What is YOUR favorite PowerPC application?

[PowerPCFan]

Post the name (and download link if possible) of your favorite PowerPC app (even games work).
If you have any questions reply to this message so I can separate questions from the other chitchat about apps.

 

[PowerPCFan]

Mine is probably Leopard WebKit for my newer PPC machines and for the older ones running Tiger I like playing Oregon Trail 5 (http://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-oregon-trail-5th-edition)

You do need Stuffit Expander, but you can grab that here: https://macintoshgarden.org/search/node/stuffit expander
This seems to be the best version of Stuffit for OSX: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/stuffit-standard-version-8x



Edit: This isn't where I downloaded it but I googled Leopard Webkit and found it here:

leopard-webkit

Download leopard-webkit for free. WebKit for OS X Leopard. builds of current WebKit frameworks for Mac OS X 10.5 (PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5). In order to revive the Snow Leopard builds at least one volunteer with skills in building open source software is needed!

sourceforge.net

 

[barracuda156]

GCC!

Latest one with ppc fixes from the maintainer: https://github.com/iains/gcc-12-branch/tree/gcc-12-2-darwin-pre-r1

 

[PowerPCFan]

GCC!

Latest one with ppc fixes from the maintainer: https://github.com/iains/gcc-12-branch/tree/gcc-12-2-darwin-pre-r1

Cool! What's the app used for?

 

[Amethyst1]

Cool! What's the app used for?

To compile source code.

 

[PowerPCFan]

To compile source code.

I don't do anything with source code and still consider myself a "noob" with old computer knowledge but it sounds like it'd be great for that.

 

[NSMacGuru]

Ambrosia Software's "Escape Velocity".
Great design, immense fun, mods, sense of humour, space-adventure-combat-trading... SO GREAT.

Macintosh Repository

 

[PowerPCFan]

Ambrosia Software's "Escape Velocity".
Great design, immense fun, mods, sense of humour, space-adventure-combat-trading... SO GREAT.

Macintosh Repository

Just clicked the link, sounds really fun! Can I play it on my "old gaming mac" which is a Power Mac G4 with Tiger 10.4?
It says OS 9 and I don't have any OS9 macs so will it run under Classic?

 

[NSMacGuru]

Apparently it will run on everything from a Macintosh Classic (!), System 7 through 9.2.2. So - very likely.

In digging up that info, I discovered another time-waster from Ambrosia that is hilarious and enormously addictive:
APEIRON. Sound effects are a riot!

 

[Amethyst1]

It says OS 9 and I don't have any OS9 macs so will it run under Classic?

Tiger's Classic generally sucks for games. So if it runs poorly, that's likely to be the culprit.

 

[ifrit05]

Tiger's Classic generally sucks for games.

AFAIK 10.2 is the best for Classic, as 10.3 introduced Double Buffering. I may be wrong though.

 

[juanstdio]

I play a LOT of Quake III Arena in my Powerbooks And yes, its in the Garden!

When I work, I use PPCMC to stream some Youtube lives of music (like lofi girl).

Sometimes I found a good radio With the Garden iTunes Nubango Radio Patch

and finally, Discord Lite! (for 10.4) Discord in the Garden

 

[Amethyst1]

AFAIK 10.2 is the best for Classic, as 10.3 introduced Double Buffering. I may be wrong though.

That’s correct. It’s also why Vintage Jaguar became a thing.

 

[eyoungren]

Hmmmmmmm…favorite can be kind of subjective, so there's going to be multiple answers. I have no singular app that I use(d) a PowerPC Mac for just because of that app.


Favorite in terms of heavy use: TenFourFox.
Favorite for customization: Magnifique and Candybar. Shapeshifter if I'm using Tiger.
Favorite for design: InDesign CS4 and Photoshop CS4.
Favorite just making PowerPC Macs work in a PC/Mac network environment: DAVE.
Favorite for working around browser requirements: Fluid.
Favorite for word processing/email: Word 2008 and Entourage 2008.
Favorite for file search: EasyFind.
Favorite for music: Songbird.

There's probably more, but that's enough for now.

 

[anakin44011]

Ambrosia Software's "Escape Velocity".
Great design, immense fun, mods, sense of humour, space-adventure-combat-trading... SO GREAT.

Macintosh Repository

Does Mars Rising count...also from Ambrosia Software?

Simple and addictive vertical shooter...can't find anything like it on MacOS or iOS.

I love games that don't require an hour of training to learn all of the moves/buttons. Just simple: these are the bad guys...have fun, blow them up, then return to your life.

 

[PowerPCFan]

Now I want to try all these apps!

@eyoungren Have you ever used InterWebPPC? It's TenFourFox but with latest security. This PowerBook I am using to write this can barely run it, but it has hardly any RAM. Leopard WebKit just crashed as I typed the words "hardly any ram." I bet InterWeb would have already crashed 3 times from low RAM even just being on MR. As long as you have at least 1gb of RAM, InterWeb is amazing. But I'll stick to WebKit for now on this thing

I'm using a:
PowerBook G4
867MHz
640mb RAM
Leopard 10.5 fully updated
253 apps!!
Leopard Rebirth custom theme

Now that's a very heavy install of Leopard for this slow of a Mac.
Haha I'm getting really off-topic. I'm gonna stop here...

 

[Dronecatcher]

This PowerBook I am using to write this can barely run it, but it has hardly any RAM.

I use InterWebPPC on a G3 iBook with the same amount of RAM without issue.
If you haven't already, use a custom prefs file and a mobile user agent - also, make site applets with InTheBox - they require less resources.

 

[eyoungren]

@eyoungren Have you ever used InterWebPPC? It's TenFourFox but with latest security. This PowerBook I am using to write this can barely run it, but it has hardly any RAM. Leopard WebKit just crashed as I typed the words "hardly any ram." I bet InterWeb would have already crashed 3 times from low RAM even just being on MR. As long as you have at least 1gb of RAM, InterWeb is amazing. But I'll stick to WebKit for now on this thing

No, I have not. But here's the thing. T4Fx was still being developed in May 2020 when I abandoned PowerPC for my Mac Pro. Interweb had not been created yet. The rest of my PowerPC Macs are not used as daily drivers and the one use I kept my 17" PowerBook for (visiting coffee shops) no longer matters.

For the record, my last PowerPC daily driver was a Quad G5 with 16GB of ram. I had a 10GB virtual ram disk and both the app (T4Fx), the user profile and the cache were kept on that ram drive. So all that stuff was always in ram.

Mostly my remaining PowerPC Macs are now used for filesharing.

 

[B S Magnet]

Post the name (and download link if possible) of your favorite PowerPC app (even games work).
If you have any questions reply to this message so I can separate questions from the other chitchat about apps.

Finder.

 

[djcerla]

Apeiron & Logic Audio 3.0

 

[mectojic]

Bean. Beautiful and efficient word processor, first made for 10.4. But it has releases all the way up to support Ventura. I was looking for a fast word processor with compatibility over every device- this was it.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

Overdrive Media Console...STILL let's me download MP3 audio books from my local Library in 2022 on a PowerBook G4 and saves them in DRM free standard .mp3 format that I can use with anything from an iPod, etc.

Awesome!

 

[Jumpthesnark]

Oh that's easy. The Marathon Trilogy - Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity. I spent far too many nights with all the lights off in the house, getting spooked while playing through the first game, and trying to figure out the pretty tough puzzles. Played it on a Quadra 630 at first, and later a Power Mac 6500/250 that I eventually upgraded with a Sonnet G3 card. Good times! Used to schlep them over to a friend's house for the occasional network gaming frenzy, too.

 

[Scott Baret]

Although it had an Intel version, I'm going with iWeb for my productivity choice here. I still use it on an older MacBook.

I agree with a lot of people who have written about some of the Ambrosia titles (a few of which had Intel compatible versions and even 68K versions).

There's one more thing I wish would be available for later Macs...OS 9. I miss its simplicity.

 

[Brandon42]

There's one more thing I wish would be available for later Macs...OS 9. I miss its simplicity.

I liked OS 9 a lot but the lack of preemptive multitasking and memory protection really hindered using it for anything other than one task at a time. Auto saving wasn’t common as a feature so the consequences of a crash were also quite painful back then.

MacsBugs was a lifesaver for me on OS 9 and earlier. It is a full debugger for developers but it is useful for avoiding reboots when something crashes.