How do you handle caring about PPC?

[Richmond]

On 08/04/13 22:23, stephen barncard wrote:
> Richmond:
>
> I am not the enemy.

I am well aware of that.

>
> Most of us know about your efficient use of Mac hardware and your struggles
> with them.

My struggles are not struggles; everything is very easy with PPC Macs.

>
> What prevents you from using existing builds of Livecode that support PPC
> like you already are doing?

Nothing.

>
> Apple announced they were dropping the platform in 2006. 9 years ago.  One
> can't expect Runrev to support a platform that is THAT old just to support
> a base that can't be justified. There's no ROI.  Also, I don't think
> there's a modern compiler that can work for both PPC and new 64 bit
> architectures.
>
> And for institutions with PPC hardware, there's a point where they can't be
> repaired and any remaining used machines have already been sent to the glue
> factory.
>
> And there's the spare parts issue. Cooling was always a problem with the
> CPU stacks in towers because they ran so hot. I went through a couple.
> Memory is now very expensive to replace for old machines.

Yup; toasted a G4 windtunnel myself.

>
> I would not want to be the person to have to maintain a lab of PPC machines
> in a math lab..   It's a much easier/cheaper sell to get new cheap PCs or
> tablets, especially in the always-cashed-starved education markets in the
> US. And easier to get grants for such items.

Not necessarily in "darkest Africa", or, for that matter in "darkest 
Bulgaria" (and believe me, it gets pretty dark round
these parts, especially when it comes to state institutions).

-----------------------------
Had to go to the tax office to pay council taxes the other day (cannot 
do it online) and "felt great joy" (NOT!) to see
loads of monochrome monitors connected to Pentium II machines running DOS.

Mind you, to be slightly unkind, the tax officers who worked with those 
machines looked as if they had been chained to their desks when those
machines were installed (around 1990) and were in need of upgrading 
themselves.

It didn't stop them skinning me for an uncomfortable amount of tax :(
-----------------------------

I was not taking issue with the above.

What I was taking issue with was not even "my chosen path" (that makes 
me sound like a buddhist arhat . . . LOL).

What I was taking issue with was the idea that PPC computers (and I mean 
Mac PPCs and not some of those
monster PPC 7 machines and so on that are used elsewhere) are history.

I am also well aware that expecting RunRev to go on supporting Mac PPC 
forever is daft.

What I was pointing out is that a lot of Mac PPCs are in use and will 
continue to be used in
a variety of settings, and as such should not be scorned.

 From my point of view one of the nicest things would be if RunRev were 
to release an early version of LC/RR, possibly
rebranded and crippled in some sort of way so that all it could do was 
take a stack and turn it into a Mac PPC
standalone; obviously with all the limitations of say, version 2 
compared with the upcoming version 6.

Obviously maintaining Mac PPCs is going to become increasingly 
difficult, but there is no reason why,
until they go 'bang' a lot of people won't keep using them.

I am typing this on a Pentium 4 running Ubuntu 12.04 with Thunderbird 
e-mail client, but I could just as easily be typing this
on a G3 iMac running Mac OS 10.4.11 with a PPC optimised version of 
Firefox ( http://firefoxmac.furbism.com/ ).

>
> not wanting to start a flame war, just sayin'.

And I'm not running around with a fire extinguisher!

Richmond.