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Project Alice

macrumors 68020
Jul 13, 2008
2,092
2,174
Post Falls, ID
Only the 15 inch 2010 and the 2011 macbook Pros have these issues. Not too many problems with the non-retina 2012 or 2015.
That comment was from 2018.

The late 2007 and early 2008 MBPs have GPU failure problems. But they are replaceable.
The 2010s are safe. The 2011s are an absolute fail, with no revised chip available; effectively turning them into a glorified shintel HD MacBook (non-Pro).
 
I've never understood why ExpressCard was replaced by the SD card in the 2009 15". I get that the SD card is more popular to creators than ExpressCard but ExpressCard provides future-proofing the system as you have a slot where you can put I/O that was never meant to be on that computer.

It is quite likely because:

A) it was cheaper to equip with an SD slot (which had next to no moving parts relative to an ExpressPort slot);

B) it was more likely to be recognized by shoppers as a “must-have” feature they’d more likely use in the near future or more readily use;

C) the 15-inch model by that point in the product’s evolution — June 2009 — was being marketed as more of a prosumer system, an “upgrade” from the newly-introduced 13-inch model (“re-purposed from a MacBook”, rather than “newly-introduced”, is more precise here), and less so a professional or business-oriented one such as the much more spendy 17-inch model; and

D) referring back to A, to be able to offer it for significantly less to “prosumers” who wanted something better than a 1280x800 glossy-only display (the late ’08 15-inch base price was USD$1,999 and the mid ’09 replacing it started at $1,699) was a more attractive proposition.
 

UH8183

macrumors member
Jul 27, 2021
30
15
I'm typing on my G4 now, I could use it for everything except internet stuff. I am using ten four fox. I keep it set up and just have to switch my monitor from DVI to VGA to use it.
 
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Mercedes33

macrumors member
Aug 15, 2021
46
28
Germany
hey
Yeah im using my Powermac G5 Quad 2,5ghz as my daily. I watch Yt on my cinema display and i work a lot of with emails and Word. Sometimes i play on a minecraft Server and play Halo. Last week i filled new liquid in my Watercoolingsystem and yeah my G5 is running fast and quiet again. Love to see i am not the only one how is using his maschine until today! I am running on Mac os Leopard
 

lepidotós

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2021
677
750
Marinette, Arizona
Yeah, though mostly out of a lack of alternative while I'm in the middle of waiting for a house to come up; I'm at a relative's in the meantime and my ""modern"", decade-old HP PowerPoint machine that runs Windows Vista SP2.5 is buried deep in a pile of junk my mother keeps around. And it's not with any "distraction-free" caveats -- I have plenty of distraction, including a port of the original Sims that runs like total garbage. I have an iBook G3 900MHz that I'm using to write stories and listen to music with and all that, and occasionally go online for light tasks. It's on 10.3, but I'm headed to pick up a 10.4/9.2.2 USB I got sent by a generous user of OS9L.
It honestly works just fine, and there isn't much I'm left wanting for. Classilla seems to be a decent, if sluggish and graphically glitchy browser when compared to Safari 1.3.2; Links is a good browser too (and even my preference) but some sites really hate it. There's even a port of GrafX2 for it.
To its side is a 450MHz Sawtooth. It's mostly stock right now, besides it having 704MB of RAM. On their way are a Radeon 9000 Pro and a Motorola PowerPC 7455 rated for 1GHz that I am going to use to make a homemade 750MHz CPU upgrade. It has a brand new hard drive that I'm going to split 72 for 9.2, 32 for 10.4, and 16 to test 10.6/whatever else, possibly mess around with Rhapsody or Haiku, which I already use on my Inspiron 2200.
A potential avenue to help PPC Macs thrive potentially into the next decade is to have a Raspberry Pi running a web browser that you pipe into your Mac. You can get a lot of mileage even out of 9.2 out of this (in fact, that's what was used to demonstrate it), and there's a Pi case that looks like a tiny G3 tower that could easily be a G4 with just a filament change. I want to get one in lime green and name it Little Mac -- I already have the Pi that I got essentially as a pity prize.
I genuinely just like Mac OS 9 and PowerPC. It's interesting, and OS 9 I feel could be refined to be the perfect home-user OS if ported to x86 or ARM due to how many resources it leaves to the actual programs, which is what people use computers for at the end of the day.
 
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Macbookprodude

Suspended
Jan 1, 2018
3,306
898
hey
Yeah im using my Powermac G5 Quad 2,5ghz as my daily. I watch Yt on my cinema display and i work a lot of with emails and Word. Sometimes i play on a minecraft Server and play Halo. Last week i filled new liquid in my Watercoolingsystem and yeah my G5 is running fast and quiet again. Love to see i am not the only one how is using his maschine until today! I am running on Mac os Leopard
How are you watching youtube on the Quad ? Not even the 2.5 quad can watch at 1440 or 1080p anymore like it used to. I don't think TenFiveTube allows even Quad to watch video higher than 720p. Sadly.
 

Macbookprodude

Suspended
Jan 1, 2018
3,306
898
Yeah, though mostly out of a lack of alternative while I'm in the middle of waiting for a house to come up; I'm at a relative's in the meantime and my ""modern"", decade-old HP PowerPoint machine that runs Windows Vista SP2.5 is buried deep in a pile of junk my mother keeps around. And it's not with any "distraction-free" caveats -- I have plenty of distraction, including a port of the original Sims that runs like total garbage. I have an iBook G3 900MHz that I'm using to write stories and listen to music with and all that, and occasionally go online for light tasks. It's on 10.3, but I'm headed to pick up a 10.4/9.2.2 USB I got sent by a generous user of OS9L.
It honestly works just fine, and there isn't much I'm left wanting for. Classilla seems to be a decent, if sluggish and graphically glitchy browser when compared to Safari 1.3.2; Links is a good browser too (and even my preference) but some sites really hate it. There's even a port of GrafX2 for it.
To its side is a 450MHz Sawtooth. It's mostly stock right now, besides it having 704MB of RAM. On their way are a Radeon 9000 Pro and a Motorola PowerPC 7455 rated for 1GHz that I am going to use to make a homemade 750MHz CPU upgrade. It has a brand new hard drive that I'm going to split 72 for 9.2, 32 for 10.4, and 16 to test 10.6/whatever else, possibly mess around with Rhapsody or Haiku, which I already use on my Inspiron 2200.
A potential avenue to help PPC Macs thrive potentially into the next decade is to have a Raspberry Pi running a web browser that you pipe into your Mac. You can get a lot of mileage even out of 9.2 out of this (in fact, that's what was used to demonstrate it), and there's a Pi case that looks like a tiny G3 tower that could easily be a G4 with just a filament change. I want to get one in lime green and name it Little Mac -- I already have the Pi that I got essentially as a pity prize.
I genuinely just like Mac OS 9 and PowerPC. It's interesting, and OS 9 I feel could be refined to be the perfect home-user OS if ported to x86 or ARM due to how many resources it leaves to the actual programs, which is what people use computers for at the end of the day.
Plus, OS 9 made it feel like a true Mac :)
 
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lepidotós

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2021
677
750
Marinette, Arizona
Plus, OS 9 made it feel like a true Mac :)
Don't get me wrong, I really like NeXTSTEP. I even use WindowMaker as my usual DE in Linux alongside MATE, having as much screen real estate for programs as I can is nice on a 15" CRT and having menus torn off and sitting on my desktop is incredibly useful. But Mac OS 10.3 just feels markedly... less aimed directly at home users. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, but the ways in which they did dumb it down all feel like they were out of touch with the ever-growing competency of home computer users. Like having to put in a password just to boot into OS 9, or to change the time zone, which isn't some unusual thing that happens rarely enough to warrant it. It's not like dumbing things down is bad, I'm happy whenever an OS includes a package manager, and I don't actually enjoy using the terminal for hours on end, but there's an art to dumbing your OS down that you'd imagine Apple of all companies would be keenly aware of.
If they were gonna keep some of NeXTSTEP's open-air edges, they should have gone even further and kept more of the cool useful stuff like tearaway menus.
 
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Mercedes33

macrumors member
Aug 15, 2021
46
28
Germany
How are you watching youtube on the Quad ? Not even the 2.5 quad can watch at 1440 or 1080p anymore like it used to. I don't think TenFiveTube allows even Quad to watch video higher than 720p. Sadly.
720p is possible . 1080p is a Butt struggling. I used to watch in 720p
 

m1maverick

macrumors 65816
Nov 22, 2020
1,368
1,267
To its side is a 450MHz Sawtooth. It's mostly stock right now, besides it having 704MB of RAM. On their way are a Radeon 9000 Pro and a Motorola PowerPC 7455 rated for 1GHz that I am going to use to make a homemade 750MHz CPU upgrade. It has a brand new hard drive that I'm going to split 72 for 9.2, 32 for 10.4, and 16 to test 10.6/whatever else, possibly mess around with Rhapsody or Haiku, which I already use on my Inspiron 2200.
I wasn't aware there was a way to get Snow Leopard running on PPC systems. Has that changed?
 

Abramski

macrumors newbie
Jun 14, 2016
9
24
Well, it's already 2022, boy does the time passes fast! I am typing this on my trusty old PowerBook G3 pismo 500Mhz. My dad's old machine he bought new in 2000, he used the heck out of it, it went everywhere with him, and he used it for a long time. When he gave this machine to me, it was in very bad shape, port door was missing, hard drive dead, optical drive dead, battery dead, screen was super red and never fully recovered, leaving a slight pink hue on the screen and the keyboard had half the keys that didn't respond. I did my best to restore this machine back to working order, i changed the screen and keyboard, i installed a new hdd and a dvd writer with the original bezel back in place, i crafted a portdoor i took off from a dead wallstreet, i had to file it down to fit the pismo, but it worked out, you have to look very close to see that the door isn't original. I even installed brand new cells in the batttery! The laptop is working fine now, nice bright screen, solid keyboard feel (one of the best to type on IMA) and the battery is going strong! 3 hours and 45 minutes on a single charge is pretty impressive! It's obviously not my daily driver, but i use it often, very often, especially if i need to write a letter or something, i have office 2008 which can use the docx extension so it can be opened on any pc or mac! I love this mac and i will continue to use it for as long as i can. If my house was on fire and i could only grab 1 machine, this is the one i take without a doubt!
 
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