Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Are you happy with PPC?
- Thread starter BoA*
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I even find that my 12" iBook isn't much slower than the 1.67GHz Powerbook I owned and cost less than half the price!plinkoman said:yes, I am perfectly happy with PPC; why wouldn't I be? I don't care what benchmarks you want to show me, the truth is my PowerBook is not that much slower than a core duo. for everyday tasks it is unnoticeable, and for photoshop, mine is still faster.
I think it just comes down to what you're using it for.
I voted yes. Why wouldnt i be happy with the G4 tech that powers my powerbook 1.25.
But I am looking to upgrade soon to the new macbook pro with Core 2 Duo.
Why? because there is more power to do things, and do things with windows if god forbid i need to. to be honest, that would likely only come if there is a game i want to use isnt on the mac yet.
but for most work items, it works great.
it isnt that im unhappy with my powerbook, it is just getting a bit beat up.
But I am looking to upgrade soon to the new macbook pro with Core 2 Duo.
Why? because there is more power to do things, and do things with windows if god forbid i need to. to be honest, that would likely only come if there is a game i want to use isnt on the mac yet.
but for most work items, it works great.
it isnt that im unhappy with my powerbook, it is just getting a bit beat up.
hell no.
It was good, but seeing that the intel Macs can now replace 2 machines in one fell swoop then BAM. save power, save money, save desk space.
It's a shame I still have to use Windows but I do. And I can't bloody wait to get rid of my horrible laptop.
It was good, but seeing that the intel Macs can now replace 2 machines in one fell swoop then BAM. save power, save money, save desk space.
It's a shame I still have to use Windows but I do. And I can't bloody wait to get rid of my horrible laptop.
For most things my G4 mac mini 1.42 is fast enough, but:
1) it has trouble playing h.264 movies sometimes
2) too slow in P.S. CS2, especially if iTunes is playing (sometimes I shut it off and plug the iPod into the speakers)
I'm switching to Intel, soon. Just waiting for the new MBPs to come out and then I'll decide between them and an iMac.
1) it has trouble playing h.264 movies sometimes
2) too slow in P.S. CS2, especially if iTunes is playing (sometimes I shut it off and plug the iPod into the speakers)
I'm switching to Intel, soon. Just waiting for the new MBPs to come out and then I'll decide between them and an iMac.
Grouping G3,G4 & G5 all under the label of PPC isnt fair. G3/G4 are pretty rock solid and I would vote yes but G5 is another ball game and would vote No.
Yeah, I'm happy.. but..
I just ran a test in Handbrake and my Macbook kicked it's fricken ass. I guess that's expected w/ dual core but:
iMac: Full DVD Rip Backup; Full Quality; 30 FPS; 1.5 Hours
MacBook: Full DVD Rip Backup; Full Quality; 70 FPS; 35 minutes.
I love me some macbook
oh yeah, specs:
iMac:
1.9GHz PPC G5
1.5GB RAM
MacBook
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
2GB RAM
I just ran a test in Handbrake and my Macbook kicked it's fricken ass. I guess that's expected w/ dual core but:
iMac: Full DVD Rip Backup; Full Quality; 30 FPS; 1.5 Hours
MacBook: Full DVD Rip Backup; Full Quality; 70 FPS; 35 minutes.
I love me some macbookoh yeah, specs:
iMac:
1.9GHz PPC G5
1.5GB RAM
MacBook
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
2GB RAM
I'm happy with my Rev. D iMac and Powerbook. PB does the job quite well in the Adobe CS area except for the lack of much ram. But I survive. Been meaning to take it in to have the screen looked at (white spots).
PPC computers are solid if nothing else...
I have two G4 machines, a mini 1.42 and 12" Powerbook 1.33. Both are very stable and capable machines. I also have a G3 PM 400 with 640 mb ram, which is good for what it does, a transcription station. It too is stable and the extra ram keeps things like scrolling through lists over the network smooth. I did upgrade the G3 to itunes 7, which was interesting. it works fine, but in the cd case view mode (or whatever it's called) even with that much ram it is slow and staggers/stutters. Maybe 7 was a bad idea. But it is rarely used for music anyway.
I always think that I should get an intel racehorse mac. But, for what I use them for, there is no good reason. Mostly word processing, surfing, and some iphoto/itunes. The G4's are reasonably good at iMovie, good enough for most users probably. I bought an intel macbook for my son, which is definitely faster and seems stable, too. No problems at all, as far as I know. I rarely get to use it unless he brings it home from college.... "dad, how do I....."
I have two G4 machines, a mini 1.42 and 12" Powerbook 1.33. Both are very stable and capable machines. I also have a G3 PM 400 with 640 mb ram, which is good for what it does, a transcription station. It too is stable and the extra ram keeps things like scrolling through lists over the network smooth. I did upgrade the G3 to itunes 7, which was interesting. it works fine, but in the cd case view mode (or whatever it's called) even with that much ram it is slow and staggers/stutters. Maybe 7 was a bad idea. But it is rarely used for music anyway.
I always think that I should get an intel racehorse mac. But, for what I use them for, there is no good reason. Mostly word processing, surfing, and some iphoto/itunes. The G4's are reasonably good at iMovie, good enough for most users probably. I bought an intel macbook for my son, which is definitely faster and seems stable, too. No problems at all, as far as I know. I rarely get to use it unless he brings it home from college.... "dad, how do I....."
I am going out of my way to stay PPC. Just bought a new with full warranty PPC 1.5ghz silent upgrade mini with BT/APX/Superdrive; just bought a new 12" Powerbook 1.5ghz w/Superdrive - dropping the same 100gb 7200rpm Travelstar hard drive in each machine and maxing out ram on both.
Just not interested in the Intels until they lose that Rosetta thing. ALso, Microsoft Word doesn't run any faster on any machine I've used from G3s to G5s and I have owned the gamut of PPCs in the past seventeen years.
People NEVER talk about Word for the Mac, and yet I need this app more than any other.
I will never forget my biggest Apple jump from a 1993 LCIII and a 1994 Powerbook 145b to a 2001 400mhz Titanium Powerbook G4
and guess what? In those seven or eight years, Word on the Mac was the SAME SPEED.
And it STILL IS.
I'll bet that Word on the Intel Macs runs the same speed as my year 1994 Powerbook 145b!!!
Anyone got any benchmarks? How come no one talks about this?
Just not interested in the Intels until they lose that Rosetta thing. ALso, Microsoft Word doesn't run any faster on any machine I've used from G3s to G5s and I have owned the gamut of PPCs in the past seventeen years.
People NEVER talk about Word for the Mac, and yet I need this app more than any other.
I will never forget my biggest Apple jump from a 1993 LCIII and a 1994 Powerbook 145b to a 2001 400mhz Titanium Powerbook G4
and guess what? In those seven or eight years, Word on the Mac was the SAME SPEED.
And it STILL IS.
I'll bet that Word on the Intel Macs runs the same speed as my year 1994 Powerbook 145b!!!
Anyone got any benchmarks? How come no one talks about this?
Anybody remember when Apple switched from the 68K chips to the PowerPC chips?
The PPC was smokin' fast, so long as you were running PPC native apps.. the problem was, everybody had thousands of dollars worth of 68K software and it had to run in 'emulation' mode to work on the PPC boxes.. and they were slow, slow, slow.
From what I understand, the transition to Intel chips has been smoother, but not all 'top tier' applications have been ported to 'native' Intel code, meaning you have to use 'Rosetta' which seems, at least in my mind, a 21st century way of saying 'emulation' mode.
Since i'm not a gamer, and after using OS X for the last year now, the thought of going back to XP makes me physically ill.. i'm perfectly happy with my little G4.
Maybe in a couple years, when everything is native, and they've worked the kinks out of the Intel transition i'll look into it.. but my next 'upgrade' will be either a faster G4 or G5.
For my purposes, I find two plus year old Mac technology is plenty fast.. and way cheaper.
The PPC was smokin' fast, so long as you were running PPC native apps.. the problem was, everybody had thousands of dollars worth of 68K software and it had to run in 'emulation' mode to work on the PPC boxes.. and they were slow, slow, slow.
From what I understand, the transition to Intel chips has been smoother, but not all 'top tier' applications have been ported to 'native' Intel code, meaning you have to use 'Rosetta' which seems, at least in my mind, a 21st century way of saying 'emulation' mode.
Since i'm not a gamer, and after using OS X for the last year now, the thought of going back to XP makes me physically ill.. i'm perfectly happy with my little G4.
Maybe in a couple years, when everything is native, and they've worked the kinks out of the Intel transition i'll look into it.. but my next 'upgrade' will be either a faster G4 or G5.
For my purposes, I find two plus year old Mac technology is plenty fast.. and way cheaper.
The only reason i upgraded to Intel was because my Imac G5 was scrapped by my insurance company when i sent it in for repair.
I wish i still had it, because it was a great machine.
I wish i still had it, because it was a great machine.
0010101 said:
It seems like it, but it isn't
Rosetta performs translation, not emulation. Sounds like a meaningless distinction, but it's incredibly important. Emulation would involve software running on the Intel processor which mimicing the behaviour of a PowerPC processor. Then, the PPC software runs atop this emulated processor. This is s..l..o..w! Rosetta does not work like this. It looks at the problem from the other side. It looks at what the PowerPC software is doing, and dynamically translates that into Intel instructions. The whole PowerPC architecture isn't emulated. Since all OS X apps are built upon OS X libraries, we already know how that code works, so Rosetta can very rapidly translate those PowerPC binaries to call OS X's Intel-based libraries.
Rosetta is simply astonishing considering the apparent complexity of the problem it solves. If I remember the benchmarks off the top of my head, PowerPC apps will run at least as fast on Intel machines as they would on current top-end PowerPC systems. Of course, the native versions would thrash the PowerPC equivalents. The one caveat regarding Rosetta is that it adds a RAM overhead to PowerPC apps, since it keeps a dynamic cache of each PPC app's translated instructions to optimise speed.
Regarding the topic of the poll, my MacBook Pro is absolutely perfect. Simply the best computer I've ever owned. My G4 Mac Mini is still every bit as capable as it was the day I bought it (well, moreso actually, since I fitted a replacement internal DVD drive that's a dual-layer burner). It's now found a home as a media centre machine in the living room.
The five most evil words ever written: "It runs fine in Rosetta". If anybody says that to me, I'll toss them off my balcony.
No, I'm not particularly happy with the stone-age architecture that is the PBG4, but I'd have to be crazier than son of sam to buy new hardware to run old software in emulation.
Office and Adobe are the major missing pieces, so when those get new Universal versions, that's when I will consider the Intel platform.
No, I'm not particularly happy with the stone-age architecture that is the PBG4, but I'd have to be crazier than son of sam to buy new hardware to run old software in emulation.
Office and Adobe are the major missing pieces, so when those get new Universal versions, that's when I will consider the Intel platform.
tristan said:
Wheeeeeeeee! *splat*
As I said, it's not emulation, it's translation. This is a very important distinction, which puts the PPC-to-Intel switch in an entirely different world to the 68k-to-PPC switch. The only noticeable sign that it's running as a translated process is above-usual memory use and an increased startup time (this startup delay is not reflected in normal use of the applications - responses once using the program are instantaneous.)
This might make you want to scrape up my remains and throw me from your balcony once more (just to make sure), but I'm a heavy user of Office and it honestly does run fine in Rosetta. The Adobe apps I have no direct experience with and so I won't comment.
This is no laughing matter, my friend. Emulation is pure evil. I will walk you through the philosophical underpinnings. When I'm finished, you will see that Rosetta is nothing less than a crime against humanity.
First, Rosetta *is* an emulator, even if Apple marketing doesn't like the word. I'm not even going to debate this, just go to Wikipedia and read up on Rosetta, dynamic binary translation, etc. Like every emulator, you pay a performance hit when you run an non-native app. This performance hit is about 50%. I won't debate this either, just go look at any of the benchmarks, like the Boot Camp vs OSX Photoshop benchmarks for example.
When you buy hardware that's two or three times as fast as your old computer, you don't expect it to run software at the same speed! But that's exactly what the situation is now, thanks to Rosetta.
Sure, an MBP probably runs software acceptably. But so does my PBG4 1.67ghz. In fact, a PBG4 1.67ghz will run MS Office *faster* than an 1.83ghz MBP! (See the MacTech benchmarks.) And a Mac Mini G4 will *smoke* any Intel machine in Photoshop.
The Core 2 Duo is an engineering miracle. There's no reason that someone who owns one should put up with performance on the level of a G4, thanks to a crippling emulator.
Well, at least Rosetta lets you run those old apps, even with degraded performance, right? WRONG! What if Rosetta was never released? What if Apple had just told their developers last year "Make your app universal or it won't run in six months." Everyone would have updated their app by now and the Intel machines would be the best performing systems ever made, rather than still getting owned by G4s.
First, Rosetta *is* an emulator, even if Apple marketing doesn't like the word. I'm not even going to debate this, just go to Wikipedia and read up on Rosetta, dynamic binary translation, etc. Like every emulator, you pay a performance hit when you run an non-native app. This performance hit is about 50%. I won't debate this either, just go look at any of the benchmarks, like the Boot Camp vs OSX Photoshop benchmarks for example.
When you buy hardware that's two or three times as fast as your old computer, you don't expect it to run software at the same speed! But that's exactly what the situation is now, thanks to Rosetta.
Sure, an MBP probably runs software acceptably. But so does my PBG4 1.67ghz. In fact, a PBG4 1.67ghz will run MS Office *faster* than an 1.83ghz MBP! (See the MacTech benchmarks.) And a Mac Mini G4 will *smoke* any Intel machine in Photoshop.
The Core 2 Duo is an engineering miracle. There's no reason that someone who owns one should put up with performance on the level of a G4, thanks to a crippling emulator.
Well, at least Rosetta lets you run those old apps, even with degraded performance, right? WRONG! What if Rosetta was never released? What if Apple had just told their developers last year "Make your app universal or it won't run in six months." Everyone would have updated their app by now and the Intel machines would be the best performing systems ever made, rather than still getting owned by G4s.
Even though it's over a year old, my mini still performs just as well as it did the day I got it. Even if I had an intel mini, it would still be doing the same exact stuff, just with 10.4 instead of 10.3.BoA* said:
Absolutely - it does all I ask it to do and more - just hope they don't drop support for them now that the intel's are all the rage...
I have a G4 iMac and up till recently, have never wanted another Mac. But with the 'switch to intel, the opportunity to run windows games, dual boot XP, AND a 24" iMac, I am in serious lust. The posterwho was looking to buy a G4... I will sell you mine.