Power Macintosh

The line of AppleMacintosh computers started by Apple in 1994, superseding the original Macintosh line. The distinguishing feature was the usage of the IBM/Motorola PowerPc chip. The current PowerMac is the G5. The processor in these machines is a PowerPC 970 from IBM - a 64bit processor derived from the Power4 family of IBM processors.

The neat thing was the relative smoothness of the transition from one CPU line to another; a 68000 emulator was built into the MacOs, with emulated performance on the early Power Macs approaching the speed of the contemporary 68k Macs. A thunking layer allowed programs to mix emulated 68k and PPC code; the OS itself and various third-party apps could thus be migrated to better-performing native PowerPC code over time without gratuitously breaking old third-party apps or rewriting the whole OS for the new hardware.

The insanely great cube design (silent, small, elegant) has been discontinued due to not really finding a niche, despite everyone thinking it was a brilliant design (although the case wasn't large enough for some PCI cards). Apple have just produced a new dual-processor G4 which, with OSX, is the first time Apple has a machine and OS capable of really using both processors without depending upon specifically written software (to date, Photoshop is an example).

The cube cost too much, plain and simple. You could get a similarly-powered G4 tower, or a similarly space-saving iMac [computer built into the monitor, vs the cube's small computer still needing a separate monitor], for less money.

CategoryHardware