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The G4 redesign predates Mac OS X, the “professional-ass UNIX machines” you’re celebrating all ran classic MacOS. Not to disabuse you of your preferred nostalgi

The G4 redesign predates Mac OS X, the “professional-ass UNIX machines” you’re celebrating all ran classic MacOS. Not to disabuse you of your preferred nostalgia, but they were all “art workstations”. If I could pinpoint the introduction of a “professional-ass UNIX machine” made by Apple, it would probably be the original unibody MBPs before they were shrunk and soldered in the first gen Retina models.

rvense 4y ago
It's true that the G4 processor was introduced in 1999, before OS X was even in beta. But I think OS X was the default installation on all Macs from 10.2 in around 2002 at the latest. The aluminium Powerbooks and iBook G4s were introduced during 2003 and ran OS X exclusively. You can get them to boot OS9, but only via hacks that haven't become available until recent years. And of course, no x86 machine ever ran OS 9 in any form, so setting Apple's transition to "UNIX machines" with unibodies in 2008 - two years after the Intel shift, and five years after that's the only OS Apple actually shipped - seems a bit strange.
- npongratz 4y ago
  > It's true that the G4 processor was introduced in 1999, before OS X was even in beta. While it's true the beta of OS X as a desktop OS wasn't released until September 2000 [0], OS X Server 1.0 was released into "production" (limited though it may be) in March 1999 [1], which preceded the first G4's release in August 1999 [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4#PowerPC_7400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4#PowerPC_7400
SllX 4y ago
> The G4 redesign predates Mac OS X Predates Cheetah by two months, not Mac OS X. If you want to get super pedantic, Mac OS X is a continuation of NeXTSTEP which is partially based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe, but there were also the Betas including the Public Beta from September 2000 which Apple would have happily sold you for $29.95. I don’t think there’s anything in particular about the Unibody MBP’s feature set that makes it more of a “professional-ass UNIX machine” than even say, the Pismo PowerBooks though other than about a decade’s worth of iterative improvements. They could all run Terminal, PhotoShop, PERL and AppleScript. It’s the software that defines them, and a MacBook Pro from the unibody era could also be reasonably called a “professional-ass NT machine” if you were primarily booting Windows on it.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
I remember delaying an update for almost a year based on the rumors about the unibody design was coming. That MacBook then lasted almost 8 years for me!
smoldesu 4y ago
Obviously they weren't truly licensed UNIX machines, but System 8 was quite capable in it's own right. Personally I like Apple hardware a lot more their their software, but the PowerBook at least shipped with one of the better Mac OSes.

rvense 4y ago

It's true that the G4 processor was introduced in 1999, before OS X was even in beta. But I think OS X was the default installation on all Macs from 10.2 in around 2002 at the latest. The aluminium Powerbooks and iBook G4s were introduced during 2003 and ran OS X exclusively. You can get them to boot OS9, but only via hacks that haven't become available until recent years. And of course, no x86 machine ever ran OS 9 in any form, so setting Apple's transition to "UNIX machines" with unibodies in 2008 - two years after the Intel shift, and five years after that's the only OS Apple actually shipped - seems a bit strange.

npongratz 4y ago
> It's true that the G4 processor was introduced in 1999, before OS X was even in beta. While it's true the beta of OS X as a desktop OS wasn't released until September 2000 [0], OS X Server 1.0 was released into "production" (limited though it may be) in March 1999 [1], which preceded the first G4's release in August 1999 [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4#PowerPC_7400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4#PowerPC_7400

SllX 4y ago

> The G4 redesign predates Mac OS X Predates Cheetah by two months, not Mac OS X. If you want to get super pedantic, Mac OS X is a continuation of NeXTSTEP which is partially based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe, but there were also the Betas including the Public Beta from September 2000 which Apple would have happily sold you for $29.95. I don’t think there’s anything in particular about the Unibody MBP’s feature set that makes it more of a “professional-ass UNIX machine” than even say, the Pismo PowerBooks though other than about a decade’s worth of iterative improvements. They could all run Terminal, PhotoShop, PERL and AppleScript. It’s the software that defines them, and a MacBook Pro from the unibody era could also be reasonably called a “professional-ass NT machine” if you were primarily booting Windows on it.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

I remember delaying an update for almost a year based on the rumors about the unibody design was coming. That MacBook then lasted almost 8 years for me!

smoldesu 4y ago

Obviously they weren't truly licensed UNIX machines, but System 8 was quite capable in it's own right. Personally I like Apple hardware a lot more their their software, but the PowerBook at least shipped with one of the better Mac OSes.