What PPC Mac to Buy?

[Mac03ForLife]

So I'm now in an interesting spot: My mom has reclaimed her PowerMac G5 as a end table (irreparably damaging the MB and other components when she stripped the case out). This leaves me with a Thinkpad P51 and a MBP2020.

I would like a PPC Mac for nostalgia purposes but also as a dedicated word processor. Using Spotify and being able to read wikipedia articles would be a bonus, but its not a strict requirement. I was looking at a iMac G3 and a PowerMac G4 as replacements for my trusty G5. I was also looking at the 2008 MacBook Pro 15in (non unibody).

If there are any Macs that I have failed to consider, let me know.

I will post a more detailed thread in a different forum, but I was also thinking about a Mac Pro 2005 for video editing (if that's even a viable option compared to my Thinkpad which uses a i7 and a Quadro from 2019 is a different thread lol)

TL;DR: ISO good word processing PPC mac.

 

[MBAir2010]

I had a powerbook 12“ G4 that I really liked!
that imac g4 was fun to use and really looked sharp!
if you get an older ppc, make sure you also get the original install disks.

 

[B S Magnet]

So I'm now in an interesting spot: My mom has reclaimed her PowerMac G5 as a end table (irreparably damaging the MB and other components when she stripped the case out). This leaves me with a Thinkpad P51 and a MBP2020.

I would like a PPC Mac for nostalgia purposes but also as a dedicated word processor. Using Spotify and being able to read wikipedia articles would be a bonus, but its not a strict requirement. I was looking at a iMac G3 and a PowerMac G4 as replacements for my trusty G5. I was also looking at the 2008 MacBook Pro 15in (non unibody).

If there are any Macs that I have failed to consider, let me know.

One Mac which is demonstrably solid for word processing and even for some browsing (using InterwebPPC), using VLC and/or iTunes 10.6.3 for streaming audio (although not Spotify), and so on, might be the 1.42GHz Mac mini, or if you want an all-in-one, the 14-inch 1.42GHz iBook G4 (the final edition, which came with integrated wifi and bluetooth). The 14-inch display is only 1024x768, but this was my daily runner for several years before I finally moved on to Intel stuff. The 12-inch counterpart, the 1.33GHz model, is a bit slower. With the mid ’05 14-inch, you get options for external display support, as well as the usual Gigabit ethernet and USB 2.0. It has FireWire 400 only, though.

Whenever they come up locally, I find the 14-inch mid-2005 iBooks have remained generally cheap and overlooked (more so now that demand for G4 Mac minis is starting to rise with perceptual collectibility, and cheap relative to the final PowerBooks of any size which come up for sale). I haven’t looked at how easily one can find replacement batteries these days for the 14-inch iBooks (usable across the final 14-inch iBook G3s and all the G4s), though.

Another possibility, if staying in the realm of PowerPC and wanting to find something in lower demand and fairly cheaply, but only if you’re comfortable with a soldering iron: the iMac G5, including the final edition with iSight and remote control capability (and which can run up to 4.5GB RAM). Many remain out there as “not running”, but this is almost undoubtedly a case of the failing, bad capacitors endemic to most, if not all of the iMac G5s out there, needing to be swapped out with fresh, better made ones — with this being probably the #1 reason why they’re sitting around and gathering dust.

One thing with any used gear you get, PowerPC or early Intel, is the need to open it up to take apart everything to get the internals completely free of dust and grime, and also to apply fresh thermal paste, so the possibility of having to do this with an iMac G5 you find for cheap locally is it’s gonna need to be opened up anyway. And since you’re gonna have to open up whatever you do get, this offers you a good opportunity to swap out the spinning hard drive with an SSD solution. This alone will speed up loading of software and the OS itself, and it’s probably the main thing you can do to eke every last drop of performance from your system.

 

[lepidotós]

Almost any G4 or G5 will do most of what you ask for. If Spotify still has a web interface (I've never used Spotify, but I've seen others use it), basically any computer that shipped stock with an 867MHz G4 or faster, or dual-processor 450MHz or faster (be wary of machines upgraded to that level as they may be bottlenecking that processor by not supporting faster graphics cards, storage, or very much RAM) should do you well for everything. That's about the point where media streaming (e.g. 360p video) becomes reasonably smooth. I'm posting this from my iBook G4 1.42GHz, Wikipedia is one of the least demanding websites you could ask for on a PowerPC Mac -- I've opened it up on my iBook G3 and on Oddball, both pretty quickly without any visual issues. Then, there's the option of FrogFind, a web service that strips web pages down to be text-only using the Firefox reader view scripts and lets any web browser on any computer (the creator demoed it on an Apple II) access them.

I personally really like the iBook G4's keyboard -- it's very crisp. The keys go down with a nice tactile bump, but at the same time are loud as a steam locomotive.

Really, it depends on what you're looking for in a computer. If it's a desktop computer, I'd say get a Dual 500MHz Gigabit Ethernet G4 tower, or an AGP Graphics (make sure the third character of the serial number is a 0 denoting it was built in the year 2000, as they are capable of dual processor cards where the 1999 machines aren't) and upgrade it with a card from a Gigabit Ethernet or Digital Audio. They're the last G4s until the MDD that will accept 2GB RAM, and according to a rule of thumb I heard a while ago the extra processor brings the speed in line with about a single 900MHz processor. They're also relatively cheap because of their low clock speed, and have the most reliable power supplies (and are the easiest to adapt to use ATX power supplies). I got my G4 AGP for $40, the guy was going to gut it and use it as a Raspberry Pi case but didn't have the space for it. You will probably find one for more like $90 though.

If you'd like to get adventurous with it, a higher end G5 tower, on top of being the same generation as what you had, can also be used to boot 64-bit Linux 5.15+, giving you access to a massive library of software (e.g. Shotcut, Blender 2.79, Firefox 91, etc.) that in 97% of cases just needs to be recompiled, or have one or two lines changed. The later models can also accept 16GB RAM total and, in Linux, boasts an impressive range of GPUs that it will take (up to a Radeon HD 6990) due to it having PCIe 1.0.

As for laptops, since you're more into Mac OS X it seems, I'd suggest probably getting a lower end iBook G4 or a midrange (between 1.0GHz and 1.25GHz) PowerBook G4. Any of them will do, I like the G4 1.42GHz but they're all more or less equally good at the pretty lightweight use case you're presenting. You won't get away with an iBook G3, because the most up-to-date browser for G3 processors doesn't have a good enough rendering engine or Javascript interpreter to do Spotify, even the fastest iBook G3. Max out the RAM and install Sorbet Leopard, which comes with WebKit 604 and is your best bet for Spotify. Otherwise, if it's not a big deal, you could really buy any PowerBook or iBook you'd like, they're all fine for word processing and Wikipedia, but you'd probably be better served staying away from the PowerBook G3 "Kanga" or earlier laptops, as they're incapable of booting into Mac OS X.

The "Lombard" PowerBook G3 (333MHz, or 400MHz that says "Macintosh PowerBook G3" on the front bezel -- its successor, the "Pismo", was officially only known as the PowerBook (FireWire) and not PowerBook G3) has a fairly mushy key feel to me, but you might like it if you like linear keys. Plus, since Spotify is out of the window anyway according to Dronecatcher, it or its pricey younger successor is a pretty decent option for trying out various OSes -- you'll usually find them with Mac OS 9.2 installed on them, which is one of the most lightweight, responsive OSes ever released.​

 

[Dronecatcher]

I will post a more detailed thread in a different forum, but I was also thinking about a Mac Pro 2005 for video editing (if that's even a viable option compared to my Thinkpad which uses a i7 and a Quadro from 2019 is a different thread lol)

TL;DR: ISO good word processing PPC mac.

Any PowerPC Mac will give you Wordprocessing and if it is internet enabled, http://frogfind.com will direct you to Wikipedia.

Like others have suggested, a G4 iBook is a valuable and economical asset for PPC tinkering.

Spotify no longer works on PPC/OSX and the web version uses a digital rights management that is unavailable to PPC/OSX (not sure about Linux.)

Whether you mean a 2005 G5 or a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 both will be left in the dust by the performance of an i7 - although I'd trade the performance for a dedicated desktop workstation instead of making a laptop pant and wheeze through HD video transcoding.