News

Introducing Power to the Mac blog

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Christian dropped me an email a couple of weeks back, expressing his appreciation for this site and the introduction of his new website, Power to the Mac.

Excellent work, Christian.

We always can use more voices in the G5 world, sharing ins and outs, spreading software wisdom, and helping us get the most out of our beautiful (if aging) machines.

By the way, to keep up with most G5 related sites, I do typically use viva PowerPC’s excellent “world” blog section which captures the RSS feeds of several sites. A great way to save time and see what others are writing about.

— Nathan

You Tell Me: How much have you/would you spend on your G5?

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One of our awesome readers, Adam, sent me an intriguing question that I get frequently: how much should I spend on a Power Mac G5?

I’m curious to know what some of you think. For those of you with G5s, what has been your budget to maximize your G5 with upgrades and fixes? For those of you looking to purchase one, how much are you willing to spend? Is there a limit?

I feel pretty content with my Power Mac at the moment, and in fact, over the last few weeks, it hasn’t been in much use with work life and family life keeping me on my toes. Counting the SSD (which was the last and largest bit of money spent on it), I feel like I have likely maximized performance too. More RAM would just be tossing money in a dark pit.

But what about you? I’d love to see your comments below.

– Nathan

SimpleMarkPPC just got updated

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Welcome to the new SimpleMarkPPC, kind of similar but a lot better than the old SimpleMarkPPC.

new simple mark opening screen

From the moment you fire it up, you’ll be greeted with some changes that are sure to get you excited for the world’s only PowerPC-exclusive-Mac-OS MarkDown app. Not just the updated welcome screen above, you’ll notice a full screen mode sure to draw your attention away from boring blog posts. A feature also included is a user desired manual save command, so you can be sure your document saved and updated before you retreat to other tasks. A rudimentary Preferences pane features nothing less than a way to change your font and font size (with a couple of caveats). Unbelievable! Most important, the Leopard-like engine beneath the hood purrs with serious efficiency. I made a few modifications myself.

And if that doesn’t sell you, there is even a Help menu!

Best of all, it’s free, and it lets you enjoy the deliciousness that is MarkDown.

Check out a new screenshot and download the app from SimpleMarkPPC’s website.

This latest version is 1.0.2.

Happy writing, blogging, coding, or whatever.

— Nathan

Video Editing on Your G5

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I still have a few holes in my exploration of software options for Power Mac G5s. One of those is actually glaring – video editing. It’s glaring partly because lots of G5s were probably used for video production over the years.

On the consumer side, iMovie HD in iLfe ’09 is not a bad option for the home video or the beginner’s project. I was always impressed by what Apple did with the iLife suite. They brought some great tools to the masses.

Final Cut Express 4 was intended as an in between option. It’s more powerful than iMovie but not as extensive as Final Cut Pro. (Keep in mind that the current version of these is simply Final Cut, which kind of makes it all confusing.)

Final Cut Pro is the more robust option direct from Apple. Version 6 is the last one to run on Power Mac G5s. If you can find it, it’s great software. I’m sure there are some video shops that might even still use it for production.

Adobe Premiere 6.5 was the last version of Premiere to run on our Power PC machines. It is not available in Adobe Creative Suite 4 either. You’ll have to dig around for a separate or earlier copy, although After Effects in CS4 will work on your G5. A little confusing.

A final option is Avid Media Composer. Evidently, any version before 3.5 will run on our G5s.

We’ve got options, and it really depends on what you are comfortable and familiar with.

— Nathan

Adobe CS4 Questions

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In the last few weeks, I’ve gotten a few emails from readers with great questions, feedback, and encouragement. Thanks for the support!

One common question is about Adobe Creative Suite. As I mention over on the Office page, Adobe CS 4 is the last version to run on our Power Mac G5s. If you are interested in the actual system requirements, head over to the Adobe help site.

What you will notice missing is this – only “Design Premium and Standard” and “Web Premium and Standard” will run on G5s. “Production Premium” and “Master Collection” will not. This is likely because they include software like Premiere, Adobe’s film editing app, and After Effects, a visual effects app, which both moved to Intel only with CS4. The last version of Adobe Premiere to work on G5s is 6.5, which was released back in 2002. The last version of After Effects to work on G5s was included in CS3.

Confusing? I suppose. Navigating old system requirement pages is a skill to be acquired for those of us running old computers.

By the way, I also get asked where to find these old software packages. I’d recommend going legal routes, even though you can’t necessarily buy older versions quite easily. Ebay is an option. Sometimes, I see Mac retailers like Megamacssporting good deals. If you are just wanting to grab Photoshop or InDesign, don’t be afraid to go a little bit older. I’ve done a lot of web design and graphic design using CS2 in the past, and they remain really capable tools for G5s.

– Nathan