Apple: Welcome to the obsolete list, PowerBook G4

What a sad day. Nobody better tell my quicksilver. It is still plugging along running an external sata RAID array as well as storing, and sharing my 40 gigs of music throughout the home. It also hooks up to my home theater to act as one nice jukebox. It is a workhorse, it is a shame apples newer computers have not bee as reliable (G5). The quicksilver has not been to sleep or shut down in a few months.

From reading the comments anyone without a command of English would think obsolete meant 'won't function anymore'.

These machines will likely work for many years to come; but there has to be a point when Apple says; right, we're not making the service parts for these anymore.

Ah yes, I have such fond memories of my G4 (quicksilver) from back when my MBP backed up via Time Machine oh those long 37 minutes ago.

I don't know when I'll retire my Quicksilver, not in the foreseeable future anyway. It's already died once and I have one and a half spares to pull parts from if it should fail again. It has several terabytes of storage, 8 eSata ports (4 internal, 4 external), USB 2, FW800, and a 4-channel RAID ATA/100 RAID card.

If you want a file server the next major milestone is the switch to intel which doesn't happen until the Mac Pro which are several times more expensive and offers no significant benefit that isn't overcome by an inexpensive eSATA card.

I mean, uh... they're horrible file servers. Everyone should sell them off to the used mac places over the next 5 years [so that I have a continual supply of them for various projects and as replacement parts].

I recently reinherited my old PowerBook G4 and it's being put to good use.

Folding@Home and BitTorrent rock on this thing. Unfortunately the screen backlight gave out (which cannot be fixed) so I can only use it as a desktop.

Of the three Macs I own, my blueberry Rev. D iMac is the only one I consider "obsolete". I still use my 12in PowerBook G4 1GHz at work. It's on its second HD and I just got its second battery today. The 2GHz Intel AluiMac is my workhorse at home.

Obsolete? I just ordered a new battery for my aging 14" iBook G3 700MHz. It will be 7 years old in May. It still works...slowly.

1.5 GHz 12" Powerbook G4, Running 10.5.6
1.25GB of RAM
Superdrive
Original 80GB HDD
Replaced battery that now holds 10min of charge.

It's my primary computer. I'm a teacher, and the funny thing is, my 7th graders think it's the coolest computer!

Still running a TiBook 867MHz 768 MB of RAM as my main computer.
Very reliable (no spare parts) and still looking way better than my crappy Dell laptop I have to use for work.

Running Leopard (how cool on 6 years old hardware !) and spending most of his time in XCode.
This was my switcher laptop, it will always be special to me.

Note to my TiBook : don't listen to Apple, you're still fine and aging gracefully

A year ago I picked up as a second home computer a well-cared-for G4 Digital Audio tower (733 MHz, 768 MB RAM, DVI display connector, even the original-equipment DVD recorder) for $160 via Craigslist; it runs OS X 10.4 perfectly well, and I won't need any newer version of OS X on it. The proprietary spherical speakers for the Digital Audio connector, along with the cool-looking transparent USB floor bass unit, were fairly inexpensive on eBay.

I always liked the G3 (blue & white)/G4 tower design, although a bit noisy by today's standards. This 8-year-old machine is modern in a way that no Windows box half its age could ever be. That is to say: obsolete, my ass. (I finally ran an Ethernet cable upstairs and got a wired router to connect the G4 and our modern Mac, a late-2007 mini with 2 GB RAM.)

Luckily I have no need for laptops; I had no trouble last year finding 22-inch DVI LCD displays for $200.

Wow. My wife is still using a Ti PB and my kids are using a Quicksilver G4 and a solar panel/half soccer ball IMac. All are running Leopard and ILife/IWork 08. My son does some amazing things with Garageband on that obsolete computer.

The wife is happy - otherwise we would upgrade her! The kids will probably take their G4 computers to college.