Power Mac G4
The "Graphite" Power Mac G4
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| Developer | Apple Inc. |
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| Type | Desktop |
| Release date | August 31, 1999 |
| Discontinued | June 9, 2004 |
| CPU | single or dual PowerPC G4, 350 MHz – 1.42 GHz (Up to 2 GHz processors through 3rd-party.) |
| Predecessor | Power Mac G3 (Blue & White) |
| Successor | Power Mac G5 |
| Website | apple.com |
The Power Mac G4 (originally Power Macintosh G4) is a series of personal computers that were designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple between 1999 and 2004. They used the PowerPC G4 (PPC74xx) series of microprocessors. They were heralded by Apple to be the first personal supercomputers, reaching speeds of 4 to 20 Gigaflops. They were the last Macintosh computers able to boot natively to Classic Mac OS.
The original Apple Power Mac G4, code name "Yikes!", was introduced at the Seybold conference in San Francisco on August 31, 1999, with 400 MHz, 450 MHz and 500 MHz configurations available. In October 1999, Apple was forced to postpone the 500 MHz because of poor yield of the 500 MHz chips. In response, Apple reduced the clock speed of the processor in each configuration by 50 MHz (making the options 350 MHz, 400 MHz and 450 MHz), which caused some controversy because they did not decrease the price of the machines from the original prices.
The early 400 MHz (later 350 MHz) PCI-based version used a motherboard identical to the one used in Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White) computers including the use of Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) processors sockets (minus the ADB port), in a "graphite" colored case and with the new Motorola PowerPC 7400 (G4) CPU. The higher-speed models, code name "Sawtooth", used a greatly modified motherboard design with AGP 2x graphics (replacing the 66 MHz PCI slot). In December 1999, the entire Power Mac G4 line was updated to the AGP motherboard.
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