What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[Amethyst1]

I can recall bringing some Red Hat discs home in 2002 or so and not having any clue what to do with them.

Use them as coasters?

There seem to be enough options out there with Linux that I can choose my path.

Yep. Some might even be inclined to say “too many options” but there’s no such thing. Choose your path and then follow it through.

So I bought a (refurb) high speced 8 core 16" MacBook Pro, thinking "ha, they just changed the form factor and moved to 8 cores in a laptop, I'm set for years to come." Two months later the switch to ARM was announced.

I know that feeling — I bought my first Mac a couple of months before the Intel switch was announced. I don’t quite remember when rumours considering the ARM transition solidified.

Now here I am just two and a half years later hoping my machine will support the latest Mac OS - and with it the latest version of DaVinci Resolve for the foreseeable future.

The question is, what is the foreseeable future? Five years, ten years, …?
The Mac mini G4 I bought in February 2005 was replaced by a much more powerful Intel model (in Apple’s lineup, not in my place) less than a year later, and by late 2009, was stuck with an obsolete version of Mac OS X.

 

[SecretSquirrel]

There seems to be a few of us who have hit that point in life where we’re tired of maintaining stuff and need something which we can use and enjoy and which “just works”.

The reality is that because of continuing technological development, when it comes to IT, we will always be somewhere in the cycle. We can either buy new, max out the spec and load every possibly useful app on it and then get as much use out if it before it breaks or is too obsolete (and start the cycle again 10-12 years later) or we can buy cheaper at the point where the OS is about to not be current, still get 7/8 years out of it, accepting that we’ll not be using the latest kit but at least non-existent updates won’t be breaking our setups (Linux updates were a continual PITA for me).

I guess each of us has to find peace in accepting where we are in the technological cycle and that change is inevitable. For me, I could have stayed with Linux but ultimately I’ve found the journey to be more peaceful and enjoyable with a Mac, even an obsolete one.

 

[eyoungren]

Use them as coasters?

The fate of many, especially AOL Online or NetZero discs.

 

[Amethyst1]

The fate of many, especially AOL Online or NetZero discs.

Well, in the case of the AOL discs, that’s certainly the only thing they’re good for.

 

[eyoungren]

Well, in the case of the AOL discs, that’s certainly the only thing they’re good for.

LOL.

There was a point in time that I was getting discs sent to me in shrinkwrapped tins. I not only got free coasters, but if you take steel wool to the tins to get all the painted branding off you have some nice brushed steel tins you can use for other things.

 

[Amethyst1]

I guess each of us has to find peace in accepting where we are in the technological cycle and that change is inevitable.

At least the cycle seems to have slowed down a bit, extending the lifespan of hardware. My newest Mac is seven years old and handles everything I throw at it just fine. Back in, say, 2001, getting by with a 1994 system was more of a challenge especially when that included surfing the web.

 

[uller6]

Interesting, I've had good luck with the 27" displays. Was there any recall from Apple?

No recall that I’m aware of. I also got my first one when it was 8 years old, and the other two after, so i suspect the backlight circuit is the weakest part of the display. They’re 14 years old at this point so I would be very wary, but my sample size is only 3. I’ve also had much better luck with the 27” ones.

 

[SecretSquirrel]

Back in, say, 2001, getting by with a 1994 system was more of a challenge especially when that included surfing the web.

Agreed - although back in’94, I got my first dialup modem and discovered the internet via either CompuServe or AOL Online. I too had the AOL coasters courtesy of some computing magazine! 😁

 

[B S Magnet]

The fate of many, especially AOL Online or NetZero discs.

View attachment 2098963

Within a generation or two, we’re going to find IKEA selling old, refurbished CD/DVD blank “sets” as “reclaimed” coasters, and appealing to the nostalgia of a consumer base which only vaguely remember a time when those were actually used for data.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

So, operation "STORAGE REPLACEMENT" started . A bit too much screws for such little computer, I think (around 16, didn't count them one-by-one), for changing HDD in ODD caddy to SSD . Later photos - my MacOS installation drive, made it around this summer . Chopped SSDs into 3 partitioins each. (First SSD - 2 HFS+ partitions + 1 unformatted, second - all 3 unformatted for something like Linuxes, maybe Win and even OpenBSD ). Installing SnowLeo currently (TimeMachine backup awaits on filerserver).

 

[originaldotexe]

Are you using WBFS to convert the ISO files to actual discs that the Wii can boot and run? I have a Homebrew modded Wii and come to think of it, also a Wii-U which I haven't really done much with and should get around to exploring its potential.

What have I done with an early Intel Mac lately?

With the help of my 13" 2011 MBP running High Sierra, I obtained a video but then discovered that the audio track hadn't included and would need to be muxed. My immediate instinct was to use Avidemux because it makes short work of such tasks.

With the video ready for muxing, it's time to add the (AAC) M4A audio file...

A no-go it seems.

Not to worry, where GUI apps fail, FFMPEG via the Terminal prevails!

Let the muxing commence...

A couple of minutes later and the processing is complete.

Let's check out the codec details in VLC.

Everything appears to be ok and it plays perfectly too: with the audio included.

On a side note, this machine is my DD and I can see it struggling at times due to what I suspect is a dire need for more RAM. At present it has the stock 4GB and I'd like to expand this. Can anyone tell me what is the max (unofficial) capacity that it can be expanded to and recommend compatible RAM? Preferably also including an exact brand - because I ran into problems years back when I attempted to do this with my 2012 15" MBP and purchased 16GB of memory that used the correct frequency but still didn't work and caused instant crashes at the desktop.

Thanks a bunch!

no, i am converting them from iso to wbfs format onto a fat32 formatted usb hard disk to play on the wii (using usb loader gx)
i have the wii u which is also modded, it is a lot of fun. there are all sorts of hidden gems in the wii u library

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

Basic recovery completed. Now it is time for rEFInd & planning other OSes installation.

 

[chaosbunny]

I know that feeling — I bought my first Mac a couple of months before the Intel switch was announced. I don’t quite remember when rumours considering the ARM transition solidified.


The question is, what is the foreseeable future? Five years, ten years, …?
The Mac mini G4 I bought in February 2005 was replaced by a much more powerful Intel model (in Apple’s lineup, not in my place) less than a year later, and by late 2009, was stuck with an obsolete version of Mac OS X.

Yeah, been there. I bought a 15" PowerBook G4 in spring of 2004. Unfortunately it was stolen in summer. Since I needed it for work, I bought the same machine again. So I bought two PowerBooks right before the Intel switch.

For me the foreseeable future is "as long as it is useful". I can easily edit 6k and even 8k material on my 16" Intel i9 mbp, yet I guess Apple will tell me that machine will not be able to run the latest OS next year. That will give me about 3 years until it will not be able to run the latest version of DaVinci Resolve and Adobe CS - which I require, not only for me but even more for the cooperation with others in the industry. I doubt that my needs will go beyond editing 6k/8k in 3 years, since I'm not even working with 8k yet. Planned obsolescence at its best. Some will say 5-6 years is solid for a video editing work machine, but I'd still rather keep costs and carbon footprint lower by using stuff as long as possible.

I guess each of us has to find peace in accepting where we are in the technological cycle and that change is inevitable. For me, I could have stayed with Linux but ultimately I’ve found the journey to be more peaceful and enjoyable with a Mac, even an obsolete one.

At least the cycle seems to have slowed down a bit, extending the lifespan of hardware. My newest Mac is seven years old and handles everything I throw at it just fine. Back in, say, 2001, getting by with a 1994 system was more of a challenge especially when that included surfing the web.

At the time of the PowerPC - Intel transition the new chips offered big performance advancements even for regular use, along with the introduction of SSDs in the following years. But right now there is not much difference between a current and a 10 years old machine for basic tasks like browsing, writing, streaming video/music. I just watched Edge of Tomorrow (great movie btw) on my white 2010 13" MacBook and now I'm writing this post on it. For tasks like these I don't notice a big difference between my 2010 consumer device and the 2019 pro device.

Planned obsolescence makes me sad. Awesome people keep older Intel Macs relevant by offering current OSs for them. But I guess that will not be possible 10 years from now with current Intel Macs, once Apple abandons the platform entirely. Then again ... looking at the PowerPC subforum gives me hope.

 

[Amethyst1]

Awesome people keep older Intel Macs relevant by offering current OSs for them. But I guess that will not be possible 10 years from now with current Intel Macs, once Apple abandons the platform entirely.

There’s always Linux, Windows etc. You’re only at the mercy of Apple if you absolutely need macOS. Sure, people buy Macs to run macOS but for someone to whom keeping a machine relevant boils down to, say, having a current browser, there’s plenty of options.

 

[rampancy]

There’s always Linux, Windows etc. You’re only at the mercy of Apple if you absolutely need macOS. Sure, people buy Macs to run macOS but for someone to whom keeping a machine relevant boils down to, say, having a current browser, there’s plenty of options.

And living proof of that is the 1.83 Ghz Core Duo MacBook 1,1 I have, with an SSD, that runs Zorin. It was amazing that all of a sudden I had access to modern and up-to-date versions of Chromium and Firefox. On my 2.4 Ghz MacBook 4,1's with 4 GB RAM running Zorin and Ubuntu I can also run Zoom video chats quite comfortably, plus run native clients for Discord and Slack, something I couldn't do otherwise.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I just watched Edge of Tomorrow (great movie btw) on my white 2010 13" MacBook and now I'm writing this post on it.

That is a great movie. I took a chance and watched it one evening on TV and I wasn't disappointed.

Planned obsolescence makes me sad. Awesome people keep older Intel Macs relevant by offering current OSs for them. But I guess that will not be possible 10 years from now with current Intel Macs, once Apple abandons the platform entirely. Then again ... looking at the PowerPC subforum gives me hope.

Amazing things are happening in the PowerPC subforum and hopefully that will continue for many years to come. The ongoing developments are heart-warming and much of that spills over into here. For example, with the guidance of @Amethyst1 I've been able to play 4K content on my 2011 MBP and MBA, which is quite a feat.

Clearly, being abandoned by Apple isn't the end of the world. As I've mentioned before I have computers that are over 40 years old and their manufacturers no longer exist but they remain supported by hobbyists in terms of new software and hardware peripherals.

There’s always Linux, Windows etc. You’re only at the mercy of Apple if you absolutely need macOS. Sure, people buy Macs to run macOS but for someone to whom keeping a machine relevant boils down to, say, having a current browser, there’s plenty of options.

This is good advice. I'm thinking of setting up a dual boot with El Capitan and Linux Mint on my Mac Pro. The latter didn't work out for me on my C2D MBA because of the hibernation issue but on a desktop this is immaterial and so it would make a great 2nd choice as an operating system.

 

[B S Magnet]

Yeah, been there. I bought a 15" PowerBook G4 in spring of 2004. Unfortunately it was stolen in summer. Since I needed it for work, I bought the same machine again. So I bought two PowerBooks right before the Intel switch.

When my indigo iBook began having issues with the DC-in board in August ’06, just before the new academic term, I’d anticipated something might eventually fail on there.*

So I took what I’d set aside for an eventual replacement and stubbornly went and bought an open box iBook G4 14" 1.42GHz at a local brick-and-mortar Apple reseller. It already had AppleCare (three months into it, in fact), and they were selling it for $100 off the usual retail. I was still very much a hard “nope” on all Apple Intel products; worse, I’d seen a couple of MacBooks by that point and promptly frowned at the new-style keyboard and the sheer cheapness in the way the laptop felt, relative to the iBook G4.

So that was a whole, final OEM chapter during my PowerPC life. My first Intel Mac, a Santa Rosa 15-inch MBP, in 2008, was stolen in 2009. :bigshrug:


* The irony: I later found a DC-in replacement (actually, it was a 2-for eBay lot), and that ended up being my first-ever DIY component fix on a Mac. Soon after, the key lime iBook showed up in my life and the indigo, appreciably slower, became the key lime’s parts donor. (Said key lime, fwiw, just let me know it has an uptime of 156 days — which would be longer had I not done a rearranging of desks and components.)

 

[eyoungren]

1. Used the 2006 Mini to scan a few document pages through Photoshop CS this morning. My 2003 era Canon USB scanner still works perfectly. One of the reasons to still keep a Mac around on an older OS. ScanGear will not work on any MacOS that has abandoned TWAIN.

2. Still wondering which version of Photoshop it was that Adobe abandoned 'Variations' under image Adjustments. Used the Mini again to process a background through Photoshop CS Variations. Blue to yellow (gold).

Both operations were accomplished through Screen Sharing.

 

[B S Magnet]

1. Used the 2006 Mini to scan a few document pages through Photoshop CS this morning. My 2003 era Canon USB scanner still works perfectly. One of the reasons to still keep a Mac around on an older OS. ScanGear will not work on any MacOS that has abandoned TWAIN.

Hey! I have a LiDE 20 from around that time!

I’ve been using VueScan for all scanning, across both that flatbed and my Plustek OpticFilm 35mm scanner, since the aughts (superseding the days when I still used SANE on SCSI scanners from the ’90s).

2. Still wondering which version of Photoshop it was that Adobe abandoned 'Variations' under image Adjustments. Used the Mini again to process a background through Photoshop CS Variations. Blue to yellow (gold).

It exists in CS4. It’s gone by CS6, replaced by “HDR toning”. I never really got into using either CS5 or CS5.5, so someone else will have to pinpoint when it got yanked. Variations goes back to at least 2.5.1!

 

[eyoungren]

Hey! I have a LiDE 20 from around that time!

I have the Canoscan N676U. I got it right before they switched from model numbers to LIDE this and LIDE that, although it is LIDE.

Not my scanner, but the picture is the exact one I have.

 

[B S Magnet]

I have the Canoscan N676U. I got it right before they switched from model numbers to LIDE this and LIDE that, although it is LIDE.

Not my scanner, but the picture is the exact one I have.

View attachment 2103657

Yah, everything about that form factor, including the chevron at the top of the door and the trio of buttons I never use, is identical to what I have, though mine is moulded in two shades of dark blue. For scanning documents, which is about the only reason I use it, it does the job. Pull it into Acrobat 9, OCR it, save it as a PDF, and I have pretty much everything one needs.

 

[EugW]

I recently repurposed my 2008 aluminum MacBook for my young son to use. He does most of his stuff on a 2014 iPad Air 2, but a few things aren't fully compatible with that, so the MacBook takes care of the rest. I have High Sierra on it with 8 GB RAM and the latest Chrome, so he's happy for the time being. I'll probably give him a replacement next year though, since the speed of the 2008 Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz is becoming problematic even with some kids' interactive websites. I also have a 2009 MBP Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz and it does help a bit, but that's only 13% faster. Actually, I had given the 2008 MacBook to my daughter a couple of years ago, but she started to grow out of it, even though she was just halfway through elementary school.

Our 27" 2010 iMac with SSD and 12 GB RAM is still in active use with both of the kids, again with High Sierra and Chrome. The lack of more modern OS support doesn't seem to bother them at all. In fact, they don't even notice the difference, except that unlike Monterey, the login avatar isn't animated. In fact, the animated login avatar is literally the only thing they've commented upon regarding the differences with older models. BTW, after that SSD upgrade, it feels fast enough that I could use it every day as a work machine if I had to.

So, in light of the last macOS release, do my three Macs stuck on Monterey now count as early Intel Macs, too? All purchased last year:

2017 13" MacBook Air 8/256 GB
2015 13" MacBook Pro 8/256 GB
2014 Mac mini 8/500 GB NVMe + 1 TB HD

Or perhaps we should define "early" as those not getting security updates anymore.

In all seriousness though, for those interested in a modern-ish Mac now, I noticed that the prices on all the above stuck-on-Monterey models have dropped significantly since last year. For example, I had purchased both the MBA and MBP with 128 GB storage each for decent prices but not what I personally would have regarded as bargain basement early Intel Mac type pricing. I then found inexpensive OEM SSUBX Apple/Samsung SSDs for the upgrade to 256 GB. However, now you can find 8/256 GB Macs for significantly less than what I paid for the 8/128 GB models. I'd say it's roughly about a one-third drop from the already relatively low used prices last year. Ventura support appears to be pushing people to upgrade, despite the state of the economy. I've also seen the 2015 13" MacBook Air 8/128 GB for the dirt cheap, priced at what I might consider early Intel Mac type pricing, which is well under US$200.

 

[B S Magnet]

So, in light of the last macOS release, do my three Macs stuck on Monterey now count as early Intel Macs, too? All purchased last year:

2017 13" MacBook Air 8/256 GB
2015 13" MacBook Pro 8/256 GB
2014 Mac mini 8/500 GB NVMe + 1 TB HD

I suspect there will be a good case of these falling within a Late Intel Macs forum to be created at some point. As to the specifics of what cuts Early Intel Macs from Late Intel Macs, I don’t yet know. Maybe it’s out-of-box Metal capability, or the absence of upgradeable storage, or the inclusion of T2, or the appearance of USB-C (especially when that form factor also accommodates Thunderbolt), or even the inability to run OS X/appearance of San Francisco as the system font. I’m sure folks will come to coalesce around some useful criteria for said Late Intel Macs.

 

[uller6]

I suspect there will be a good case of these falling within a Late Intel Macs forum to be created at some point. As to the specifics of what cuts Early Intel Macs from Late Intel Macs, I don’t yet know. Maybe it’s out-of-box Metal capability, or the absence of upgradeable storage, or the inclusion of T2, or the appearance of USB-C (especially when that form factor also accommodates Thunderbolt), or even the inability to run OS X/appearance of San Francisco as the system font. I’m sure folks will come to coalesce around some useful criteria for said Late Intel Macs.

In my opinion the early/late intel era is split down the lines of the Core/Core 2 vs. Core iX CPUs. It's not a clean break as the transition took a couple years, but I would consider all the computers you have as "late intel" machines. Some of these are 10 years past the Intel transition!

 

[eyoungren]

So, in light of the last macOS release, do my three Macs stuck on Monterey now count as early Intel Macs, too? All purchased last year:

We've pretty much already hashed this out shortly after the subforum was enabled. It's a fuzzy line, but basically, the consensus was anything that the denizens of the main MP/MB/MBP subforums refuse to help you with because those models are too 'old'.

In the sticky above this subforum's topic list the mods define it differently, but we all own an older model here and there.

I consider my work MBP to be borderline and it's a 2015 model. I think there's considerable wiggle room here.