-free writing setup, there's always the good old word processor.
God only knows what format it outputs to on the floppy, but it's also an electric typewriter, so you have the best of both worlds. And there's absolutely no way to play doom on it, never mind reach google.
I really chuckled at this. I once had to write a paper on the effect of Israeli military operations in Gaza on Palestinian popular support of Hamas.
I read the entire Wikipedia page on wombats.
Surely you meant to say triple-screen? And all 4K or higher of courseOnce you get the feel for a dual screen setup, you can never go back.
Yep - I like to use my phone to have Spotify or YouTube audio playing while working - don't want to "clog up" my computers with that.
So... even six screens on the Pro aren't enough
Once you get the feel for a dual screen setup, you can never go back.
I've had dual and even tripple monitor setups in the past, and I always went back to one. If I worked in graphic arts or something like that I may have stayed with more.
The first time I tried dual monitors just for fun ages ago, I couldn't make sense of it. My work flow didn't need them. But now I always need to have several windows open, and "spaces" just aren't as good as having everything viewable at once.
Nah, just lazy.So... even six screens on the Pro aren't enough
I like to have my browser on the main display. I also like to have the word processor on the main display. And I don't like shifting either one.
With the PB sitting to my left I don't have to compromise, LOL!
Yeah, I've been using a single 1920x1200 for so long that I'm actually super efficient within those pixels. When I've had more that one I also felt it was just more than I needed.
Plus I have 2 brand new extras of the same monitors just sitting in the boxes still, as they are for when the current 3 year old U2415 gives out. Dell had a sale, so I couldn't resist. So I could easily have triple identical monitors if I wanted.
What you could try - and what initially sold me on having more than one - is using another monitor in portrait mode. It's just awesome for working with lots of text, reading websites and the like.
