I was just joking. The smiley was supposed to indicate that.
Not anymore. It’s “current minus two”: Ventura, Monterey and Big Sur are getting security updates. The last one for Catalina was released July 20th, 2022.
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Don´t buy a second hand mac !
- Thread starter PowerPC Punk
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- Old Macs can be more secure than any modern device. Open firmware, the latest open source operating system. vs. Closed firmware with back-doors and proprietary and privacy-killing operating systems: Android, Windows (see CVE-2023-21554 and many others), iOS/macos.
- It's even more difficult to repair and/or upgrade a modern device: modern devices seem to be throwaways. A battery for my iPhone? A battery for a laptop? Upgrade the RAM? Nope.
- What does "appropriate" even mean? Big tech is not going to help you. They only want your Euros for more broken tech.
- I am disappointed with modern devices. Moore's Law is over. Clock speed has not improved significantly since the last of the PowerPC Macs. Depending on what is being bench-marked, my Apple II could do circles around modern tech.
- Intel sucks and the monopoly is crumbling. AMD is a better imitation. Apple uses it's own processors now. Arm processors are everywhere. RISC-V is the future. The PowerPC does not suffer from System On Chip (SOC) issues.
My friend once found a second hand M1 MacBook Air, and it was too good to be true. It was an M1 MacBook Air, but the storage had a major issue where only a certain percent can be used. He ended up getting refunded for it, and is saving for an M2 Air when the M3 comes out.
How old is 'very old'?
Older than PowerPC?
Most of my older Macs are PowerPC. My newest Mac is a 2009 Mac Pro.
I have bought 8-9 month old macs in the past from folks who upgrade to latest models. It was cheaper to slap a 3 year apple care on top of it and still save lot of money.
The cheapest way to fix those is to put the graphics card in the oven for a few minutes. Granted that is only a temporary fix.
This is a forum for enthusiasts of very old Macs, hence the title PowerPC Macs
Cheers
Hugh
Macwelt was a great informative magazine many years ago, my dad used to have a subscription and I still remember the CD giveaways included with demos and often really nice shareware. Good old days.™️
It’s sad to see what they’ve become. Hard to even recognize. Guess they had to transform to poorly written clickbait articles to somehow stay alive - though likely it would have been better they just stopped operations when the time came. 🫤
It’s sad to see what they’ve become. Hard to even recognize. Guess they had to transform to poorly written clickbait articles to somehow stay alive - though likely it would have been better they just stopped operations when the time came. 🫤
I mainly buy and use polycarbonate Mac minis, i.e. the ones produced between 2005-2009. I've never bought any iMac but a 2010 iMac should be comparable software-wise to Mac mini 2009. Most of the time I use macOS 7 (Mac OS X Lion) on a Mac mini 2009. macOS 7 might seem a strange choice but it hits the sweet spot of being usable without bringing any crapware. The browser support is one its weakest points but thanks to InterWeb 60.9.8 Mac64, Chromium 90.04413.0, parrotgeek.com's Firefox 68.12.0p2 and newly added SeaLion, it can still browse most of the sites safely. It supports Java 8 which is quite critical because some popular apps such as JDownloader2 requires Java 8. It runs almost all modern software which you might like to use. It occupies very small space at the desk, it consumes about 10 Watts it's quiet, it's good to look at, it's aesthetic, it's durable, it's upgradable, it sells quite cheap. The list of advantages is long.
Tis funny how freckle folks can be. Remember the big fuss about going over to Intel ..and how great it was gonna be. Now it's shown as a bad thing.
Wonder if in the future they'll get to the point of: hey don't those old macs of the 2020s, they still have a screen and mouse.
Wonder if in the future they'll get to the point of: hey don't those old macs of the 2020s, they still have a screen and mouse.
Did the author(s) of the article post it here? Or did someone reference it here? Since I don't know German I can't read the site. However I believe someone posted it here, not the authors. So the question becomes: Who is the target audience for the authors of the article?This is a forum for enthusiasts of very old Macs, hence the title PowerPC Macs
Generally speaking I would be hard pressed to recommend a Macintosh which is no longer receiving operating system support to anyone who is not an enthusiast or has a specific need. I'd even have a difficult time recommending one which is limited to current - 2 as it's likely to lose support with the next release of macOS (which tends to be yearly).
Sorry, but the point I was trying to make was that this place (the PowerPC forum) is full of enthusiasts who are trying to save and put to good use all the old Macs they can find; therefore the linked article hasn’t had a good response from a lot of us regulars. I think it was originally posted ‘tongue in cheek’.
That doesn’t mean that these people don’t also own more modern machines by the way
Also, in the 2nd post I linked to an English translation of the article in question, for those who can’t read German.
Cheers
Hugh
My assumption is that the thread was originally posted outside the PowerPC subforum before it got moved by mods (to this subforum). There were replies to it before it got moved, which explains how quite a few users who do not frequent the PowerPC subforum are involved.Sorry, but the point I was trying to make was that this place (the PowerPC forum) is full of enthusiasts who are trying to save and put to good use all the old Macs they can find; therefore the linked article hasn’t had a good response from a lot of us regulars. I think it was originally posted ‘tongue in cheek’.
That doesn’t mean that these people don’t also own more modern machines by the way
Also, in the 2nd post I linked to an English translation of the article in question, for those who can’t read German.
Cheers
Hugh
That's my take on it. It's happened before and it will happen again.
As to OP's intent, I think OP was attempting to express his disgust about the article.
Of course, as always, I may be entirely wrong.
If I am, we have some new users to the PowerPC subforum.
Nor would I expect it to. However it's my impression the authors of the linked article didn't post it here nor are participants of this forum the target audience for their advice.
That doesn’t mean that these people don’t also own more modern machines by the way
Also, in the 2nd post I linked to an English translation of the article in question, for those who can’t read German.
You did but I don't "trust" translations as sometime nuances get lost in the translation.
There is an inherent flaw with the ecosystem because it's software-dependant ok the same manufacturer. Microsoft does not make own computers (to the extent Apple does anyway), and supports a plethora of hardware. Only recently (!) was there a stubmle as Win11 stopped suporting older hardware, but with literally ALL Apple devices that's the deal. And functionality set aside the real danger is security if the same devices get "old" and don't get patched. And the only real "savior" is probably Linux.
All in all this is planned by Apple in advance and the "natural" expectation is use and discard. And sure, I have a what... 2014 or 15 macbook pro that's rarely used and no new OS and patches only here and there and officially according to Apple I own an antique museum exhibit.
But all taken into consideration one can't expect anything else from Apple. The M1 chip machines will literally become "vintage" is just some few years.
All in all this is planned by Apple in advance and the "natural" expectation is use and discard. And sure, I have a what... 2014 or 15 macbook pro that's rarely used and no new OS and patches only here and there and officially according to Apple I own an antique museum exhibit.
But all taken into consideration one can't expect anything else from Apple. The M1 chip machines will literally become "vintage" is just some few years.
Intel Macs will continue to be useful for years after Apple has dropped support for them, just put Windows on them. I got years of extra life out of an old 24" c2d iMac that way. Same won't be true in a few years once apple starts dropping m1 support.
It's disappointing, but understandable, that Apple has discontinued macOS support on older systems. Especially with Ventura dropping support for most (all?) pre-2017 Macintosh systems. Thankfully some of those systems will continue to receive support with n-2 and n-1 versions of macOS.
Windows 11 does officially drop support for older systems but it can run on unsupported systems. For example I have it installed on a Dell Latitude E6430 system. All that was required to install it was to change the TPM settings in the UEFI. I am unsure how widely this can be done but I wouldn't be surprised to learn at least other models / manufacturer systems can be easily configured to run it.