Did I just instale A Jet Engine?? (Apple Power Mac G4)

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Product:	Apple Power Mac G4
Date:	21/02/03 (372 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Noisy, Unstableish, Price

Disadvantages: Dual Monitor from the box, Looks Cool

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of these "Switch" adverts, every man and his dog "I hate my PC so I got a mac". So I thought – right get me a Mac and get me some testing time. I organised with Apple to review the new Dual G4 (1ghz model with 250mg Ram), and thought great now to really test these things.


First thing I noticed when I went to get the box from the distributor was how darn heavy it was. Has to be one of the heaviest computers I’ve lifted in a LONG time. Later when I cracked the case open I discovered why, half the worlds aluminium was wrapped around the CPUs, and fans – wow I’ve never seen so many fans in one machine. Anyway … I digress.

I got the box home and carefully cut the sealing tape, to find the usual see through keyboard and mouse looking up at me. Gotta love the way Apple present their computers, tells you straight away they care. So I lifted out these plastic wrapped items, and set them aside, digging deeper for the main box. After a struggle to get it out of the box – did I mention how heavy this thing was? – I gently placed it on my desk, hunted out the cables and plugged it in.

I stood back admiring the gray casing , the shiny stainless steel faceplates around the drive bays, the big apple on the side. The four holes on the front – I wonder if my fingers fit in there .. oh yeah they do – what the? Four holes …. In the front? Err oh okay this must be some really cool bass woofer – nope, solid steal behind there. I’m told these holes are for looks – oh and to let more air into the machine – think jet engine intakes.

So enough delay – I hit the familiar power button, BOOM, ahh yes this IS an Apple I thought as that deep rich sound echoed through my stereo speakers – left on way too loud. Hang on, that’s strange I thought, the welcoming sound has died away.
What is that noise. Here I must insert a disclaimer – I’m sitting in a office full of Macs as I write this – 20+ G3 machines, and hardly a sound. This ONE G4 drowned out the TV in the room next door, and everything else around me. My thought about jet engine intakes on the front was true – this thing is a small jet!

By now my PC monitor had flickered to life – the optional converter cable allowing me to drive my 17" LG monitor no worries. And I waited, oh there we are nice welcoming screen not unlike Windows XP wanting to know all about you before letting you into the system.

Hmm not blazingly fast I thought, certainly no faster that the 800mhz G4 I use at home, but that’s okay it’s booting up for the first time. I quickly found my way around OSX to set up my network so I could dial up the net, and it quickly identified the built in 56k modem. Most things worked as well as could be expected. So I tried to do some things that you might expect to do. I went to install Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX and other MX Studio apps. I flipped in the CD, which launched to life, almost as noisy as the small jet inside the computer. Grr this was getting to me already. I left it installing and went to get a coffee. I came back as MX Studio was finishing. Again – not as fast as I thought it should be.


I thought what else can I put on here – oh I know I’ve a Mac review copy of Swift 3D v3 to try. I flip the CD in. Hitting the installer icon, I’m greeted by a very friendly message informing me in the nicest way that I’ll need OS 9 to run this and that the operating system can’t find it. No worries I used to be a Mac and Compaq technician, who’s been using computers for years – I can install an operating system.


Switchita, switicha, switcha – I flip through the CDs. OS X install, Mac recovery, Developers Tools, and other nick nacks. Hmm Switc
hita, switicha, switcha, did I miss it? Surely it’s here. I hunted for about 25 mins through the CD’s and the manual, and the help – maybe I’m blind but I couldn’t find anything. I’ve since been told that on the restore disc there is a copy – but it requires a clean restore or some fancy disk mounting to get to it. Way too much trouble for me – and I consider myself a power user.


I opened Flash – now here I have to say this machine performed beautifully, menus opened lightning quick, commands responded at the touch of a button – not like under OS9 on a G3. BUT a simple square rotating around 360 degrees, duplicated 5 times with different alpha settings sent the Flash player in to dramatic slow down. My PC in comparison (single cpu 1.7gig P4 with 500meg ram) flew through 25 duplicates before it hit the same slow speed.


Photoshop 7, runs really well on this machine, although some items such as clouds rendering and lighting effects did tend to drag it’s feet a little. Now a little thing here before you all go nuts at me. My work mate has a Dual cpu G4 on his desk at work and a single cpu G4 at home – the home one has more memory, twice as much he tells me these machines NEED memory to make a huge difference, not the CPU speed. SO our thoughts – if you can buy one of these G4’s LOAD it up with ram.


The one thing that continues to baffle me is the use of the single button mouse with these systems. Photoshop, Flash and MANY other applications are so much easier to use with a dual button mouse, this machine handles it too no worries at all. I grabbed my Microsoft Wireless Explorer mouse, plugged the receiver into the USB port and that was it – working no worries at all, in fact I’d almost go as far as to say it ran better under OSX than it did under XP. The whole review experience picked up from here and the use of the machine was made H
EAPS easier with that RIGHT click.


Well after a few days of testing and using I have to say I’m bitterly disappointed. The machine crashed more times in the 4 days I had it than my Windows XP unit has in the last month. When it did crash I had multiple copies of FINDER running for some reason, and killing or restarting them often spawned another instance of it. Reading reviews all over the net of these machines suggests that the Dual G4 and OSX just don’t sit well together.


I say I’m disappointed because believe it or not I do like Apple machines, and I can’t wait till I own another one, but sadly my test of this machine – well just doesn’t do it for me. BUT I’m working experience of OSX on a Single CPU G4 is a completely different story.


As for all the technical stuff, the usual things are here, 56k modem, ethernet, firewire (2 ports), USB (4 ports), PCI expansion (four full-length 64-bit, 33MHz PCI slots with 215MB per second throughput). The machine comes with 2 Apple monitor connection plugs, and an adaptor for standard VGA monitor plugs. This allows dual screen support directly out of the box – very cool. It has new cache and other memory/bus managements systems from Apples huge Xserve – which apparently give better stability.


Over all I have to say it was a nice machine, but for me it was too noisy (considering Apples are well known for their silence), and just not stable enough yet. I guess after reading this Apple won’t let me review the Ti-Book or other machines as they come out … oh well I was only being honest.

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