appleUbuntuBook?
I'm thinking of installing Ubuntu PPC onto my old PowerBook - I don't think I'd get too much for it if I sold it now as it's pretty old so I figure it's worth more to me to keep as a portable device then the cash it would bring in. Why switch to Ubuntu? Well I'm a bit worried about the state of security updates for Leopard (which as you probably know is the end of the road for PPC Macs). Apple haven't come outright and said they're stopping support or anything like that but during the recent Diginotar cert debacle they only issued updates to Snow Leopard and Lion. In that particular case it was simple enough for me to manually revoke the certs (and I use Firefox as a web browser anyway which includes its own root certs) from Leopard's keychain but what happens when the next vulnerability is discovered? It may be something that I can't so easily fix myself.
So Ubuntu it is - I'll wait until 11.10 is released next month and then I'll divvy up the hard disk so I can dual boot. If I find Apple still releases updates for a while (there was a security update not too long ago so all is not lost!) I'll keep dual booting it - otherwise if it looks like the end of the road I'll delete OS X and go completely Ubuntu where I know I'll get updates for a few years to come.
Of course since getting the TouchPad I hardly even boot this laptop anymore so most likely it'll sit unused no matter what OS is installed...
Steve Jobs Steps Down
Well I guess the day was always going to arrive at some point - assuming it's not some blogger making it up and all the papers are rushing to publish it looks like Steve Jobs has resigned.
Watch the stock dive...
UPDATE: Looks like it's legit.
UPDATE 2: Well it looks like the stock *didn't* dive - in fact Apple is looking pretty solid :-) I didn't expect such common sense from people!
Stuck on Firefox 3.6
And the blows just don't stop falling on my poor old PowerBook G4 - I went and downloaded the Firefox 4 RC (seeing as it's being released tomorrow I thought I may as well try and beat the rush!) only to find that it only runs on Intel Macs.
I'll keep trucking along with Firefox 3.6 for now (and I realise that Mozilla will probably keep supporting 3.6 for longer than Apple will support OS X Leopard) but it would be nice to experience some of this new found speed and cleaner interface. I did find this site which has builds of Firefox 4 available for PPC Macs so will likely end up giving that a whirl at some stage but they can't officially call the builds Firefox as they have had small changes made to the source to make it compile on PPC hardware.
I know I say it over and over again, but the end is definitely drawing nigh for this little laptop...
Also just a small update on the Adobe Flash issue, I've reinstalled Flash but have also installed the Flashblocker plugin so I can choose when to run it - hopefully this keeps me safe enough from vulnerabilities going forward. Why did I reinstall Flash? The web was just too damn hard without it...
End of the line for Flash on PPC
So Adobe have released the latest version of Flash player, 10.2, and it marks the end of the line for PPC Macs. I can't say it comes as a great surprise - most vendors have been dropping support for PPC from their software for the last few years, and considering how much my PowerBook struggles with flash video maybe it's for the best going forward.
So I've un-installed the Flash plugin (I'd rather not have vulnerable software installed no matter how many sites rely on it...) and I'm experiencing life Flash free. Other than youTube I haven't had any issues (in fact some sites are better without flash ;-D ) and when on youtube I have discovered the trick of switching the user agent to that of the iPad so the videos work, which is a slight hassle but better than nothing.
I must admit though that after this latest blow to my usage of the old PowerBook that new MacBook Air is looking mighty tempting...
SSD
Was just talking to a friend who owns a really early (2006?) MacBook Pro. One of his friends has just bought the new MacBook Air that I'm currently drooling over and he was really impressed with how fast the notebook is despite the fact that it should be slower on paper than his old MacBook Pro.
So in an effort to breath a bit of life into his old laptop he fitted a 40GB solid state disk for the OS and apps and fitted a 640GB hard drive in place of the DVD-ROM (which had broken anyway he said) for his data. The result? A five year old laptop that boots Snow Leopard in around 15 seconds from power on and loads apps like Firefox in under one second.
Now that prices are dropping and sizes are increasing fitting an SSD is a good way of perking up an aging laptop - I'll certainly be looking into fitting one to my nearly 4 year old MacBook.
Trusty PowerBook
Since buying my (second hand) PowerBook earlier in the year I've been really impressed with it - I use it far more often than I use my Intel based MacBook and if I had to give one up the PowerBook would be the one I'd keep. I know it's slower and more and more software isn't available for it (due to it being PowerPC, er, powered) but the construction of it is so tidy with all its aluminium, the battery still lasts around 4 hours and everything works as it should. But mostly it's the size - I've got one of the final 12" models to be built so not only is it small and light it also packs the fastest PPC processor Apple ever put into a 12" model complete with DVD burner and decent (for 2005) nVidia graphics.
Not only does this laptop get carted around when I'm on call (being small and light is a massive bonus here and the reason my work supplied ThinkPad sits at home unloved most of the time) I've also started playing games on it - nothing fancy mind you but I'm impressed at how many of my old PC game titles run on it (things like StarCraft, Diablo II etc all run off the same install CDs), and I've since bought other early-to-mid 2000's titles such as Halo and American McGee's Alice second hand off ebay.
Yup - things are pretty much perfect with this machine... Until Apple released the new MacBook Air last month. Suddenly I want (no, I *need*) a new laptop, an 11" Air would be brilliant. The 13" MacBook Pro was never really a replacement for the PowerBook 12" (despite what people were saying when it was first released), it was simply too big. Now with the new Air however...
I'm off to check on my bank balance and start on excuses on why I need one of these.