I have a confession to make. When the Blue & White Yosemite G3 PowerMacs were rolled out at MacExpo SF last January, I was not all that smitten with their looks. The radical shape of the case with its four handles took some getting used to, but it was really the color scheme that I really didn't warm to. While the translucent Blueberry and Ice motif looks cool and right on the iMac, it didn't look appropriate to me on a machine aimed at serious professionals. Also, the iMac USB keyboard and round "hockey puck" mouse seemed downright dinky for a state-of-the-art power-user's machine.

The rest of Yosemite was mostly pretty great. Lightning-fast G3 processor speed; a fast system bus; FireWire; and the incredibly cool fold-down access to the internals.

With the G4 "Yikes!" and "Sawtooth" PowerMacs introduced at Seybold on Tuesday, Apple has fixed the color scheme issue in fine style. The new "Graphite" and opaque "Silver" white case looks more professional and businesslike, and is also downright gorgeous. In clear plastic, the handles finally look just right.

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Photo Courtesy Apple Computer

Unfortunately, it is reported that the poky iMac keyboard and one-button mouse are retained, although in colors to match the G4's new livery. There are rumors that a bigger, more traditional USB keyboards on the way from Apple, and it can't come too soon. As for the mouse situation, it appears that there are continuing opportunities for third-party rodent suppliers.

Of course the G4's impressiveness is a lot more than skin deep. It is the fastest personal computer on the planet, and not by any small margin. "The Power Mac G4 is not only the fastest Mac ever, it's the fastest personal computer ever," said Apple's iCEO Steve Jobs. According to Apple, this machine is two to three times as fast as the fastest Pentium III, depending on what program you're running. With a claimed 1-4 gigaflops performance, (the PowerPC G4 is the first commercial desktop processor to achieve gigaflop performance -- one billion floating-point operations per second) the G4 offers supercomputer capability in a desktop machine, and reportedly is the first personal computer ever classified as munitions and placed under export restriction because of it's power. As Apple puts it, "Chances are, you’ve never even heard of a gigaflop before. But very soon you won’t be able to live without at least one on your desk."

Apple notes that it was less than two years ago that the University of California at Irvine’s Aeneas Project custom-built a one-gigaflops supercomputer for $50,000. The secret of the G4’s revolutionary (and vastly cheaper) performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine -- the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a silicon chip. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it’s the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers -- except that Apple/IBM/Moto added 162 new instructions to speed up computations). In addition, it can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle—two to four times faster than traditional processors. The Velocity Engine also operates independently of both the integer unit and the floating-point unit, enabling all three units to process data simultaneously.

The PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine works with the PowerPC architecture to accelerate the data-intensive processing required by ever more processor- challenging video, voice and graphics applications. Among the G4 's key features is a vector permute function capable of rearranging data in the registers -- a tremendous benefit when converting data from one format to another (often necessary with voice recognition, video and graphics applications, which typically need to save data in a number of different formats).

These vector processing acceleration advantages give the G4 microprocessor a significant edge when it comes to fast visualization of large data sets, and intensive math for real-time simulations. Making the G4 perfect for everything from graphics and 3D games to astronomy, the biosciences and predictive modeling.

The G4/400 (code named "Yikes!), which is based on the "old" Yosemite motherboard, is available immediately at the same $1,599 price point as the Blue & White G3/350. The G4/450, which is based on the new "Sawtooth" motherboard will be along in a couple of weeks at $2,499, and the awesome G3/500, also with a Sawtooth MB will be released for sale sometime in October $3,499.

I predict that Apple is going to sell a ton of these G4's, and the Mac/Wintel "which is faster" debate should be effectively silenced for the foreseeable future. The Power Mac G4 is reportedly up to 100% to 200% faster than the fastest 600 MHz Pentium III-based PCs. I'm usually a bit of a foot-dragger when it comes to embracing new innovations, but these new machines are really making me salivate. If I were buying right away, I'd probably settle for the 400 MHz Yikes! version, which is basically a Blue & White Yosemite with the G4 chip grafted on, and which should minimize teething problems.

The technological advance incorporated in the new G4s is so much more of a leap than the usual incremental upgrade with new product releases, that one has to expect the value of older G3 PowerMacs to take a nosedive. The aggressive pricing of the 400 MHz "Yikes!" model will turn even high-end Yosemites into market wallflowers overnight.

Is the 400 MHz Yikes! a good value? It's hard to argue with its price/performance equation, but buyers should be cognizant that it is likely an "interim" model that will have a short market lifespan (Apple is calling it "an affordable configuration that includes a base logic board architecture"). "In order to deliver a very affordable Power Mac G4 configuration," says an Apple statement, "we decided to use a base [ie: Yosemite] logic board architecture that features the PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine. Now anyone who wants the power and performance of the PowerPC G4 processor can purchase it at an excellent price."

It should also be noted that there will be no practical upgrade path from Yikes! to Sawtooth. As Apple puts it: "They are two separate logic board implementations with distinct feature sets. Customers who are interested in innovations such as AirPort wireless networking or 1.5GB memory support should consider configurations featuring the new logic board architecture from the outset." Good advice. Yikes! also cannot support the awesome new Apple 22 inch LCD Cinema Display (although that is not likely an issue for the price-conscious), and has no built-in Airport wireless networking capability.

Differences between the Yikes! and Sawtooth units are as follows (a tip of the hat to Doug Landry at The PowerBook Zone, whose comparison I’ve borrowed from here):

• Yikes! has PCI based graphics - Sawtooth has AGP based graphics

• Yikes! has 1 GB RAM capacity - Sawtooth has 1.5 GB RAM capacity

• Yikes! has 400 MB/sec memory bandwith - Sawtooth has 800 MB/sec memory bandwith

• Yikes! has Ultra ATA/33 - Sawtooth has Ultra ATA/66

• Yikes! has CD-ROM standard - Sawtooth has DVD/DVD-RAM standard

• Yikes! has no Zip drive - Sawtooth has a standard Zip drive

• Yikes! has two FireWire ports (none internal) - Sawtooth has 3 FireWire ports (1 internal)

• Yikes! has 1 12 Mbit USB bus - Sawtooth has 2 12 Mbit USB busses

• Yikes! has no AirPort capability, no antennas built-in - Sawtooth has AirPort capability, with antennas in the handles

• Yikes! cannot run an Apple Cinema Display - Sawtooth supports Apple Cinema Display

Obviously, the $900 price difference between the 400 MHz Yikes! and the 450 MHz Sawtooth is well-justified by content, if the enhanced content is useful to you.

The two high-end G4 PowerMacs feature a 100MHz system bus with three times the memory bandwidth of the G3. All models have 1 MB of L2 cache, and require OS 8.6 or later. The "entry level" (some entry; some level!") 400 MHz machine comes standard with 64 MB of RAM, while the 450 sports 128 MB and the 500 has 256MB. All are expandable up to 1 (Yikes!) or 1.5 Gigabytes of RAM (in four slots) for extreme power-users.

Video support includes 16 MB of VRAM, and ATI Rage 128 on 66 MHz bus or 133 MHz AGP 2X slot, supporting resolutions to 1600x1200 with 32-bit support, and VGA output.

Hard Drive options include a 10 GB 5400 rpm Ultra ATA/33 on the G4/400, a 20 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA/66 on the G4/450, and a 27 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA/66 on the G4/500. The machines come equipped with a 32x CD-ROM on G4/400, DVD- ROM on G4/450, and DVD-RAM on G4/500.

There are 4 PCI slots (3 are 64-bit, one is 66 MHz; 66 MHz slot used for video card), an optional internal 56k modem, two 400 Mbps FireWire ports two 12 Mbps USB ports for keyboard, mouse, and peripherals. Yosemite's holdover ADB port is gone, however, alas. Apple says that as part of their "ongoing platform simplification, we’ve removed the ADB port from the Power Mac."

A standard 10/100Base-T Ethernet connector is included with all models, and the Sawtooth versions also get an antenna and connector for Apple's new AirPort wireless networking card (same card used in iBook).

Another cool feature of the G4 Power Macs is that with its new PowerBook-style sleep management, the Power Mac G4 is able to turn off most of the subsystems in the computer to achieve an extremely low-power sleep mode of around 6 watts. If you shut down the computer entirely, but leave it plugged into the wall, it would still consume about 3 watts -- so there is no real reason shut down except to change internal system components. At least that's the theory. I have gone as long as 10 days without restarting my PowerBook 5300, but I find that my 233 MHz WallSteet usually crashes several times a week. However, the fully protected memory in MacOS X should make restart frequency measured in months a realistic possibility.

On the PowerMac G4, a tap on the space bar wakes it from sleep mode, and , you’re back at your desktop, just like with a PowerBook, much more quickly than booting from scratch. The behavior of the power button on the new Power Mac has been modified to take advantage of this feature. Pressing the button automatically takes the system into and out of sleep, while the Shutdown function is still available from the Special menu.

Until MacOS 9 ships in October, G4 PowerMacs are expected to ship with a modified version of Mac OS 8.6, similar to the enabler-loaded one that will ship with iBook. It is rumored that the 400Mhz "Yikes" G4 is an interim transitional model that may only stay in production until year-end, when Sawtooth production should be fully ramped-up.

Applelinks reader Michael LeRoux has been rooting through Apple TIL articles on the G4s and forwarded some info to us:

Hello there.

This morning I searched the Apple Tech Notes for references to the new G4 machines

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/797a936e79d3ea86862567d90053e336?Cr eateDocument

and I found a few interesting tidbits which were new to me. I thought I'd pass them along to save you some digging. I haven't seen any mention of the iBook's "Save and Shutdown" feature which dramatically decreases boot time. The Sawtooth motherboard in the 450mhz and 500mhz G4 machines should support it as well.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58430

Two new features to USB are most apparent. Support for USB Audio devices and bootable USB drives. Both these features are available with the Power Mac G4 (AGP and PCI Graphics).

USB Audio Devices - The Power Mac G4 now supports Audio USB devices. This includes any device also which supports the Isochronous USB protocol (which are mostly Audio in nature). This includes USB speakers, microphones, and other recording/playback devices.

Bootable USB drives -- The Power Mac G4 also supports booting from USB devices. A storage device such as a SuperDisk drive can be used to hold a valid system folder and used at startup. Third party USB hard disk drives are also supported.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58418

The easiest way to externally differentiate the two computers, outside of the model number, is by the arrangement of the microphone and speaker jacks on the rear panel. The Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) has them oriented horizontally while the Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) orients them vertically.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58433

Playing and recording from audio CDs Audio CD playback is now done digitally for increased fidelity and use with digital audio peripheral devices. When you play audio CDs, you no longer have to select "Internal CD in the Input section of the Sound control panel or the Sound section of the Control Strip. To record from an audio CD, you may need to select "Internal CD in the Input section of the Sound control panel or the Sound section of the Control Strip

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58426

Although 2 GB of RAM can be physically installed, a maximum of 1.5 GB can be addressed via the Finder in the Mac OS. The computer comes from Apple with one DIMM slot populated with a 128 MB DIMM. Additional DIMMs can be installed in any order, in any size as there is no performance benefit to matching DIMM sizes or installing them in pairs.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58421

Power Macintosh computers which use the new world ROM architecture, such as the Power Mac G4, will take longer to boot unless the drive which contains the active system folder and the Mac OS ROM file is selected in the Startup Disk control panel.

If you do not have a drive selected there, the computer has to scan through all the available interfaces where a boot device can be found, including SCSI (if installed), IDE, any network port, and USB. This takes some time to do so the length of time to boot the computer is extended.

--Mike

As Mike noted, the new Power Mac G4s (high-end Sawtooth models only) incorporate changes in the way that the Mac uses USB, including the ability to boot from USB hard drives,and a separate USB channel for each port.

In my estimation, the inability to boot from a USB drive has been a major shortcoming of the new interface as compared with SCSI. The idea of having a computer with only one means of emergency booting (ie: CD-ROM) unsettles my ingrained belt-and-suspenders conservatism. I think it's the biggest thing I miss about floppies. Being able to boot from a Disk Tools floppy has saved the day for me a lot more than once or twice.

The problem with System CDs as an emergency boot device is that they don't include Internet access. You could theoretically burn a custom startup CD with Internet logon capability, but most people are unlikely to take the trouble, so with CD's as your only emergency booting option in the case of hard drive corruption or failure, you are still stuck as far as getting online in an emergency is concerned. This is not a trivial matter when you work on deadlines.

I can boot and run my SCSI Macs from a ZIP boot disk, which up to now hasn't been an option for USB Macs. By making USB bootable on the G4s, Apple has acknowledged that emergency boot capability from an external drive is an important issue. One hopes that bootable USB will soon be included on the iMac and iBook as well.

On Macs equipped with two USB ports, up to now both ports have been siamesed to the same USB channel. The Power Mac G4 (Sawtooth only) implements two USB ports, each with its own 12-Mbps channel, instead of two ports on a single shared 12-Mbps channel. This essentially doubles the bandwidth available for USB peripherals and increases their performance. For example, you can listen to digital audio from speakers connected to one USB port while printing a large document on a USB printer connected to the second port, without any of the latency or interruption that might occur on a shared bus because of heavy data traffic. Because USB has a relatively narrow bandwidth of 12Mbps, having two separate USB channels is an advantage when doing data-intensive work. Having separate USB channels doesn't make the USB bandwidth any larger, and USB won't be faster, but there is less chance of a channel becoming flooded or congested.

Speaking of drives, the PowerMac G4 is equipped with the Ultra ATA/66 hard drive interface for low-cost internal ATA hard drives, doubling the available bandwidth of the ATA/33 bus used in the Power Mac G3. In MacBench 5.0 disk tests, the Ultra ATA/66 hard drives used in the Power Mac G4 are up to 46% faster than their predecessors.

Consequently, Apple says that most users probably won’t need SCSI. In Apple's opinion, the Ultra ATA/66 drives are fast enough for everyday tasks and even intensive multimedia uses like Photoshop and FireWire-based DV capture and editing. In fact, internal Apple testing indicates that the Ultra ATA/66 drives perform sustained read and write functions faster than SCSI drives with similar specifications. For ultra high end work, users can opt for a RAID configuration, which combines multiple drives into one larger, faster volume. This is typically done using an Ultra2 LVD SCSI PCI card and drives, which are available as BTO options from the Apple Store.

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Photo Courtesy Apple Computer

In summary, these new G4 Power Macs are yummy in a different way from the colorful iMacs. Most hard-core Mac-nuts I've discussed it with want one. I'm a dedicated PowerBook fan, but my flat-screen predilections make the thought of a Sawtooth hooked to the Apple Cinema monitor (with a decent keyboard and mouse) the stuff of dreams. Unfortunately, for me that's what they will have to stay, but it's satisfying to have your ideal Mac fantasy upgraded so convincingly.

Charles W. Moore

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July 03, 2009