Macintosh computers - The apple thread

[LinuxVoid]

As a desktop operating system GNU/Linux is at this point still just a hobbyist OS.
Wine is a very useful and wonderful tool, but it's stupid and garbage to have to emulate a program, there needs to be more native support for software.
Also the entire ecosystem is a clusterfuck and because of this GNU/Linux can never catch on as a mass-use operating system.
What I mean by the sentence above is that you have like a million different distributions and several different desktop environments, it's all very confusing and unnecessary plus very confusion, for example:

• what is the operating system I can point to
• if an operating system is just an assortment of programs that are interchangeable with completely different projects (BSD) and configurations (distributions) then what IS the operating system I'm using and what really is and should an OS be in the first place.

It's a clusterfuck. I want to be able to look at an OS and say "That's Mac OS" not "That's gnome running on the linux kernel packaged by Ubuntu"

If the linux kernel is to ever become a real viable alternative to windows and mac os then there needs to be an actual operating system and not just some shitty group project by a bunch of shitskins or basement dwellers.

I see, well I can assure you the Linux Void is a complete distribution, rich in all functions you could ever wish for, programmed by aryan gods who have jobs and live in apartments (as opposed to basements). Install now and get over 20 lbs of pussy & ass!
(act now, supply is unlimited)

 

[JM 590]

I love my MacBook Pro. It’s the most reliable computer I’ve ever had. A 6 year old laptop being used as a desktop PC with three 1440p monitors dangling off it. It still keeps up with my workload like a fucking champ.

The Apple community: "scoff your macbook is 6 years old? don't you think it's time for an upgrade? time to pitch that machine STRAIGHT in the motherfuckin' GARBO and buy yourself a brand new one, fucker cheap ass poor idiot"

They really do have this weird subtle attitude where hierarchy is built around how new your Apple stuff is, and you're a scrub if your computer's too old. Even if it works well. Looking up problems with Macs is always a pain in the ass because you're all but guaranteed some half-assed snarky answer from a complete douchebag before you can find an actual solution.

I used a Macbook Pro for a while, and it really was a nice computer when it worked well. It overheated all the time, though, and got hot over even simple shit like watching YouTube videos. I had to have the logic board and the battery swapped out, too, so it's a good thing I bought Applecare.

Lovely screen, keyboard, and trackpad, though. I wish I could just rig those up directly to my Windows desktop.

 

[nagant 1895]

ITT: person who is going to get a mac regardless of advice pre-emptively defends his decision to get a mac against advice.
If you really do wanna learn to program and or code study up how to make a hackintosh. By the time you're done you'll be have an affordable machine running the OS you like and you'll have learned a lot.

 

[Hikikomori-Yume]

ITT: person who is going to get a mac regardless of advice pre-emptively defends his decision to get a mac against advice.
If you really do wanna learn to program and or code study up how to make a hackintosh. By the time you're done you'll be have an affordable machine running the OS you like and you'll have learned a lot.

This thread is a Machintosh general thread
I started it by asking people what they thought about machintosh computers, not once did I ever say I was getting an ancient mac from the 90s or asking you all whether or not I should buy one.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

ITT: person who is going to get a mac regardless of advice pre-emptively defends his decision to get a mac against advice.
If you really do wanna learn to program and or code study up how to make a hackintosh. By the time you're done you'll be have an affordable machine running the OS you like and you'll have learned a lot.

OP said that Mac is about the experience and that's really perceptive, so a cheaper and just as good if not better hackintosh is like artificial diamonds with a flawless crystalline structure: it's not the real thing, reeeee!

Mac being the premier platform for content creation is a myth at this point. IIRC Quark used to best on the Mac when 68k was a powerful platform and Windows was unstable shit(most the of the "the graphics industry uses Macs" comes from QuarkXpress being so dominant) but that's no longer the case, when Apple switched from PPC to x86 Adobe didn't even bother to port the current version of Photoshop, video editing makes use of GPU's more and more and I think a Vega 64 is the best GPU Apple offers and that's in the most expensive MacPro. But it's easy to just buy and upgr.... oh.

 

[JM 590]

Anyway, OP - you really should try to find one of those old iMacs. They go for around $300 on eBay complete and in good shape, but they generally hold up well. They take any USB keyboards and mice, and they're backwards compatible with "Old World" software (aka what came before PPC). Finding software and games is a hassle, though, and I've never found just like one gigantic game & software pack like you can find with just about any other platform, though.

And that's a shame too, because 90's Macs are filled to the brim with obscure games you've never heard of. Bungie even released their first game, Marathon, on Mac OS exclusively.

I figure it's hard to find games because of a combination of:
-Apple's culture of dismissing their past products ASAP, which seeds into the greater community and kills their sense of preservation
-Not a lot of people growing up with Macs outside of school because they were even more expensive back then, so they never got much of a taste of Mac gaming as kids
-Mac versions of most games being very rare, overpriced, and coming out years after DOS and even consoles

And while I'm at it, Macintosh emulation is an overly complicated crock of shit that barely works. You really are better off buying a 20 year old iMac than beating yourself up trying to get Basilisk II to run just right.

 

[Doggo]

The Apple community: "scoff your macbook is 6 years old? don't you think it's time for an upgrade? time to pitch that machine STRAIGHT in the motherfuckin' GARBO and buy yourself a brand new one, fucker cheap ass poor idiot"

They really do have this weird subtle attitude where hierarchy is built around how new your Apple stuff is, and you're a scrub if your computer's too old. Even if it works well. Looking up problems with Macs is always a pain in the ass because you're all but guaranteed some half-assed snarky answer from a complete douchebag before you can find an actual solution.

I used a Macbook Pro for a while, and it really was a nice computer when it worked well. It overheated all the time, though, and got hot over even simple shit like watching YouTube videos. I had to have the logic board and the battery swapped out, too, so it's a good thing I bought Applecare.

Lovely screen, keyboard, and trackpad, though. I wish I could just rig those up directly to my Windows desktop.

I will admit that I am an Apple fanboy through and through. But I am a reasonable one. The mothership in this case is not perfect, far from it, but I enjoy using the products, and they fit my life rather well. That said, I’m not going to tell someone to toss out a perfectly serviceable computer just to buy a Mac. That would be like Tesla saying ‘junk your perfectly serviceable Chevrolet and join the dark side’. It’s simply illogical.

That said, if someone is in the market for a new computer, and I believe that their use case fits a Mac, I will recommend one. Otherwise, I will recommend something else. It’s no use recommending something you can’t afford. Yes I would like to action the Lamborghini ads I see all over the place and buy the one recommended by the ad/someone else. But the dealership would not even open their doors for me - probably literally. I’m simply not in that market.

I’ve rabbitted on way too much, now, and probably made a moron of myself, so I will stop here.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

K, so, to get a few thoughts out there:

• I love Macs and Mac hardware, though it's all been downhill since the 68K Performa/Quadra type units that succeeded the early box Macs where everything was beautifully put together, had plenty of thermal room, and you got the best interface to storage devices ever invented (SCSI) right there along with plenty of customizability. Nowadays, they're good and all, but not that much better than say a modern Thinkpad.
• Same with the OS. System 7.5-Mac OS 7.6.1 were great, had a lot of really easy extensibility and theming, but some of the changes following in Mac OS 8 and 9 were not well thought out. That said Mac OS X is still the least bad OS around*, though you can get plenty of non-Apple laptops that will run it (just be careful with upgrades).
• If you're going to buy a Mac, listen to 5-10 episodes of ATP before doing it. They have their fingers on the pulse of what's happening Apple wise.

* especially because Linux on the desktop is now being constantly sabotaged by fat women giving grants to shitty programmers to expand the scope of systemd

And that's a shame too, because 90's Macs are filled to the brim with obscure games you've never heard of. Bungie even released their first game, Marathon, on Mac OS exclusively.

Fortunately, in the case of Marathon, one can play it today on Mac OS X/Windows/Linux using the Aleph One engine. Still a great experience, like replaying System Shock. I don't think the website for that engine has been updated graphically since I first went there in 2001-2002, but it still looks great.

 

[Sergeant Politeness]

that gives Apple the opportunity to replace Windows as the go-to desktop OS for the masses.

rainbow stickers

Been using Macs for about a decade and they keep getting progressively less and less worth it. They keep taking out ports and shit I need and the OS just keeps getting more and more annoying to use (Gatekeeper is a big issue for me and it never fucking stays off). My next computer definitely won't be an Apple. I won't be missing it other than using Logic for music.

I've been enjoying using System 7 in an emulator and I'd like to pick up a compact Mac sometime, or maybe a Quadra. Nice machines.

 

[CIA Nigger]

What was so bad about your experience?
Also did you use a modern iMac or something pre-2018.

Since this about Mac OS 9, the only two things people liked about the classic Mac OS were the aesthetics (which were commonplace at the time in 90s tech design, see Windows 9x, IRIX, CDE, KDE 1.x, etc.) and the game library it had. For a while it also was popular with creative professionals as it got quite a few programs for photo editing, desktop publishing, music production, and whatnot all while costing less than a UNIX box did.

The classic Mac OS was such a disaster from a technical prospective that by the 90s Apple was willing to do anything to dump it, which led Apple to seek a buyout or a company to buy out only for them to sack that CEO when buyout deals kept falling through. Then Windows 95 and NT came out on higher end PCs that were able to rival and beat not only Macs but even higher end UNIX workstations. The NeXT buyout followed by Steve Jobs coming back to Apple is what really gave Steve Jobs the reputation he had because he turned a failing computer company into a fashion brand.

Anyway, OP - you really should try to find one of those old iMacs. They go for around $300 on eBay complete and in good shape, but they generally hold up well. They take any USB keyboards and mice, and they're backwards compatible with "Old World" software (aka what came before PPC). Finding software and games is a hassle, though, and I've never found just like one gigantic game & software pack like you can find with just about any other platform, though.

And that's a shame too, because 90's Macs are filled to the brim with obscure games you've never heard of. Bungie even released their first game, Marathon, on Mac OS exclusively.

I figure it's hard to find games because of a combination of:
-Apple's culture of dismissing their past products ASAP, which seeds into the greater community and kills their sense of preservation
-Not a lot of people growing up with Macs outside of school because they were even more expensive back then, so they never got much of a taste of Mac gaming as kids
-Mac versions of most games being very rare, overpriced, and coming out years after DOS and even consoles

And while I'm at it, Macintosh emulation is an overly complicated crock of shit that barely works. You really are better off buying a 20 year old iMac than beating yourself up trying to get Basilisk II to run just right.

If you're trying to find old Mac games it's easier than it used to be. Go to Mac Garden or Macintosh Repository (both sites have similar content) and download your favorite games. Mac emulation's better than it used to be as well, as MAME and QEMU can run Mac software better than the old emus ever could.

The big problem with old Macs is their hardware issues. PSU caps and motherboard caps leak or pop, clock batteries have a tendency to explode, the plastics can be brittle, and perhaps worst of all the black PowerBooks simply fall apart.

You don't need to spend $300 on a Mac, you can find old PPC ones for under $100 easily. Look around for a G4 tower or a G3, just about all of the G4 towers can run OS9 and all G3 macs can run OS9 as well.

 

[Xarpho]

Anyway, OP - you really should try to find one of those old iMacs. They go for around $300 on eBay complete and in good shape, but they generally hold up well. They take any USB keyboards and mice, and they're backwards compatible with "Old World" software (aka what came before PPC). Finding software and games is a hassle, though, and I've never found just like one gigantic game & software pack like you can find with just about any other platform, though.

And that's a shame too, because 90's Macs are filled to the brim with obscure games you've never heard of. Bungie even released their first game, Marathon, on Mac OS exclusively.

I figure it's hard to find games because of a combination of:
-Apple's culture of dismissing their past products ASAP, which seeds into the greater community and kills their sense of preservation
-Not a lot of people growing up with Macs outside of school because they were even more expensive back then, so they never got much of a taste of Mac gaming as kids
-Mac versions of most games being very rare, overpriced, and coming out years after DOS and even consoles

And while I'm at it, Macintosh emulation is an overly complicated crock of shit that barely works. You really are better off buying a 20 year old iMac than beating yourself up trying to get Basilisk II to run just right.

It's easy to find games and software, as Macintosh Garden and other sites do archive that stuff. I'm 60% sure that there's at least one old-school Kiwi that has maintained a presence on both CWCki Forums/Kiwi Farms and Macintosh Garden for years, but that's just a theory.

I'm quite fond of Mac games as that was largely my youth (Nintendo, too, but that was during holiday vacations, making it even more special). In terms of emulation, SheepShaver with the 68k emulation works slightly better, though it has so many quirks of its own it's not much of a way to relive the past. Besides, unlike most emulators, it's incredibly poorly integrated with the host system as it requires a virtual machine and not a ROM or something you can easy load from another application.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

I just wish Apple would go back to making laptops you can upgrade and Microsoft would realise that with Windows Phone dead, there's no need for all the Metro crap in Windows 10.

Also I wish Samsung would launch new phones with a removable battery.

But none of that's going to happen.

 

[Splendid]

The iPod marked the beginning of the end for good Apple products.
If you buy a modern Apple product, I'm sorry, but you're a fashion slave or a cuck.

 

[Derbydollar]

Classic macs are fun, modern macs are a scam. OSX is inferior in tons of different ways to Windows and most every spin of linux you'll touch.
Stick to a functional computer and operating system for your work and grab a Power Mac G3 or something for playing around with.

 

[CWCchange]

The iPod marked the beginning of the end for good Apple products.
If you buy a modern Apple product, I'm sorry, but you're a fashion slave or a cuck.

Maybe at its peak and the release of iPhone to Steve Jobs's death. With the exception of the iPhone 5, pretty much everything started going downhill from there. The shit Apple released from the early 1990s to Jobs's return in 1998 made even the eMac look like a decent machine.

 

[JM 590]

Maybe at its peak and the release of iPhone to Steve Jobs's death. With the exception of the iPhone 5, pretty much everything started going downhill from there. The shit Apple released from the early 1990s to Jobs's return in 1998 made even the eMac look like a decent machine.

Fuckin' A dude. The trackpads on the newer Macs have haptics that are supposed to feel like physical clicks, but they just feel like they have bits of food stuck underneath them. Their older, physically clicky trackpads were terrific.

Remember these kinds of ads? This is from 2006:

It's the other way around today. Dongles, docks, and daisychains as far as the eye can see, because Tim Cook thinks USB type-A ports are for white supremacists.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

Since this about Mac OS 9, the only two things people liked about the classic Mac OS were the aesthetics (which were commonplace at the time in 90s tech design, see Windows 9x, IRIX, CDE, KDE 1.x, etc.) and the game library it had. For a while it also was popular with creative professionals as it got quite a few programs for photo editing, desktop publishing, music production, and whatnot all while costing less than a UNIX box did.

The classic Mac OS was such a disaster from a technical prospective that by the 90s Apple was willing to do anything to dump it, which led Apple to seek a buyout or a company to buy out only for them to sack that CEO when buyout deals kept falling through. Then Windows 95 and NT came out on higher end PCs that were able to rival and beat not only Macs but even higher end UNIX workstations. The NeXT buyout followed by Steve Jobs coming back to Apple is what really gave Steve Jobs the reputation he had because he turned a failing computer company into a fashion brand.



If you're trying to find old Mac games it's easier than it used to be. Go to Mac Garden or Macintosh Repository (both sites have similar content) and download your favorite games. Mac emulation's better than it used to be as well, as MAME and QEMU can run Mac software better than the old emus ever could.

The big problem with old Macs is their hardware issues. PSU caps and motherboard caps leak or pop, clock batteries have a tendency to explode, the plastics can be brittle, and perhaps worst of all the black PowerBooks simply fall apart.

You don't need to spend $300 on a Mac, you can find old PPC ones for under $100 easily. Look around for a G4 tower or a G3, just about all of the G4 towers can run OS9 and all G3 macs can run OS9 as well.

People give them away and in working condition too-someone gave me a dual G5 in January but fixing an old Mac is a world of pain. I have a black PowerBook someone asked me to fix that's been lying around for three years (the keyboard literally disintegrated).

 

[The Fool]

I see, well I can assure you the Linux Void is a complete distribution, rich in all functions you could ever wish for

but didn't they forget to install systemd in it?

 

[UF 404]

I had to use a Mac for several years due to work related reasons. I mean, it was usable and all, but I don't see myself buying one for myself. They're expensive for what they are, I can never get used to the interface, and in my opinion there are only a few advantages they have over Windows. And most of said advantages, such as somewhat better virus protection and Unix support, are shared by Linux anyway.

 

[Banh Xeo]

I love Macs. Been using them since my parents bought me a classic II. The 2008-2012 MacBook and mbpro models from this era are great. I currently have a 2009 and a 2012. Had a 2008 that ran like a beast but I fucking knocked coffee on the keyboard and ruined it. Throw 8-16gb and a ssd in them and they fly. I don’t game much but my 2012 mbp runs 2 monitors, Xcode, Photoshop, Illustrator, Rimworld, Civ, etc. pretty ok, not the best graphics but good enough for me.
I’m hoping to make it to Apple’s switch back to their in-house processors before I’m forced to buy a new MacBook.

Like all things though, there are bad with the good. My biggest hate right now with Apple is the lack of ports direction. I hate the dongle fiesta. The forced upgrades by making the OS not compatible too, that’s bullshit and all my computers run Mojave. Fuck you Tim Apple, I say when we’re done.

I also worked in the Apple community for a short time and have a good amount of experience working on lots of different macs. They can be tricky bastards and Apple can juggle cables and wires through infuriating places.