newish imac older apps

Im sorry but I dont know anything about macs but my dad still uses his really old one cant remember the name but is centris or something , big flatish square box.

Anyway for the last 5 yrs he has used a PC but kept his old museum files on the mac.

His worry now is that he wants a new mac but living on Jersey we are limited with local support.

Just wanted to check some truths. He was told not to buy the latest 24'' mac as it will nor run older apps but to buy an old stock G5 ? as it will work with them filemaker 5/7. for about £800.00

is this correct.

Thanks sorry for the lack of info but he asked the question but is really hard to contact.

Cheers

Latest macs have Intel processors, and they are not compatible with the old OS9, which is a terrible downside. This could or could not be a problem. If you are going to use new versions of all applications, they will probably work on OSX so that's OK, but if you still need to rely on a OS9 thing, then the Intel mac is useless, so you need a G5. BTW, G5 are not quite "old" to me, I'd buy them with confidence.

So you can run OS9 on an intel mac? That'd be cool!

You can't boot up in it, that feature disappeared in the G4 days, but you may be able to emulate like someone else said. If you buy a G5 you can use OSX's built in emulation to run your programs.