Apple G4

The Apple G4 series of computers is a currently discontinued series of personal computers that was introduced by Apple in late 1999. Apple G4 computers used the PowerPC G4 series of central processing units. They were built with an eye towards ease of use in common tasks for new users and home users without a lot of technical experience, and are useful for tasks such as internet communication with friends and family, surfing the web, and writing or reading multimedia files such as photos, music and video recordings. The Apple G4 computers were housed in a silver colored rectangular case with the Apple logo in the center and rounded edges with handles, making it an easy computer to move from place to place. The entire design of the Apple G4 brand was with an eye towards consumer convenience, and it became a popular home computer. Early models were said to be quite noisy, but later models had a quieter power supply and system fan which helped decrease the sound output considerably.

The Apple G4 brand is also noteworthy for the popular invention of the Apple G4 Cube, a computer with the power of the Apple G4 that was the size of a small cube shaped box and could easily be lifted with one hand. The system looked very attractive on top of a desk and won awards for its innovative appearance. While the Apple G4 brand was largely marketed to users with little technical knowledge, it was also marketed to the artistic users that have often preferred the Apple brand, and the Apple G4 series computers were the first produced by Apple to carry nVidia graphics cards for three dimensional graphics acceleration. The Apple G4 series also produced the 733 Mhz model which was the first personal computer with a preinstalled DVD-R drive, making it possible to write video and multimedia data onto DVD-Rs. At the time that the Apple G4 series was released, this was quite a luxury as DVD-Rs were not at all common outside of professional multimedia work.

Currently, a used or refurbished Apple G4 can be had for an easy price, somewhere in the range of a few hundred dollars, and this brand of system is likely to still be useful for many who have basic computing and multimedia tasks who want a simple to use system.