Mac to the Future
October 12, 2020 4:13 PM Subscribe
Tim Sneath upgrades his trusty Macintosh SE/30 to a brand new iMac G4 and marvels at the technological progress that a decade brings, including a DVD player, built-in Ethernet and modem, OS X Panther, EarthLink, and World Book 2004.
the gap between a 2010 MacBook and a 2020 MacBook is shockingly narrow. Looking at this spec sheet from 2020 eyes, I'm imagining that this computer would run today's software reasonably well if macOS supported it
MacOS Catalina still supports the 2012 MacBook Pro. It's the last MacBook Pro with easily upgradable RAM and hard disk. I've seen several people running Catalina with up to 8GB of RAM and a SSD for speed. Upgrading memory, and especially changing to a SSD, is a massive upgrade in performance.
DosDude1 has a patcher for Catalina, or Mojave, which will add support for the 2010 MacBook Pro. It's unofficial, but it works.
posted by blob at 4:55 PM on October 12, 2020 [6 favorites]
MacOS Catalina still supports the 2012 MacBook Pro. It's the last MacBook Pro with easily upgradable RAM and hard disk. I've seen several people running Catalina with up to 8GB of RAM and a SSD for speed. Upgrading memory, and especially changing to a SSD, is a massive upgrade in performance.
DosDude1 has a patcher for Catalina, or Mojave, which will add support for the 2010 MacBook Pro. It's unofficial, but it works.
posted by blob at 4:55 PM on October 12, 2020 [6 favorites]
FWIW I'm typing this on a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, 15", which I with aforethought specced out with 16G of ram and the 2.6GHz quad core i7. (The Retina models are not after-market upgradable.)
It was astonishingly expensive at the time but amortized over the 8+ years it's been my main machine possibly the most cost effective per year. Previously I was on a 2 year upgrade churn because photography.
It's running Catalina fine and while it seems to chug a little now and then I'm not feeling any productivity pain. I did have to replace the swollen battery pods last year, and every two years I need to take the bottom off and vacuum the lint out of the heat exchangers or the fans run too much.
I'll probably replace it with an Apple Silicon Mac Mini once they've got all the bugs worked out and have one for sale that I can similarly upspec to last me another 8-10 years or so.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:07 PM on October 12, 2020 [6 favorites]
It was astonishingly expensive at the time but amortized over the 8+ years it's been my main machine possibly the most cost effective per year. Previously I was on a 2 year upgrade churn because photography.
It's running Catalina fine and while it seems to chug a little now and then I'm not feeling any productivity pain. I did have to replace the swollen battery pods last year, and every two years I need to take the bottom off and vacuum the lint out of the heat exchangers or the fans run too much.
I'll probably replace it with an Apple Silicon Mac Mini once they've got all the bugs worked out and have one for sale that I can similarly upspec to last me another 8-10 years or so.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:07 PM on October 12, 2020 [6 favorites]
Tim Sneath.
I purely love that name.
I am Tim! I speak for the Sneaths!
I may be drinking. Sorry.
posted by Splunge at 5:29 PM on October 12, 2020 [11 favorites]
I purely love that name.
I am Tim! I speak for the Sneaths!
I may be drinking. Sorry.
posted by Splunge at 5:29 PM on October 12, 2020 [11 favorites]
Panther? My guy, step into the /future/ and upgrade to 10.5 Leopard. It is worth it for the soft metal interface and groovy purple/black space theme of the box alone.
(I had two G4 iMacs, a 15" and a 17", and they were the last desktop computers I owned. Still kind of fond of them.)
posted by seraphine at 5:54 PM on October 12, 2020
(I had two G4 iMacs, a 15" and a 17", and they were the last desktop computers I owned. Still kind of fond of them.)
posted by seraphine at 5:54 PM on October 12, 2020
MacOS Catalina still supports the 2012 MacBook Pro.
I'm on my 3rd 13" 2011-2012 i7 MBP since 2011 (the last 2 bought refurbished), running mojave - 10.14 - the last OS that can 32 bit apps. I'm using the same 1TB SSD I bought in 2014 for about $450, swapping it out each time my computer dies.
I'm never changing from pre-retina until intel chips go away.
posted by lalochezia at 7:08 PM on October 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
Every time I use my 5th-generation iPad 2017 (9.7” screen, weight 1.03 lbs.) in one hand, I think of lugging around “compact” SE/30s (9” screen, weight 19.5 lbs.) on my first computer job. Progress indeed, and they’re still sufficiently magical little windows to the world universe around us.
posted by cenoxo at 7:52 PM on October 12, 2020
posted by cenoxo at 7:52 PM on October 12, 2020
I was disappointed when I found that this was about REPLACING his Mac SE with a G4 and not actually UPGRADING his Mac SE/30 into a new G4.
posted by rikschell at 8:03 PM on October 12, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 8:03 PM on October 12, 2020 [13 favorites]
I, too, miss computers with soul and the iMac G4 was certainly one of them. Still a striking design.
posted by hijinx at 8:54 PM on October 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by hijinx at 8:54 PM on October 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
I passed my 2013 MBP down to my brother. All it has needed are battery and hard drive swaps — everything else runs more or less the same for regular work. Apart from GPU advances, Gruber is right: "There’s no question that the state of progress for PCs has slowed tremendously."
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:34 PM on October 12, 2020
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:34 PM on October 12, 2020
I was disappointed when I found that this was about REPLACING his Mac SE with a G4 and not actually UPGRADING his Mac SE/30 into a new G4 .
Oh, thank goodness I wasn't alone there. I was very confused for a while.
posted by brundlefly at 10:42 PM on October 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
Oh, thank goodness I wasn't alone there. I was very confused for a while.
posted by brundlefly at 10:42 PM on October 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
Boy, that still might be my single favorite computer design of all time. I get the value and appeal of the current iMac design (even if it's getting a bit long in the tooth in some regards), but there was an incredible "Luxo Jr." sort of friendliness and whimsy to that design.
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:25 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:25 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
This is my kind of unboxing walkthrough
posted by Kitchen Witch at 12:33 AM on October 13, 2020
posted by Kitchen Witch at 12:33 AM on October 13, 2020
Somewhere I have a full page ad for this computer from the inside cover of an issue of Newsweek that I saved because it was just so striking to me at the time.
I still want one.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:05 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I still want one.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:05 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I passed my 2013 MBP down to my brother. All it has needed are battery and hard drive swaps — everything else runs more or less the same for regular work. Apart from GPU advances, Gruber is right: "There’s no question that the state of progress for PCs has slowed tremendously."
He also makes the point that phones are now where phones were in 2004 - at the end of a very steep capability ramp. I actually think that phones are further along than that. I have an iPhone 5S, it is old has had a battery refresh at some point but that battery is now 4 years old as well (the phone design is now 7 years old) and therefore the battery is now basically dead and requires external charging after only 45 mins or so of constant use. It has only recently been EOLd on iOS support and every app I use still works. If it weren't for that, I would get the battery replaced again and keep running it probably.
The most substantial change has been in cameras, the kind of camera capability that a new iPhone has is vastly superior to a seven year old phone.
There is no way that I would have been able to use a 7 year old computer in 2004! A 1997 vintage would have meant running Windows 95, even 98 wasn't out. OS X was still four years in the future.
We can therefore say that we are much further along in phones than the equivalent of 2004 for PCs.
posted by atrazine at 2:58 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
He also makes the point that phones are now where phones were in 2004 - at the end of a very steep capability ramp. I actually think that phones are further along than that. I have an iPhone 5S, it is old has had a battery refresh at some point but that battery is now 4 years old as well (the phone design is now 7 years old) and therefore the battery is now basically dead and requires external charging after only 45 mins or so of constant use. It has only recently been EOLd on iOS support and every app I use still works. If it weren't for that, I would get the battery replaced again and keep running it probably.
The most substantial change has been in cameras, the kind of camera capability that a new iPhone has is vastly superior to a seven year old phone.
There is no way that I would have been able to use a 7 year old computer in 2004! A 1997 vintage would have meant running Windows 95, even 98 wasn't out. OS X was still four years in the future.
We can therefore say that we are much further along in phones than the equivalent of 2004 for PCs.
posted by atrazine at 2:58 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
My homebuilt PC is now six years old and I'm playing current games on it without problems; I don't really see a reason to upgrade it for at least a couple more years.
posted by octothorpe at 4:54 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 4:54 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
A 2012 MBP with an SSD and maxed ram was my daily driver this spring when we went remote - new job gave me a 2017 15" which is notably buggier and has weird screen issues. The main (fairly impressive) improvement is USB-C, and I like the bigger screen, but otherwise I think that was a better computer in most ways.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:13 AM on October 13, 2020
posted by aspersioncast at 6:13 AM on October 13, 2020
I think that SE/30 was my first work machine. It would still work for what I do most of the time, which is mainly watching cowboy movies.
posted by pracowity at 6:32 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by pracowity at 6:32 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
That generation of iMacs certainly was cute, but I think that the bigger shock by far would be OS X. It wasn't just the "lickable" Aqua interface; it was that you could open up a command line, something that Steve Jobs, who didn't even want people opening his computer cases, had been notoriously averse to back in the days of the original Macintosh. (Although he didn't seem to have that problem with his NeXT computers, whose OS would become the basis of OS X.) OS X seemed as far ahead of the previous Mac Systems as they had been ahead of MS-DOS.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:36 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:36 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
I bought one of the so-called "Sunflower" iMacs back in the day. There's a well-known story about Johnny Ives walking about with Steve Jobs in his garden, and Jobs pointing to a sunflower and saying basically that the screen should just float, like a sunflower, without stuff globbed on the back, while the CPU should rest solidly on the horizontal surface. In other words, each part should be true to itself.
For years, people would look at the Sunflower iMac, their mind a little blown, and say, "That's a strange monitor." "That's the whole computer," I would reply. They were so used to seeing beige boxes!
Ironically, after that beautiful design vision was reified, future iMacs would become exactly what Jobs had said back then that he did not want (a heavy, barely moveable screen with electronics globbed on the back).
MacOS Catalina still supports the 2012 MacBook Pro.
Yes, but not Big Sur, the next macOS. I was using a 2012 MBP, 16 GB ram, 1TB ssd, 1T hd (in place of the optical drive). Never had a problem with it. But although it works just fine, Apple decided that it can't run Big Sur (at least, not without some magic). Since I develop a mac app that needs to be tested on Big Sur, I gave in and bought a new MBP. Which is really disorientating. Spent 2 days trying to get VirtualBox to run Linux acceptably. Because of the stupid touchbar, I'm now constantly pressing the display with my fingers and wondering why nothing happens (because brain is confused). Also, I don't like how the USB-C that powers it sticks out so far...it seems fragile compared to the Magsafe adapter. The sound is better though.
posted by jabah at 6:53 AM on October 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
For years, people would look at the Sunflower iMac, their mind a little blown, and say, "That's a strange monitor." "That's the whole computer," I would reply. They were so used to seeing beige boxes!
Ironically, after that beautiful design vision was reified, future iMacs would become exactly what Jobs had said back then that he did not want (a heavy, barely moveable screen with electronics globbed on the back).
MacOS Catalina still supports the 2012 MacBook Pro.
Yes, but not Big Sur, the next macOS. I was using a 2012 MBP, 16 GB ram, 1TB ssd, 1T hd (in place of the optical drive). Never had a problem with it. But although it works just fine, Apple decided that it can't run Big Sur (at least, not without some magic). Since I develop a mac app that needs to be tested on Big Sur, I gave in and bought a new MBP. Which is really disorientating. Spent 2 days trying to get VirtualBox to run Linux acceptably. Because of the stupid touchbar, I'm now constantly pressing the display with my fingers and wondering why nothing happens (because brain is confused). Also, I don't like how the USB-C that powers it sticks out so far...it seems fragile compared to the Magsafe adapter. The sound is better though.
posted by jabah at 6:53 AM on October 13, 2020 [4 favorites]
I just replaced a 2010 MacBook Air with a new iMac. That was a great value – ~$1k at the time – and I expect the new iMac to be similarly long-lasting but I do miss the swivel arm design. I doubt that it’s really feasible to hang a 27” display off of an arm like that without a major weight increase in the back (massive heat sink for passive cooling?) but the effortless perfect display positioning was something I’ve never seen done better.
posted by adamsc at 6:54 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by adamsc at 6:54 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
The screen is TEENY
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:31 AM on October 13, 2020
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:31 AM on October 13, 2020
My primary rig is a 2008 Mac Pro (cheese grater) set up to dual-boot between OS X and Win10. I've upgraded the drives and graphics card, and even though it has "only" 32GB of RAM, it still runs all the apps and plays all the games I've asked of it.
posted by xedrik at 7:40 AM on October 13, 2020
posted by xedrik at 7:40 AM on October 13, 2020
2008 Mac Pro (cheese grater)
I thought the third-gen (2019) Mac Pro was the cheese grater
posted by hanov3r at 8:10 AM on October 13, 2020
I thought the third-gen (2019) Mac Pro was the cheese grater
posted by hanov3r at 8:10 AM on October 13, 2020
Somewhere I have a full page ad for this computer from the inside cover of an issue of Newsweek
I have the issue of Newsweek in which every ad is for Apple's new computer called Macintosh. It's a special issue from November 1984 about the Reagan's re-election. It was what enabled me to get my Dad to buy a Mac (our family's first computer). Macintosh had been introduced back in January.
posted by neuron at 9:06 AM on October 13, 2020
I have the issue of Newsweek in which every ad is for Apple's new computer called Macintosh. It's a special issue from November 1984 about the Reagan's re-election. It was what enabled me to get my Dad to buy a Mac (our family's first computer). Macintosh had been introduced back in January.
posted by neuron at 9:06 AM on October 13, 2020
A 2012 MBP with an SSD and maxed ram was my daily driver this spring when we went remote - new job gave me a 2017 15" which is notably buggier and has weird screen issues. The main (fairly impressive) improvement is USB-C, and I like the bigger screen, but otherwise I think that was a better computer in most ways.
I’ve had a 2012, 2015 and... 2018 MBP? (Last one’s a work computer.) And the 2007 plastic MacBook before that. 2015 is the best one, in my opinion. CPU performance has definitely improved with each (come on, don’t cite clock speed in 2020) but I do think that practical improvement has probably slowed down. Obviously the SSD (which I got in the 2015 one) was a big leap. I think my last two have the same amount of RAM but Apple doesn’t like putting RAM in things for some reason.
posted by atoxyl at 9:40 AM on October 13, 2020
I’ve had a 2012, 2015 and... 2018 MBP? (Last one’s a work computer.) And the 2007 plastic MacBook before that. 2015 is the best one, in my opinion. CPU performance has definitely improved with each (come on, don’t cite clock speed in 2020) but I do think that practical improvement has probably slowed down. Obviously the SSD (which I got in the 2015 one) was a big leap. I think my last two have the same amount of RAM but Apple doesn’t like putting RAM in things for some reason.
posted by atoxyl at 9:40 AM on October 13, 2020
One thing that has not kept up for the older mac laptops is Bootcamp. I tried to get Windows 10 going on a 2012 MacBook recently and it worked fine until I installed the bootcamp drivers and then it started crashing all the time. Unfortunate.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:06 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:06 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I had that iMac! I was very sad when it died about a decade later. A modern computer with a similar form factor would be awesome for zoom school; our 2009 iMac is doing the job well, but it's just not as easy to position the monitor, or anywhere near as cute.
posted by puffyn at 10:38 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by puffyn at 10:38 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I am trying to build the strongest SE/30 possible. Other than a better external video card that never comes up for sale and costs hundreds and hundreds when it does, there's nothing left to upgrade. Ad a result I have a machine that can load static web pages in mere tens of minutes. It's a fun hobby.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:59 AM on October 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 10:59 AM on October 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
I thought the third-gen (2019) Mac Pro was the cheese grater
Both enclosures were called cheese graters.
But speaking of the new Mac Pro, the XDR display mount gives the same kind of freedom of motion that the iMac G4's screen had. You can even rotate it, which the iMac couldn't do. Progress, albeit at a price.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:59 AM on October 13, 2020
Both enclosures were called cheese graters.
But speaking of the new Mac Pro, the XDR display mount gives the same kind of freedom of motion that the iMac G4's screen had. You can even rotate it, which the iMac couldn't do. Progress, albeit at a price.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:59 AM on October 13, 2020
magsafe RIP.
no, really, RIIIIP. i trip over cables about 6 times a year, and it would kill newer macs.
posted by lalochezia at 12:18 PM on October 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
no, really, RIIIIP. i trip over cables about 6 times a year, and it would kill newer macs.
posted by lalochezia at 12:18 PM on October 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
I don't like how the USB-C that powers it sticks out so far...it seems fragile compared to the Magsafe adapter.
I don't either, and functionally my 2019 MBP is otherwise similar to my 2012 rMBP. My Thunderbolt display even still works with an adapter and works with OG USB accessories. It seems like a step backward to lose Magsafe that has saved my computer many times.
posted by a halcyon day at 12:21 PM on October 13, 2020
I don't either, and functionally my 2019 MBP is otherwise similar to my 2012 rMBP. My Thunderbolt display even still works with an adapter and works with OG USB accessories. It seems like a step backward to lose Magsafe that has saved my computer many times.
posted by a halcyon day at 12:21 PM on October 13, 2020
Looks like Magsafe is back in the new iPhones.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:28 PM on October 13, 2020
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:28 PM on October 13, 2020
That iMac was my grandmother's last computer before she passed away in 2015, after her OG iMac - which she loved - fried from a lightning strike (fun fact, she paid for it with a payment from the surge protector manufacturer).
I remember her delight when we got it unboxed and set up. Its utter modernity, how easily the screen moved and adjusted, the intuitiveness of it all (she was well into her 80s when she got it). She typed emails and read the paper and just used it constantly.
I have it on a shelf now - powered off mostly, but just its presence in a room feels like an art piece. Sometimes I'll power it up and play the solitaire game she played so often she figured out how to read the (not at all) random shuffles and win every game.
posted by phong3d at 12:34 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
I remember her delight when we got it unboxed and set up. Its utter modernity, how easily the screen moved and adjusted, the intuitiveness of it all (she was well into her 80s when she got it). She typed emails and read the paper and just used it constantly.
I have it on a shelf now - powered off mostly, but just its presence in a room feels like an art piece. Sometimes I'll power it up and play the solitaire game she played so often she figured out how to read the (not at all) random shuffles and win every game.
posted by phong3d at 12:34 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
But speaking of the new Mac Pro, the XDR display mount gives the same kind of freedom of motion that the iMac G4's screen had. You can even rotate it, which the iMac couldn't do. Progress, albeit at a price.
I wonder how much of that price is pro-pricing and low production numbers. Apple doesn't release granular sales figures but I'd be surprised if they sold more than 10,000 XDR stands given that's it's a $1000 accessory for a $5000-6000 display. It's a niche accessory for a niche product.
posted by nathan_teske at 1:45 PM on October 13, 2020
I wonder how much of that price is pro-pricing and low production numbers. Apple doesn't release granular sales figures but I'd be surprised if they sold more than 10,000 XDR stands given that's it's a $1000 accessory for a $5000-6000 display. It's a niche accessory for a niche product.
posted by nathan_teske at 1:45 PM on October 13, 2020
I am wondering how shocked I am going to be (or not) when I get a new system. Still have a 2011 Sandy Bridge based PC with a 9 series Nvidia card. It still seems fine but I heard the new CPUs and GPUs are far better now than then. My sisters have iMacs from around 2014 that are painful to use they're so slow. I suspect they'll be in for a surprise if they ever update.
posted by juiceCake at 2:28 PM on October 13, 2020
posted by juiceCake at 2:28 PM on October 13, 2020
Despite sharing the nostalgia, this thread is also giving me the dry heaves when I think about the hours — nay, years — I have invested in obsolete expertise.
I still have a 1992 PowerBook Duo 230. It still boots up fine in System 6. I have a SCSI and Ethernet adapter for it, so it’s semi-reachable. The original hard drive seems flawless. And that machine spent its first two years traveling in a guitar case, back when I was a road musician and writing my PhD dissertation in random Dairy Queens throughout the southwest while my bandmates slept off the night before or scored meth. I abused that little marvel. It never let me down. It is the 1978 Toyota Corolla of computers, minus the rust. I boot it up once a year just to time travel. It still smells vaguely of beer, cigarettes, and Hung’r Bust’rs. And it still runs.
I’ve owned countless Macs over the intervening years, also on roughly a two year upgrade cycle (because academic) and often purchasing them in bulk for various lab or departmental situations I oversaw along the way.
Now I do every damn thing I can on my phone and can’t stand to use my 2018 MBP because of the stupid keyboard and because it means I’m about to spend way too long answering email or writing some useless bullshit document. Fucking A.
posted by spitbull at 2:43 PM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I still have a 1992 PowerBook Duo 230. It still boots up fine in System 6. I have a SCSI and Ethernet adapter for it, so it’s semi-reachable. The original hard drive seems flawless. And that machine spent its first two years traveling in a guitar case, back when I was a road musician and writing my PhD dissertation in random Dairy Queens throughout the southwest while my bandmates slept off the night before or scored meth. I abused that little marvel. It never let me down. It is the 1978 Toyota Corolla of computers, minus the rust. I boot it up once a year just to time travel. It still smells vaguely of beer, cigarettes, and Hung’r Bust’rs. And it still runs.
I’ve owned countless Macs over the intervening years, also on roughly a two year upgrade cycle (because academic) and often purchasing them in bulk for various lab or departmental situations I oversaw along the way.
Now I do every damn thing I can on my phone and can’t stand to use my 2018 MBP because of the stupid keyboard and because it means I’m about to spend way too long answering email or writing some useless bullshit document. Fucking A.
posted by spitbull at 2:43 PM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
That Duo was $2400 1992 dollars, by the way. It cost way more than my vintage Telecaster and Deluxe Reverb, combined. It cost 6 months of Austin, Texas rent (read it and weep, modern Austinite, a lovely house could be had in Hyde Park or Travis Heights for $350 a month and that’s why it was a great music town), or the earnings from 2 months on the road. Hell, it cost more than the truck I drove back then. I can’t be arsed to do the inflation math but that would have to be a $6000 laptop at least in 2020 dollars. It was the first actual solution to extreme computational portability that crossed my radar as I was trying to decide whether to be a PhD-slinger or a guitar player, and it gave me one solid, precious year of not having to decide, and that’s why I’ve kept it and still love it.
PS I made the wrong choice. Fixed it later.
posted by spitbull at 2:52 PM on October 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
PS I made the wrong choice. Fixed it later.
posted by spitbull at 2:52 PM on October 13, 2020 [6 favorites]
I am wondering how shocked I am going to be (or not) when I get a new system. Still have a 2011 Sandy Bridge based PC with a 9 series Nvidia card
Newer GPUs are noticeably better. Newer CPUs, not so much for most workloads. It's not even Intel (or AMD) at fault. Even if their roadmaps had been executed perfectly, there are official physical limits to IPC gains and maximum possible clock speed that make the order of magnitude increases we used to see unlikely to ever happen again.
The problem is software. Few things multithread particularly well, which is why a four core system from almost a decade ago isn't the terrible experience a 2001 system would have been in 2011. Until that nut is cracked, nothing is going to change dramatically.
If our nearly 10 year old systems supported PCIe 4.0 and NVMe, there would be zero point in upgrading for the vast majority of people. The decreased storage latency and increased PCIe bandwidth does make a bit of a difference in gaming workloads and there are certainly business workloads that multithread better than any normal desktop software does, but for everything else we've been in a holding pattern for a very long time.
posted by wierdo at 4:41 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
Newer GPUs are noticeably better. Newer CPUs, not so much for most workloads. It's not even Intel (or AMD) at fault. Even if their roadmaps had been executed perfectly, there are official physical limits to IPC gains and maximum possible clock speed that make the order of magnitude increases we used to see unlikely to ever happen again.
The problem is software. Few things multithread particularly well, which is why a four core system from almost a decade ago isn't the terrible experience a 2001 system would have been in 2011. Until that nut is cracked, nothing is going to change dramatically.
If our nearly 10 year old systems supported PCIe 4.0 and NVMe, there would be zero point in upgrading for the vast majority of people. The decreased storage latency and increased PCIe bandwidth does make a bit of a difference in gaming workloads and there are certainly business workloads that multithread better than any normal desktop software does, but for everything else we've been in a holding pattern for a very long time.
posted by wierdo at 4:41 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
The only reason I got a new computer was because the motherboard failed on my almost 10 year old desktop. It couldn’t play the biggest new games, but it was still ran well and fast with pretty well everything I threw at it. My new desktop computer is, spec wise, much more powerful, but except for games it is really not very notably better or faster. Nothing at all like the astounding changes every year or two in the 80s and 90s
I still have an SE/30, and it even has an Ethernet card, not that you can do much on the web. BBSes are still a thing though, but I tend to use the Apple II or ti99 for those. Even at 31 years of age, the SE/30 is still pretty impressive for what it can do with so little.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:23 PM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
I still have an SE/30, and it even has an Ethernet card, not that you can do much on the web. BBSes are still a thing though, but I tend to use the Apple II or ti99 for those. Even at 31 years of age, the SE/30 is still pretty impressive for what it can do with so little.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:23 PM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
Now I do every damn thing I can on my phone and can’t stand to use my 2018 MBP because of the stupid keyboard
I’m the opposite. Touch screens drive me bananas. Give me a keyboard and mouse any day over jabbing at a slab of glass with my fat thumbs. Ugh. So frustrating and slow and so many stupid annoying typos that would never happen with a proper keyboard.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:51 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
I’m the opposite. Touch screens drive me bananas. Give me a keyboard and mouse any day over jabbing at a slab of glass with my fat thumbs. Ugh. So frustrating and slow and so many stupid annoying typos that would never happen with a proper keyboard.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:51 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
At this point I can type faster and more efficiently on my iPhone than my 2018 MBP. I got the terrible butterfly keyboard. It has never worked right, and I scream at it on the regular. I went from 60+ Wpm touch typing to half that on that keyboard, and rage about it is why I haven’t bought a new one. I use an external keyboard with the MBP to do real writing, but that defeats the point of a laptop.
I’ll never forgive Apple for that keyboard, never. And I forgave them for a G3 Blackbird that literally caught on fire.
posted by spitbull at 6:56 PM on October 13, 2020
I’ll never forgive Apple for that keyboard, never. And I forgave them for a G3 Blackbird that literally caught on fire.
posted by spitbull at 6:56 PM on October 13, 2020
My brand new 2020 computer is rocking a 1986 IBM Model M keyboard . . . I have had that keyboard since new and used it on every computer for the last 34 years, and it is still a delight to type on.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:17 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:17 PM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]
My brand new 2020 computer is rocking a 1986 IBM Model M keyboard
USB ports drove me to Unicomp's classic version of the Model M when the ps2->5 pin DIN adapter didn't work with a replacment kvm switch I had bought to replace a wicked cool old HP model that died one day.
posted by mikelieman at 4:38 AM on October 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
USB ports drove me to Unicomp's classic version of the Model M when the ps2->5 pin DIN adapter didn't work with a replacment kvm switch I had bought to replace a wicked cool old HP model that died one day.
posted by mikelieman at 4:38 AM on October 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
Yeah, when I built my new computer I got a motherboard with a PS/2 port just so I keep using the Model M.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:59 AM on October 14, 2020
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:59 AM on October 14, 2020
I'm back to college using a 2010 13" MacBook Pro -- I've maxed the RAM and replaced the original HDD with a SSD and it runs like a champ. It can only run High Sierra, but I have had no problems with my pretty light workload of word processing and web browsing.
I finally put the 2007 iMac to bed last year when I got a new mini. Honestly, the iMac is dead reliable but it just didn't have the muscle to handle modern webpages. Well, and the fact that it can only run El Capitan.
This mini has been really nice, although I haven't been able to transfer my home folders to my external SSD like I planned. That has been a problem, as I bought the 128gb SSD version. Stupid non-upgradeable SSDs.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:13 PM on October 14, 2020
I finally put the 2007 iMac to bed last year when I got a new mini. Honestly, the iMac is dead reliable but it just didn't have the muscle to handle modern webpages. Well, and the fact that it can only run El Capitan.
This mini has been really nice, although I haven't been able to transfer my home folders to my external SSD like I planned. That has been a problem, as I bought the 128gb SSD version. Stupid non-upgradeable SSDs.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:13 PM on October 14, 2020
I can't quite articulate why I found this whole thing completely obnoxious, but it's likely a combination of "the idea on its own is as funny as it will get in execution" and "do you have to be such a smug muppet about it".
It's a joke very much in love with its own cleverness and every tweet is like being prodded in the side by the comedian yelling 'geddit geddit'.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:27 AM on October 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
It's a joke very much in love with its own cleverness and every tweet is like being prodded in the side by the comedian yelling 'geddit geddit'.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:27 AM on October 15, 2020 [1 favorite]
but it just didn't have the muscle to handle modern webpages
This is sad and still astounds me. I have a cheap 4GB i3 laptop (for taking notes so I wouldn't care if it was stolen) and running a modern web page with it eventually gets incredibly frustrating. It seems so absurd but I finished university just before the Internet so my ideas about how much processing power a web page should need may be shaded by outdated models.
posted by juiceCake at 7:24 PM on October 25, 2020
This is sad and still astounds me. I have a cheap 4GB i3 laptop (for taking notes so I wouldn't care if it was stolen) and running a modern web page with it eventually gets incredibly frustrating. It seems so absurd but I finished university just before the Internet so my ideas about how much processing power a web page should need may be shaded by outdated models.
posted by juiceCake at 7:24 PM on October 25, 2020
It's rarely the web page itself that is the problem, at least for "normal" websites where you are reading some stuff or looking at a relatively simple map. What murders low core count/low memory machines in web browsing are the ad networks, analytics scripts, and the like. (Leaving aside the obvious exceptions that are doing things that have obvious reasons to eat up a bunch of memory or burn up a lot of CPU cycles)
Ironically, the other thing that kills them are ad blocking plugins/extensions, thanks to the ginormous filter lists that have to be searched 100+ times on most web sites these days.
posted by wierdo at 4:20 AM on October 26, 2020
Ironically, the other thing that kills them are ad blocking plugins/extensions, thanks to the ginormous filter lists that have to be searched 100+ times on most web sites these days.
posted by wierdo at 4:20 AM on October 26, 2020
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There was a lot wrong with those machines, but I miss design ambition like that.
posted by mhoye at 4:54 PM on October 12, 2020 [15 favorites]