Hello everyone!!

I am interested in getting into the Apple world,(not hackintosh as I already use it sometimes ) but it's a little too expensive for me... so I saw a quite cheap PowerBook G4 12" on ebay... my doubt is that it has an 1.5GHz PowerPc CPU... according to you, would that be useful or it's dead technology that can never be updated?? Is there some software that is for sure not compatible with those kind of computers?? What are the main issues of PPC??

Thanks everyone!

Well, I wouldn't use a machine like that as your main computer, but old Apple machines are fun to play around with. If you want modern games, applications, hardware, etc., just stick with Intel and AMD. I don't see the point in going back in time virtually to use an old thing like that as your main computer. It's almost a machine from a different era.

Thanks for the answer!! My intention was to get this instead of a netbook, so not main computer for home, but for everywhere else... so I need something usable, not for collection... but maybe it's better to put a little more money and get a brand new netbook!! Thanks again!

It's true that it's a dead end machine as far as new software is concerned - Apple and most 3rd party developers have effectively abandoned the PowerPC architecture and you won't be able to update to anything further than 10.5.8. For reference, Apple is releasing 10.7 in a couple of weeks, so the machine is already pretty outdated. Of course it'll keep functioning fine with the software already available for the platform, so if you're not all that bothered about running the "newest" or the "best" I'd say go for it.

If your in the US and looking for an old Apple computer, I'm selling my PowerBook 520. It's a mice item if you're collecting and old Apple machines are fun to mess around with.

Oh, I don't care running the latest software but I wanted something to see if the Apple world is for me... and maybe in the future get a mac... but I don't wanted something that too outdated... I saw that PPC may also have Flash Player (for Youtube ecc..) problems, does anyone knows about??

Lion is something totally new, but SL isn't that much different than Leo. You can always buy it, see if you like Mac and then sell or install Linux / BSD on which PPC is supported. As for Flash, you can try Gnash. Although I'm not sure if it's available for OSX. If it's not, you can compile it (given it supports PPC), OSX is a UNIX so it should work.

That Power Book will run Leopard (10.5) but no newer. You can use Ten Four Fox or something else for browsing and you'll have a decent mobile computer. The G4s seem good for web browsing so this would work out good for what you want it for.

Thanks everyone! now I wait and see if the price doesn't raise too much I gonna place a bid!! I knew that the latest Os supported is Leopard while the imminent relase of Lion and my fears of dead end technology came from this...
@MugenFox, unluckly I live in europe... even if I don't collect apple computers I saw that your selling the PowerBook quite cheap but shipping may be more expensive than the computer...

I own an old PowerBook G4 15" with an 1.5 GHz G4 processor.
It runs most applications fine using MacOS 10.5.

But: When watching YouTube videos, you will notice that they don't play without stuttering. The h.264 codec, which is used nowadays, is a bit too much for the old G4.

But besides that, a G4 is a fine machine

PPC Macs really show their age when you start using flash.

Good for web browsing, but youtube and other flash things become pretty much unusable.

As for the cpu, the computer I'm watching is 1.5 GHz is not too bad... a PC would run flash, without problems...
And is there any software that for sure won't run on PPC??? except Snow Leopard or Lion, do you know if the latest iwork, ilife, office 2011, itunes and VmWare are available?? and is there any emulation possibility of running Snow L or Lion in an emulated virtual machine?? Many thanks!!

Office 2011, No. Running SL or Lion in a virtual machine, No. Firefox, No. pretty much any new commercial Macintosh program.

Yeah Mozilla just ditched 10.4 which is what my eMac runs.

Firefox 5 works fine on PPC as long as you use these custom builds, Flash and all.
http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Thanks everyone for the answrs.. anyway, what I was looking for reached a too high price as I wanted to spend 100-140 € and went over 200... anyway I keep looking at something similar...

You can also install Linux and get uptodate software like that, but then you won't get flash at all
but you can use HTML5 in youtube.

that would be a great idea to use the computer.. but I wanted to try some apple OSs in it's machine

I still have my G4 TiBook that I have running Mac OS 9 and 10.1 through 10.5. I don't really use it for anything other than playing around with. Occasionally I just like to go back to an old OS to see how things have changed. Although each point release may not feel significant, the changes sure add up. The one thing I would recommend is obtaining copies of older software while you can, it gets increasingly more difficult to find versions to run on early Mac OS X (and 9!). Like many here though, I wouldn't recommend it as a primary machine, the G4 is dated and performance is not very good.

It would be nice to try out some PowerPC versions of Mac on native hardware. Apple also provided a way of running older OS 9 programs on PowerPC versions of OS X. So if you wanted to run some Mac abandonware this may be the way to go. But besides for that PowerPC is a dying platform.

I try to run old "classic" apps on 10.4.11 on my G4.
Heard that the 10.5 betas cant run them.
I wish someone would compile a new 10.5 or 10.6 replacement kernel for Tiger.


PowerPC variations are used on Xbox 360,PS3 and Wii U.
Set-top boxes and routers had embedded versions.

I realize the original post was a while back, but I would maybe look for an intel macbook instead of a PowerPC based mac. As of this week you are down 2 versions of OS X. You might get a bit frustrated at a lot of websites that use flash video (as others have pointed out). My unibody macbook pro uses nearly all of its CPU to play some flash videos. Sad reality of Flash.

With an intel macbook you could easily run snow leopard, and if it is a dual core, you will be able to upgrade to Lion.

Having said that, I have an old powerbook G4 running 10.4 that I use from time to time when my wife is using my macbook pro and it is fine for most of what i need it for (web browsing, email, picture editing).

Lion requires more than just a dual core processor, it requires a 64-bit processor. That means that both Core Solo Macs and Core Duo Macs are unable to run Lion.

My iBook G4 plays YouTube just fine.

Isn't YouTube HTML5 compatible? Not too much into web developing but couldn't HTML5 be used instead of Flash?

As Derf said, dual core is not enough. It needs to be 64-bit. I think Snow Leopard also requires a 64-bit CPU. Correct me if I'm wrong.