This Old Mac Episode 13
Hello folks and welcome to my ongoing playing with the world of Macintosh computers. Lately a friend loaned me his G4 Mac Mini (Thanks Richard).
So I have playing briefly with MorphOS. Now for those who have never heard of or used MorphOS it is a replacement operating system which uses a look and feel to that of Amiga Workbench.
It uses the same structure setup and the desktop uses all of the same concepts of mainly icon based and everything will be familiar if you have ever used a Commodore Amiga.
MorphOS has been going for quite a while and the latest version is 3.14. This apparently fixes many bugs.
MorphOS will work on certain G4, G5 and a few Amiga PPC boards such as the Sam460ex and the X5000. However if your system is Nvidia based then it won't work.
So it's a limited based system and equally it costs €49-79 for registration depending on the machine it's installed on. If you don't have a key it works for 30 minutes then slows to a crawl.
Thankfully Richard loaned me his MorphOS key for this test.
However for all it's limits MorphOS slowly over time has improved. The last time I used it was version 3.9 and it definitely has had a lot of improvements.
In MorphOS 3.14 they seem to have sorted out the system so it runs slightly faster due to streamlining.
However it's not the base operating system you are probably interested in but the software available for use.
Well if you want to run email I would highly recommend Iris. While it's not the prettiest looking email client. It managed to cope with picking up and accessing my Gmail account without a problem.
Also recommended is Wayfarer. This is a new web browser for MorphOS and definitely seems to be a vast improvement over OWB the previous one.
Because it uses a lot of Amiga code for it's base it will never be the greatest for accessing the internet but I was quite surprised how well it loaded stuff especially compared to something like tenfourfox on Tiger.
Obviously there has been various emulation been worked to MorphOS but obviously due to it running on a G4 the results were variable at best.
However if you get the Chrysalis 3.14 disc you will get several emulators, some game demos and a few applications to look at.Programs such as Morpheus (text editor), TV paint and many more.
I will be honest with you. As much as I liked the Amiga Workbench when on an Amiga. I have never been a huge fan of its overall design.
However if you are an Amiga person then you are definitely into a world that will seem familiar to you.
If you have the patience then you can even set up an Amiga setup with EUAE and it can be integrated to a degree to load certain elements direct to the desktop such as Whdload games and certain apps.
There is also many things for MorphOS you can download from various sources such as Warmup or Aminet. Things are regularly updated so it's recommended you keep it in check.
To be honest the G4 is not really powerful enough to run everything at speed but I am sure if you use it with a G5 or higher then things become much more useful.
Overall it's not a bad idea but personally it's not my thing any more. If given a choice between Mac OS or MorphOS I am definitely going to go for the Apple setup.
However if you are an Amiga fan and want an operating system that looks and runs in a similar fashion to Workbench then MorphOS is the one for you.