We've received a lot of email about the "Bastard
Offspring" column published on Thursday (subsequently removed at the
correspondent's request). We're holding them for Monday,
when we'll publish an exceptionally long Mailbag column. dk - Tip Jar
Road Apple Nominations
From a reader who wishes to remain anonymous:
Dan,
Some Road Apples not featured in your list that I think should be
are the following:
No FireWire ports meant backup was slow and cumbersome and made
installation of Mac OS X 10.4 absurdly difficult in these models:
- The iMac G3 Rev C, Rev D, and 350 MHz models. Rev A and B at least
had a Sonnet upgrade available for them to go to FireWire, which the
others did not and Mezzanine slot possible video card add-on meaning an
external display could be added to be able to overcome firmware updates
blinding your iMac forever to have no display.
- The iBook G3 300 MHz, 366 MHz, and 466 MHz.
- The G4 Mac mini - not able to be upgraded beyond 1 GB of RAM meant
for many applications, it came with insufficient RAM.
- All Core Duo and Core Solo processor Intel Macs. Not until the
Core 2 Duo did Apple's Macs regain their 64 bitness. It was two steps
down from the G4 and G5 which were 64 bit. This meant Rosetta had no G4
nor G5 optimizations making Rosetta much slower than the Macs that
preceded them in the same lineup. And Leopard won't be able to run at
full speed.
Sincerely,
anonymous
Anonymous,
Our original definition of Road Apples was Macs that
were deliberately compromised for no good reason (or no reason other
than marketing).
iMac Rev. A-D
In many ways, the
iMac was the successor to the earliest Macs: It was designed to be
expanded through peripherals not internally. Although the 233 MHz iMacs
had a mezzanine slot, Apple never supported its use, and eliminating it
helped keep the cost of the Rev. C and D down. Apple's only big design
mistake with the tray-loading iMacs was that you had to disassemble the
whole thing to upgrade RAM.
I can't fault these iMacs for not including FireWire,
as there were no Macs with FireWire when the first iMac came to market.
Adding FireWire would have necessitated a motherboard redesign, which
Apple postponed until the tray-loading "Kihei" models came to market.
(The Sonnet
Harmoni upgrade (US$200) puts a 600 MHz G3 and FireWire into any
Rev. A-D iMac, not just Rev. A and B.)
The tray-loading iMacs were never supported in Tiger,
making it a moot point. There's not enough reason to call these Road
Apples.
iMac 350
That said, I'll give you the iMac 350. It uses exactly the same motherboard
and case as the 400 MHz and faster slot-loading iMacs, and leaving out
FireWire was a marketing decision that made it easier for Apple to bump
buyers up to the next model.
Clamshell iBooks
In retrospect, we can fault the early iBooks for a small screen and having
only a single USB port, but at the time it wasn't really considered
compromised by anyone. Two USB ports would have been nice, and the
second generation clamshells gained FireWire.
Mac mini G4
The entire Mac mini
design was and still is compromised by Apple's (read: Steve Jobs')
decision that it had to be as small at practical, forcing the use of
more costly, sometimes slower notebook components. And not leaving
enough room for two sticks of RAM. And making it seem ridiculously
overpriced compared to less costly, more expandable (not to mention
uglier) Windows PCs.
As it was designed for the consumer market, though, I
can't say that a 1 GB RAM ceiling is a real drawback. At least it
didn't surrender 64-80 MB of that memory for video, as the Intel-based
Mac mini does.
All First Generation Intel Macs
There are costs to being an early adopter, and Intel's
failure to make the Core Solo and Duo 64-bit processors was one of
them. That said, the Mac OS has never been a 64-bit OS, although Tiger
does have a little 64-bitness about it (it can access more than
4 GB of RAM, but no program can access more than 4 GB).
[Corrected from reading 2 GB.]
This won't ever be a factor for the vast majority of
users, as Tiger is a wonderful operating system and Leopard will
transparently run on both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware. The only Macs
were we can expect this to be a factor are the Mac Pro and Xserve, both
of which were delayed until Intel had released the 64-bit Core 2
CPUs.
I will have to sit down and write Road Apple articles
about the 350 MHz iMacs and the Mac mini....
Dan
OS X 10.5 and Mirror Drive Door Power Macs
From Joe Leo:
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the article on the Power Mac G4s. It's comforting to know
that it's still a contender for the latest and greatest from Apple, I
mean, OS X v 10.5.
It's the first "big purchase" I ever made . . . applied
for a new credit card just so I could get it. At the time, I was doing
lots of video work, and the tools I had just weren't cutting it
anymore. I went for the top of the line (at the time) 1.42 GHz, Dual
Processors and got it from Power
Max in Oregon, as an Apple Certified Reconditioned unit. (Went from
a Power Mac G3 AIO, to an iMac G3 400 MHz, to the Pismo PowerBook, then to an iMac G4 800 MHz that was purchased for me,
then to the G4 MDD).
I had the chance to get a single processor Power Mac G5, which I
think was 1.6 GHz. The G5 dual processor was beyond my range ($). But I
wanted to run OS 9 in native mode, since I had a lot of those
applications still in use, so I went for the G4 line. And I didn't like
how the G5s looked, not to mention how the monitors didn't match at the
time. But?? I was misinformed! The ones that ran OS 9 in native
mode were the newer ones that Apple had released without the FireWire
800.
So I was bummed, but you know what? That machine was what immersed
me in the world of OS X (now that I think of it, I should really
be writing about this on "my" site, ha ha). Why? I hated OS X at
the time. I believe it was still Jaguar. I liked the eye candy of
OS X but found it hard to navigate. Sounds like a bluff, but no
kidding. And since this was my new computer, I was forced to learn it
and get used to it.
The iMac G4 that was bought for my use, prior to that big purchase,
was a huge step from all the ones I had, but even that wasn't cutting
it either (800 MHz) and that was why I took the plunge. You can guess
which OS that I preferred to use on that iMac G4 . . . Mac
OS 9!
Of course, the Dual MDD is starting to show its age with newer
applications that must use Intel processors, or even those that can run
on PowerPC chips but require the G5s. But for "average/everyday"
things, it's still blazing fast! I just hope that when I do get Leopard
that it will still be snappy. It's maxed out at 2 GB of RAM, has
various drives in it with different buses (PCI cards), and I plunked
down $400+ for an ATI Radeon 9700 card so that I could run Motion for
my video projects.
Like you said, getting high-end video cards is hard. I searched
eBay, the Internet, for weeks until I got a solid hit. It was ApplePalace.com that had my video card,
and it cost a pretty penny. (All the ones on eBay were fake, in that in
order to use it, you had to flash it, or wasn't even compatible, and I
didn't want to take a risk.) There was no way I could've asked for the
upgrade when I bought it, because it was a reconditioned unit.
Thankfully, they had the OEM part in stock.
I've been tempted to see what I can do with upgrading the processor,
but at this time, nothing really beneficial for the price, as you
pointed out too.
Anyway, long live the Power Mac G4 for its elegance, style, and
shape. And? For forcing me to use OS X. If not for that purchase,
I probably never would've enjoyed the world of OS X and quite
possibly would still be using OS 9. Seriously! Or at least, G4
Macs in Classic mode, fearing to ever touch OS X. =)
Joe Leo,
Columnist
PBCentral.com
Joe,
Thanks for writing. You bring back memories of my own
transition to OS X in the version 10.2 era. It ran nicely on my
late 400 MHz PowerBook G4, but it was very
different and not as responsive as OS 9. Today I can't imagine
going back to OS 9.
There is no economic reason to upgrade your 1.42 GHz
machine to dual 1.8 GHz, as you would lose the Level 3 cache and gain
very little real processing power. At $600 and a gain of maybe 25% on
the most optimized applications, it just doesn't make sense.
I plan on using my dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4 for quite a
while. I'm sure I'll put Leopard on a partition just to play with it,
but it won't be my production OS for quite some time. The usable
lifespan of these Macs is just incredible!
Dan
UMPCs a Threat to Apple?
From John Pugh:
Dan,
Love the site! Still humming along on a 400 MHz iMac, but I'm eyeing my wife's G4
PowerBook with envy these days.
Regarding "UMPCs a Threat to Apple?"
I'm with you all the way - I'd be the first in line if Apple would
release a stripped-down tablet with flash-only memory 8 hours of
battery life. Throw in a SD card slot for additional memory, WiFi, and
Bluetooth and I'd be in heaven. All the pieces are in place, and I
think the market is more than ready for a what would essentially be a
beefed up iTouch.
My wife and I paddled the Mississippi River in 2005, and I did a
fair amount of my rough drafts for my book using an old Handspring PDA
and folding keyboard. I've also thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, and
wrote a series of newspaper articles while on both trips. I'd love to
have a better system of writing and sending in photos while out on an
expedition and have seriously considered going the Palm Treo / folding
keyboard combo for the next trip.
If you're interested, you can check out everything we used for
Writing on the River online.
Take care,
John Pugh
John,
Yeah, all the pieces are there. The way Apple has
always been defining markets (Lisa and Macintosh, Newton, iPod, iTunes,
and now the iPhone) and generally becoming the player to be reckoned
with, if and when Apple decides to produce something between the
iPhone/iPod touch and MacBook, you can bet they'll redefine the Tablet
PC and PDA worlds in one fell swoop.
As cool as the iPhone's onscreen keyboard is, I think
the limiting factor is how small a keyboard you can comfortably type
on.
Dan
Dan,
I agree on the keyboard size - I'd hate to type anything other than
a short email on them. I've had great luck with the Targus folding
keyboard to punch out some real writing. You can't beat putting your
whole writing system in a couple of pockets and hacking out a few
hundred words anytime you get an extra couple of minutes. Make it play
pretty with Google Docs, and I
don't think I'd ever use a laptop for day-to-day use.
Taking electronics on these long expeditions is always a mixed bag.
It's great to get words on (virtual) paper and out in the public's
hands in almost real time, but man the other issues are a pain -
battery life, recharging, weatherproofness, and of course the money to
buy it all. I'd much rather replace a $200 PDA than a $2,000
tablet.
My world for a 2007 Newton!
Take care,
John
John,
I think the ideal for portability would have a screen
no bigger than required for the keyboard and a small touchpad. :-)
Dan
Broken Power Button on iMac G3
From RolfWrenWalsh:
Dan,
First, I just want to say I've been visiting your site for years and
absolutely love it. However, I need your help with my iMac G3.
Hopefully you can help.
I just got my iMac yesterday, and after testing everything worked, I
swapped hard drives, for a newer, faster 80 GB.
After getting it all put back together, I plug it all in, and press
the power button. Nothing, and the button seems jammed. No big deal, I
thought, I'll just take it apart real quick and fix it. Lifting the
iMac up, I hear a bit of rattling inside. I'm thinking, "Oh, it must be
that loose screw I lost. I'll probably need that." I open up my iMac
and see thousands of tiny pieces of plastic everywhere. Turns out, the
plastic that goes with the spring (inside the iMac case) to press the
power switch, was completely destroyed.
Any idea what I can do? This is really upsetting me.
I did a little research on Google, and broken power
buttons don't seem to be rare on iMacs, especially the first generation
of slot-loading models. One suggested fix is to use a USB keyboard that
has its own power button. Science
Man actually recommends putting a sticker over the power button so
you will be forced to use the one on the keyboard.
If you don't have such a keyboard, We Love Macs sells the
onCue Start-Up Key, a USB device, for $14.99 (a used keyboard may be
cheaper).
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
