SCSI you can get via a PCI card, but the serial port issue is more interesting - the USB‑to‑Serial adapters that I've found do not seem to support MIDI, though Griddin Technology are working on the gPort, a serial adapter specifically for the new G3 series. Future G3s apparently won't have an ADB socket. The iMac dumped the floppy, SCSI, the serial ports and the ADB, and the G3 does the same, although the ADB makes a brief re‑appearance to enable ColorSync calibration of monitors. And this matters, because the new G3s don't have any serial ports. USB is still new, and although compatible MIDI interfaces have begun to appear, as well as the promise of Operating System enhancements intended to improve the real‑time performance of USB for applications like audio and MIDI, the possibilities are still very limited. Firewire is useful if you have a suitable video camera and want to do some digital editing (it may also be used for digital audio in the future). State‑of‑the‑art 3D graphics acceleration is fine for games but less useful for audio editing or MIDI sequencing. There are quite a few features which might cause excitement for other Mac users, but which have little effect on Mac musicians. For card users, there are three 33MHz PCI slots, and one 66MHz PCI slot, and the 100MHz internal buss means that there should be fewer data bottlenecks when using the PCI slots. Although you can add up to a gigabyte of RAM in the 100MHz, 400Mbps memory slots, there are only four of them, which isn't so good for people who 'drib & drab' RAM, as I do - my 7300's eight slots are gradually filling as I find suitable RAM bargains - but is one more slot than previous G3s. And the speed at which some software opened was impressive - Microsoft Word was ready to go in a couple of seconds from cold, for example. Although benchmark tests don't tell the whole story, it's significant that, using independent figures, the new 400MHz G3 was almost twice as fast as a 450MHz Pentium PC. Processor speeds of up to 400MHz are available, with caches running at half the processor speed - up to 200MHz. As mentioned in the News, there are three internal hard drive bays, and two front‑panel slots for CD, DVD, Zip, Jaz or other removable media. There are a few changes inside the new G3s, too. Personally, I wonder what the next Powerbooks are going to look like - the mix of the iMac, new G3s and the eMate should be very strange indeed, if Apple follow the same design path! The world increasingly runs at web speeds these days: soon after the Apple site had the new G3 details and I was thinking how radical the design was, an SOS reader emailed me to say that he had been "expecting something even more radical" from the new G3s. The entire case is polycarbonate, and one side opens up via a handle which bears a strong family relationship to the iMac's door - it has the same soft blue rubber grommet, but instead of just revealing the ports, the whole of the side of the G3 hinges down, giving immediate access to all the internals. When on the G3 page proper, you discover that what looks like a badge is the side view of the computer! The Bondi Blue Apple logo must be 10 centimeters across, and the 'G3' characters are huge! On my first visit, the page showed what looked like a new badge for the G3: a blue apple with 'G3' showing through a translucent cover. Visiting the Apple web site's opening page ( gives you some impression of just how startling the new G3 can be. But the design is fiendishly clever, ridiculously symmetrical, and perhaps even bolder than the iMac. Indeed, the first word that springs to many people's minds on seeing them is "weird". Of course, Apple may well provide colour‑change kits of just the coloured parts of the case to resellers.īondi Blue hasn't actually gone away, as the brand‑new Power Mac G3 computers (previously code‑named Yosemite) have lots of turquoise‑tinted polycarbonate fittings. Bearing in mind the £200 price drop for any Bondi Blue iMacs that are still around, it's not out of the question that another six months will see some bargain deals on less popular colours, which could be useful for anyone who wants a Mac to act as their Internet machine, and to use for other, non‑music‑related tasks. If you've read that item, you'll already be aware that the new Macs come in a range of colours (as the name 'Rainbow' would suggest), some of which will inevitably be less popular than others. Martin Russ looks at the new Bondi Blue G3 PowerMac, and then does some serious Thonking.Īt the annual San Francisco MacWorld Expo, Steve Jobs, Apple's 'Interim' Chief Executive Officer, revealed the Rainbow iMacs - full physical details and internal spec can be found in this month's News pages. A badge? Nope, the side of the newest G3 Macintoshes.
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