Vintage Mac News is a roundup of news related to vintage Macs* and
other older Apple products. For other Mac and Apple news, see Mac News Review. For iBook, PowerBook, and other
portable news, see The 'Book Review.
iPad, iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV news is covered in iOS News Review.
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News & Opinion
News & Opinion
With iPhone 5, Apple Abandons PowerPC Users
This
isn't something that's received a lot of coverage, although it has been
mentioned on Low
End Mac's Facebook page: The iPhone 5, 5G iPod touch, and 7G iPod
nano require iTunes 10.7, and that in turn requires OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, which
was the first version of Mac OS X with no support for PowerPC
Macs.
The last version of iTunes for PowerPC Macs is 10.6.3 for OS X 10.5.8 Leopard (OS X 10.4 Tiger users were left behind
after version 9.2.1), so if you haven't already made the migration to
Intel and want the newest iPhone or iPod touch or nano - or the next
iPad - it's time to bite the bullet and go Intel.
Or you can just pick up a cheap PC with Windows XP SP2. Yes, iTunes
10.7 supports a 10-year-old version of Microsoft Windows, but not a
5-year-old version of Apple's own operating system.
As for iTunes 11, we'll know more when it becomes available in
October.
Ripping Video on PowerPC
PowerPC Liberation reports:
"The only limitations are in the software you rip with and the
capability of the hardware the video is intended to be played on. The
software you will use for playback should also be taken into
consideration so that what you rip will play flawlessly.
"In my opinion there are two PowerPC compatible apps on OS X worthy
of keeping in your ripping toolbox, Handbrake and Media Converter. The
Handbrake team ceased PowerPC development during the 0.9.4 - 0.9.5
transition, but Media Converter continues to have G4/G5 support. Both
are very capable and allow fine tuning of rips beyond what anyone would
ever really need. Many will find Media Converter a little more user
friendly because once you have all the presets fine tuned just the way
you want it's simply a matter of drag and drop."
"With Handbrake you shouldn't go past version 0.9.3 on Leopard
unless you're happy with h.264 as your only codec option. 0.9.3 was the
last build to still offer full FFmpeg and XviD (avi) options alongside
h.264. It also is much more MP3 and AC3 friendly. Tiger users cannot go
past 0.9.1 which is a very solid build also.
"For Media Converter just use the most recent build or any version
you tend to prefer. I use the current 1.2 version and other than a few
small tweaks I needed to make the built in presets are quite good out
of the box. Once it's all setup the way you want all you have to do it
open it and drag whatever you have to rip onto the window."
"No matter if you're ripping DVD's or re-ripping compressed video
there is a sweet spot for all G4 and G5 hardware. Anyone on a slower G4
with the will and patience to watch something their hardware can't
handle can down-rip videos to a codec and resolution more fitting their
hardware playback capability.
"Before doing any large quantity of ripping it's best to first
figure out the codec/resolution sweet spots for your playback hardware
. . . you need to work within the capability of your
hardware."
"In terms of what hardware is suitable for ripping it would be wise
to only use G4/G5 on OS X . . . AltiVec has a big part in the
performance of ripping."
"A laptop is not the best piece of hardware to use because they are
simply not built for running at 100% CPU consumption for the hours or
even days it takes to rip a big que of video. Towers can do this with
ease for months . . . a nice cheap dual 450-500 MHz Gigabit
G4 would do an admirable job for well under $100 and could also be used
for file serving, torrents or whatever else you think of."
The article goes on to make specific recommendations for various
categories of G4 and G5 Macs.
Link removed at the request of PowerPC Liberation.
Another Flash Alternative for PPC Macs
PPC Luddite reports:
"Since myself and others have written about the thousand or more
flash alternatives out there, I thought I'd add one more to the mix.
I've discovered a new tool for Linux called quvi. It works
from the command line and streams YouTube videos to your player of
choice. It basically works like this:
"Install quvi, create the file ~/.quvirc and add:
- exec = "yourplayer %u"
- format = your preferred format
where yourplayer can be vlc or smplayer or whichever. I prefer to
run mplayer from the command line with arguments, so my exec line is
'mplayer -really-quiet -framedrop %u'.
For your preferred format, typical YouTube formats are fmt18_360p,
fmt22_720p, and fmt37_1080p, which play mp4s in those resolutions."
"When using quvi with mplayer, I find this the most cpu-efficient
way to waste time, I mean, watch YouTube videos, and I can even watch
them without frame-skipping on a G3 laptop, something I couldn't say
for MacTubes."
Link:
Yet Another Flash Alternative
Apple Ends Software Update for Mac OS X 10.3 and
Earlier
From My Mac Collection:
"For those of you who are running Macintoshes with OS 10.3 or
earlier (including OS 9), you will no longer be able to download
software updates through the application 'Software Update.' OS 9
was Apple's first operating system to tout automatic software updates
and now Apple sees it fit to shut it down unless you're running OS 10.4
or later. This is likely due to the cost of running update servers for
the small amount of Mac users who run these vintage operating systems.
This is quite a disappointment for those of us who are still running
OS 9 or a version of OS X before 10.4 'Tiger.' If you thought
that wasn't bad enough, there's more to be upset about. For anyone
running a vintage version of iLife or iWork on OS 10.3 or earlier, you
will not receive updates for those either (unless you download them
directly from Apple's support site). If one has already received all
necessary updates, I strongly recommend regular backups of your
Macintosh OS in the event you experience a hard drive failure and need
to reinstall the OS. Lastly, software updates for the affected
operating systems can be found manually by heading to the link
below."
Link:
Apple Kills Software Update Application on Mac OS X V10.3 and
Earlier
Link: Software Update No
Longer Available in Mac OS X v10.3 and Earlier
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