True, but that really was a significant issue with most of the G3 or later PPC systems, made worse by the G5’s power and heat issues. Funny, in an increasingly ARM world, to think that Intel was an improvement over the PPC in the power and heat department, but, unfortunately, that’s how bad the G5 was!
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.
What if Apple had released the PowerMac in other colors?
- Thread starter Rikintosh
- Start date
-
- Tags
- powermac
- Sort by reaction score
I haven’t. One case example is Apple contractually prohibiting LG and Texas Instruments, inter alia, from supplying parts from retina and later MacBook Pros to any party other than Apple — which might be “““efficient”””, but it is rendering a lot of circulating product unfixable when the parts needed to repair circulating devices are not available due to the artificial shortage invoked by a supplier contract.
This is neither figurative nor “gross oversimplification”. It’s been the case now for several years, and it is a key driver behind why the right-to-repair movement is being recognized as vital for the consumer’s best long-term interests.
No. The Malthusian argument is talk of overpopulation, not of overconsumption — in particular, the inequity in that overconsumption. The promotion of overconsumption under un(der)regulated capitalism is literally the only way an economy based under a system of said capitalism may continue to “grow” like a weed/plant/animal.
I also am not on board with designating overconsumption as quote-unquote “Neo-Malthusian”. The global intensity of chronic poverty has only worsened within my lifetime, as has the global rarification and exacerbation of extreme wealth into the hands of a very selected few who’ve reaped a lot from a deregulatory environment which really got underway after about 1980.
The same market enriches those who control the means of that market, at the human and ecological cost of anything or anyone else who inconveniently happens to be “in the way”. No thanks.
Even that is a gross oversimplification. What isn’t a gross simplification is the concepts of planned obsolescence (Sloan, lifting from the early bicycle industry); monoculture development (a function of three points making a triangle: one, the U.S. adopting WWII-style base tract housing to the civilian world, which was similarly designed for solely discrete, single-family units, all built in one place; two, workplaces, like office and corporate parks, as well as CBDs, concentrated in a second location; and, third, sites of consumption like power centres and shopping malls); and de-regulations in the financial industry from the 1980s, widely tearing down what was built in the mid 1930s.
Cars were and remain a symptom of the above, not a cause. I am not a fan of cars, but for ones already in use and circulating, I am OK with keeping them running and in use where they are needed. But monocultural development and single-family zoning policy must first be curtailed. If that means a long-term public strategy to begin regulating developers, then so be it.
Corporate socialism. Nothing new here.
It’s always worth reminding from time to time how that nebulous phrase, “the government,” is a function and a product of the people who constitute the population a nation-state — including people who have no connections, interests, and/or shares with multi-national corporations.
The world — especially the chronically impoverished peoples on this planet — and even folks within the U.S. beg to differ with your take.
More topical to this thread (from which you’ve veered significantly): what if Apple were to release a special edition M1x Mac mini in the colours of desperation and a sea of children’s tears, from impoverished parts of the planet (formerly, “global south”), to, I dunno, illustrate its impact…
Last edited:
The Power Mac in Sage would have been amazing.
Wanna try a Power Mac mock-up in key lime?
Last edited:
Nah. I’m writing this reply on a 14-year-old Mac which does just fine in 2022. Why? Its components are modular, and faulty components on it have not only been replaced, but others have also been upgraded. It’s nice. Really nice.
That early 2015 rMBP? I later damaged the display, and LG, the supplier of the retina display, are prohibited by Apple from selling it to any party other than Apple. So for now, I have a glorified Mac mini, if I’m willing to buy a dedicated external display for it. No thanks.
No, it really isn’t beside your point.
Last edited:
I want an iMac junior now, damn you...
Maybe it could be done with a 3D printer, a 12" CRT, and a mini G4...
@Moonlight
All three look great. I'd definitely go with sage but if they gave me a ruby I'd be fine with it.
Can you provide credible evidence to back up this statement? I'm genuinely curious.
I have a limit when it comes to kludges. As an example, one guy I met at university had a late-1990s laptop with a dead internal battery, so he dragged along an external battery almost as big and heavy as the laptop itself all the time. No thanks.
As my main laptop. It's still perfectly useful as an air-gapped, distraction-free writing and brainstorming device.
Example 1: DDR2 RAM has been around since 2005 or so, and you can still buy sticks off e.g. eBay. Same goes for DDR3 which was introduced in 2008.
Example 2: SATA SSDs have been around since 2007 or so, and there's no sign of them going away anytime soon despite far faster PCIe SSDs having been a thing since 2013.
Example 3: ATX cases and PSUs have been around since, lemmethink, the late 1990s?
For some things like chipsets and CPU sockets, this holds (some) merit. For RAM, SSDs and PSUs, less so.
Being "slow" is one possible way in which computers may no longer live up to users' expectations.
Last edited:
I found out by chance, I work since 2006 with computer repairs here in Brazil, and due to the dollar being a more expensive currency than the currency of my country (and still the import freight costs + an absurd import tax of 60% of the value of the product + shipping) made it unfeasible to carry out repairs by replacing the gpu chipset. So all the techs here just went through a painstaking, artisanal process of putting the balls back into the original chipset. I believe that a small minority of chips may have died even after the reballing, but that would be because of the suffering the chip went through until it went to a technical assistance (some even got the green color changed to something a little brown) because here in Brazil it is naturally very hot all year round, so a problematic laptop can easily reach 80 degrees in summer, even the 95 degrees required for it to automatically shut down. I particularly like 2008 gaming laptops and pcs, so I have a few here that I fixed up and use on weekends for fun, they've worked perfectly for years.
I believe the 8xxx chipsets being faulty is kind of a generalization on the part of manufacturers like Apple, HP, and Dell, who when the **** hit the fan, quickly passed the blame onto nvidia. That's because the chips arrive at the factory of these OEMs already with the balls soldered on them, so "if there's a problem with the balls, it's nvidia's fault because it's the one who puts them in". If there was really a defect with the geforce 8xxx series, there would also be with all others before it (which also suffered from the same defect), and after, because even the 9400M (which were basically newer revisions of the rescheduled 8600M GS/GT) too had the same problem.
As I recall, this all only stopped (or slowed down significantly) when we started to see tesla and fermi chips in laptops (not necessarily because of the chip's technology, but because they developed a stronger tin). And this whole problem started, when environmentalists whined about the presence of lead in the tin of electronic equipment, so they removed it, but lead was crucial to the strength of solders, so from there all the problems started. Not just GPUs, but north bridges, south bridges, and anything that was soldered could suffer from this, but the most common were GPUs due to being the component that handles high temperatures the most. Desktop video cards from that era, and even motherboards (especially nforce), are also no exception. ATI chips also suffered from the same problem
If I may ask, how (or if) did y’all manage fixing the Radeon HD 6490M//6750M/6770M GPU failures on the 2011 MacBook Pros?
It's kind of a shame how PowerPC essentially became IBM's thing, because IBM doesn't care about anything and anyone. They stuffed an entire PPC405 in the G5s just to boot them. PPC64(el) has the potential to be a fantastic architecture but Daddy Blue is at the helm.
Hopefully Raptor and libre-soc can work together on a custom OpenPOWER processor that doesn't assume it's an HPC.
Hopefully Raptor and libre-soc can work together on a custom OpenPOWER processor that doesn't assume it's an HPC.
Until today I never put my hands on a macbook with these graphics cards. It doesn't seem to be very common in my country
I don't want to sound pessimistic, but I don't trust it, until they manage to get it on the market, the chip will be old and late.
It's fair to be pessimistic about libre-soc, but at least they do use a public bugtracker to show their progress. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt -- their project is very ambitious and is trying to catch up with a multibillion dollar corporation with a handful of people.
You know, I remember when a couple of folks in a garage and another with a “““disk operating system””” program took on, separately, a multi-billion-dollar corporation where, if hired, one was set for life — also a corporation whose fortunes dated back almost a century (including bloody profits from its, ahem, deeply problematic German subsidiary, Dehomag)…
The Power Mac in Sage would have been amazing.
Wanna try a Power Mac mock-up in key lime?
That thing is just begging to be upgraded and given the name Little Mac -- "it packs a punch". I know I posted that joke before, but seeing this photoshop is really making me sad I can't actually do it (yet).
Last edited:
And I’m behind the right to repair movement because it’s how a functioning market should work.
Oh please, you can’t separate the consumption of resources from the population, the Malthusian argument in its strictest sense was population but you can’t separate the consumption aspect. The inequities in resource consumption is true but a temporary status, as developing parts of the world develop their buying power will grow and the distribution evens out.
To look at current inequality and say “capitalism bad!” is silly and ignores the vast improvements in quality of life around the world since the industrial revolution.
In short our current problems are not permanent, and can and will improve.
World Poverty Rate 1981-2024
Poverty headcount ratio at $5.50 a day is the percentage of the population living on less than $5.50 a day at 2011 international prices. As a result of revisions in PPP exchange rates, poverty rates for individual countries cannot be compared with poverty rates reported in earlier editions.
Classic Marxist argument, should’ve died with the fall of the berlin wall but somehow lived on.
And is currently being uprooted with technological advancements allowing work from home, delivery of goods, and digital media being accessible. Only zoning remains in the way.
I’m a huge car guy, I love old cars. But here we agree and I believe owning a car should be a choice that cities should facilitate through better zoning and a willingness to build higher density, lower income housing near strategic places.
For people in rural areas, unfortunately cars are a part of life here, but it shouldn’t be so in population centers.
Which is bad, and a symptom of a poorly functioning market.
Okay let me reduce that down to “the morons who give subsidies to entrenched businesses”
You keep using the phrase “chronically” as if this is a permanent state of affairs that will never get better. What you have illustrated instead is a severe need in investment into these places to rapidly improve their infrastructure.
More money, better education, less corruption, this is what makes progress. History has shown that.
Evil capitalists, amirite? Upvotes at the bottom!
Naturally, light tasks are perfectly fine on older hardware. I still chat on irc on my G3. (Which isn’t upgraded by the by).
Raw performance though cannot compare to newer hardware. Though there’s plenty of ways to squeeze perfect out of older hardware through software!
1. Those restrictions should be illegal.
2. Why not? I’ve done that with several old laptops that broke. It’s still useful, even if you just say “nah don’t wanna”
Then you’ve misconstrued my argument.
I’m saying that the useful life of machines is tied more to performance and ever changing standards than repairability. I’m NOT arguing against right to repair, or building machines to be repairable. I support the ability to buy components direct from OEMs because that’s a dumb restriction.
What I’m arguing is that the noble-intentioned notion of repairability ignores simple truths about technological advancements. Namely, the efficiency of Systems on a Chip over discrete components.
Things change, demands change, and if someone makes a good solution, albeit less easily repaired, it’s still a good solution.
And I’m behind the right to repair movement because it’s how a functioning market should work.
Oh please, you can’t separate the consumption of resources from the population, the Malthusian argument in its strictest sense was population but you can’t separate the consumption aspect. The inequities in resource consumption is true but a temporary status, as developing parts of the world develop their buying power will grow and the distribution evens out.
To look at current inequality and say “capitalism bad!” is silly and ignores the vast improvements in quality of life around the world since the industrial revolution.
In short our current problems are not permanent, and can and will improve.
??World Poverty Rate 1981-2024
Poverty headcount ratio at $5.50 a day is the percentage of the population living on less than $5.50 a day at 2011 international prices. As a result of revisions in PPP exchange rates, poverty rates for individual countries cannot be compared with poverty rates reported in earlier editions.www.macrotrends.net
Classic Marxist argument, should’ve died with the fall of the berlin wall but somehow lived on.
And is currently being uprooted with technological advancements allowing work from home, delivery of goods, and digital media being accessible. Only zoning remains in the way.
I’m a huge car guy, I love old cars. But here we agree and I believe owning a car should be a choice that cities should facilitate through better zoning and a willingness to build higher density, lower income housing near strategic places.
For people in rural areas, unfortunately cars are a part of life here, but it shouldn’t be so in population centers.
Which is bad, and a symptom of a poorly functioning market.
Okay let me reduce that down to “the morons who give subsidies to entrenched businesses”
You keep using the phrase “chronically” as if this is a permanent state of affairs that will never get better. What you have illustrated instead is a severe need in investment into these places to rapidly improve their infrastructure.
More money, better education, less corruption, this is what makes progress. History has shown that.
Evil capitalists, amirite? Upvotes at the bottom!
Oh noooo. The invisible hand is trying to spank me. “Stop it, daddy, stop… please.”
So libertarian/unregulated/supply-side/whatever pure capitalist economies good except here, because bad for… reasons. OK.
Next, you’re gonna attest that a corporation, a legal creature existing on paper, is a “person”.
There is no utility in carrying an external monitor to the café or to a friend’s place just so I can run my screen-damaged rMBP. Or, for that matter, buying a display for it. If that was the use-case for which I got it, I’d have bought a Mac mini or used Mac Pro.
I’m done playing. Your takes on this discussion have veered way, way off-topic.
Last edited:
The 17-inch versions of those 2011 MBPs were the last for the 17-inch line. They are, physically, the sturdiest large laptops Apple ever produced (given the unibody construction water/laser-milled from a slab of aluminium). Were it not for the design flaw of that series of Radeon HD GPUs (for which no fixes by AMD were provided, unlike when NVIDIA’s GPU flaw was revealed in 2008), there would be many more of these unibody models still in use today alongside their 13-inch siblings. They included Thunderbolt, and there was still the upgrade-build option for an anti-glare display.
While there are methods to bypass the faulty discrete GPU in favour for solely using the integrated GPU, it does require
They are also the only MBP to have both ExpressCard and Thunderbolt.
...and, as an alternative, DeMux.
I completely forgot about that detail. Thanks!
Demux is one in the same as the firmware patch cited in the above link.
I love it. You did a great job. My favorite are graphite and indigo. Same as always haha
As a sidebar, there’s been past discussions on here with respect to unused on-board RAM chip pads on the clamshell iBook G3s. It was my seeing these on a Rev. C board (the indigo/key lime/graphite series) which got me to sign up to the MR forums.
Had it not been for the polarized reactions against the clamshell form factor, I’ve conjectured that Apple likely designed the board with the foresight of getting up to at least four revisions/updates from it before moving on to something else, such as the conventional rectangle iBook we got in May 2001.
This, of course, has long left me to ponder an interesting thought exercise: had a Rev. D iBook clamshell, with 128MB onboard RAM and a slightly faster PPC750cxe CPU been added (say, 500MHz and 600 MHz), instead of the first “dual-USB” ice iBook, what colours might Apple have run with?
One of the “out there” hues which I’ve long imagined might have been on the table for a potential Rev. D is something like the day-glow yellow of limoncello (would would have been key lime’s spiritual successor); snow (because it was already happening with the iMac and would have made for an interesting finish in the silicone wrap), and carrying over the indigo from the Rev. C (much like what happened with the iMacs).
I keep coming back to something like a limoncello hue because it was the only notable primary or secondary hue which otherwise was never used during the run of polycarbonate/silicone/plastic Macs with colour-injected moulds.
So I guess we ought to see what that might have looked like.
Would I have liked it?
Well, for starters, I would have to needed to see an actual one in person and gauge it in different kinds of light. I imagine a physical example would be nicer than a quick and dirty digital rendering from stock photos — especially in, say, sunlight or halogen lighting.
Also, yellow is generally one of my least favourite hues, though I do make exceptions for yellow slightly tilting toward the green. Meanwhile, I know plenty of folks who love hues like yellow, honey, canary, tumeric, and gold. So something like this might have played well for folks who like those tones.
Were a limoncello iBook the direct successor of the key lime, then I can easily imagine a situation wherein I’d bring over the logic board from the more common “Rev. D” SE edition (i.e., the fastest one sold) and dropping that into a key lime case, since I’m still as much in love with the key lime iBook as I was on the day when Apple announced them back in September ’00.
If anyone else wants to make a snow rendering of the clamshell, be my guest!
9 inch - same as original Macs so not that interesting. But that 5 inch... Of course, you can go smaller with CRTs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Watchman
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/15/a-look-at-the-smallest-magnetic-deflection-crt-ever-made/