> The G4 was just a sad period in the PPC line up on desktops.
Not really. In 1999, the US government classified them as supercomputers and banned their export to over 50 countries. Apple tried to make hay of it, but almost immediately started lobbying to get the ban lifted. The last G4 tower was released in June 2003 and discontinued a year later and just got old by 2006 because Motorola already left AIM, and IBM wasn't delivering. Not Apple's fault, and the reason for the platform jump to Intel. But, again, at release, any of the high end G4 machines were faster than any consumer Intel tower, though 2003-2006 gave them plenty of time to catch up and pass the G4. The Mirrored Drive Doors 2003 dual 1.25GHz G4 was... is still a pretty sweet machine. It is still in use in Pro Tools studios because Digi equipment and plugins were expensive, and none of the PPC Digi components work on Intel. Try sourcing one. You'll be shocked what MDD 2003 DP sell for in 2022 at 18-19yo.
Yeah, I was around back then. It was faster if the code was heavily optimized for AltiVec like Photoshop Gaussian Blur, image interpolation, audio filters, etc. But most general purpose code was not.
The G4s were overclocked for most of their life and stuck behind a 133mhz bus that choked the whole system. The MDDs you cite even gained the unaffectionate “Wind Tunnel” nick name. I hope whoever worked in Pro Tools with such machines had it running in a different room.
I remember a video studio still running a 68k Quadra that had some crazy expensive Avid board in 2001 or something, so I'm not surprised by high end equipment lasting a long time. Though I imagine you could emulate it on a laptop these days. Depending on 20yo hardware that ran really hot for most of its life it's not a recipe for peace of mind.
I was a huge enthusiast of 68k and the PPC and was devastated when Apple switched to Intel. Mediocrity won, I thought. Even though both architectures were much more interesting than x86, the reality of chip manufacturing is that scale is almost everything. Intel had it then, mobile phone chips have it now.
Not really. In 1999, the US government classified them as supercomputers and banned their export to over 50 countries. Apple tried to make hay of it, but almost immediately started lobbying to get the ban lifted. The last G4 tower was released in June 2003 and discontinued a year later and just got old by 2006 because Motorola already left AIM, and IBM wasn't delivering. Not Apple's fault, and the reason for the platform jump to Intel. But, again, at release, any of the high end G4 machines were faster than any consumer Intel tower, though 2003-2006 gave them plenty of time to catch up and pass the G4. The Mirrored Drive Doors 2003 dual 1.25GHz G4 was... is still a pretty sweet machine. It is still in use in Pro Tools studios because Digi equipment and plugins were expensive, and none of the PPC Digi components work on Intel. Try sourcing one. You'll be shocked what MDD 2003 DP sell for in 2022 at 18-19yo.