My G5 is nearing its 11th birthday (or thereabouts), and perhaps to celebrate, Apple announced that it was finally introducing a new file system to its line of Macs and devices. (Haha!) HFS+ has lived a long life, and it was about time. But with a new file system in the works, it points to yet another distancing of our old Macs with the inevitable future.
The question will be – how long will we on Leopard (or Tiger) have some interoperability with newer Macs? HFS+ support will be ongoing on newer Macs, so it’s not something that will be imminent. Someday, HFS+ support will go away. Then, for those of us who may use those newer machines on a regular basis, we may have to make difficult choices or find workarounds to keep all of our Macs working in beautiful harmony.
I was also struck by other developments. TenFourFox, our beloved hero of the PPC community, will continue to face hurdles to get later versions of Firefox (and the security fixes and features that go with them) working. Cameron’s work is amazing nonetheless.
I was excited to see Leopard Webkit with a new version out, but it’s likely less secure than TenFourFox and potentially will always be.
The Dropbox hack is also likely facing its end of life – pretty soon, I won’t be able to sync my various files between devices quite so easily. *sigh*
At some point, we will all face the difficult reality that our Macs are not going to get any younger. Already, on some websites, my G5 sputters and chokes a bit, taking its sweet time to catch up on html, images, videos, and javascript that my iPhone 6+ renders in seconds. It makes you appreciate simpler webpages and simpler times.
Already, my G5 longs to play newer versions of Minecraft instead of the old outdated version someone shared on MacRumors sometime ago.
While a 11 year old may seem quite young compared to some old mainframes chugging along after all these years, I do expect that someday I will come downstairs, press the power button, and hear a final sad whirl as my G5 shuffles off into restful sleep. Until then, I’ll continue to marvel at the noisy behemoth and enjoy the many productive hours it has given me creating cool things and interacting with the world.
— Nathan
