Via OSNews, I learned about Mavericks Forever, a project with resources for continuing to use Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks as one’s operating system.
I, of course, wondered how one could live with an old web browser, I think the most modern one that supports Mavericks is Firefox 78 ESR, from 2020; that’s recent enough that it’s probably usable but as newer web features become more widely adopted, more and more sites would become unusable. This is solved by Firefox Dynasty, another wacky project that builds current versions of Firefox that run on vintage OS X versions (the Mavericks Forever site has its own download with some small modifications).
Ah, a Windtunnel G4! I have one of those gathering dust in my home office closet, along with the power supply replacement kit Apple sent out for them. Never got around to installing it, and the G4 itself hasn’t been powered on in about ten years or so. These both sit in the closet alongside my college workhorse, a Performa 636CD; my high school computer, an Apple //c; and my first home computer, an original TRS-80 CoCo. And tons of probably unreadable media for all (Zip disks for the G4, 3.5" floppies for the Performa, 5.25" floppies for the //c and cassettes for the CoCo).
I’ve thought about reviving the G4 as a household music server—it’s more than powerful enough for that—but I think that its four internal hard drives combined may not be enough for the current size of my collection. I don’t think they even total a half terabyte. Might have to muster up one of 2TB Phantom drives I rescued (unopened!) from my late father’s storage unit. (They actually came with FireWire cables!) I’ll also probably have to install that replacement power supply.
Wait - Apple sent out replacement power supplies?! I bought mine new and never got a notification or replacement. Had to buy one from some random “only guy around that refurbishes them” and it was not cheap!
Yes, there were power supply kits for them. It’s been long enough that I don’t remember the circumstances very well, but ISTR that it was something you had to know about and invoke the right magic words to Apple Support about to not pay full price for them, and they were available only once for a short time. I believe there was a nominal shipping fee, but that’s all. There may have been a class action suit involved, but I’m very unsure about that.
Those of us who had them and used them in quieter environments realized quite quickly that they were really loud. The one I had at home I used in my office where my wife started making me close the door whenever it was awake since she heard it blow two rooms away.
As I recall, you could order your replacement from Apple, they send it it to you (you paid only $20 S&H), and then you installed it yourself which was a breeze thanks to the nice hinged door design exposing all the innards of those PowerMacs. The new assembly was indeed quite a bit quieter. Not silent, but less loud than the factory default. I still ended up replacing it with a lamp iMac because I hated the remaining noise (and loved the design of the G4 iMac).
Mine died well after that date. It was a loud machine but I also had a clacky keyboard which bothered my partner more than the machine when I was up late
Thanks for the intel on the replacements, I had no idea and I am pretty sure I was reading much of the trade info at that time as I was still in IT!
Cool. Sort of reminds me of the (mostly, but not entirely defunct) TenFourFox project porting Firefox to PowerPC systems.
I may need to use that project in the future when the Mozilla people choose to stop maintaining ESR 115 for macOS 10.12. Right now, maintenance is through September. We’re supposed for find out this month if they will extend it further or not.
It was not long since I helped a customer install Adobe Creative Cloud on Mavericks – should have known about the site then (2 years ago or so)! There are still several apps I prefer from back then to now, but not enough to make me go back.
Gawd, how I miss Eudora! No other email client has ever been more suited to my needs, and rarely has one come close to matching it.
I used Thunderbird on my 2010 MBP, which had sufficient customization available that it was close to a match for my needs. Unfortunately, when I moved to a 2019 MBP with a Retina display, something in my Thunderbird profile caused it to draw the interface pixel-to-pixel rather than at the Retina resolution, so everything was super tiny. I could adjust text display size, but not the interface itself, and I couldn’t get it to draw it properly, even with a brand new profile, so I ended up (unhappily) switching to Mail.app.
Now, Thunderbird has fallen on hard times and appears to be struggling for relevance. And with Mail.app standard on every Mac and iPhone and iPad, Outlook standard on Windows, and webmail dominating everything, there’s just not much market for stand-alone email clients for any of these platforms. Most that are around are designed around particular workflow paradigms that may be suitable for people who use those paradigms, but don’t fit how I do email at all.
I still normally use Thunderbird on the few Windows users I help and it makes a lot more sense to most than Outlook (all platforms). Even helped a company migrate from Outlook to Apple Mail, because they had too much problems (esp. with contacts) with Outlook. The customer using Eudora mostly wanted it because it was easy to create long lists with users to redirect/forward mail to that just pops up predefined … (but there were so many other nice things there, some of which no longer work I am sure, like putting in whatever you wanted in the To field … :-)).
That last part doesn’t work here (Sequoia). I cannot drag the message back to a Mail folder.
Instead I first have to open the edited message in Mail and then save it to that folder again. That obviously leaves a copy and doesn’t replace the original email (not saying it should, just clarifying).
Sure, but that’s even more convoluted because now you have to move that imported message out of the imports folder and to where you want it stored.
Having to resave the message is not a big deal, but it’s important for folks to realize that although you can drag a message out of Mail, you cannot drag it back in.
