How Long Until The PowerPC is Truly Obsolete?
Some decisions are easy to make. If you’re driving to work and a boulder suddenly rolls over the front of your vehicle you know you’re in the market for a new car. Likewise if you’re typing away on your Mac and a dense cloud of electronic infused smoke bellows forth you know you are now a computer shopper. Most decisions aren’t so easily made, the decision to get a new Mac is not one most people take lightly (those things cost serious money). Coupled with Apple’s recent decision to go with Intel as their CPU manufacturer and the waters are seriously muddied.
The reason that the choice of when or why to buy a new Mac is so difficult is because most people don’t buy computers when they absolutely need them. Instead, and I’m more guilty than most, the majority of folks fall for the marketing and buy Macs when they feel hopelessly far behind the current offerings. For example, a nearly pristine G5 might be sitting on the floor next to a person who primarily uses the machine to write, surf and use iMovie. Obviously this person doesn’t need the power of a G5 but this individual was certain that people were having such a great time with the 64 bitness inherent in the G5 that he was compelled to acquire the perforated prince of performance.
The personal foolish example above aside, when making an investment as large as required to obtain a G5 a plethora of factors must be considered and accepted. First you have to convince yourself that your current computer is somehow substandard (can’t host a three way video chat? Why you’ve got a piece-o-crap my friend!). Then you can easily convince yourself that the new computer must be top of the line because it will take a much longer time before it becomes obsolete. That is an old argument and it doesn’t hold much water anymore. Note that you could buy six Mac minis for the price of one 2.7 GHz PowerMac. Which computer do you think will likely be more powerful in six years: a brand new Mac Mini or a six-year-old tower? Still, if you’re thinking of buying a computer right now you are likely worried about near term incompatibility with the new Intel chips on the horizon.
So the question effervesces: just when will the current line of Macs become obsolete? Before answering that we have to first decide how to define a Mac as obsolete. Most Macs become antiquated when there is a more capable computer nearby to replace them. That standard is too personal to provide an objective definition so for the purposes of this article obsolescence will be defined as occurring when the latest release of the OS is no longer officially supported for the computer. If we take this metric and apply to past computers made by Apple hopefully we can gain some insight as to when the current models of Macs might become unusable with Apple’s latest OS offerings.
Out of the compacts Macs let us choose my personal favorite: The SE/30. A nice machine and a bit of a powerhouse back in the day the SE/30 was introduced in 1989. It reached obsolescence when Apple release System 8 in 1997. That is a span of 8 years, a pretty good lifetime for any computer though if you wanted to take advantage of color you would have needed an external monitor.To pick a model closer to a major change in hardware a Quadra example is in order. In this instance we choose a Quadra 660av. Introduced in 1993 it became obsolete with the release of Mac OS 8.5. The interval between the Quadra’s release and the advent of 8.5 gave the machine an effective lifespan of 5 years. For a representative of the early PowerPC a PowerMac 8600 offers a reasonable choice. Introduced in 1997 these machines stayed current until OS 10.1 was released in 2001. A G3 model s definitely needed and for that one we opt for the venerable iMac. Introduced in 1998 these, of course, run 9.2 with aplomb and still make a passable browsing/e-mail/writing platform. They became obsolete with the advent of OS 10.2 in 2002.
Those are plenty of samples. What we see is a life expectancy of at least four years even when the computers released were offered near a major hardware revision. Hence if the past is any indication it is likely that any Mac you buy today will be supported in four years. One supposes it is likely that the first machines to become obsolete will be the machines that feature G4 chips and are, therefore, not 64 bit compatible. Macs featuring G5s might be supported much longer. The real question, it seems, a prospective computer purchaser needs to ask is: Will I still be buying software for this computer in four years? To put a different perspective on the question: if you’re still running the latest OS on a dual G4 400Mhz machine it might be a good time to wait.
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I would contest that the original iMacs are dead. I just upgraded 5 iMacs to Panther, and they are working as good as, if not better than, they were under 9.22. Memory upgrade to over 256MB was the only change I had to make, and I had memory chips lying around.
Chris, I really enjoy the humor in your articles.
I suspect that the G3 will have a longer life than most because of Rosetta. And possibly that is why the G3 is still so well supported by Apple. With both Panther and Tiger rumors abounded whether Apple would drop G3 support. Now we know why they didn’t.
Your current Mac will become obsolete when you stop using it.
The example of the iMac’s running Panther above is a great one, for most purposes it will be a very long time before the tasks we need to perform just simply demand more power. Right now a Dual G5 PowerMac is cutting edge for pro video editing, music production, photography, and much much more. At what point will that no longer be the case? Quite simply put, when Apple and the other major Mac software publishers start churning out software that will not perform these tasks on a PowerPC-based system. Now, considering that right now there are millions of PowerPC systems out there, and zero Intel-based Mac’s - well, this could be upwards of a decade realistically.
It’s funny, I left the MS Windows platform because my productivity skyrocketed when I tried Mac. I was no longer worried about such trivial nuances as “How many GHz do I need to run Go Live, Photoshop, Antispyware, Antivirus, a firewall, and outlook at the same time” - just because as anyone familiar with Windows knows - no matter how much power you have (and I have a 4GB/4GHz system sitting here collecting dust to prove it) in the Windows world you always need more. I haven’t yet felt that way with Mac. My Mac Mini keeps up with my iBook which keeps up with my shiny new 2.0GHz iMac G5 just fine. That performance gap on the current crop of systems really just isn’t there.
planetmike thanks for the correction. When I wrote the first draft I was thinking of the original G3/233 PowerMac. You are absolutely correct the original iMac did not get “obsoleted” until Tiger.
Thanks Chris!
Someone should be pointing out that switch to Intel will turn the G4 and the G5 into identical twins as far as future obsolescence goes. The only reason that the G4 would become obselete earlier is because of developers compiling their apps for “G5 and up” in order to take advantage of new processor features. But there is no “and up” anymore. The new regime will be just as incompatible with the G5 as the G4. With the next generation being a massive sideways step instead of building on the best of the previous architectures, developers will largely tend to support the G4 and the G5 always together, as the altivec-enabled legacy baseline. There’s no value anymore in compiling only for the top-end (G5) features of a dead-end chip line. I doubt we will *ever* see ‘requires a G5 minimum’ in any popular pro application. If you were holding off for a G5 PowerBook, this is good news. Buy the G4. The longevities of the G4 and the G5 chips are now inextricably married and are essentially one.
The truth is Macintoshes last forever--okay, maybe not “forever"--but they sure last longer than similar level PCs. I have yet invested in a G5 system, since G4 and G3 processors still work great for me. My primary systems, desktops and laptops, run on 400, 500, 900MHz G3 up to 1GHz G4s. Servers range from the 604s up to dual 450MHz CPU G4.
When will these machines become obsolete? As dickrichards2000 mentioned earlier, they “will become obsolete when [I] stop using [them].”
I’m running Tiger on both my upgraded Pismo PowerBook and the original 400MHz Lombard PowerBook. Believe it or not, I still plan to use these PowerBooks, as long as their LCD displays can hold up that long, for another two, three years until Apple comes out with another PowerBook that can hold two battries, allowing me true wireless computing experience for 8 hours between charge.
I agree, folks tend to keep machines so long as they still run the software they need. Most users don’t max out the capability of their machines with the typical apps they use - email, web surfing and IM. I’m still happy with my PowerBook G4 1GHz (which replaced a Summer of 2000 iMac Indigo because I needed portability). Heck, my oldest PC (given to my daughter for her use during 4 years of high school (purchased in 1996) is still in service. Folks tend to get into what I call “upgraditis” and have to have the latest and greatest. So as long as Apple supports the systems we have and the programs we use and need run on them, I for one don’t plan on dumping any of my Macs.
10 years. Almost.
I bought my PowerMac 7500/100 in decmber 1995.
Over the years it’s seen some upgrades. Coming gradually.
It’s now running with 10.3.9, a G3/500, 1GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon and multi-GB’s worth of disks.
Although a bit long-in-the-tooth even when running firefox and thunderbird, it still suits a purpose.
Hell, it even runs World of Warcraft daily…
yes, even a mac-mini outpaces it on every single benchmark, it does run reliably.
I’m considering to upgrade to an upgraded G4.
Why? Well, a Sawtooth machine with an 1-1,2 GHz G4 will outpace a mac mini at roughly he same cost.
Ongoing dilemma… the Mac-mini is very, very cute… and has a power-usage and form-factor that is very, very, very tempting…
What it will be? I don’ know yet. A 1.42GHz Mac Mini is the true temptation here…
If I am allowed to sway your decision, even in the least…
Go with the Mini! You’ll be glad you did. I have to confess that I use my 1.42GHz Mini more than my shiney new 2.0GHz iMac (except for when using Logic Express and other music apps).
It isn’t the fastest machine in the world, and no one ever claimed that it is… but for sheer economics across the board it simply can’t be beat, AND you can take it with you! The purposes it’s designed to serve simply won’t demand much more power in the coming years - how much beefier does a CPU need to be to surf the internet or check your email? That’s the downside to this entire arguement (if it can even be called that), 95% of the Mac and PC users out there don’t know what they’re running and three quarters of those that do really don’t care. I’m glad to see so many folks with older Macs professing their love for them, this whole thing is very new to me. In my day, a Mac was a silly overpriced monochrome machine that we Amiga/Atari ST users simply scoffed at (or emulated via software). Having been stuck on a PC for the past 7 years I feel like I really missed out - so in effect, the future with Apple has never looked brighter, through my eyes at least.
mcfrog, I’ve tried both the mac min and upgrading a sawtooth. The mac mini is excellent but expandibility is somewhat limited. You’ve only go one slot for memory and the hard drive is a bit on the slow side. On the other hand my upgraded sawtooth was also pretty nice, You could swap video cards, add drives and seriously bump up the memory. All in all I would call it a wash, you can’t go wrong either way.
Not sure that the definition of obsolete is accurate as it is tied to the OS. I guess that’s one way of defining it however I think that it really comes down to applications rather than the OS.
After all, if you were to remove *everything* from a new computer *except* the OS, wouldn’t it be pretty much obsolete!? You could start it up and make some folders and delete them.
Um, Cool. I think you get the point.
I have to agree with the folks above who say that when you can’t do what you want to do on the Mac you have, then you need to get another.
And that’s a question of software, hardware and OS.
Could I post to this site using an SE30? Probably not (browser limitations?) but I could do word processing and write emails and a few other things..... most of which I use a new machine for.
Interesting question - what’s the oldest hardware that someone is using to post to this site?
I’m out - 2005 iBook.
*sigh*