DrMac is a fun widget to play with if you have nothing better to do. It’s like very simple version of “Siri” on your Dashboard. You can play by asking question but truth be told, I got bored after 3 or 4 questions. Maybe it’s me. If you like this kind of game, be my guest and have some fun on your Dashboard.
* DrMac 200 – Free – 10.4 or later (PowerPC) – http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21339/drmac
DrMac couldn’t answer questions like “What day is today?”.
Once I read this article on MakeUseOf (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/write-peace-distractionfree-editors-si/) and I thought that it was very interesting. I’m not a writer but sometimes when I want to write some articles here on PowerPC I sometimes have difficulties in focussing and concentrating. It’s hard to concentrate on drafting my text, with so many things going on my computer: Facebook, Tweets, E-mails popping up, things that I want to search on Google… At the end of the day, I just dont find myself writing as often as I’d like.
So from this article I installed and tried the following apps that work with Mac OS X and to my surprise, a few of them actually ran on PowerPC!!! Here are the results.
* JDarkRoom (15 Beta) – http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/ - Simple full-screen text editor, that you just have to run and start typing. You can change the background color, font and font size. It’s comfortable to write with JDarkRoom.
*Typewriter (2.0) – http://www.lifehackingmovie.com/typewriter-minimal-text-editor/ – Minimal Text Editor and again you just run it and start typing. With this program, you need to type ever word, no copy, no paste, no delete. It’s like you are on an old school typewriter and that’s what this application is all about.
*DarkCopy – http://darkcopy.com/ Simple, full-screen text editor that does not require installation. You do the task straight from your browser, I think is a great idea and everyone should try it.
I hope you guys enjoy one of these three options and before I start writing another post I will watch my anime. At the moment I’m very busy with the saga of Alabasta / One Piece!
And in case you were wondering which application I use to write my posts….at the moment I’m using AppleWorks 6 and sometimes iWork 8. But if I was a writer I would use Typewriter and JDarkRoom.
P.S.: After talking to the writer of the original post, he mentioned that FocusWriter has a version available for PowerPC… so it’s time for Mac PowerPC to dig deep on Google. We found out that FocusWriter 1.3.1 is fully compatible with PowerPC 10.5 and here is link (http://cl.ly/472a2N1d1w2Y), I uploaded it on my cloud account to make it easier for you guys and I have to mention that FocusWriter is a very good full-screen text editor with more features. If you decide to work with small windows you will have access to an easy menu! http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
Saturday! Saturday is my day off from my regular job, which is actually one of my busiest days because it’s the day that I wake in the morning, have my coffee and get to “work” here on Mac PowerPC. I always try to have 3 posts for the following week done by the end of the day. But enough about me! I hope you guys will like what I found for PowerPC this week!
I still use MSN once in awhile because I’m from the time when MSN was the coolest thing online. I still like to use iChat, as it’s one of my favorite instant messengers. It’s simple, clean and relatively easy to use…Some of you might think that I’m only a mac fan but the fact is if we enjoy Mac OS X applications and systems it’s OUR preference at the end of the day!
If you guys are also in the same camp as me, there is a way to sync iChat with MSN and this blog will guide you through the process, step-by-step: http://gigaom.com/apple/how-to-connect-ichat-to-msn-facebook-and-more/
Psi 0.15 (Free) – http://psi-im.org/ – it’s a really good client for Jabber and this version is compatible with 10.5. PowerPC friendly.
Psi 0.14 works on 10.3 / 10.4
But if you use iChat, you will be limited to the typing mode only and won’t be able to use video chat, etc. This is perfect for me because I don’t like this option anyways.
But you might be asking why encounter all this work if it is easier to use Adium, Amsn or the most powerful, Skype. If you also prefer iChat, let me know in your comments, and tell me why!
Thank you all!
Is it Free?
Is it PowerPC friendly?
If both answers are yes, it will become a post here, and why not download this scientific calculator which supports complex and hexadecimal numbers.
Follow features:
• 25 accurate digits of precision
• Complex numbers
• Hexdecimal, octal, binary, decimal and 2′s complement display.
• Floating point numbers, even in non-decimal radices.
• A full expression history (go back to anything)
• A graphical display that you can click on to change the entry point
• Value memory limited only by computer memory.
• Statistics functions
• Linear regression
• Matrix functions including gaussian elimination, inversion and determinants.
• Large number of scientific constants built-in.
Magic Number Machine 1.0.30 (Free) 10.4 / 10.5 – PowerPC – http://projectswithlove.com/magicnumbermachine/
Magic Number Machine 1.0 (Free) 10.2 / 10.3 – PowerPC – http://projectswithlove.com/magicnumbermachine/
Thanks to Matt Gallagher
Most PowerPC users and some Intel Dual Core users really would like to have AirPlay to mirror Videos to our Apple TV without having to convert and sync with iTunes.
AirFlick is a beta version and there is no support but it works (sort of) on PowerPC. AirFlick is a free application that allows you to stream videos from your computer to Apple TV. Apparently, you’re also supposed to be able to stream videos from any URL address.
The fact is I recently updated my Apple TV and then I tried to use this application and for some reason it does not recognize my Apple TV, likely because of my upgrade. But I saw some comments online which indicate that it seems to be working for some of you, but some users experience challenges with the URL streaming feature. So if you guys want to try out AirFlick and share your experience if worked or not, please feel free to post on comments for the rest of us. We appreciate your feedback!
AirFlick 0.51 (Free) 10.5.8 – Leopard – PowerPC – http://ericasadun.com/ftp/AirPlay/AirFlickArchive/AirFlick-ReleaseNotes.html
More information & comments: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36512/airflick
DVD Extractor and Converters
Have you guys ever encountered a situation where you want to make a “back-up copy” from DVD to Hard Drive and you don’t know how to do it and everything on internet seems too difficult to comprehend? I have recently been in this situation and the results were very bad because I ended up putting the DVD in and the famous and life-saving command + c & command v did the job, but the results were not satisfactory, but were at least safe and saved on my HD.
If you have a lot of DVDs and want to spend some money to do the right thing with better results, Cinematize is a good application that you should consider.
*Cinematize – 3.03 (Demo / $59.95) PowerPC 10.4 / 10.5. http://www.miraizon.com/index.html – This is a really good DVD extraction and conversion program which allows you to extract audio and video clips from any DVD and convert to the most popular formats – small clips or the entire DVD! It’s really easy to use and the results are very professional.
I was browsing at my local Apple Store and wondered if I could use the Magic Mouse on my PowerPC machine… I never actually stopped to check this information out, and ended up wrongly assuming that Magic Mouse was only for Intel! Anyways after reading the “System Requirements” here is what I found:
System Requirements
• Mac computer with Bluetooth wireless technology
• OS X v10.5.8 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0* or OS X v10.6.1 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0
• Existing keyboard and mouse for setup
• Two AA batteries (included)
So the Magic Mouse works on Leopard, the only thing I have to do it is download this update and start using the Magic Mouse!
* Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0 for Leopard - http://support.apple.com/kb/DL951
Click on advertisement to help MacPowerPC. Thanks 
If you are looking for a nice menu bar shortcut for your applications or utilities, I think your search is about to end! Let me introduce to you HimmelBar.
*HimmelBar 3.0 (accepting donations) http://softbend.free.fr/himmelbar/download.html – 10.4 / 10.5 – PowerPC friendly. It’s a very small icon on menu bar that gives you many options to easily access your folders, applications, etc. You can also customize the folders and applications to better suit your needs. After you start using it, you will likely question yourself why Apple didn’t think about this before because it’s a great feature and makes browsing your own computer much easier! One of the features that I like is that you have the choice on what size your icons are displayed (big, small or not at all!) Make sure you check the options Launch at login and go to Preferences as soon as you install, to do the setup the way you prefer.
Now comes good news for our feline relatives:
Jaguar users – 1.4.4
Panther users – 2.4.3
Tiger & Leopard – 3.0
Just one more point, this would be really great for Jaguar, Panther and Tiger because the folder dock application does not work the same way that it does on Leopard: you have to click and keeping holding until the list shows up and it’s not quite a shortcut…
Bring life to your dashboard with one of these widgets! They are not “the big deal” but they’re cool little apps that will help keep your machine in the “now”;
*ClassiCalculator – PowerPC – ClassiCalculator it’s a widget that reminds us how applications looked a few years ago. You can download here: http://cl.ly/2K3b2M15462U
*iBooks – PowerPC – This widget only allows you to access the iBook Store from your Dashboard. I was wondering if we could actually read our iBooks from the Dashboard, which would be very helpful and cool. Anyways you can download it here: http://cl.ly/1y3v3b3L280E
Lately I’ve been getting so addicted to the Anime One Piece, that I crave just 20 minutes to watch an episode, in my “free” time, which there never seems to be enough of! But with this week’s announcement of the new iPhone 5, I just wasn’t able to properly focus. As Kylie said, I just cant get it out of my head!
I’ve already received a few e-mails from my readers telling me how disappointed they are because the won’t be able to sync the new iPhone with the PowerPC! But I’ve got news for you…if you have a 10 year old Windows XP you can! LOL!
Each company has different policies and it seems that Windows has more support for the old OS than Apple does. It’s sad and I think that soon Mac users will start using hackintosh more than the PC users do, it’s just getting to be “too much”. Apple computers are expensive to buy and after few years (and I mean 2 year), are already obsolete and I’m not telling this just for PowerPC users. Look at the Intel Dual Core, which can be updated to Mountain Lion but can not be used for Airplay! Dual Core was replaced for i3/i5/i7 in 2010…ONLY 2 years ago! Also, Snow Leopard it’s not compatible with iCloud and other applications that were released just for Lion/Mountain Lion. So long story short, either you change your Mac every 1 or 2 years and spend around $1,200.00 for each purchase to keep yourself up to date, or you can keep your best machine as your main machine and buy some cheap (and very powerful) PC for half the price of a Mac and Hackintosh it to keep your devices up to date! (just thinking)
While completing this iPhone research I found this application that is PowerPC friendly and I hope for the release of an update that would allow us to sync the iPhone 5. It’s not free, but for what it does, it’s totally worth it!
* PhoneView v2.8.4 - http://ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/ – PowerPC 10.5 (Leopard)
P.S.: They just announced that works great with iOS 6 – If you guys have the iPhone 5 and try this application please share the results with us.
Stay strong!
I was checking my old posts to review what ground we’ve been covering, and what directions we could take the site in. I noticed that we never mentioned the great e-mail client TenFourBird. I couldn’t believe it, because TenFourBird is one of the first applications that I open each morning. So this post is to make sure that TenFourFox gets a special place here on Mac PowerPC.
* TenFourBird 10.6.6 – 10.4 Tiger / 10.5 Leopard (G3 / G4 / G5) PowerPC – ThunderBird dropped the support for PowerPC a while ago and here comes TenFourBird based on the latest version of Mozilla ThunderBird and TenFourFox. It’s identical to ThunderBird: it’s fast, it’s light and it’s a very stable application to run. Compatible with most IMAP/POP e-mail, the developer did a great job for the PowerPC community and I want to say Thank You.
* http://en.sourceforge.jp/projects/tenfourbird/
P.S.: * ThunderBird 3.1.20 is the version that will work on PowerPC (10.5 Leopard).
Browsing the web this morning, I came across a great application that it gives extra features to iTunes. MultiTunes is a plug-in that allows you to have multiples iTunes libraries. If you are an iTunes user, you know what I mean and you probably wonder how to have 2 iTunes installed in the same computer… Anyways if you feel like trying this app it’s shareware and works with iTunes 6 or later.
MultiTunes 1.6 (ShareWare – 15.99) 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard) PowerPC - http://porkrind.org/multitunes/
Also there is a cheaper version that helps you to create multiple iTunes libraries and manage them. This app supports iTunes 4 of later
*Libra 2.1.9 (ShareWare – 10.00) 10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard) PowerPC – http://www.sillybit.com/libra/ It’s very rare to see apps available for Jaguar. Anyone that has partitions with Jaguar and Panther sitting on the side, it’s time to boot the feline one more time.
We from Mac PowerPC are always looking for the cheapest ways to do things and we want to let you know that there is one way to have multiple iTunes libraries in the same computer, but it won’t be as practical as Mac users like things to be. The only thing you have to do is “hold Option key” and click on iTunes icon, a window will pop up asking if you want to create a new Library or choose one, that’s it! It’s simple but you will have to get used to pressing the Option key each time you want to change your iTunes library.
Yeah Yeah Yeah!, let’s re-revisit our favorite kind of apps, and if you thought that “re-revisited” is in regards to Metallica’s record Garage Days you are right. In this post we will introduce you to some browsers that we did not check out before. They’re very promising and will help you in your day-by-day browsing. I’m really sorry that we don’t have Google Chrome available for the PowerPC platform and I don’t think we ever will. So let’s appreciate projects like those listed here and others like TenFourFox, AuroraFox, SeaMonkey, etc.
*OmniWeb (5.11.2) Free – http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/overview/ (Tiger 10.4/Leopard 10.5) - It’s a very interesting browser, which is light to run. It’s very powerful, it’s fast and the most important thing is that they are still doing all the updates for either PowerPC and Intel. In OmniWeb you can find features such as WorkSpaces, Visual Tabs, Ad Blocking, etc. Installing this browser in your Mac will definitely be a benefit for you. I personally really like the idea of being able to show and hide the tabs. It’s pretty cool and very easy to browse.
*Leopard WebKit – (Free) - http://www.webkit.org/ / http://code.google.com/p/leopard-webkit/ (Leopard 10.5) - This is their own statement “The goal of this project is to provide builds of current WebKit sources for Mac OS X 10.5 (PowerPC only). The built product comes with no support and is provided only for testing purposes.” Well now, it’s up to you if you want to use this very promising project !
If you’ve been searching for a great notepad for a long time and have yet to find the right fit for your needs, I think your search is about to end right here. MacNote3 is a very complete product that goes beyond the capabilities of a simple notepad. It’s fast to use and has a very clean interface. One very interesting point is MacNote3 is similar to Notepad or Scrapbook (applications familiar to users of Mac OS9). This is such a powerful app, and I highly recommend it to all of you!
But now let’s check out the features, please pay special attention to feature #7 because it’s essentially what is missing from Notes and iCloud.
MacNote3 – 3.0.1 (Trial – $15.00) 10.4 Tiger / 10.5 Leopard / PowerPC – http://nsek.net/SYW/software/english/macnote3/index.html
If you check “Downloads” you can see a list of other interesting apps that they have developed.
Features
1. Simplicity
The most important feature of MacNote3 is its simplicity. It can be used in a fairly intuitive way, and there is no need to pay any attention to its file structure, or worry about saving data. New data is saved automatically and in a manner compatible with unhindered use. I hope that, for purchasers, MacNote3 will always be the stationery of first recourse.
2. Link
The user is able in any MacNote3 page, to install links to URLs, Files, other pages of MacNote3 and messages in Mail.app. Thus, pages can serve as an application launcher or a bookmark. In OSX 10.4 or higher, it is possible also to make a link to a message in Mail.app, so it’s easy to organize a To-Do page.
3. Multi-Window and Tab
MacNote3 allows the opening of multiple windows. In addition, multiple pages can be opened, via a tab, in one window.
4. Incremental Search
MacNote3 provides a swift incremental search. The user can quickly locate a needed page, even though it may be hidden among many others. MacNote3 also provides a list of “Frequently-used pages” and “Recently-used pages”, so the user is free to store as many pages as required.
5. AppleScript
MacNote3 is AppleScript compatible. Text data from MacNote3 can be transferred to another application via AppleScript. For example: templates for creating mail messages may be stored in MacNote3, and by employing AppleScript, new email messages can be created from these templates. Or, by means of AppleScript, lyrics from iTunes can be imported into a newly-created page. AppleScript can edit text of MacNote3 too, so it’s easy to insert HTML tags and so on. Of course you can write a new script and expand the ability of MacNote3 by yourself.
6. Iconize
If the user so desires, MacNote3 windows can be made to appear as tiny icons, and thus can be displayed separately on the desktop. In this mode a MacNote3 window is unobtrusive, yet allows the convenient entering of new data.
7. Export to iPod
It’s easy to export page data to an iPod, and therefore memos can be read on an iPod. MacNote3 can export its page data to any kind of iPod – from the oldest models to the most recent touch iPod or iPhone (with the exception of shuffle). Now MacNote for iPhone and iPod touch “mmNote” is available (freeware). MacNote3 can synchronize its data with mmNote via Wifi, so the users can refer to and edit MacNote3 memo and its images on iPhone and iPod touch too. (Screenshot 1, 2, 3, 4, “mmNote” manual)
8. Compatible with other standard services of Mac OSX
MacNote3 is compatible with other services that apply in Mac OSX. A new page can be created via the “Service” menu of another application; a page in MacNote3 can be opened via Spotlight; a page previewed via QuickLook, and so on.
During my morning research, I found a great browser called Shiira. It’s a Japanese open source that was working out very well for PowerPC/Intel users until recently. Unfortunately, our Japanese PowerPC friend decided to discontinue this project in 2009 (after 5 years of life), which is too bad because Shiira had a lot of potential as a fast and simple browser, but seemed to also have a lot of bugs to work out. The last version released was 2.3 and the developer’s site is not online anymore but if you would like to check this browser out, you can download from the link here:
* Shiira (2.3) https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15032/shiira (Runs on Tiger or later. You also can check this site: http://sourceforge.jp/projects/shiira/
If you take a minute to review some of the comments, you will notice that there are some disappointed people, but there is also a member who is using Shiira as his default browser on a PowerBook G4 running Tiger and he is pretty happy with the performance. Well, the only way to find out what YOU think is to download it and do your own test drive. Right now, the most important thing for me to find is ANY software that supports PowerPC! This will make me, and all my readers, very happy!
Installing Leopard on unsupported PowerPC Macs (like less than 867MHz requirements).
In the last post I mentioned our difficulty in finding a way to partition an iMac. The message ”Partition failed with the error: File system resize support required, such as HFS+ with journaling enable” kept displaying on my screen. The only solution was to format the iMac and start from scratch. Unfortunately, my DVD requirements weren’t quite right for our machine but after a few hours browsing different sites, I finally found this amazing application/plugin called LEOPARD ASSIST. And what this app does is essentially virtualizes a 933MHz processor in such a way that your system will think you have all the requirements necessary to finish the task of formatting your less than 867MHz machine! I was very excited to see the results and everything seemed to be working perfectly and finally I was having no more errors. So, once again I clicked on Spotlight “the brilliant lazy way to find anything on your Mac” and Disk Utility get ready because tonight you will work!!! OMG – Everything worked out…I created a partition and installed Tiger beautifully! Once it was ready, the only thing I had to do is launch System Preferences > Startup Disk and target which disk I preferred to start when I turned on the Mac.
* LeopardAssist 2.3.3 – (10.2/10.3/10.4 – PowerPC ) - http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26562/leopardassist
Long story short:
I learned how to partition using Terminal;
I learned how to cheat the system requirements without having to buy another 10.5!
Value of Lesson: PRICELESS!
