Whalen said that the company has been “talking to everybody” about Medfield and that the company first “took a conscious decision to focus on Android,” since “at the moment [Intel's] customers are asking for Android” but that iOS remains a consideration as it continues to grow. But Apple has little reason to want to open its arms to Intel’s mobile processors and plenty of reason to keep them closed, in fact.

It’s not that Intel’s efforts aren’t praiseworthy: The company needs a strong mobile platform, and Medfield looks strong. It’s an SoC that seems like it can hold its own with ARM’s latest, and there is even good reason to believe it will have a strong foothold in the Android market a year from now, not the least of which is Motorola’s endorsement of the platform.

But don’t expect to see Apple’s mobile devices rush to embrace x86 architecture anytime soon. Cupertino has done a lot to make sure that it maintains total control over its chip designs, which are based on licensed ARM architecture. It has acquired two chip-making firms and no doubt worked out extensive, high-volume fabrication contracts with chip-making partners like Samsung to ensure that it can deliver an SoC that is carefully tailored to work with its mobile software and hardware. That affords it advantages when it comes to system performance, power consumption and more; so much of an advantage, in fact, that an analyst recently said Apple had a leg up on Intel when it came to mobile chips.

Apple may have switched to Intel from PowerPC, a tech it helped create, for its Mac line of computers, but the mobile market is not the PC market. Intel still has plenty to prove when it comes to its ability to operate in the realm of smartphones and tablets, and for now, Apple has invested years of development time and huge amounts of money in making ARM-based designs that perfectly suit its software and hardware.

Apple’s recent acquisition of Anobit shows that it wants more, not less control over its product components. That desire for control combined with Whalen’s caginess when talking about Apple specifically lead me to believe it will still be a long time (if ever) before we see Intel architecture in an iOS device.

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1. Microsoft Office 2004

Let’s face it, Microsoft Office isn’t cheap, and Office 2008 wasn’t that great. Some features in 2004 weren’t in 2008 (though many were reintroduced in 2011), and when 2008 included the new .docx format, 2004 users didn’t want to move to a new format that could cause problems. Because of these issues, it’s not unusual to find users two versions behind. Alternatives: Office 2011, iWork, Google Docs.

2. Appleworks

Appleworks, why can’t we quit you? I’ve been a fan of Appleworks since the Apple II days. You worked equally well on Mac and PC, and included a database that’s easier to use and understand that those used by either Filemaker or Access. In fact, Apple was still selling Appleworks until 2007. Fortunately, iWork will open most files in Appleworks format and Apple has a full transition guide about moving Appleworks files over to iWork. Database users will either need to export the file to spreadsheet format or move up to Filemaker. Alternatives: iWork, Filemaker, Bento.

3. Freehand

Die-hard Freehand users refuse to use Illustrator. Freehand MX was the last version released before the purchase and discontinuation of the product by Adobe. Freehand holdouts might balk at the cost of Illustrator, or at having to relearn using new software, but it’s time to move on, or Lion won’t be able to open your files. Alternatives: Illustrator (this guide will help).

4. Eudora

Eudora was an outstanding cross-platform email program and a longtime Mac standard. It easily imported into Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or Microsoft’s Entourage, but some of us, myself included, were lazy and didn’t import old emails. Instead, if I needed an ancient email, I just opened Eudora. Now’s the time to import those emails before you run into problems with Lion. And if Eudora is still your primary email program, it’s definitely time to move onto something else. Alternatives: Penelope/Eudora Open Source, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook.

5. Quicken 2007

Although Intel Macs have been out since 2006, Quicken still hasn’t updated the program. And Quicken 2007 is still being sold, because Intuit’s new product, Quicken Essentials, is a scaled-down version of its 2007 predecessor. Essentials lacks features such as bill pay and sophisticated stock tracking. Intuit generally keeps their Mac products somewhat behind the PC versions. Intuit’s suggestions for what to do with the end of Rosetta are laughable. Fortunately, a wide variety of alternatives exist for these users, but be sure to research these carefully, and import your data into a new program before you make the move to Lion. Alternatives: iBank, Moneydance.

What still-in-use programs will you have to say goodbye to when you make the leap to Lion?

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In a mailing list posting on Tuesday, Mozilla’s Firefox honcho Mike Beltzner affirmed: “I am gathering data on the number of PPC users we have, but the likely outcome is that we will not be supporting PPC [PowerPC] for Firefox 4.”

Mozilla has already cut off Firefox support for Mac OS X 10.4 after version 3.6, and the new SeaMonkey 2.1 Alpha released yesterday (SeaMonkey is based on the Firefox browser engine) also dumped support for OS 10.4.

Feeling The Pain

These developments were inevitable, and the proverbial writing has been on the wall for some time for Tiger support especially, but looming termination of all PPC support is a splash of cold water for legions of holdout users. With two old 550 MHz G4 Pismo PowerBooks running OS 10.4 Tiger still in daily service, I’m definitely feeling the pain of constricting browser support. At present, I’m using SeaMonkey 2.0.6 (current stable release), Opera 10.01, and iCab 4.8 on the Pismos along with old Netscape Navigator 9.

Indeed, in many respects, Navigator 9 remains the most satisfactory all-round browser on low-powered Power PC machines, although its security profile is woefully out of date, so I wouldn’t recommend it for visiting your online banking site, or anywhere else that security is a particular concern. You can still download Navigator 9 here.

SeaMonkey: The Best Compromise?

SeaMonkey 2.0.6 is probably the best compromise at this point between performance, reliability, and security, and I was disappointed when I downloaded the version 2.1 Alpha 3 build, which features some interesting interface upgrades, only to discover that the system requirements cited on MacUpdate were in error, and it doesn’t support OS 10.4.

iCab 4.8 still fully supports Tiger, and I don’t anticipate that it will be dropping it anytime soon, since they still offer a browser on their download page that supports 68k Macs running System 7.1, but the latest 64-bit version of iCab 4.8, of course, requires Snow Leopard, and it’s doubtful that legacy versions get much security updating, if any.

The latest version 10.6 of Opera nominally supports Power PC Macs running Tiger as well, but in practice, I’ve found that it’s slow and unstable on the old Pismos, with lots of spinning beachball time. The last build that works well on those machines is version 10.01 (c. October 2009).

Curtain Dropping On Power PC

Consequently, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the curtain is dropping on Power PC Macs. I’ll not be giving up on my beloved Pismo PowerBooks any time soon, and hope to continue using them for years to come, but I’ll do any security-sensitive web stuff on my MacBook and whatever supersedes it. Opera 10.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 4, and Safari 5 all offer a superb browsing experience for Intel Mac users.

It’s interesting that Web browsers seem to have emerged as the tipping point of practical computer obsolescence. Are you feeling the pinch?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: What Does The Future Hold For Browsers?

Operating System Upgrade

The first thing I did was upgrade the operating system to Leopard. It’s too bad Apple decided to drop PowerPC support with Snow Leopard, but I can understand why it did. The move to Intel chips has been a phenomenal success for Apple, and I don’t think anyone can argue that it was the wrong thing to do. Thankfully, Leopard is pretty close to Snow Leopard. It’s close enough that I’m only missing a couple of features, and it has the same look and feel as a modern Mac. A lot of my favorite apps have dropped support for Tiger, but not too many have dropped support for 10.5 just yet.

Cleaning House

[inline-ad align="right"]The next thing I did was clean house. Opening up the hard drive in Finder was an interesting look into how normal people use a Mac. There were aliases to nothing, a few shared folders, old disk images, and, of all things, Netscape Navigator (hello, what are you doing here?) in the root of the hard drive. People drop files everywhere. There was also an outdated version of Norton AV running…that got the axe pretty quickly. The scattered files reminded me of how neat and clean iOS is when compared with OS X. OS X didn’t seem to mind where the files were as much as I did though.

App Installation

With the filesystem cleaned up and the operating system upgraded, I set about finding my “must have” apps. I created an “Applications” folder in my home folder, and downloaded TextMate, Twitteriffic, OmniGraffle, CyberDuck, Yojimbo, CoRD, and NetNewsWire. I don’t run apps like Yojimbo or Twitteriffic in the same fashion on the G4 as I would on a MacBook. In the interest of saving RAM, I’ve found it best to close any background apps. When I need them, I launch the app, then quit it again when I’m done. The same goes for Mail and Safari, apps I’d normally leave running constantly on a newer machine.

Slow, Middle-Aged Champ

The PowerMac still runs like a champ, but a slower, more middle-aged champ. He’s not the thoroughbred he used to be; it takes a bit longer for some apps to start, and from time to time the dreaded pinwheel pops up for a few seconds, but nothing earth shattering. Unfortunately, there’s still a couple of Windows apps that I need to run, so I keep my Dell laptop on the side to run the latest version of Lotus Notes and VMware VSphere Client. It’s not the perfect setup, and I’ll be upgrading to a MacBook Pro to replace both of them soon, but it’s been fun finding out just how useful the older G4 can be. There’s very little I’m unable to do with it, and I think if I had more RAM, the system would be much, much faster.

The same setup I’ve got now can be had on eBay for less than $200, maybe even with a monitor to go with it. With a good Time Machine backup for peace of mind, and a little patience, a PowerMac G4 can still be a great day-to-day computer.

27 years old, with longish hair (no helmet), wearing tan boots and a light-colored shirt with sleeves rolled back (no black turtleneck), Jobs looks like he’s having the time of his life riding the two-wheel Bimmer in San Francisco freelancer Moira Johnston’s feature “High Tech, High Risk, and High Life in Silicon Valley,” published in the magazine’s October 1982 issue.

However, notwithstanding his (excellent) taste in bikes, Steve’s stated ambition, when interviewed by Johnston over herb tea at a vegetarian restaurant, was modestly at the time to become “the Volkswagen” of the microcomputer sector rather than its BMW — which became a popular automotive analogy with Apple-watching commentators later on — although he emphasizes that “We’d rather call the Apple a personal than a home computer.”

The article notes that the Apple computer “has inspired a dedicated cult of hard-core enthusiasts who trade new uses for the computer in the columns of Apple magazines” and that Jobs had “become a potent role model for a new breed of bright kids who are writing and selling software programs and, with their arcane computer skills, gaining the prestige formerly tasted only by the high-school football team.”

Johnston also reports that besides the BMW two-wheeler, Jobs, already holding $100 million worth of Apple stock, also owned “the requisite Mercedes,” but that “success seems not to have spoiled the first folk hero of the computer age,” who still preferred according to an unnamed friend quoted, “to drive his motorcycle to my place, sit around and drink wine, and talk about what we’re going to do when we grow up.”

Of more than passing interest is that not unlike Apple’s performance through the current economic recession, the company seemed to be weathering a late ’82 downturn the microchip sector rather well, with revenues soaring 81 percent year-over-year and Apple occupying 22 buildings in Silicon Valley as well as having plants in Texas, Singapore, and Ireland.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Read here for a scan and transcript, with photos, of the entire National Geographic article.

A tip of the hat to Modern Mechanix for posting the article scan and to Peter Orosz of jalopnik.com for drawing my attention to this fascinating snippet of history.

Still running a PowerPC Mac and hurting for some serious browser speed, up-to-date security and web standards compatibility? Being open-source applications, Mozilla’s web browsers and Thunderbird email client are open to being breathed on by third-party developers, several of whom specialize in optimization of particular versions of the Mac OS — such as Chris Latko’s Mac Intel-optimized variants of Firefox.

Terrific Results

However, for us PowerPC holdouts, a reader recently tipped me to some PowerPC-optimized Mozilla web browsers plus Thunderbird by R.P. Mozely, noting that he’s been getting terrific results and highly recommends these tweaked apps.

That sounded promising, as I’m still using two G4-upgraded Pismo PowerBooks for production work, and haven’t found the latest Mozilla gecko-based browsers to be particularly happy campers on the old laptops running OS 10.4 .11. So I keep reverting to old Netscape Navigator 9, which works nicely, but is getting long in the tooth, beginning to encounter some limitations content-compatibility wise. Of course it hasn’t had any security updates for nearly two years, since development was terminated.

Squeezing Every Bit of Speed Potential Out

Now this R.P. Mozely cat doesn’t just provide a one-size-fits-all PowerPC generic optimization, but discrete dedicated versions for G3 PowerPC 750, G4 PowerPC 7400, G4 PowerPC 7450, and G5 PowerPC 970, presumably all the better to squeeze every bit of potential speed out of each respective processor. My hot-rodder Pismos have 550 MHz G4 7400 CPUs, so last weekend I proceeded to download the G4 7400 optimized builds of Firefox 3.5.6, Camino 2.0.1, and the SeaMonkey 2.0.1 Internet suite application.

Worth the Effort?

So was it worth the effort? I think so. These browsers are definitely faster than the stock builds, performing remarkably well on the old Pismo, even when it really needed a restart to clear the memory heap, dipping into virtual memory swapfiles on the hard drive routinely.

I had been especially hopeful that the PPC-optimized Camino would work well, and it does. My seat-of-the-pants assessment is that it’s the fastest browser I’ve used on the Pismo — livelier even than Opera 10, which is no slouch speed-wise itself.

Sluggishness Banished

I’ve found recent versions of Firefox, Camino and SeaMonkey a bit sluggish on the old G4 machines, which is a big part of why I keep using Navigator 9. But that complaint is pretty much eliminated with these PowerPC optimized builds of the current Gecko browsers, at least in their G4 7400 iterations. However, for what it’s worth, I think the Camino variant is the pick of the litter.

If you’re still hanging in with a PowerPC Mac, I think you’ll thank yourself for taking the trouble to download one or more of these PowerPC-optimized browser versions.

Yes, it’s unfortunate, but it also makes sense from Apple’s perspective. The company hasn’t released a PowerPC computer since October 2005, which will be nearly four years ago when Snow Leopard is released in September. Four years might not be a long time to own a car or a refrigerator, but with computers, it’s a lifetime. Just think about the difference between the original MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Pro announced this past Tuesday.

A lot of what Snow Leopard brings to the table won’t be all that applicable to a computer with PowerPC architecture, either, such as multicore processing improvements with Grand Central Dispatch, and OpenCL tech that leverages graphics processor capabilities for general computing tasks. Not to mention that the whole thing runs in 64-bit mode, which probably wouldn’t play all that nice on older Macs.

Macs have always been notable for their value proposition in the long term. I was only recently shopping for a PowerPC G4 12-inch PowerBook as a gift for my girlfriend, thinking I could pick one up for a song at this point. In fact, for a decently spec’d machine with a newish battery, I was looking at paying at least $550-$600. Many people were unblinkingly asking $750 and up for their cherished machines, and weren’t open to being talked down at all.

Does a lack of continued OS support hurt the value proposition of those machines? Sure it does, but probably not as much as one might think. Anyone looking to buy an older Mac, for instance, probably doesn’t have technological currency at the forefront of their mind. In fact, whether they find Tiger, Leopard, or Snow Leopard on the computer in question probably won’t make much difference in terms of their usage.

Maybe Apple is leaving a lot of people out to dry when it comes to Snow Leopard’s backwards compatibility, but at the same time, you have to remember that Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. Yes, it makes a lot of software, too, but that’s not its primary source of revenue. Snow Leopard is really just another reason to buy a new machine, and you can’t really blame Apple for wanting people to do that.

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apple.com, 9 May 1998 [via]

Noted blogger and podcaster Daniel Eran Dilger writes today at Roughly Drafted on Leopard and the History and Future of Mac OS X on PowerPC.

For those of you, like our own Stephanie Guertin, who are running on older PPC systems, Dilger lays out why support for the PowerPC isn’t going away anytime soon. With an informative examination of historical Apple products, his article provides a sound argument for G4 and G5 owners to stay calm.

His article (as well as his blog in general) is worth a read whether you’re panicking about support for that PowerBook you bought just before the MacBook Pro was announced, or you merely want a refresher on the history of Apple’s products and CEOs during the dark ages (the years when Jobs was gone).

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