Bummed about my Mac
Posted by delta on June 16th, 2009
I’ve had this thing for 5+ years and it’s really been a work horse for me- it has burned over 500 movies and 25 seasons of various TV shows from DVD to mp4 (I digitize everything so I can watch it on my iPhone/iTouch), so I have no room for complaint as far as overall performance (any other computer would have been dead after a year). It’s the last 17″ G4 Powerbook made before they went Intel. I’m really bummed that it’s on it’s last legs…
Ever try to start a car when the battery is about to die? That what it’s like starting this thing up now. Always takes a few times to get it going. And when I finally get it running, the processor runs above 70% constantly…
I love this thing! It is kinda big to tote around though – I had a 15″ before this one and totally loved the size. I got the 17″ so I could edit video on the fly (with the larger screen), but have found that I always use an external (large) monitor to do that anyway – so I kinda found out the hard way that smaller is better (I can use the external monitor with any size laptop)…
My first issue started with the OS (and Final Cut) upgrade about 2 years ago, suddenly I could not capture video from my old Hi-8 video camera because I have a PPC processor. I tried the same exact setup with the intel processor (a friends computer) and it works fine. So this really put a hamper on my life – I have a ton of footage that I can’t download to my laptop to edit – STUPID! I have tons of family stuff that I need to digitize!
Second issue was that I really want to start developing programs for the iPhone. I downloaded the SDK when it first came out and found that the iPhone SDK does not work with the PPC processor. So I need an intel processor to develop iPhone apps…
My third issue is that iCal hasn’t opened in 3 months – just sits there wanting to open – until I “Force Quit” it. I have to do all my updates to my Calendar on my iPhone or online – it’s more of a “put out” than you would think in my case…
My fourth issue just occured when I found that the new Safari update crashes constantly, and it won’t let me delete it and reinstall the old version. I should have stuck with the Beta version – it was solid, and I liked how the tab bar was on top…
So, basically, I can’t download video from my old camera to edit it, I can’t make iPhone apps, my iCal doesn’t open, Safari crashes constantly, and no amount of uninstalling and reinstalling anything has worked in any of the cases above…
Fifth Issue would be that there are a few other programs which I really want to be able to run that only work on the intel processor as well..
The sixth issue is the dual boot that you get with Intel – I would love to be able to do that on my Mac. When using programs such as LD Assistant (which only runs on Windows) doing things virtually just doesn’t cut it when your rendering – it totally doubles/triples the render times..
The new 13″ MacBook Pro really caught my eye – and I have a buddy who works at Apple who has nothing but good stuff to say about it, so…
We’ll see what comes up here – and if I do something (like buy a new Mac), I’ll definitely write about it so you can learn from my mistakes – AS ALWAYS…