The last couple of updates have pretty much made my MacPro useless, it's not even heavy enough for a boat anchor. My Iphone isn't much better. I know my Mac is over 2 years old but had the best processor and maxed out memory when purchased. Since the Big Sur update it is slow and keeps rebooting on it own. Is there anyway of getting it back to the old operating system without taking it to Apple store?

Excellent question, Merritt. I've been experiencing the same thing with my iPhones. My personal one is a 6S and my work one is and 8. Granted, they are "old" in the IT world, they have been just fine for me. Now, I'm finding that more and more apps require IOS versions that aren't supported. Of course, the devices can't be upgraded to the latest IOS version. I guess that's what they refer to as 'planned obsolescence', or a means bywhich they force you to keep purchasing the newest and latest hardware.

This reminds me of Microsoft. Maybe Apple just realized that MS has had a license to steal money from us for decades and decided to jump on that bandwagon.

I am thinking of building up an old PC with Win 98 and load all the old programs that worked on it then just have it as a stand alone PC with no Net connection. Since the last few upgrades have stopped most of the programs that I use. MS office products stopped working about a year ago now they have made it so Quickbooks wont even start up so I have lost all my inventory and customer info.




Apple Sucks

You could make it dual boot so it has win98 and say win 10 or whatever.

But if it were me I would use windows XP 32bit instead of win98. Win XP Pro would be even better because it allowed remote desktop connections.
It was the most stable version they ever had and still worked with legacy windows programs.

Merritt,

If you need to run Windows 98, take a look at VMWare Workstation. You could run an instance inside there and not need a dedicated computer for that. You could even map your COM port on your host computer if needed.

I have Windows 95, 98, and 2000 bootable install images I can send you if you need them.

As for your Mac--what type of drive does it have? Solid state or spinning HDD? I've put solid state drives in OLD machines with very slow processors and it still makes a world of difference.

Scott

Thank you for the suggestions XP maybe a better way to go I mostly want to get my old FoxPro software working again so I can use the business programs I had custom made for a small business. What should I look for to build an XP PC? Can I use a new PC or does it need to be a processor fro the XP era ?


Here is some info on the Mac

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac17,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 32 GB
System Firmware Version: 429.120.4.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.33f12
1.02 TB Fusion Drive
The main Apple drive has about 516 GB free

You can always install a Virtual Machine.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Mac%20OS%20X%20build%20instructions

If I can install VB running Windows XP SP3, DOS 6.22, Windows NT Server 4.0, Kali, Windows 1.04 and Ubuntu, then it can't be all that difficult!

Windows 1.4?!

One operating system is problems enough for me. In have made multi boot systems before and they always had too many problems I just want something that I can turn on and have it work right and not have to constantly keep upgrading.