Definitely. My laptop is a Dell Precision M4700 from 2013, Dual Core, 12Gb ram, Windows 10. It's still quite fast and it's thicc but I love all the extra ports you no longer get in modern laptops.
I'm just now decommissioning a Quad G5 tower and it still works! It spent it's whole life running Logic in my home studio attached to MOTU multichannel recording hardware and an 8 channel Emagic USB to MIDI expander. The only reason I'm changing is I picked up a used M2 Mini for $400 so I can run the latest Logic and trade files with my growing number of online music collaborators. The G5 will go downstairs to my lab as it still has a full copy of the Adobe creative suite that I use a couple of times a year. I'm hoping the added heat will make the basement more comfortable ;) Keep up the good work Alice!
@@alicemcgown5358 The G5 Quad needs maintenance and if you stop it it demands more. My advice, have the liquid cooling system checked, if there are leaks the Mac will go to worse trouble. If you are not using it, always unplug the network cable.
I still have a fleet of PPC macs in service to this day. Some for room control systems, some for programming and a bunch for classic gaming / Land parties. It's all about using the right software and knowing how to configure the machines. As a developer that supports machines from the 68k to Intel Macs, they can all be useful in todays computing 😉😀
Well guest, I am showing my age because the PowerPC area for me was the "Golden Age" of Apple Computers (both desktops and laptops). We went from the G3 processor to the G4 processor both from Motorola and then to IBM's G5 processor (which, was never designed to be placed inside of a personal computer). During this time, I only bought All-in-One desktop systems. Picked-up a glossy white 20-inch G5 iMac which, I still use today. This iMac stores 99 percent of my decades of digital photos and lets me watch and record over the air TV shows and movies using my Elgato EyeTV 500 HD digital system. Also, just for the record this is not the oldest desktop in my collection that belongs to my All-in-One 5500 with its 603(e) processor (smile...smile).
Sad to see the PowerMac architecture being so dead nowadays, they were always interesting machines. I owned a PowerMac G5 not long ago, which I ended up exchanging for a Mac Pro 5,1 from 2010, which is still a very competent and upgradable machine for its years, and still has that beautiful G5 “Cheesegrater” design the PowerMac G5 debuted with. It is always interesting to look back on vintage tech like this and see how usable it would be nowadays. You just gained a like!
Yeah, the lack of software support is bad enough, but it's the power efficiency that really kills them these days. Even though a G5 or G4 Mac can still do useful tasks, the power usage is off the charts compared to even older Intel gear.
@@thetechwehave Well yeah, these machines were targeted towards professional users, so I get why they take up so much power and space, but yeah, power consumption for doing more complex and more demanding tasks has advanced a lot, leaving these as old unsupported and power hungry machines, it is sad really, knowing even more that the PowerPC architecture still exists, just not for the consumer, it would have been cool to see these machines advance more and more towards the current age for consumers, but we all know how it went. It is always interesting to see what could have been and what ended up being. PS: Even tho they are not that useful today tho, these machines look very beautiful and could make your computer collection stand out more if you do collecting and all that stuff that is.
I have a PowerBook G4 that I still use occasionally. It struggles with processing, but using a couple of apps that I can either not find anymore or that they are too costly to renew (Live TV/Radio recording apps and a 3D design app), I still use it for the basics. I get the native data outputs of those apps and then transfer them to my new Mac or Raspberry Pi to work on and process to other open file standards. I’ll keep using it until it dies completely.
My Quad G5 runs Mac OS 9 apps butter smooth, simply don't let any PowerPC Macs doing any modern tasks and gave it an SSD upgrade, it can run most 90s and early 2000s Mac applications super fast!
I think part of the reason why even a Dell Dimension 2400 is faster then many powerpc machines is due to PowerPC being essentially dead in the desktop market. x86 and amd64 see the most compiler development. Compilers are really REALLY good at producing optimized x86, amd64, and arm machine code because those are the dominant architectures. Compilers for PowerPC just don't create code quite as optimized, which doesn't help matters when your CPU is from about the same era as the Northwood Pentium 4's.
This test performed on a PowerMac MDDD Dual G4 at 1.25Ghz with 2Gb, OSx Leopard, I tested it the same on an iMac 20" Dualcore 64bit, 4GB, SSD and Snow Leopard and I can assure you that the INtel CPU struggled to maintain the step, despite the architectural improvements and the increased speed of the 2.16Ghz CPU, the 667Mhz bus, the ATI X1600 128Mb DDR3 video card; consider that OSX 10.6.8 is highly optimized for Intel and performance of Altivec are clearly superior to SSE3... Analyze this video where 2 G4 CPUs are put under very high stress
I still love my TiBook's keyboard. I'm now down to Leopard and now-abandoned Void-Linux and want to learn how to do-it myself cross-compiling stuff as it doesn't have to go for landfill.
Unless…. With cheap (formerly $3500) Digidesign audio cards, 888 IO, and Pro Tools 6.4, you can have an awesome DAW that networks with modern computers! The earlier G5’s with pci-x slots will run PT Mix cards.. Yes. I’ve done it. 4:41
for today's standards, absolutely the G5 does not come up to snuff, it is simply not even remotely close to on the level of competing machines of the modern era, even when you stack up ultra-budget machines like the raspberry pi against the G5, which at its time was a pretty bleeding edge, flagship workstation that you paid a significant amount of money for. however i would argue it still does have value in terms of legacy support, emulating these systems, as far as i am aware is not possible perhaps maybe minus a very specific QEMU setup, and even if it were theoretically possible, the real system is still always going to be the most accurate one, as even with cycle-perfect emulators in existence, ownership of the nintendo 64 console still has significant value and demand to this day among retro gamers.
Tip InterwebPPC still is getting developed for, great video though... liked and subbed... Oh and there's still a lot you can do with the PPCs and there's even better streamlined custom Mac OSes out there like Sorbet Leopard... They aren't dead yet just getting slower than they were for modern day stuff
Morph OS is fascinating! While I focused this video on creating a useful system for the average user (using macOS, ChromeOS Flex, and Linux), it's amazing to see the same majic that gave us "Video Toaster" still alive.
You are forgetting one of the BEST features of the PowerPC Platform. ABSOLUTE SECURITY! Meaning? Zero Back doors built into the silicon while running your program on Bare metal. There is also small thing about the hardware running in the worst of circumstances. By design? The Power Mac's paid EXTREME attention to EMI & RFI with some having no wireless to speak of on board. This is REALLY important running with Tube's / Valve's based gear; that is EXTREMELY sensitive to outside noise and will be happy to pick up your WiFi or Bluetooth router humming and buzzing away across the room. Spewing Ungodly amounts of RF that your wonderful Tube gear Preamp seem to pick up EVERY tiny nuance of it. PowerMac G5's and G4s are Quiet as a mouse when it comes to being used in the studio (EMI wise that is 😉) So even today, they still have a niche application in today's Studio's . There is also one more area (Kw b Dam3d ) and that is in a Real Time OS & Real world latency. The designed the platform for server use. Meaning? Physics labs etc. The only thing close to day in modern hardware are Game Systems. Sony's PS2 with the Firewire Port proved this.
You make an excellent point on the EMI/RF shielding! Besides some early models that suffered from "coil whining," the G5 was perfect for recording studios. While I only came into possession of the G5 recently, my G4 PowerBook spent its last couple of "working years" in a home-studio/practice-space, running Logic, Reason, Garageband, and Audacity flawlessly. If you look closely at the footage of it, you'll pick out Reason running and dock icons for a couple other audio apps. These days, my 2015 MacBook Pro for recording (featured in a previous video), iPad Pro 2018 for demos (running Garageband), and M2 Mini for proper mixing all run circles around this old gear. But I could absolutely see the utility of keeping one going in a recording studio, especially if you've got PowerPC-only professional audio cards (I can think of a few old MOTU cards off the top of my head). As for security, while the PowerPC ISA isn't a big target these days, MacOS 10.5 long stopped receiving security fixes, leaving it with a growing list of well-documented security holes. If you're keeping it off the internet (such as in a recording space), that's not a big deal. While there's no Intel-style ME core to worry about, Open Firmware is far from airtight. Anything critical enough to require a real-time OS is probably best not trusted to old hardware like this- check out @lillebrorsanvincent2017's comment on the cooling system for one example. Thanks for your thoughts! The love for these machines is so strong in this comment thread. 🥰
This makes me wish I'd kept at least ONE of my PPC Macs as time capsule. As a former PowerMac G5 owner, I don't miss my G5 but do wish I had my PowerMac G4 for the nostalgia of OS 9 and PPC OS X.
Thanks! I developed this concept because it seems all the other tech TH-camrs out there are focused on the latest shiny devices. I don't have the money to be buying $1000+ graphic cards every week; as an environmentalist, I felt that the constant focus on the newest new stuff only leads to waste; and it's just more fun to explore gear with limitations. I was also looking for more women nerds who know their way around a soldering gun and PCI Express bus to make YT videos before realized that was going to have to be me!
I had one of these, and I regret giving it away. - mostly just wanted to port my apps to it, "because I can!" - I was recently given a Macintosh SE, and an intel based white MacBook from 2006, still regret giving away the PowerPC though, I think because most desktop computers these days are x86 based there is an allure to try something different, so I have some excitement for RISC-V desktops...
Thanks for the encouragement! Most of the emulator programs either never supported PowerPC Macs or stopped getting updates over a decade ago. There have been so many cool advances in creating cycle-accurate and more compatible emulators since then. I've got an old Intel Core2 Quad machine that's been languishing under my bed that I've been thinking of turning into an emulator station, so "watch this space."
Works vs practicality - that's the rub. I guess maybe you could pull the guts and see if there would be a way to drop the power requirements and/or use the case for your RPi...
Didn't Sony make these PowerBook s? I know they used to make some apple laptops. Also I hope you tell your cat to be careful whilst examining these PCs! I was getting nervous as it casually stuck its paw in there...cause you know what say about curiosity and cats!
LOL I had a simliar era PBG4 (and ran Reason on it also). It was about as trashed as yours. Still my favourite mac I've ever owned was a PowerMac G4 (gigabit ethernet) from 2000. It lasted 20 years before the motherboard popped (and I still intend to repair it). I skipped the G5 generation entirely. Agreed that they are unfortunately quite useless these days, except for restoration purposes - unless you don't mind skipping the internet and just using old versions of reason and adobe creative suite before it was a subscription.
3:30 because devs stopped to use Altivec and other PPC specific instructions, so it uses more brute force from CPU.
You just inspired me to review my old 2015 MacBook Pro. Gonna try and get it moving on Linux!
Definitely. My laptop is a Dell Precision M4700 from 2013, Dual Core, 12Gb ram, Windows 10. It's still quite fast and it's thicc but I love all the extra ports you no longer get in modern laptops.
I've got Mojave, Sonoma, Void Linux and Fedora on my late 2013 13' MBPro. Void with Sway is great. Mojave is fine and Sonoma is sometimes useful.
I'm just now decommissioning a Quad G5 tower and it still works! It spent it's whole life running Logic in my home studio attached to MOTU multichannel recording hardware and an 8 channel Emagic USB to MIDI expander. The only reason I'm changing is I picked up a used M2 Mini for $400 so I can run the latest Logic and trade files with my growing number of online music collaborators. The G5 will go downstairs to my lab as it still has a full copy of the Adobe creative suite that I use a couple of times a year. I'm hoping the added heat will make the basement more comfortable ;) Keep up the good work Alice!
I'm also running an M2 Mini, and it's incredible! Logic has come a long way as well.
@@alicemcgown5358 The G5 Quad needs maintenance and if you stop it it demands more.
My advice, have the liquid cooling system checked, if there are leaks the Mac will go to worse trouble.
If you are not using it, always unplug the network cable.
I still have a fleet of PPC macs in service to this day. Some for room control systems, some for programming and a bunch for classic gaming / Land parties. It's all about using the right software and knowing how to configure the machines. As a developer that supports machines from the 68k to Intel Macs, they can all be useful in todays computing 😉😀
Well guest, I am showing my age because the PowerPC area for me was the "Golden Age" of Apple Computers (both desktops and laptops). We went from the G3 processor to the G4 processor both from Motorola and then to IBM's G5 processor (which, was never designed to be placed inside of a personal computer). During this time, I only bought All-in-One desktop systems. Picked-up a glossy white 20-inch G5 iMac which, I still use today. This iMac stores 99 percent of my decades of digital photos and lets me watch and record over the air TV shows and movies using my Elgato EyeTV 500 HD digital system. Also, just for the record this is not the oldest desktop in my collection that belongs to my All-in-One 5500 with its 603(e) processor (smile...smile).
Sad to see the PowerMac architecture being so dead nowadays, they were always interesting machines. I owned a PowerMac G5 not long ago, which I ended up exchanging for a Mac Pro 5,1 from 2010, which is still a very competent and upgradable machine for its years, and still has that beautiful G5 “Cheesegrater” design the PowerMac G5 debuted with. It is always interesting to look back on vintage tech like this and see how usable it would be nowadays. You just gained a like!
Yeah, the lack of software support is bad enough, but it's the power efficiency that really kills them these days. Even though a G5 or G4 Mac can still do useful tasks, the power usage is off the charts compared to even older Intel gear.
@@thetechwehave Well yeah, these machines were targeted towards professional users, so I get why they take up so much power and space, but yeah, power consumption for doing more complex and more demanding tasks has advanced a lot, leaving these as old unsupported and power hungry machines, it is sad really, knowing even more that the PowerPC architecture still exists, just not for the consumer, it would have been cool to see these machines advance more and more towards the current age for consumers, but we all know how it went. It is always interesting to see what could have been and what ended up being.
PS: Even tho they are not that useful today tho, these machines look very beautiful and could make your computer collection stand out more if you do collecting and all that stuff that is.
I have a PowerBook G4 that I still use occasionally. It struggles with processing, but using a couple of apps that I can either not find anymore or that they are too costly to renew (Live TV/Radio recording apps and a 3D design app), I still use it for the basics. I get the native data outputs of those apps and then transfer them to my new Mac or Raspberry Pi to work on and process to other open file standards. I’ll keep using it until it dies completely.
My Quad G5 runs Mac OS 9 apps butter smooth, simply don't let any PowerPC Macs doing any modern tasks and gave it an SSD upgrade, it can run most 90s and early 2000s Mac applications super fast!
I think part of the reason why even a Dell Dimension 2400 is faster then many powerpc machines is due to PowerPC being essentially dead in the desktop market.
x86 and amd64 see the most compiler development. Compilers are really REALLY good at producing optimized x86, amd64, and arm machine code because those are the dominant architectures.
Compilers for PowerPC just don't create code quite as optimized, which doesn't help matters when your CPU is from about the same era as the Northwood Pentium 4's.
This test performed on a PowerMac MDDD Dual G4 at 1.25Ghz with 2Gb, OSx Leopard, I tested it the same on an iMac 20" Dualcore 64bit, 4GB, SSD and Snow Leopard and I can assure you that the INtel CPU struggled to maintain the step, despite the architectural improvements and the increased speed of the 2.16Ghz CPU, the 667Mhz bus, the ATI X1600 128Mb DDR3 video card; consider that OSX 10.6.8 is highly optimized for Intel and performance of Altivec are clearly superior to SSE3...
Analyze this video where 2 G4 CPUs are put under very high stress
I still love my TiBook's keyboard. I'm now down to Leopard and now-abandoned Void-Linux and want to learn how to do-it myself cross-compiling stuff as it doesn't have to go for landfill.
I love how your ‘oldest Mac’ is still from this century 😂
Unless…. With cheap (formerly $3500) Digidesign audio cards, 888 IO, and Pro Tools 6.4, you can have an awesome DAW that networks with modern computers! The earlier G5’s with pci-x slots will run PT Mix cards..
Yes. I’ve done it. 4:41
for today's standards, absolutely the G5 does not come up to snuff, it is simply not even remotely close to on the level of competing machines of the modern era, even when you stack up ultra-budget machines like the raspberry pi against the G5, which at its time was a pretty bleeding edge, flagship workstation that you paid a significant amount of money for.
however i would argue it still does have value in terms of legacy support, emulating these systems, as far as i am aware is not possible perhaps maybe minus a very specific QEMU setup, and even if it were theoretically possible, the real system is still always going to be the most accurate one, as even with cycle-perfect emulators in existence, ownership of the nintendo 64 console still has significant value and demand to this day among retro gamers.
Love that kind of content ❤ Keep up and greetings from Greece 🇬🇷
I have a g5 "Tiger" 2008 that is still working. All-in-one unit with a keyboard and mouse, software. Great deal!
Tip InterwebPPC still is getting developed for, great video though... liked and subbed... Oh and there's still a lot you can do with the PPCs and there's even better streamlined custom Mac OSes out there like Sorbet Leopard... They aren't dead yet just getting slower than they were for modern day stuff
I just installed Ubuntu on my 2013 MBA and it's running great. I love your videos!
The Quad water cooled G5 is useable and most PowerBooks can be used with the Amiga-like MorphOS (with true preemptive multitasking and a shell)
Morph OS is fascinating! While I focused this video on creating a useful system for the average user (using macOS, ChromeOS Flex, and Linux), it's amazing to see the same majic that gave us "Video Toaster" still alive.
i run a quad and a dual 2.7 ive got debian sid moprph os and others on it and with linux i have a radeon 6970 and it can play 1080p 60
You are forgetting one of the BEST features of the PowerPC Platform. ABSOLUTE SECURITY! Meaning?
Zero Back doors built into the silicon while running your program on Bare metal.
There is also small thing about the hardware running in the worst of circumstances.
By design? The Power Mac's paid EXTREME attention to EMI & RFI with some having no wireless to speak of on board.
This is REALLY important running with Tube's / Valve's based gear; that is EXTREMELY sensitive to outside noise and will be happy to pick up your WiFi or Bluetooth router humming and buzzing away across the room. Spewing Ungodly amounts of RF that your wonderful Tube gear Preamp seem to pick up EVERY tiny nuance of it.
PowerMac G5's and G4s are Quiet as a mouse when it comes to being used in the studio (EMI wise that is 😉)
So even today, they still have a niche application in today's Studio's .
There is also one more area (Kw b Dam3d ) and that is in a Real Time OS & Real world latency.
The designed the platform for server use. Meaning? Physics labs etc.
The only thing close to day in modern hardware are Game Systems.
Sony's PS2 with the Firewire Port proved this.
You make an excellent point on the EMI/RF shielding! Besides some early models that suffered from "coil whining," the G5 was perfect for recording studios. While I only came into possession of the G5 recently, my G4 PowerBook spent its last couple of "working years" in a home-studio/practice-space, running Logic, Reason, Garageband, and Audacity flawlessly. If you look closely at the footage of it, you'll pick out Reason running and dock icons for a couple other audio apps.
These days, my 2015 MacBook Pro for recording (featured in a previous video), iPad Pro 2018 for demos (running Garageband), and M2 Mini for proper mixing all run circles around this old gear. But I could absolutely see the utility of keeping one going in a recording studio, especially if you've got PowerPC-only professional audio cards (I can think of a few old MOTU cards off the top of my head).
As for security, while the PowerPC ISA isn't a big target these days, MacOS 10.5 long stopped receiving security fixes, leaving it with a growing list of well-documented security holes. If you're keeping it off the internet (such as in a recording space), that's not a big deal. While there's no Intel-style ME core to worry about, Open Firmware is far from airtight. Anything critical enough to require a real-time OS is probably best not trusted to old hardware like this- check out @lillebrorsanvincent2017's comment on the cooling system for one example.
Thanks for your thoughts! The love for these machines is so strong in this comment thread. 🥰
This makes me wish I'd kept at least ONE of my PPC Macs as time capsule. As a former PowerMac G5 owner, I don't miss my G5 but do wish I had my PowerMac G4 for the nostalgia of OS 9 and PPC OS X.
I have one of these, the air cooled 1,8ghz variant. The coolant in those tend to leak and ruin everything, watch out
😅
Great video. Also I just read the channel description and I think this channel is very unique and awesome!!
Thanks! I developed this concept because it seems all the other tech TH-camrs out there are focused on the latest shiny devices. I don't have the money to be buying $1000+ graphic cards every week; as an environmentalist, I felt that the constant focus on the newest new stuff only leads to waste; and it's just more fun to explore gear with limitations. I was also looking for more women nerds who know their way around a soldering gun and PCI Express bus to make YT videos before realized that was going to have to be me!
@@thetechwehave 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Yup, for Amiga third party neo-systems
I had one of these, and I regret giving it away. - mostly just wanted to port my apps to it, "because I can!" - I was recently given a Macintosh SE, and an intel based white MacBook from 2006, still regret giving away the PowerPC though, I think because most desktop computers these days are x86 based there is an allure to try something different, so I have some excitement for RISC-V desktops...
One more like for the cat and the math dress. Hehehe
Cute, I have a 68040 Mac running NetBSD running a Mud server that I access with an Atari 800XL LOL
use it as a heater for your feet :)
Hey !
1-Is the power mac G5's CPU better than the intel P4?
2-Can you build a retro gaming PC ?
The video is nice BTW keep up
Thanks for the encouragement! Most of the emulator programs either never supported PowerPC Macs or stopped getting updates over a decade ago. There have been so many cool advances in creating cycle-accurate and more compatible emulators since then. I've got an old Intel Core2 Quad machine that's been languishing under my bed that I've been thinking of turning into an emulator station, so "watch this space."
@@alicemcgown5358 i will be waiting patiently for the C2Q emulation station
Good luck !
The iPhone has had a longer run than the Intel MacBook Pro.
Works vs practicality - that's the rub. I guess maybe you could pull the guts and see if there would be a way to drop the power requirements and/or use the case for your RPi...
Didn't Sony make these PowerBook s? I know they used to make some apple laptops. Also I hope you tell your cat to be careful whilst examining these PCs! I was getting nervous as it casually stuck its paw in there...cause you know what say about curiosity and cats!
Sony (partially) designed the PowerBook 100 from 1991. That’s the only one.
Que hermosa 🌹🌹😍😘
I still have Mac 128 😂
PS....anyway I signed up... ;)
LOL I had a simliar era PBG4 (and ran Reason on it also). It was about as trashed as yours. Still my favourite mac I've ever owned was a PowerMac G4 (gigabit ethernet) from 2000. It lasted 20 years before the motherboard popped (and I still intend to repair it). I skipped the G5 generation entirely. Agreed that they are unfortunately quite useless these days, except for restoration purposes - unless you don't mind skipping the internet and just using old versions of reason and adobe creative suite before it was a subscription.
🫃🏼👈😎🫵
Not fast as a cat running...
nope.
you both need some classes of actuation and drama