Recycled Computing

I've Got the PowerPC Blues

- 2010.09.16

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Short link: http://bit.ly/bmzqlj

"Oh, no, momma can this really be the end?
To be stuck inside of Apple with the PowerPC Blues again?"

Bob Dylan, the prophet from Hibbing, Minnesota, was not this accurate, but the handwriting has been on the wall long enough that it's impossible to erase.

It's Intel, PowerPC fans, and you're stuck with it.

I own a couple of PowerPC icons in the Apple lexicon of laptops. I have my ever-faithful Pismo G3 with two bad batteries and a homemade DVD burner. My current computer is a 12" PowerBook G4.

In order to keep up to date, I am going to have to my hands on an Intel Mac one of these fine days.

PowerPC Support Is Disappearing

Firefox is the latest to announce that it is abandoning the PowerPC processor (version 3.6 is the last to support Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and recent 4.0 betas only partially work on PowerPC Macs). Chrome, my favorite Internet browser, is not available for PowerPC processors, so I am left with Safari.

When will Safari reach the point where it is not updated for the G3, G4, and G5 brethren?

iTunes Has Abandoned the G3

Apple already have with iTunes support. I recently updated my PowerBook to iTunes 10, because Steve Jobs told me to.

It happens to me every time I watch one of his keynotes. I want to buy a new iPod touch, but then I learned that the camera is not as good as the one in the iPhone. Guess I'll have to watch the next keynote to see if Apple corrects this oversight and introduces an iPod touch with an iPhone camera.

What was I talking about? Boy, did I get off topic.

Anyway, my PowerBook G4 has the firepower to run iTunes 10, but Apple also had a link for Mac G3 owners. I followed it, and it took me to iTunes 8.21. Apparently, Apple feels that G3 users can't run any version of iTunes higher than that - starting with iTunes 9, a G4 has been mandatory.*

This looks like a banzai challenge to me.

Let's just fire up the old Pismo. Okay, so much for the challenge. iTunes 10 needs to have OS X 10.5 Leopard to install, and Leopard requires a G4 or newer. Darn.

At least I can get iTunes 8.21 into the old Pismo and can do Home Sharing between computers. But I just can't get that Intel feeling out of my soul.

That Intel Feeling

My wife has an Intel MacBook, my kids have Intel MacBooks, and the dog and I are the only ones without an Intel Mac. Other people are watching Hulu, but not me.

"The times they are a-changin' "

That's enough with the sixties references.

If only Apple made an Intel Pismo.

* Publisher's note: For the record, iTunes 10 is compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and requires at least a 1 GHz Intel or AMD x86 CPU. This means that a mid-2000 (when the Pentium III hit 1 GHz) Windows PC is capable of running iTunes 10, as is a 1999 Power Mac G4, but a 2003 900 MHz iBook G3 is not. dk

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Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: PowerBook 500 Series, introduced 1994.05.16. 'Blackbird' includes a 25 to 33 MHz 68040 along with smart batteries and grayscale or color displays.
May 16 in LEM history: 98: iMac reconsidered - 01: The exclusivist Mac - Cubed - Troubleshooting - 02: SE/30 catharsis - Microsoft free - 03: SCSI and OS X on a beige G3 - 05: Failures: Apple III and Lisa - Bigger, faster, more - 06: MacBook - PowerBook 3400 still useful - 07: 3 GB in a MacBook - 08: Mac Pro beats HP and Dell - Limited USB power in Santa Rosa Macs
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