Newton Poetry

I try to practice what I preach, so when my grandma’s old Packard Bell computer exploded, I bought a used blueberry iMac G3 to fix up and upgrade for her to use.

The iMac bears the scars of its duration in the public school system, but it still chugs along. I bought a 256 MB SO-DIMM RAM chip for it, thinking it would help pull a new Panther install along on the 333 MHz machine, but I think grandma’s model was one of the iMacs that will only recognize some of the RAM it’s given. Given that, it seems 256 MB of RAM would be better used in my iBook G3 333Mhz blueberry clamshell.

But first, I needed to swap that RAM chip (a PC133 model) with a 256 MB chip inside my Bondi Blue iMac G3 (a PC100 model). More… »

Kirk McElhearn over at Kirkville says his current Mac Pro is fast enough to last a few years:

So we’ve finally reached the point where computers are fast enough, and people don’t need to upgrade to catch up to their software. With four cores in the Mac Pro, and two in the MacBook Air, I don’t have any situations where I even use all the processor power I have…So, thanks, Apple. You’ve given me a reliable, powerful computer that has already lasted longer than I expected, and should easily see me through another year.

That’s “good for me, but not so good for you,” Kirk says, because he won’t be buying a new Mac anytime soon. With software unable to keep up with the processing power of today’s multi-core Macintosh systems, what’s the point of upgrading?

Helping a friend purchase a refurbished iMac, I understand what he means. What’s the difference between a 2.0 Ghz model and a 2.4 Ghz model, besides $50?

Back when megahertz meant something, the speed of your Mac was a bragging point. But now it seems RAM and screen real estate are more important than, say, hard drive size and speed.

Dealing with low end Macs, speed is a huge issue. A PowerMac G4 doesn’t “scream” along like it used to, and your only hope is a processor upgrade or more RAM. But my iBook G4 turns three years old this winter, and is just now starting to show it’s age – and that’s mostly due to it’s hard drive running out of space, I think. Even my iMac G4 purrs along fine at 800 Mhz, but there are some tasks it’s not cut out for.

These days, none of that is an issue. There are work horses like the Mac Pro that are mini supercomputers, but even the iMac is getting up there in specs.

Until software developers figure out how to program for those quad-core beasts, all that processing power will go to waste. But it also means you can worry about specs other than speed when buying – or holding off from buying – a new Macintosh.

Anyone else ever get a low memory message like the one I got playing “Aurora Feint” just now?

I don’t remember how much RAM is in the iPhone 3G, but I guess it wasn’t enough for all the mining action.

[Update: Turns out I’m not the only one – read here and here. Also, the iPhone RAM specs are hard to come by.  Apple doesn’t own up to them, Macenstein has a good debate going, but the consensus is 128 MB.]

What would we do without eBay? Found two 256 MB RAM sticks on eBay for less than $20 (with shipping), and couldn’t pass up on the deal to boost the PowerMac G4’s RAM from 320 MB to…well, strangely, only 704 MB…

But before we get to the goofy math, let’s explore how we got this far.

More… »