Perspectives: Apple iMac G4

The iMac G4 is known for its exceptional styling, but I think it's worth taking a different kind of look at it. There are some really noteworthy features in this computer
Off hand, I can't think of a single mainstream computer that currently uses a non-x86 based CPU. Sure there are/were things like the RISC SGI Workstations. But those are hardly what I would call mainstream. If you get a bit looser with your definition of a "computer" to include smart phones then obviously ARM stakes a big claim of the current market. But call me old fashioned, or just old, but I would never consider my phone as a replacement for my computer. I will always want a dedicated, unmoving, reliable device that is what I do work on.
I have fond memories of using this iMac G4 despite not really liking Macs. There were so many other things I could have talked about with it. The true native Mac games from this era like Bugdom, Nanosaur, and one of my favourite games period, Marble Blast Gold. But I wanted to keep this tight and too the point with minimal tangents. Although I couldn't resist the weird one about the box. I don't think the boxes are too common now, so I figured I'd focus a bit more on that.
Camera? Camera.
Yes, a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. This is first video I recorded with this camera. I have been doing a bunch of test recording and grading for about a week before starting on this video. When the shots "click" they look amazing on this camera. But I still need to put a lot more time into it. So expect things to get better from here. I've been working in the background on getting ready for this camera for a couple months now. There are still a few things I need to do like get a GPU with more than 2GB of VRAM so I don't have to set my computer to 640x480 when I render. And while the Nikon adapter I previous did a video on works fine, I do need to get a speed booster to fix the lighting and focal lengths.
I might make "perspectives" a series where I do overviews of computers like this.
Playlists of more stuff like this:
Computers: • Computers
2000s: • 2000s
Other Links
KZbin: / akbkuku
Github: github.com/AkB...
Thingiverse: www.thingivers...
Patreon: / akbkuku
Discord: / discord

[@TechTangents]

I'm not totally happy with how this video turned out from a camera perspective. But if you think the same way, it's important to realize that this camera is a big departure for me. So I have a lot of new stuff to learn to make the most of it. I've had some amazing test footage with it already so I know once I get the hang of it, it will be a stunner. Non-video people: The camera can record light in a different way that better preserves light and dark areas. You can watch the lens mount adapter video for an example of why that matters. The bright metal and black frame made it difficult to record in a normal way. As a result the way you edit that footage is very different from what I'm used to so I'm still getting the hang of it. The sensor in the camera is also sensitive in different ways at different exposure settings. Practice will help me learn what is best for each shot. The white balance on the camera is a little different on here and I tried turning off one of my worse lights while shooting and it threw my colot balance off. So some of the colors are weird. Video people: I recorded all the shots with Blackmagic's "film" setting which is a log color space. For most of the editing though I didn't use the log to rec709 LUT for this camera and used an "extended video" LUT instead to try and better preserve the white case and the over exposed screen because I forgot to dim it. I'm still getting the hang of balancing the 13 stops of dynamic range around the dual native ISO. It's weird seeing the histogram practically reset between 1000 and 1250 on a bright image. www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=78172 A couple shots I tried ETTR and I think they turned out alright. It's a lot new exposing steps to keep juggling but I'll get the hang of it. I think my D5300 had a terrible white balance. I've been manually setting it against a sheet of off white paper intentionally. I thought it was counteracting an imbalance with my lights. But now I think the D5300 is just wrong. I eye-balled the white balance for this video which turned out fine for the most part. I need a real grey card. I shut of a florescent light for some of it which has a green tint and forgot to re-balance. So some shots I had to balance in post.

[@Yasin_MN]

@Dik dic oof

[@armanelgtron4533]

OS what? Also, maybe you'd like to find an example of Linus Torvalds calling it GNU+Linux ?

[@Nick-ef8tu]

AkBKukU there is a patch for after dark on Macintosh repository www.macintoshrepository.org/1859-after-dark-for-os-9

[@TechTangents]

That's really interesting, I wonder if I just so happened to stumble onto one of a few incompatible programs. I think I'll be coming back to this computer for other reasons, so I'll remember to try that out. Thanks for mentioning this!

[@Blustride]

@Dik dic ugh, guess it's copypasta time... No, Richard, it's 'Linux', not 'GNU/Linux'. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation. Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ. One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS -- more on this later). He named it 'Linux' with a little help from his friends. Why doesn't he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff -- including the software I wrote using GCC -- and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don't want to be known as a nag, do you? (An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies whereever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title 'GNU/Linux' (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example. Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn't the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you've heard this one before. Get used to it. You'll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it. You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn't more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn't perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument. Last, I'd like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn't be fighting among ourselves over naming other people's software. But what the heck, I'm in a bad mood now. I think I'm feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn't you and everyone refer to GCC as 'the Linux compiler'? Or at least, 'Linux GCC'? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD? If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this: Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux' huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don't be a nag. Thanks for listening.

[@TechTangents]

Apparently there are recent of rumblings of Windows 10 for ARM. I wasn't aware of those when I started this video. But really the only thing I would add is "while they may be working on it, again, we'll just have to wait and see if anything comes of it this time around"

[@KadahCoba]

In typical Microsoft fashion, Win 8 had an ARM version, Windows RT. The non-Pro Surfaces ran it, but it was very limited. RT could only run Metro apps (MS quickly dropped the "Metro" name with the failure of Win8.0's Metro UI) that were available on the Windows Store. It was a Windows OS, that ran on ARM, but couldn't run Windows programs. You can likely see why it sold even worse than tablets running normal Win 8. This is kinda of why non-Pro Surfaces didn't exist for Win 10.

[@fisitron]

@@KadahCoba Whats weird is that non-metro apps did work on the RT, it just wouldn't let you run them (there was a hack to allow it). There were a number of applications that were available for this (Putty was the big one for me). The worst part about RT was the browser choice. You had the option of using the desktop version of IE or the metro version. That was it. No firefox or chrome. I wish the RT would have gotten a linux port or something. It had fantastic hardware and was incredibly snappy but just completely ruined by the lack of software.

[@CattoRayTube]

They're more than rumblings - aren't there products shipping already? They were kinda screwed around by the delayed 1809 update iirc.

[@monsalai]

Theres about 2 Windows on ARM devices, and Windows hasn't even released the October update for W10 (what is confirmed working with ARM)

[@SEVENTEENPOINT1]

BestBuy is selling them in stores. I toyed around with one and it is really neat. I might pick one up just for on the go computing. I cannot stand Chromebooks so the ARM Windows laptops are a good alternative. Battery life on these ARM laptops is amazing from what I researched.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

5:12 Unfortunately, architectural diversity back then was also a weapon for vendor lock-in. It was very difficult for customers to switch architectures, when they couldn’t get the same software they were used to on the new architecture. This is probably why everybody saw Microsoft-compatible PCs as the safe bet, and why 68K, Z8000, and even eventually PowerPC, all died. But now we are seeing a resurgence in diversity, as Microsoft’s influence wanes. The new movement is driven by Open Source, since that is much easier to port across different architectures. Thus, the Linux kernel runs on about two dozen different architectures, including the ones that ship vastly more units than Intel: MIPS and ARM. It also supports the up-and-coming Open Source RISC-V hardware. Basically, anything that GCC can compile C code for, Linux can run on. And from there you can end up with a complete, Open Source, self-hosting application and development stack.

[@233kosta]

GCC and linux have come a long way since 2002. We now also have wide adoption of python as the everyman's programming language, and the crossplatform support on that is rather excellent. I don't think the wider world was ready for so much architectural diversity back then

[@vwestlife]

Not all TRS-80 computers were based on the Z80. The Color Computer series used the Motorola 6809, the Model 100/102 portable computer used the Intel 80C85, and the Model 16 (a.k.a. Tandy 6000) had both a Z80 and a 68000. And the city of Munich, Germany switched to Linux and LibreOffice, believing it would save them money on not paying Microsoft licensing fees, but it actually ended up costing them more due to lost productivity and inadequate IT support, so now they're switching back to Windows and MS Office.

[@TechTangents]

Oh man, I had looked that up as and forgot to change that line. I re-recorded the whole script 3 times and tried adlibing some different parts on each take. This was one of the earlier ones when my voice was less hoarse. It slipped my mind that line was wrong in the final edit. My edited line after this take was "Tandy was stretching the Z80 for all they could" since they would keep the Model 4 in production until 1991. That would have made much more sense. The LiMux story is very interesting. I love the idea of a government using Linux to save tax payer dollars, be more secure because of the open source nature, and possibly put development efforts back into it. But Munich went too far in developing their own distro. That put a lot more work on them than they should have had. Going off the Wiki info on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux#Timeline it seems like the Windows return is motivated by special interest groups and that they may have been ousted in a recent election. So they may put the brakes on the change. This is a project that I've been interested in for years as a Linux user. So for me it would be a happy turn of events to see them continue on with Linux.

[@IanC14]

No? They are switching back due to the new IT director preferring Windows.

[@MarkHyde]

Important corrections but the Widows versus Mac battle has been won by WinTel for over a decade now. Nostalgia for older Apple Mac need not be dismissed with passive aggressive digs at 'errors' in a KZbinrs videos. It's all about use case and the wider niche need to experience historic CPU varieties. Sadly market consolidation has often meant a market disincentive to innovate and MS playing REAL catch up with the corporate IT world by 'embracing' open source technologies. Buying GitHub and moving the browser engine core of Microsoft Edge to a Google Chrome implementation. Open source is where Microsoft sees benefit and more profit streams.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

No, Munich did not lose money running LiMux. As of 2012, it reported a saving of €10 million. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@TechTangents It doesn’t take much to develop your own distro. Look at Distrowatch, and you will see that every man and his dog has done it. LiMux did indeed save Munich a whole bucket of money.

[@DEMENTO01]

I want an iMac G4 now lol. I almost forgot about the PowerPC architecture, so, thanks for remembering me those good old days

[@TheMixedupstuff]

I don't know, RISC-V looks promising. An open-source processor architecture would benefit everyone around the globe.

[@FG-lq4pz]

Found one of these in my parents basement a few years ago. Was brand new in box. It was actually inside the original mailing box - which is why no one noticed it for over a decade. My grandparents bought it for me and my siblings Christmas of 2002. My parents simply forgot to give it to us. Looking back, I should have sold it on eBay in it's unsealed status, but I was so excited to finally unbox one. It's currently set up in my living room for iTunes use only. I'd definitely consider it a piece of art. I always get compliment on it from friends 😉

[@Beth9228]

I still have this computer. It still works. It used to be my mother’s since she had a upgrade and gave it to me.

[@LucaHibbardCurto]

Well this is a treat to see in a recommendations list: this is the third computer I ever had. My family is a Mac family and we had some really old Mac I barely remember, a G3 iMac, and then this guy. While I’ve strayed from the pack for game development, seeing this makes me miss the old days of OS X.

[@DEMENTO01]

Btw, yeah, the video is looking a lot better (and not only bc it's 4k and YT doesn't compress it af. I can't wait to see how your content quality gets better and better :D

[@travistaylor3186]

Great video. I love the PowerPC Apples. In the 80s we had so much variety out there with the Commodores, Atari and everything else. But in the 90s and 00s it seemed we only had Windows machines and just the Macs until they joined the Intel crowd.

[@LucaRyroMiles]

That lens dirty transition is amazing

[@umageddon]

I guess IM an idiot - what actually changes??

[@tibet2811]

umageddon i Think its a steve jobs meme

[@linksmith1057]

I love the late 90s to early 2000s Macs. I have two G3s (an original Bondi blue in perfect condition, owned by some little old lady, cookbook recipes all over the drive and she even kept the original keyboard and puck mouse), an Indigo with the 500 mhz G3, and a 1.25 Ghz G4 15 inch.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

2:47 The G3 iMac didn’t have a motorized CD tray. It was just spring-loaded, as I recall.

[@thejackofclubs]

i have an imac g5, used it for many years. it was nice to have because it was much more powerful than any other computer i had. it was the first computer i could use to watch youtube videos back in 2005. except for the processor, it had similar specs to yours. i even used the mini vga adapter and ran dual monitors. i remember it not being classic compatible, and them removing that in software updates anyways. and they switched to intel processors shortly after. everything started to lose software support quickly after that, i even had to switch to tenfourfox so i could have an up to date web browser. i really began to hate using it after that. and apple has not won me back over with their planned obsolescence. it was still nice while it lasted.

[@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive]

This was my favorite Apple computer design and still one of the best display mounts out there.

[@littlebottleofink]

The G3 and the G4 are what turned me on to the iMac. I still want one of these in my collection. Doesn't even have to turn on.

[@KadahCoba]

Wow, that pro keyboard did not age well. And all these years later, I still don't like the pro mouse. It was a better than the iMac's hockey puck mouse, but there was somethings about the pro mouse that annoyed me which I can no longer remember.

[@TechTangents]

For me when I first got this computer I could never figure out why the side "buttons" didn't work for me. I'm still not sure why they are there. My best guess is so you have somewhere to grip the mouse without holding the part that moves so you don't accidentally push down on it.

[@ITzTravelInTime]

i got a brasnd new pro keyboard recently and as a daily macos user i love it, but it's not a good keyboard for key feeling, sound and buiuld quality, but it's still a cool one

[@CattoRayTube]

The click never felt right to me. It feels like clicking on a badly made trackpad.

[@matthewkriebel7342]

I would grip the sides in such a way as to impede the click action. I'd be slamming my finger down hard enough to be heard two cubicles away and not clicking.

[@rasz]

what, you dont like one button mouse?? Im shocked!

[@stumblepuppy606]

I have an iMac G3, slot-loading model, that I picked up in the Autumn of 2003. They had not that long ago stopped producing them, and the one I got was the last one in the store. It came with the G4 keyboard and mouse. I still use the keyboard.

[@stumblepuppy606]

My G3 shipped with OSX, and I upgraded it as far as it could be supported, to OSX 10.3

[@HeadsetGuy]

_(insert complaint about pronouncing X as "Ecks" rather than "Ten")_

[@BCProgramming]

Regardless of their official pronunciation (which I will use when necessary) , It will always be "X" rather than 10 for me, for two reasons. The first is that, as far as I'm concerned, it's a "Version 1" of a new OS line. You can't just start with 10. I mean, you can, but I don't have to respect that. You can't just pretend that you've got this rich legacy of versions behind the product. The second is ironically one of respect. the "X" was used partly as a tribute to OS X's nextSTEP/Mach/CMU origins. Pronouncing it as "10" I think kind of disregards that association so I pronounce the "X" out of respect to it technical origins.

[@mrlurchAU]

When OSX first launched, we *all* called it Ecks. It sticks. Even today I refer to it as (eg) OS-Ecks, version 10.9.30.78 (or whatever we’re up to).

[@vwestlife]

Tell that to Microsoft, who named the first version of Windows NT version 3.1, to match the current 16-bit DOS-based Windows at the time.

[@retroguy74]

@@BCProgramming It's the successor to OS9, so yeah, 10.

[@SuperSmashDolls]

Let me guess, you also pronounce it "iPhone Ten" too, right?

[@LightTheUnicorn]

Huge fan of the late Apple PowerPC-era, those iMacs are certainly up there with the best in terms of style! I've seen these and similar-age PowerMacs still in use at hospitals here as recently as last year.

[@storino03]

Nice vid! I have the 20", 1.25Ghz version I got off of Craigslist several years ago for $70. It's so pretty.

[@kge420]

BoneCollector I have the same also from CL. Came with a Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Paid $40 a few years ago. Use it mostly for music. Runs and looks great.

[@TravisNewsome]

I've actually been looking into getting a Talos II motherboard to build a new powerpc system . The Amiga x5000 motherboard is also a pretty cool powerPC board. Nice vid!

[@IanC14]

If I had the money (or be willing to spend the money) I'd buy an Amiga x5000 in a heartbeat.

[@thundercloud2982]

So have I. The Lite looks like a good option.

[@ghallora]

I miss classic Mac OS. Spent my childhood on it. Learnt it back to front.

[@LewTube-mp3dp]

Hey Tech Tangents 👋😀 You are totally right about how the photo is a tight zoom of the hemisphere of the computer but I just wanted to point out that it is not the same picture doubled because the shadows on the apple logo are different. I feel silly posting this because I feel like you already knew that lol. Keep up all of the great work! 💾💯

[@Otakunopodcast]

Ahh, thanks, that was a lovely trip down memory lane. I used to have one of these machines back in the day, and loved it. Actually I still have it today, sitting in my garage, although I'm kinda afraid to turn it on since it probably needs a fair amount of refurb work (replacing old/bad/leaky caps and all that) that I"m not really up to tackling. I absolutely loved the machine, and the main reason was for the way the LCD screen was mounted. The screen is beautiful (and I agree, it would definitely still hold its own to this day) but the mounting arm was the best part for me -- being visually handicapped I needed to be able to basically position the screen right in front of my face, and that was difficult to do with the older CRT-based iMacs; however with the iMac G4's mounting arm I was able to position it exactly to where I could see it best. (Fortunately in today's world VESA desk mount arms are a thing, and I am able to achieve the same effect with current technology.) And yeah, you are totally correct about the weirdly squashed Apple logo on the box. That thing always bothered me but I could never put my finger on the reason why.

[@bobgrimes8618]

I have a 2002 15” iMac G4 bought new in the Apple Store. I used my educational discount and paid $1099. Still runs great with the added Airport card on Tiger.

[@kato223]

Pretty good video! Brings back some memories for me of the Apple Desk Lamp! Haha! Actually, this system in my opinion was built pretty well! It came after the colored iMacs like the Tangerine or Bondi Blue's etc. It was great to have a cooling fan back in the case again after dealing so much with the previous generation not having a fan. That was a nightmare to me about the previous generation, but that's for another story. From a repair standpoint, it was interesting to repair this iMac for the way it was designed. Basically it was a two part base on it. The bottom most was the logic board with a SODIMM memory expansion right under the bottom plate that could be removed with a small Philips screwdriver that was easy to access. The other memory module was on the other side of the board that was a standard DIMM module. Apple didn't intend for the regular end user to upgrade the internal module. This wasn't really a problem, however, you wanted to make sure that when you purchased the SODIMM that you were matching the speed of the internal. This was also a very unique design for Apple since it was the first system that I had repaired that had a split heat pipe cooling system for the CPU. If you removed the base of the system to upgrade the RAM or work on the logic board, etc. it would break the seal that they had for the heat pipe. It was one vital step that many users forgot to do when they would try to open it themselves to clean off the old heat sink compound and replace it with new compound. So, with the CD/DVD ROM being above the logic board, this side split heat pipe that ran up to the fan at the top of the base made sense. Any work done to the screen wasn't too bad if you were only replacing the LCD. Replacing the cable to the screen was a completely different story as that required a complete tear down and rebuild of this system. So, for the most part, this iMac was probably my favorite of the iMac line. Thank you for bringing back some good memories for me from when I repaired Apples from '97 - '06. =)

[@GetJesse]

That compatibility mode is pretty dope, wish they kept that up

[@Melmelbaton]

HELL YES - STOP THE ROCK!!! I played the hell out of that game on my PowerMac G3 tower when I was a kid. I never beat it though, I just wandered around and clicked on things. those riddles are way too hard for kids man.

[@naikjoy]

Adorable! (shocking | Slovenia, lake Bled as the background )

[@bamdadkhan]

funny how people nowadays build the 'ultimate DOS machine', i have an ultimate classic mac machine: a powermac G4 with os 8.6. RAM is maxed out to 1GB, which is insane for pre-OS X systems, and 8.6 has a lot better backwards compatibility than OS 9.x. so it can run both unreal and after dark 4. : )

[@nobushi]

A Power Mac G4 and screen recording on camera? Druaga2 almost confirmed... It's missing a SSD though.

[@eduardoavila646]

Leandro Nobushi Hoshiko "Hello jokers, druaga2 here.."

[@thorsteinj]

@@eduardoavila646 #almostconfirmed

[@SirenaWF1]

The problem with installing an SSD in one of those is that they're not going to be much faster as you're limited by bus speed. The only thing you're improving upon is maybe a newer drive so it'll fail much further in the future, and it's lighter.

[@tyttuut]

My grandma had a somewhat similar eMac up until the early 2010s. I remember using the internet over dial-up on that thing... That's 2008 rural Maine for ya.

[@jseden]

I was a PC guy back then but I also thought osx was gorgeous when it came out. Now I have a MacBook 12 as my only computer.. I love how little the os has changed in appearance

[@stevenjlovelace]

When you opened the box, my first thought was, "why is there a beige ADP keyboard in there?" Then I realized it was the proper keyboard that had yellowed really badly. Holy retr0brite, Batman!

[@AfterDark33]

I still have one sitting in my basement. One of the finest bits of apple design if I do say so. Although mine is the showy 1ghz model, it won't run the classic environment without an OEM installer, which I unfortunately don't have.

[@MrStevetmq]

You said "there is no hope of running older(OS9) programs natively). However you can boot into OS9 and run programs natively. (yes some iMac G4's did have this disabled and marketed as "X only" but there is a work around that lets you install and run OS9 and older programs natively).

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

2:40 The iMac G3 keyboard also has those half-height function keys that drove me crazy. The round “puck” mouse, which many people didn’t like, was fine by me.

[@rolaroli]

Apple did pretty good with backwards compatibility later on as well - when they transitioned from Power PC to x86. Though I only used Rosetta once personally, I actually heard pretty good things about it. Though it was never intended for computationally heavy stuff. As for Mac OS... As an ex-windows and Linux user I find Mac os to be the perfect blend of the two. The unix core with access to bash and all of the normal terminal utilities, but with a nice GUI, and excellent software and hardware support.

[@jonvincentmusic]

They were beautiful looking machines

[@dave4shmups]

Fantastic video on this iMac!

[@1999ba7b1999ba7b]

Great video as always

[@Complextro93kg]

Amazing quality man :) I really wanted imac g4 when it was new, but man, so expensive it was, like good used car where i live.

[@andrewdupuis1151]

I have this imac it still works i brought it at second hand store 2 years ago

[@IdealIdeas100]

I had these in my highschool (I was in highschool 2005-2009) in 1 of our 2 computer labs. They were garbage. I guess they were better than the other computer lab we had which was full of old windows 98 pcs. We also had a 3rd computer room for Mechanical Drafting and Architecture classes and those were easily the best! Those ran windows XP and even got upgraded to better windows XP systems midway through highschool

[@joeconti2396]

The way you introduce PCs reminds me of Doug Demuro

[@infinitecanadian]

Your keyboard also lacks a volume feature. What did you do to that thing, leave it in the sun for 2 years and drop a hammer on it?

[@nickwallette6201]

As a DOS -> Win -> Lin -> Mac user, I really like OS X. You should give it a try. I still use all of the above, of course, but I find that it really does combine the best of Windows and Linux into one OS. Doesn't seem too locked down except of course for hardware options, and I don't mind that too much as my 2015 MBP is my favorite laptop ever. The whole reason I started using a Mac was how crap the PC laptop market has gotten. I'm just happy to have found a touchpad nice enough that I don't miss using a mouse. I am a little concerned about the post-Jobs era hardware direction though. Ives isn't going to stop until the MB line is an unusably thin wafer. I don't mind the lack of options as long as the only option is a good option.

[@dvdbytes4348]

I have the entry version of this iMac. 800 mhz, 60 gig hd, 15 inch lcd screen that cant go any further then 1024x768. Amazingly enough its running vpc, with Windows 98 and Discworld II, just fine. Discworld Noir is a bit stroppy, but also manages to run. I don't have the box, in fact this the first time i ever saw the box the speakers or the mouse though. I do have one of the models that are the real end of the G4 line, an MDD. Those are also video worthy I think, cause they are beasts.

[@psivewri]

Cool video 😊 Very informative

[@gabotron94]

There's another keyboard you're missing! The late G3 model. Same design as this one but with the G3 style dark gray colored keys

[@eformance]

How's the workflow of the BMPCC 4K and Linux?

[@TechTangents]

Not bad at all. I'm using Davinci Resolve now, so I have fewer hacky workarounds. I will do another workflow video once I've settled into it more. But for now it's fine. Resolve likes to crash a lot, but I'm editing on a 2GB GTX 960, so I'm pretty sure it's my fault. A new GPU is my next purchase for the camera. I've had to get a lot of supporting parts to use this thing and there are a lot left. The biggest change has been dealing with the files the camera produces. This video was 473GB of medium quality ProRes. After I did the editing and final render I converted all of that to H265 at crf 15 (extremely high quality) and it dropped to 10GB. I'll explain it more in the workflow video, but the reason it compresses so well is the difference between I frames and P frames.

[@eformance]

@@TechTangents geforce support under Linux sucks, save yourself now and build a Windows workstation to run resolve. I had to can a nice quaddro because the damn drivers wouldn't set the clock speed correctly for 4k output, so it was in power save and the memory clock was to slow to drive 4k.

[@eformance]

@@TechTangents To qualify my previous reply, I downloaded Resolve and was a bit disappointed that they have such a tight support constraint. RHEL 7 with Nvidia hardware only -- which stems from this being the commercial platform they sell to customers. I was also a bit disappointed that the audio workflow requires a digital audio card and resolve doesn't directly emit audio without it. Compare this to the Windows requirements and you basically just need Windows with any supported GPU that has good drivers. I bought 3 4K monitors to use on Linux and a Quadro P400 to run them. This would have been fine except the mainline Nvidia drivers have long had a problem that cards can get stuck in "power sipping mode", which throttles back the main and memory clocks. The early cards don't have this issue as mich, but the P400 is a Pascal or Maxwell card and has all of the tricks. Try as I might, I could not get the dang driver to force full speed mode at startup. The result is that the refresh rate is like 20hz and the flicker is just unreal. I yanked that card and resold it on ebay, replaced it with a FirePro W4100, which is a newer card based on an old chipset, but it will drive 4 4k displays at 60hz just fine. The only downside is that the AMD driver periodically crashes on the GPU and the GPU can't be reset, preventing a full shutdown and requiring a hard reboot.

[@TechTangents]

@@eformance Starting with Resolve 15 the decklink audio requirement was fixed with the linux version. I'm just using line out. It's not perfect, I have no way of recording with my USB mic right now. But at least I don't have to have a card just for audio. I haven't encountered any performance issues with my Nvidia cards, but maybe that will change with a new one. I would much rather run RHEL/Fedora than Windows if it takes using a different OS. I've really come to despise Windows since 8 came out. I could probably switch to RHEL/Fedora as my daily OS if I really needed to.

[@eduardoavila646]

EFormance Engineering I think its more for davinci resolve support under linux sucks. Because even on my old windows laptop i could run (slowlly) a 1440p60fps video at cqp15 and edit it without any crashes, i actually never saw it crashing. And my gpu was a radeon 8850m with 2gb of vram and a really bad 1.8ghz dualcore intel chip.

[@rubblemonkey6904]

I know this is a dumb question, but why is x86 vs powerPC compatibility for average programs important? If you are doing low enough level programming that you would notice a change in CPU architecture (bitwise operations, assembly, etc.) then most likely you are using a specific Operating Systems API, right? In which case you would have to spend a long time porting your program anyway, and if you were using a large and sluggish multi-platform API, why would you need to go so low level that it would matter? As I said, this is a dumb question as I have only dabbled in programming and have never tried to target multiple architectures, as such I have no practical knowledge to speak of.

[@IanC14]

I miss the PowerPC days. I still have a PowerBook G3 from the late 90s which still works. I ended up with an eMac from this time period which is a lot bulkier than the G4 iMac (CRT), but I'm not sure if it still works...

[@Noaddedsalt01]

For me I have my parents old g4 in the 15inch 1ghz late 2003 configuration which is the last model before the g5 and the best part is that it has USB 2.0 on the back and can run leopard 10.5 at a decent speed with a few graphical glitches probably due to the lack of v ram

[@linoxyard]

The PowerMac G5 is also compatible with the Classic Environment (up to 10.4.11), but sadly it can't run MacOS 9 natively (I mean, it tries to boot it but os9 has no driver support for the G5). That's also a reason to prefer a G4 system, the other being reliability (Power Mac G5s are known to die easily).

[@JakonDeluxe]

Very informative video. Would love if you would do some more on other PPC Apple products in the future.

[@AshenTiger]

Omg, I grew up with the eMac G4 with the same keyboard, mouse, and I also had Alice! 😁

[@andrewdupuis1151]

I have same one it still works great

[@daviddavidsonn3578]

watching in 4k on my 1440p monitor looks really good.

[@helloimash]

iMac G4 is art, at least to me. One of the things I've always wanted to do, but lack the resources/funds, is to put a miniITX PC inside the body of one. The tricky bit, I imagine, would be dealing with the display because I'd love to reuse that. Oh well. This video will have to suffice!

[@IiTzToss]

You actually can reuse the display as it's essentially a DVI monitor, so if you keep the original power supply you can rewire the old display connector to a dvi port. There are tutorials on Google for doing that.

[@bippaasama]

>the game just plays fine >that severe framerate drop right after you said that

[@briancalifornia1]

The g 4 was so cool that you could adjust the height the best I Mac design hands down

[@taragwendolyn]

The dock wasn't created by Apple... :) It was originally part of CDE on *nix, and Apple got their jump start on it from the acquisition of NeXT. They did bring it to mainstream consumer desktops, though, and they certainly made it pretty.

[@DavidRodriguez-lv8kr]

For star up disk how do you go back from Mac 9 to os x ? 🤔

[@NicoDsSBCs]

Great to see, I've got an IMac G5. Got it for free, I've only booted it 1 time. One day I'll make a youtube video about it :)

[@NicoDsSBCs]

And don't say there's no other computers than x86. I'm a single board computer addict. I've got so many that I lost the count. Got a youtube channel where I review them things. Greetings

[@froedlmetallmann4643]

Too bad Apple ditched Classic support with 10.5.

[@xnonsuchx]

Well, they said it was just a limited time transitional thing, but yeah, it woulda been nice if they kept it until they dropped PPC entirely. I have a G4 Mac mini that I keep Tiger (10.4) on just because it performs better than 10.5. And unfortunately, the later G4 and G5 Macs lost the ability to boot in Classic mode, so could only run from within Mac OS X.

[@froedlmetallmann4643]

@@xnonsuchx I'll give macos9lives.com a shot. They offer a custom restore CD image to overcome this.

[@TimurTripp2]

There's always SheepShaver. Even works on contemporary Macs running Mojave, or another Intel version of MacOS. But neither Classic nor SheepShaver works as well as natively booting into Mac OS 9 on an old Mac.

[@paulmuaddib451]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered by that pic of the Apple logo.

[@YesterYearsMacGames]

I kinda feel that the versions of OSX that ran on this era of machine don't do a whole lot. I occasionally boot into it to accomplish or play something specific but on the whole, if it can boot naively into 9, thats the OS that can do and play more. There is a version of After Dark out there that was specifically tweaked to play nice with OS9, although I think its unofficial

[@acmild]

Finally... this came out. Anyway, can you make a repair guide fot this iMac G4 power supply?

[@tituslafrombois1164]

Yo! I just got one of these machines, a first-gen 15" model I quite literally found in the dumpster. Surprisingly, almost zero technical issues with it! However, the way it came to me, it did not have OS 9 installed in any form, just OS X. I'm not quite certain how to go about configuring the machine to run both systems. Since you have a machine that already does have both, I thought I'd ask a few questions... on this nearly 3-year-old video lol. Are the OS 9 and OS X systems installed on completely separate partitions on the hard drive? If so, how much is allocated for OS 9? If they're not divided into separate partitions, and are somehow merged into one nightmare partition, do you have any idea how one goes about installing the two systems together? Would it involve installing OS 9 first, and then installing OS X over top of it? I've seen some people online state that the OS X installer configuration will make accommodations if it detects OS 9 is present on the system. Sorry for this massive block of text, hope it reaches you, good luck with your new office space btw!

[@boerre9000]

I guess you could argue that there is competition in the CPU space now, given that the newest ARM based iPad pro performs as well in benchmarks as some of Apple's Intel based laptops now!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

7:17 Incompatibilities between different installations of Office would put paid to that!

[@caincha]

So OS6 then followed by OS7 then followed by OS8 later OS9 and you figured the next would be OS 'ecks' and not OS10..?

[@hanro50]

This computer was amazing...I used to work on it now and again. Sadly my 256 mg ram was too limited...

[@CattoRayTube]

It'll be interesting to see how well Windows 10 on ARM goes, and whether a desktop/laptop variant of Apple's mobile chips ever appears. Personally, I'm trying to hold out for that new wave of systems to prove themselves before getting a new laptop as they should be lighter and last longer, which are my primary concerns for portables.

[@CattoRayTube]

Congrats on the new camera, by the way. I'm sorry I had to watch 240p thanks to my net cap haha

[@jtsgaming4192]

I have one and I love it

[@AnthonyJoesphRabbito]

terrific video !

[@mashakos1]

*$1999* !! Apple fans got fleeced in the mid 2000s... EDIT: Before any Apple fans pipe up about Apple build quality, I was aware at the time that the cost of the machine was partly credited to the high quality LCD panel it had in a time when it was far from mainstream. Still, you could get a beefy PC and a 21" IBM CRT monitor that could output at 2048 x 1536 at 75 Hz for a lot less than $2k early 2000s dollars - so us CRT windoze users weren't exactly suffering in the gutters of quality back then. On the plus side we weren't saddled with the insane markups Steve Jobs imposed on his loyal fans in order to fund Apple's comeback.

[@FairPlay137]

I've got an iBook G4 with the PowerPC G4, and OS X 10.5 Leopard. Unfortunately, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can't do Classic Environment. However, I also own a Dual USB iBook G3 formerly running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger with Mac OS 9 for Classic Environment. (It's currently running FreeBSD) I'm planning to reinstall OS X or possibly OS 9.

[@Zishy]

power pc is still around and you can actualy buy very competitive cpus/mainboards that can go toe to toe with zen or intel xeons

[@AKATenn]

yeah i remember using pear to run the PPC OSX on my windows machine because the GUI was so cool, but it ran at like 300mhz on my 1.5ghz amd machine, and then when the x86 version came out I ran a hackintosh, and with that all the games meant for OSX worked, ran at native speeds, but most of the games i played only had a windows version due to directX, so i basically only used osx just to say i did on a normal pc, even though i still prefer the osx gui.

[@lhmmhl1]

Video looked great!

[@BCProgramming]

You can run Windows on PowerPC via earlier versions of Virtual PC. Since it is emulation, it is probably not something that runs well enough for games, though. I have an iMac G3, PowerMac G4, and PowerMac G5, myself. I prefer the Classic OS to OS X. OS X is better in terms of it's technical underpinnings but I've always felt that the User Interface design heavily suffered from the mishmash of OS 9 and nextSTEP concepts, and didn't "find it's legs" until much later.

[@eduardoavila646]

And i think in one of the ppc macs it was also possible to put a pentium 3 or something like that too...

[@jabba334]

Wow compared to the original iMac specs, my computer has 5X the MHz, 64X the ram and 13X the storage space. The iMac is still very smooth though. I owned one of the "cheese grater" Power Mac G5 systems and I still think it was the greatest stand alone desktop computers Apple ever made. It became a hand-me-down and went for 10 years(!) before it simply became too outdated to be useful.

[@MakarovFox]

i like the arm for the display, i need something like that for my monitor

[@Nick-ef8tu]

Are you going to do one on the apples most colorful the computer iMac G3

[@rhythmepaper]

Now they have ARM based mac!

[@djdjukic]

Alright, first up, what is UP with these garbage comments lmao Second, just days before this video, I had gotten obsessed with wallpapers of lake Bled and that's a fantastic one you've got there Third, this has always been my dream machine (well, the 15" model actually. Looks more proportional to me). It came out when I was in first grade and I found a copy of Jabuka (Apple) magazine with its picture on the cover, and I was just stunned. I finally bought the 17"/1GHz model for 50€ a couple years back, and the guy threw in a Clamshell and a White iBook G3, out of which I actually got far more use. The iMac itself, though in great condition, turned out to be disappointing in its performance, even with 2GB of RAM, even compared with something of that era (it has a really slow bus...). Not that a show piece such as this needs to be fast, but I like to use my classics. In any case I kept it on my side desk for a while and one day I thought I could fit a LaserJet III next to it. I couldn't, and the iMac slipped off the table. I caught it before it hit the ground, but the screen continued pivoting and struck the LaserJet. Luckily nothing was broken but there are 2 dark bruises on the display now, still completely functional, but darkened. After that I couldn't really stand to look at my shame so the iMac G4 sits safely in my closet now. The LaserJet is a great bedside shelf though.

[@eduardoavila646]

djdjukic Yeah, i mean months ago the commumity here on this channel was so light-hearted, so good. Now we have that :/

[@djdjukic]

I was here since the second or third video, and I really cherished the basically hand-picked community, heck, even my other favourite subs started showing up in the comments, like LGR. I guess that some of those big names gave the channel a shout-out and that's just what happens when you have a lot of folks arriving. Either that, or AkBKukU has been hard at work deleting the utter trash people post, and we just caught this video before the cleanup :D (in fact, the situation seems better already)

[@igormarcos687]

6:52 OMG the lag, the low frame rate on the system is the reason I gave up developing on mac, I was sponsored by Apple and IBM on a 3 week iOS development course and in the course we used the latest macbook, man, that shit felt slow... Even dragging and switching apps could drop frames, macbooks just suck

[@piratesmvp]

I don't think most companies would switch from Windows to Linux just because Office was available on it. There's many other software that may or may not run on Windows, and the bigger issue is that Windows desktop just simply plays a lot more nicely with a Windows domain environment.

[@duncangarnett1976]

You may know and have been told a million times by now, but it's pronounced "OS - TEN", the "X" is a roman numeral for "TEN". I'm surprised you didn't get the mini-VGA adapter, how expensive could a small adapter/dongle cost? Despite my comment, I like your video and it is very entertaining to watch.

[@scottgall9844]

if you want to fix the yellowing on the keyboard the 8-bit guy has some videos of him doing that look up retrobrite on his channel to see how it’s done

[@shermanmacoy]

Good job 👌

[@JesuszillaS]

I still adore the OS X aesthetics to this day, from the hardware to the OS itself. I'll also admit I was very envious as a Windows user back in the day. I eventually managed to get an iMac G5 and dear god I loved it; still have it and it actually still runs brand new. The only real problem I had with it was software compatibility: MUGEN did not run on OS X, and I got into it not long after getting my iMac, which led me to using my old Windows hardware for longer than I had anticipated until I got a MacBook Pro. I find it weird that you use Linux on modern Mac hardware of any sort, though, as the OS itself is still UNIX-based. I just use my normal PC machine for that. Apple really ought to focus more on software, but I understand why they want control over the hardware after dealing with Linux and Android development: it's a fucking mess of support.

[@dysfunctionalwombat]

I had one of these, and it did have the later trimmed down USB keyboard in the original box. Mine was a 15 inch, 1 GHz machine, with AirPort, 768 megs of ram, and an 80 gig hard drive. (2003). When I purchased it, I thought it was the ugliest piece of garbage. I just wanted to play with it though, and thats why I bought it. But as I used it more and more, I just started to use it more and more. By the time I sold it, it had become one of my favorite macs. I sold it to buy my TiBook. Also later 2003 and 2004 iMac G4s, like mine, can use the classic environment, but cannot directly boot it

[@eduardoavila646]

Lol! The first person in the internet who had the same amount of ram as me! My old olivetti with a 1.2ghz amd duron, and 768mb of 133mhz sdram and a 20gb hdd was my pc since 2002 up to 2008, when we got a c2d laptop, and later on we gave him and the new owners broke him. I didnt know how to fox it so it gone to the trash. My grandma also had one, ans thats the one i have today, i miss mine tho. I never found in any place my olivetti pc model, it seems to never have existed.

[@askhowiknow5527]

1440x900? Up until a few weeks ago, that was the resolution of a Macbook Air in 2018

[@ting6366]

i have the G5 but the all in one version, the screen is really dirty and i dont know how to use it (first time on mac)