Jan. 5, 1999 was also the date on which Apple introduced the new Power Macintosh G3, a new Macintosh line which, according to Steve Jobs, was meant to “crush the competition with its raw power, graphics performance and industrial design”.
The new Power Mac G3 featured new copper-based PowerPC processors from 300 up to 400MHz (later upgraded to 450), an ATI RAGE 128 16MB video card, two USB and two 400 Mbps Firewire ports (an industry first), retained an ADB legacy port, and most of all it was housed in a striking translucent blue and “ice” (white) mini-tower enclosure.
This enclosure not only brought the design concepts already seen on the iMacs (but christened on the eMate 300) to Apple’s Pro offerings but coupled that with a groundbreaking access mechanism that simplified access and expansion.
Code named “El-Capitan”, the case was considerably more easy to open than those of the previous minitower “beige” Power Macintosh G3s, which were introduced with the 8600 and 9600 models.
In fact it allowed the user to open the side of the computer with just one swift move (even while powered on) by pulling a lever and to expose entirely its motherboard, memory slots and expansion cards.
Pictures are courtesy of Apple and were taken from an old PR section of the Apple website.
Matt Searles
This was the first computer I ever bought.. and omg was it awesome!
I believe it was the first Power Mac where.. the graphics was an not an integrated part of the processor, which meant the graphics performance was a crazy leap forward..
The graphics card also spelled the first time apple supported Open GL.
It was the first PowerMac with no disk drive.. which many a company needed to authorize there software.. in my case this was an issue with Cubase.. and even with a usb disk drive there were issues.. and it would be a while before a USB midi interface would even hit the market.
I bought what I think was pretty much first firewire interface.. the MOTU 828.. that and my USB MIDI interface I’m still using today.. all be it on an 8 Core Mac Pro
It featured the first buss, at least on the Apple line, that was big enough to handle full screen Standard Def video.. without having to buy expensive extra stuff
Nicola D'Agostino
Matt: I believe the first Power Mac without integrated graphics was the 9500 in 1995. Otherwise the Blue & White G3 was indeed groundbreaking in its thrust towards new technological standards.
nda
Maarten
Since 1 april this is my computer! It’s awesome! That design, so beautiful! It runs mac os x 10.1 puma, but for iTunes and Mail its good! Faster than my 3000mhz pentium 4 computer. My PowerMac has a 400mhz processor, 256mb RAM and was made on february 9 1999