June 23, 2003: Apple launches its beautiful Energy Mac G5, a powerhouse desktop laptop with a perforated aluminum chassis that earns it the affectionate nickname “the cheese grater.”
Beginning at an inexpensive $1,999 (greater than $3,400 in at the moment’s cash, adjusted for inflation), the Energy Mac G5 is the world’s first 64-bit private laptop. It’s additionally Apple’s quickest machine but.
Energy Mac G5 launch
Inside its distinctive, anodized aluminum case, the Energy Mac G5 boasted IBM’s PowerPC G5 CPU structure. This offered an enormous step up from the ageing Energy Mac G4, which had been Apple’s high-end Mac from 1999 till 2002.
Apple launched three totally different Energy Mac G5 fashions working at 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz and a pair of GHz. All used the identical 64-bit PowerPC 970 (G5) processor, which provided increased clock speeds. It additionally introduced vastly improved (and massively parallel) computing capabilities.
In commercials, Apple touted the brand new laptop’s pace when in comparison with PCs. The headline on one known as the Energy Mac G5 “the world’s fasted computer.”
“In side-by-side tests using industry-standard benchmarks, the [top end] dual 2.0-gigahertz Power Mac G5 is up to 41% faster than both the fastest Pentium 4 and dual-processor Xeon workstation,” Apple stated. “And the results get even better when using real-world applications: the new Power Mac G5 runs Photoshop more than twice as fast as the fastest PCs.”
Excessive-performance {hardware}
Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised {that a} 3 GHz mannequin can be accessible “within 12 months,” however it by no means occurred. Actually, a Mac with a processor able to working at that pace didn’t arrive till three years later in 2006. That’s when Apple launched the similar-looking Intel Xeon-based Mac Professional.
By way of different {hardware} options, the Energy Mac G5 packed an AGP 8X video card, FireWire 800, gigabit Ethernet, as much as half a terabyte of inner Serial ATA storage and a SuperDrive for authoring DVDs. So far as professional-level computer systems went, only a few may beat the Energy Mac G5 in 2003. For trivia buffs, this was additionally Apple’s first laptop to incorporate USB 2.0 ports.
Energy Mac G5: A surprising piece of Apple design
Photograph: Bernie Kohl/Wikipedia CC
The commercial-inspired design of the Energy Mac G5 made it distinctive in its day. Actually, it nonetheless appears to be like beautiful practically twenty years later. (There’s purpose why the “cheese grater” design returned with the 2019 Mac Professional.) The G5’s beautiful design wasn’t restricted to the pc’s distinctive case, both. The Energy Mac G5 was the primary Apple laptop to have its inside — which most customers would by no means even see — designed by Jony Ive and his staff to be aesthetically pleasing.
The pc offered some issues, nonetheless. Some fashions suffered from noise and heating points, though a subsequent liquid-cooled model tried to right these shortcomings.
Among the best Macs ever?
Nonetheless, the Energy Mac G5 stays certainly one of my favourite Macs of all time. It underlined the truth that Apple was doing rather more than constructing trendy mass-market units just like the iPod and consumer-friendly computer systems such because the colourful iMac G3 and iBook, fashions the corporate was most related to on the time.
If you wish to monitor down a Energy Mac G5 now, it should possible set you again round $100 on eBay. Do you’ve fond reminiscences of this machine? Depart your feedback beneath.
