The way we talk on the Internet fundamentally changed over the past 20 years. When I came online through AOL in the mid 1990s there were chat rooms and instant messaging clients. I still remember the *beep* of my ICQ client when receiving a message all those years after.
Tag Archives: PowerPC
If you’re a loyal Low End Mac user, chances are you’ve heard of TenFourFox, the popular Firefox fork for PowerPC Macs. Few, however, have heard of TenFourFoxBox, a program for your OS X 10.4 or 10.5 PowerPC Macintosh that turns ordinary websites into web apps. While it does not require you to run TenFourFox alongside it, […]
Nearly a decade has has passed since the last run of PowerPC Macs hit Apple’s store shelves and provided us with one last hurrah on “thinking different” and being part of the trope of “crazy ones” who simply would not conform to the norm.
With the Motorola 680×0 architecture running out of steam and Motorola’s 88000 making haste slowly, Apple had to look a bit further afield for its next processor architecture. Here’s how IBM’s RISC project became the heart of the Mac.
Put simply, you can’t. With the introduction of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in August 2009, Apple removed all support for PowerPC Macs from its operating system. You cannot run OS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, or 10.10 on G5 Macs or anything earlier. They will only run on Intel x86 hardware.
Many people describe their first experience of using an Apple computer as “uplifting”, “simple”, and “straightforward”, but despite being a die-hard Mac user now, I found it very different.
The future of PowerPC web browsing is looking even bleaker with the recent announcement of no plugin support in future releases of TenFourFox.
Following up on from some articles I wrote about TenFourFox, a port of Firefox 10 for PowerPC Macs, it would appear that Cameron Kaiser and his team are not the only ones still developing browsers for PowerPC (PPC) Macs. A reader pointed out another: SeaMonkey.
I love the Classic Mac OS, the Mac operating system prior to Mac OS X. Mac OS 8 has to be one of favourite classic OSes.
I had some video files I needed burning to a DVD-video yesterday, so started looking around for something free, and I stumbled across a superb little application called Burn.
Six years after Apple switched to Intel, I am finally back owning one, but sadly leaving the PowerPC Mac world behind. In 2006, I became one the first to jump to Intel with a 1.83 GHz iMac. It replaced my 1 GHz G4 eMac, and the difference was amazing. The sheer processing speed of the new […]
I spent all day arguing with my fellow local Mac group members about Apple’s decision to release another version of OS X less than twelve months after Lion – and the rapid pace at which Apple is making Macs outdated. Then it suddenly struck me: Why am I bothered? I’m not going to be in the […]
2012 – Remember the early 1990s, when we found out about QuickTime and were all so excited about viewing five-second low-resolution clips on our Macs? We could finally play video on our computers! I remember it like it was yesterday. A new project for Mac OS 8-9 brought back those sweet memories: Cornica.org. What Is Cornica? […]
Whenever a new version of Mac OS X is released, it is always debated whether it is an improvement over the previous version and whether it could slow down your machine, particularly if you are not running the latest hardware.
Charles W Moore raises a good point in Thoughts on Using Older Macs as Work Machines: As much as we may love our old Macs, some of them just don’t have what it takes to be productive in the wired and wireless world of the Internet today.
Web browsing on older Macs is harder. How long can the PowerPC platform survive? I use my iBook for web work and writing – nothing heavy – but this is becoming more and more tricky as each month passes.
I am still enjoying the announcements from this year’s WWDC. The details about iOS 5 sound great, pushing Apple further forward in the portable world. iOS 5 got me thinking about the PowerPC platform.
I leapfrog from browser to browser, checking out latest releases and trying to find the fastest and most stable version on my older PowerPC Macs (my current workhorse is a 500 MHz TiBook). But what about Safari, Apples offering to the browser market?
Low End Mac users are always looking for ways to get better performance out of their aging machines. Most of these machines are used for web browsing, and this is one of the areas that lower spec’d machines suffer in.
It has been a roller coaster of computing in my life recently. About 18 months ago, after 10 years of being a hard-core dedicated Mac user, I decided that I wanted to try something else. Linux.
How do you run three operating systems on a PowerPC Mac, especially when one of those is Linux? This tutorial will show you how.
Is Ubuntu a realistic alternative to Mac OS X? For some it could be, but your experience will differ if you have a PowerPC Mac or an Intel Mac. But does it match up to Mac OS X?
2009 – Low End Mac colleague Simon Royal says he didn’t believe the rumors last year that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard would be Intel only. I have to say that at the early point when it was reported that alpha builds of Snow Leopard were being seeded to developers as Intel-only software, the proverbial […]
In late 2008, I wrote an article about the future of PowerPC Macs, The Future of PowerPC Macs and Software as Snow Leopard Approaches. Well, all the rumours have been put to bed: Apple have announced the next version of Mac OS X, and it isn’t looking good for PowerPC users.
2009 – Brooke Crothers of CNET News states that the “PowerPC platform never lived up to the hype” and “the PowerPC platform had really failed long before 2005.” The evidence: the fact that Apple switched to Intel in 2006 and that some of the first-generation dual-processor G4 Power Macs ran hot. I beg to differ.
Apple announced the next version of Mac OS X, code named “Snow Leopard”, about six months ago. Information regarding it has been vague – even the official 10.6 Snow Leopard site doesn’t really tell you much.
2008 – There has been lots of talk on various Apple discussion websites and Mac mailing lists that I subscribe to about how Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is not geared towards PowerPC Macs and was developed with Intel Macs in mind. I disagree with this.
The future of PowerPC Macs has been in question since Apple moved to Intel processors in 2006.
2008: Has it really been five years since Apple introduced the Power Mac G5? Yes, and the new enclosure introduced on June 23, 2003, lives on as the housing of the Mac Pro.
