“Leopard WebKit developer Tobias Netzel has done it again with the recent release of yet another version of this wonderful web browser for PowerPC Mac users running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard,” Bob Skelley writes for hittingthesweetspot. “Having the ability to update system security certificates to OS X 10.9 Mavericks levels and enable advanced features such as full screen HTML 5 video playback support on places like YouTube keeps me smiling as a PowerPC Mac user.”
“The computer I’m typing this on isn’t even supposed to run Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but it does via the old XPostFacto hack,” Skelley writes. “It was so many years ago that I made the move from 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard, I’ve taken for granted what great work it was to have been done in the first place.”
“How can it be that PowerPC Mac hardware has been created so sublimely it has scalability that even its original designers could not have foreseen? It’s truly one of the longest running Apple accomplishments.,” Skelley writes. “I read on Facebook today how someone’s Macbook Pro was about to give up the ghost at the ripe old age of seven – that’s right, 7! The Mac I’m writing this on, the indomitable Sawtooth of yore and legend is now 15 years old. You were once again reading correctly – 15 years old. Talk about Return On Investment (ROI).”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You know, because Macs cost too much. 😉
My wife still uses my old first intel white macbook. Bought in Jan 2006. Still works after 8 years and counting. I suggested to replace it and she shrugged the idea away with a big WHY? 1179 euro was expensive according a Windows friend. He has had 5 laptop computers in that same time about 500 euros each. ROI.
Exactly! I have a 2006 iMac which is used everyday, my wife is doing online schooling so it is not sitting idle. This year I upgraded it to a SSD and it is faster than when it was new. I am stuck on 10.7 Lion, but it still works great and runs all of the newest software programs that I need. The only hiccup is when we get over 85 degrees F in the house and it is doing something intensive like Netflix streaming or my son is online gaming, then it sometimes overheats, but those times are rare where we live. Most folks with machines this old stick with Leopard – it is faster than Lion, but I personally like the iCloud support you get with Lion and greater.
My oldest son has had 4 widows machines since 2009 – 3 of them are dead, only the newest one is still running. Gee, who paid more?
“My oldest son has had 4 widows machines since 2009 – 3 of them are dead, only the newest one is still running”
___
Intentional typo or not, that was great 🙂
Was just looking over inventory at a clients and talked about replacing the oldest Macs.
It is amazing how time flies when you have no problems with the hardware. Thought the batch of iMacs, 11 of them was 3-4 years old. Nope, coming up of 6 years, good old Core 2 Duos with 4GB of ram.
Running typical office programs, they are plenty fast enough, but it’s time. Hardware will eventually fail of old age.
I got about 15 years out of a PowerPC open case Mac (circa 1995).
They were great-started with 601 and ended up with 3 or 4 processor upgrades , memory installs ,PCI cards-all done by me and I’m not really proficient .
the final issue was ports .
Great machine although in it’s first life running OS 7.5.2 it crashed a lot .I attributed that to the fact that Steve Jobs was at Next then and nobody was riding the programmers hard enough
I recently fired up my 1996-1997 PowerPC G3, running OS 9, and it worked perfectly. I could even use it to get on the web (sort of). It was pre iMac.
My Sister’s MacBook Air SSD died with 1 year and 1 month on the odometer. Not funny.
Nope, not funny at all. But Apple generally stands behind its products (far better than most, anyway). You should press the issue with Apple.
Not nearly enough information to draw a conclusion. Heck, maybe she spilled water on it and never told you?
And if she bought AppleCare she is still covered for 3 years if it wasn’t anything SHE did to break it. Though I’ve seen Apple bend that rule before. Years ago I didn’t realize my electrical circuit had repeated brown outs, and it killed my iMac Hard Drive. Apple gave me a new drive free.
Agree, not funny, but EXTREMELY RARE. I agree with KingMel, press the issue with Apple. However, I also agree with Coolfactor. Press her to maybe confess if she dropped it, dropped something on it, or spilled something on it or something! Maybe an internal part came loose. I’d have it checked by an authorized dealer if you can’t get to a real Apple Store. It may not be dead, just injured.
Btw: i use a Power Mac G5 for every day use.
PowerBook G4 is still my mobile computer.
I’m not even joking. I’ve still got two blue and white G3’s in production. They only do word processing, but still, they were built in 1998 and are still going strong after 16 years!
My Mac SE still runs to this day. 🙂 (Got it in 1987) Is it still useful? It can be on a limited basis. I created a HyperCard stack for a little coffee shop I worked at, and it ran fine for a couple of years… I decided to pull it because, well, it was getting freaken dirty!!!
You can pull out the guts and pressure wash the enclosure. Carefully cover the logo first, though
Way back when I worked in a service department those cases cleaned up great with 409. It cut thru any grease and cigarette smoke stains, plus general dirt. No need to remove guts.
I have a Mid-2007 iMac that still runs great. 7 years old, and it’s compatible with Mac OS X Yosemite when it comes along this year. Needless to say I am very happy about it.
I gave my mid-2007 iMac to my Mom when her old PC got so screwed up it wasn’t worth messing with anymore.
She had a stroke previously which made reading very tedious and difficult (but oddly, she still touch-types faster than I do) and she *looovves* being able to highlight text on webpages and emails and have her Mac read it to her. She uses it every day. Oh, and voiceover is Included in the price of a Mac.
If she has trouble doing something with it I just share her desktop and show her how to do it, from 100 miles away, with audio too. Oh, and that’s included in the price of a Mac. And the 7-year-old machine still running great.
And the mid-2010 iMac I got to replace the one I gave her is as good as it was when I brought it home.
Macs are the best value, plain and simple.
Every lad should be so good to his mother 🙂
My “Pismo” PowerBook from 2000 is used almost every day. Its battery is not so good, so it’s always connect to power, but it sits next to where I watch TV. It runs Tiger, so I can’t use this Leopard WebKit, but TenFourFox is a great (very efficient) browser for my Pismo’s upgraded 550-Mhz G4. I once tried running Leopard on it “unofficially,” but it was too much “overhead” (or it be the old graphics hardware not being supported in Leopard). Plus, no Classic mode (for Mac OS 9 apps) in Leopard.
This guy has an even older machine, but it’s a Power Mac with a 1.8 GHz G4 upgrade. He probably also upgraded the graphics card at some point. And it’s max RAM is 2GB, which is pretty decent for such an old Mac. All of that upgradability makes a big difference in long term “scalability.”
I fires up my Abacus. It’s probably 100 years old and works great!!!
Seriously I can fire up my oldest Mac 512K and it will still run. I still use my Titanium G4 for opening old documents. Like above my first INTEL CPU iMac is used as our iTunes Media server and family or guest computer. It’s set to sleep but wakes on LAN so that ATV can access it.
My 1st Gen 2005 Mac Mini is still my Work Horse,
that i use every Day.
Apple Products are solo well Built.
(Great Job Apple)
While I loved my old PowerMac MDD/OS 9 and they worked flawlessly for years, I must confess to absolutely hating the amount of noise and heat that machine generated. By comparison, my Mac Pro is many, many times faster and completely silent.
My wife uses a 450 Sawtooth for her accounting software. She can’t find newer software that she likes enough and probably wouldn’t be able to migrate to new software. Oh well, it keeps working.
When a machine gets 10 years old if you decide to keep it, it typically gets relegated to doing 1 or 2 tasks. A G5 is no exception. It’s old technology. It’s not supported by Apple, nor can you get replacement service parts from Apple. Even a machine 1/2 it’s age is “vintage”.
Next week we’ll have some sort of discussion about how we NEED ultra powerful machines because we run 20 huge programs simultaneously. Interesting conversation… but let’s keep it real. Saying a G5 still has game is like saying an 80 year old man still has game… except Hugh Hefner of course 😉
I’m doing ok on my PowerBook 180 connected to a color monitor. I have access to the internet, plus have the ability to word process, desktop-publish, and print, and can use my email account to communicate with my colleagues and friends and family. What more does a basic consumer need?
The ability to connect an iPhone or an iPad to back up it’s content via iTunes, .docx support, a web browser that supports modern websites like Facebook, iMessage or 100s other examples.
If I sold a customer a PowerBook 180 today and told them it would meet all there basic computing needs, I’d get shot.
I have a 20+ year old Mac Classic that works great, but it’s totally useless for anything but word processing. I love that there are people out there who can keep PowerPC Macs going, but for the large majority of Mac users, it’s best to upgrade every few years. I admit that I’m a little annoyed that my Mac mini mid-2007 can’t run anything higher than OS X 10.7, but if I installed Mountain Lion or Mavericks on it, the video card would choke on the animations, and it would be no fun to use. So, it sits on my desk headless running Lion Server, and it makes a great testing platform for a few things.
My parents own one of the first Intel iMacs. It came with Tiger. I helped them upgrade to Snow Leopard a few years back. They’re finally going to upgrade to a new Mac Mini after about 8 years. Not a bad run.
——RM
The Cube still works fine. It’ll be 14 years in September.
Running Snow Leopard, too. Grafted it on like it was a burn victim.
I have an Apple IIe with an Applied Engineering ram card that I use with the original AppleWorks to write all the rough drafts of my novel. I use an adaptor cable to connect to my Mac’s USB to back up my Apple II stuff to Dropbox and Time Machine. I get the piece of mind with local and online back up with being able to use my old school machine for a practical purpose. Next, I’ll get the compact flash card adaptor so I don’t have to keep a library of aging 5.25 floppies.
Great thread!
Reminds of the scene in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer when Santa picks up all the misfit toys and makes them useful again … :~)