'Book Value

End of the Road in Sight for OS X Tiger and My Pismo PowerBooks

Charles Moore - 2012.06.21 - Tip Jar

Popularity:

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

The proverbial bell is tolling louder for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and PowerPC Macs.

19 months ago I was delighted to discover that the TenFourFox hack of post version 3.6 Firefox had given my two old Pismo PowerBooks Pismo PowerBook G3 (with upgraded memory, hard drives, and G4 CPUs) a new lease on life as production machines - no longer frontline road warriors to be sure, but still very useful as utility computers.

However, that appears to be coming to an end. With the past two or three builds of TenFourFox, these old PowerBooks are running slower and slower, to the point of near-unusability, with many minutes of spinning beach ball constipation. I've even resorted to ancient Netscape Navigator 9, which is a speedster by comparison. Unfortunately, it is also woefully out of date security-wise, lacks a bunch of features I've become accustomed to in TenFourFox and other more recent browsers, and has stability problems in the bargain. Not a satisfactory solution by any means.

I suppose I really can't complain. The Pismos are 12 years old, and OS X Tiger, introduced in April 2005, is soon to be four revisions out of date. It's actually quite remarkable that the party has lasted this long. Thanks are due to software developers like Trans-Tex Software's Tom Bender, who's kept my Tex-Edit Plus word cruncher standby current supporting a Tiger version, and special appreciation to the Dropbox folks for continuing to include Tiger support with their cloud service software upgrades.

On the other hand, Tiger support stopped at version 3.1 for Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler (it's now at 4.1 in Snow Leopard and Lion), another important tool in my production suite, although version 3.1 remains available for download - along with version 3.5.3, the last to work with OS X 10.5 Leopard - on the Bare Bones site.

It isn't that I have any particular sentimental attachment to OS X 10.4. It's a good operating system and rock solid on the Pismos, but I would happily run Leopard if it supported the Pismo. I'm aware that hacked installs are possible, but not without a degree of kludginess that I would find unacceptable on a work tool.

I'll continue working around the increasing angularities for a while yet, but browser support is really key. Not too ancient versions of Opera and OmniPage help, but they aren't really the answer that TenFourFox had been until recently.

However, when I finally do upgrade my anchor Mac (something I've been able to/obliged to push back thanks to purchasing an iPad 2), my current number-one Late 2008 Aluminum Unibody MacBook will get demoted to the role currently being filled by the Pismos, and the old black 'Books will finally be put out to pasture. I'm doubtful that the computer universe will see the likes of 12 year laptops again.

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, use our Google+ page, or read our RSS news feed

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column was a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: PowerBook 165c, introduced 1993.02.10. The first color PowerBook had an attractive screen, slow graphics.
May 25 in LEM history: 99: OS X and the econoMac - iMac iMpact - 00: Is a Mac better than a PC? - 01: 1993: PowerBook vs. ThinkPad - Old files on a new Mac - 05: Mac minis in classroom a big hit - Of mice and keyboards - 06: The best 'Book for my needs - 07: More RAM vs. matched RAM - Running OS X from flash memory
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Opinions expressed are those of their authors and may not reflect the opinion of Cobweb Publishing. Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all.
Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2013 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, Mac Pro, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it, and we don't share the information we have with others. For more details, see our Terms of Use.