Tuesday 11th Jan 2021
I had a very late start to the 2022 PowerPC challenge, as I had non-stop work from the moment the challenge began. Some of this could have theoretically been done on a PPC, but it would have slowed me down, which wasn't really an option. Not to mention that the challenge is more about recreational computer time, rather than work time.
Today was the first time I even began to think about how this year's challenge would look for me. I have no shortage of PPC computers to work with, from early 603 PPC processors all the way up to G5s, and with everything in between.
I settled on which computers I would be using, and there were two of them. The first is the computer I'm using as I type this, which is a
1.5GHz 12" PowerBook G4 with 1.25GB RAM, a 320GB mechanical hard drive and OSX 10.4.11 Tiger installed. There's something about these little 12" PowerBooks, they are just so cute!
The other computer is a
Dual 2GHz G5 tower with 8GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, dual booting between OSX 10.4.11 Tiger and OSX 10.5.8 Leopard. This G5 I have owned since buying it brand new in 2003. It is my intention to install the game-changing Sorbet Leopard on it before the challenge is over.
The next thing to decide is what will I do on these Macs? I'm not really much of a gamer, so I would be looking at more functional tasks. For my day job I'm a web developer and while I can use just about any text editor to write code, I need a modern web browser to test that code. I also do computer repairs, but that's a job that actually takes me away from the computer, so not really a good one for the PPC challenge. And finally, I am also a YouTube content creator, and I can't really use the PPC for editing video, but I can use it for writing scripts, so that's a good starting point.
Interestingly enough, one of the most important pieces of software I use daily is good old Apple Notes. It's just a simple text editor, but the way it synchronises with all of my devices is fantastic. I can edit my notes on my phone, my iPad, my laptop or my desktop computer and they're all immediately synchronised. So simple but so useful. I use Notes for drafting emails, writing scripts, storing ideas and making shopping lists. We even use Notes for sharing the topics of the Mac Yak show. Given that Notes is unavailable in Tiger and Leopard, I was forced to find a way of having a similar functionality using the tools at my disposal. And that's when I decided to write my own web version of Notes. Borrowing very much on the design and functionality of the actual Notes application, my new web Notes allows me to create, edit and delete notes, with an autosave feature running in the background using Javascript and AJAX. And it works beautifully in the old Safari version 4.
The beauty of this is that I can type away on my little G4 laptop (which still holds a pretty decent charge) then jump onto my modern Mac and use that text in whichever way it needs to be used, without any need to transfer files.
As soon as I mentioned this new creation to the Mac Yak crew, they immediately asked where they could get hold of it. Unfortunately, it's a one-user system at the moment, but I do hope to expand this for multiple users in the near future.
So what have I done with this new tool? So far, the only thing I've done is write this little piece, but I'll be using it for lots more in the coming days. Stay tuned for further updates!
Not a thought that should trouble any member of Tinker Different though 
randommacstuff.blogspot.com
