Other Daily driving Mac OS Snow Leopard.

[PowerHarryG4]

With the recent release of PowerFox, is anyone now attempting to daily drive Snow Leopard?

I understand before this there were Firefox 45 based browsers available like Arctic Fox, so maybe some people have always continued to use Snow Leopard. If so, how has PowerFox improved compatibility for you on websites that you use?

I have a 2012 Mac Pro that I've installed 10.6 onto and I'm tempted to look into getting early 2011 Macbook Pro to see if I can use solely Snow Leopard for my home-computing purposes.

Also if I was going to do this, I'd like to login to my email on the default apple mail app - how risky would this be? Does anyone use this frequently?

 

[kencu]

Use it all day, every day, for many many years now. Runs PPC software via Rosetta. With Parallels running XP as well. And BasiliskII for MacOS9 68k, SheepShaver for MacOS9 PPC, and DosBox for old PC games like Lemmings.

With MacPorts installing libc++, you get access to tons of newer software too, new clang compilers, linkers, assemblers, Octave for math, tiff tools, pdf tools, ghostscript, most of it prebuilt at MacPorts and supported by them with fixes.

One system runs all the legacy software you probably ever care about, just beautifully.

Apple Mail and iCal connect to gmail no problem at all, using the app-specific password method to login.

Logging onto Apple’s imap and calendar servers not so easy, some say can be done, I don’t use it so don’t care.

 

[PowerHarryG4]

Use it all day, every day, for many many years now. Runs PPC software via Rosetta. With Parallels running XP as well. And BasiliskII for MacOS9 68k, SheepShaver for MacOS9 PPC, and DosBox for old PC games like Lemmings.

With MacPorts installing libc++, you get access to tons of newer software too, new clang compilers, linkers, assemblers, Octave for math, tiff tools, pdf tools, ghostscript, most of it prebuilt at MacPorts and supported by them with fixes.

One system runs all the legacy software you probably ever care about, just beautifully.

Apple Mail and iCal connect to gmail no problem at all, using the app-specific password method to login.

Logging onto Apple’s imap and calendar servers not so easy, some say can be done, I don’t use it so don’t care.

Thanks for the suggestion on the MacPorts tools. Have you run into situations where you can't do something or need a modern computer to complete something?

I use a lot fewer dedicated apps than I used to, so much more of what I need is simply in a browser.

I think the only situation I can think of where I may run into issues is modern formats like video files and images. I'd need to find a way to convert these so I can view them.

 

[kencu]

Oh, sure -- Apple TV, Apple News, some websites, lots of modern software, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, etc, etc -- I use a current MacOS system frequently.

But if you have a well-trodden workflow path that works nicely for you for doing certain tasks, as I do, it is very practical continue using SL as a system.

I might someday update my workflow to use newer tools and newer systems, but there would need to be some compelling argument to undertake that project, as what I do now works just fine for me.

 

[lowendlinux]

While I won't DD Snow with a modern browser it seems like my 2011 13MBP seems completely usable

 

[GalacticStag]

Oh, sure -- Apple TV, Apple News, some websites, lots of modern software, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, etc, etc -- I use a current MacOS system frequently.

But if you have a well-trodden workflow path that works nicely for you for doing certain tasks, as I do, it is very practical continue using SL as a system.

I might someday update my workflow to use newer tools and newer systems, but there would need to be some compelling argument to undertake that project, as what I do now works just fine for me.

for modern websites i personally use a win7 ultimate vm through parallels to use supermium!! but powerfox is quickly evolving, i hope it reaches the level of firefox dynasty soon!

 

[nickdalzell1]

I've been dailying Snow Leopard ever since I 'upgraded' from my M3 Air to a 2009 MacBook Pro. It was just over $50 on eBay and I'm lovin' the skeuomorphism being back in my life. PowerFox is what I'm using but it's got a serious memory leak issue on some sites (namely YouTube and Gmail) that if you leave those sites open too long it starts ramping up the fans and ultimately beachballs requiring a force quit (that's an issue in my experience with Firefox ESR on Windows 7 as well, not sure why). Seems to be a 'Firefox thing' (and sadly no Chrome or Chromium for Snow Leopard seems to exist!). I've tried multiple tricks to improve performance but eventually I have to force quit or just close it when I'm done.

I love this old Mac. It's certainly built more solid than my Air (which has three keys that have detached from its keyboard already!) and I like having ALL my USB ports.

There must be some kind of bug though, as when I click on the battery status up top it shows 'Service Battery' but it holds charge fine! I've used it for at least an hour watching YouTube and two just browsing and never dropped below 50%, and for something 16 years old that's darned good! Reminds me of those fear-mongering posts about modern iOS 'Battery Health' when in my experience I've seen iPhones with supposedly '65% Health' still going a full day on charge.

I'm just one of them oddballs that not only loves vintage stuff but I never could get used to so-called modern flat design UI (I'm old enough to have experienced it back in the 1980s with Tandy DeskMate, MS-DOS and VisiON so I harbor zero nostalgia for boring interface design--we're not living in the era of 640 KB RAM or MFM Hard Disks so why we'd have it today is beyond me) and I even went to the effort to get a pre-jailbroken iPad 2 with iOS 6.1.3 (and managed to get all the built in apps including iMessage working)

 

[wicknix]

i hope it reaches the level of firefox dynasty soon!

Don’t hold your breath. The guys have done an amazing job of back porting UXP to 10.4/10.5/10.6, but because PF is built upon UXP it will never be on the same level as current Firefox. The Pale Moon devs (creators of UXP) have ripped out the code for DRM, disabled WebRTC, etc etc. So, as good as all these UXP based browsers are, they will never support Netflix, Spotify, etc. Just be happy that 95% of the web works again (properly) on these old unsupported Macs.

 

[GalacticStag]

Don’t hold your breath. The guys have done an amazing job of back porting UXP to 10.4/10.5/10.6, but because PF is built upon UXP it will never be on the same level as current Firefox. The Pale Moon devs (creators of UXP) have ripped out the code for DRM, disabled WebRTC, etc etc. So, as good as all these UXP based browsers are, they will never support Netflix, Spotify, etc. Just be happy that 95% of the web works again (properly) on these old unsupported Macs.

oh yeah, im SUPER happy, and not complaining about the level that it’s at right now! I remember when i first downgraded my mac in 2023, and half of the websites i visited were just w h i t e D,X so im VERY happy that you can just use this OS like this!

 

[GalacticStag]

I've been dailying Snow Leopard ever since I 'upgraded' from my M3 Air to a 2009 MacBook Pro. It was just over $50 on eBay and I'm lovin' the skeuomorphism being back in my life. PowerFox is what I'm using but it's got a serious memory leak issue on some sites (namely YouTube and Gmail) that if you leave those sites open too long it starts ramping up the fans and ultimately beachballs requiring a force quit (that's an issue in my experience with Firefox ESR on Windows 7 as well, not sure why). Seems to be a 'Firefox thing' (and sadly no Chrome or Chromium for Snow Leopard seems to exist!). I've tried multiple tricks to improve performance but eventually I have to force quit or just close it when I'm done.

I love this old Mac. It's certainly built more solid than my Air (which has three keys that have detached from its keyboard already!) and I like having ALL my USB ports.

There must be some kind of bug though, as when I click on the battery status up top it shows 'Service Battery' but it holds charge fine! I've used it for at least an hour watching YouTube and two just browsing and never dropped below 50%, and for something 16 years old that's darned good! Reminds me of those fear-mongering posts about modern iOS 'Battery Health' when in my experience I've seen iPhones with supposedly '65% Health' still going a full day on charge.

I'm just one of them oddballs that not only loves vintage stuff but I never could get used to so-called modern flat design UI (I'm old enough to have experienced it back in the 1980s with Tandy DeskMate, MS-DOS and VisiON so I harbor zero nostalgia for boring interface design--we're not living in the era of 640 KB RAM or MFM Hard Disks so why we'd have it today is beyond me) and I even went to the effort to get a pre-jailbroken iPad 2 with iOS 6.1.3 (and managed to get all the built in apps including iMessage working)

Psst, if you want better performance try https://vorapis.pages.dev and use macs fan control for when they freak out!! its helped massively in keeping my 2009 iMac’s temps under check

 

[nickdalzell1]

I don't think compensating for why the fans ramp up by manually controlling them solves the underlying issue--the way PowerFox slows to a grinding halt and requires a force-quit after around an hour or so of YouTube watching or browsing Reddit. The fans ramping up are a symptom but not the problem. My MBP ain't overheating, the browser is ultimately chewing up far too many resources than it should for my system with its 2GB RAM and Core 2 Duo.

PowerFox is somewhat based on Firefox, and this issue is one I've had with Firefox as well on many systems, Windows PCs included. It's one reason why I do in fact, prefer Chrome (or Chromium) even my M3 MacBook Air struggled with a Firefox derivative, it also ran quite warm in the end and would slow to a halt or the browser would 'unexpectedly quit' randomly. Chrome ran super fast and cool. Unfortunately ain't nobody developing a Chromium-based alternative for 10.6 Snow Leopard.

For some reason that Mozilla is keeping secret, Firefox and any browsers based on it or are forks of it have this habit of consuming ALL available free RAM in the system until nothing remains for vital system services either resulting in a BSoD (Windows) or apps unexpectedly quitting (Mac) or pop-ups about system memory being used up (modern macOS). I'm no fan of Firefox for many reasons especially post-quantum but I have to work with what I have if I want to keep using my preferred OS and UI design. I can't get used to flat design anymore, I dealt with it back in the Tandy DeskMate era and it hurt my eyes enough then.

The symptoms begin with randomly getting 'unresponsive script' pop-ups, and killing said script just kills the site (as in YouTube will no longer load videos afterward) and hitting 'continue script' will just grind the browser to a halt until it beachballs. Something on the web these days has massive issues with any Firefox fork. Chrome seems immune. As much as I'd like to support open-source and the 'fight against Google' the fact is I need my browser to work, and sadly Firefox isn't. Maybe one day a fork of Chromium will exist on 10.6.

 

[startergo]

Browservice: Browser as a Service​

A web "proxy" server that enables browsing the modern web on historical browsers. It works by rendering the browser viewport into images, which are then shown by a JavaScript application running on the client browser.

It works in Qemu with win98 IE6 so it will work better in Snow Leopard in Safari as it has better JavaScript support.

browservice-macos/MACOS_BUILD.md at master · startergo/browservice-macos

Contribute to startergo/browservice-macos development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[startergo]

Camino Browser in SL video playback:

 

[PowerHarryG4]

Camino Browser in SL video playback:
View attachment 2634031

View attachment 2634038

I’m surprised this still works. Why not use PowerFox?

I’ve been using it for everything and it’s by far the most compatible with modern websites on Snow Leopard.

 

[startergo]

I’m surprised this still works. Why not use PowerFox?

I’ve been using it for everything and it’s by far the most compatible with modern websites on Snow Leopard.

Yes, but the point of this setup is to use the lightest browser available with javascript support as it is remoting to a Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). This is like a Remote Desktop, but is a remote browser only. For some reason Safari's javascript does not render, Google Chrome is too heavy for SL and Camino is just the right browser.

 

[PowerHarryG4]

Yes, but the point of this setup is to use the lightest browser available with javascript support as it is remoting to a Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). This is like a Remote Desktop, but is a remote browser only. For some reason Safari's javascript does not render, Google Chrome is too heavy for SL and Camino is just the right browser.

Ah I missed that you were using Browservice. I haven't found a need for it on Snow Leopard as PowerFox can load most websites. Just out of curiosity why are you going through this method?

PowerFox with the vorapis V3 extension, ublock and h264ify works really well for Youtube - have you tried this?

 

[startergo]

Ah I missed that you were using Browservice. I haven't found a need for it on Snow Leopard as PowerFox can load most websites. Just out of curiosity why are you going through this method?

PowerFox with the vorapis V3 extension, ublock and h264ify works really well for Youtube - have you tried this?

Nothing else works properly in a virtual machine.

 

[startergo]

This is Webgl Aquarium running on webkit-610.