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Second Class Macs & Road Apples

Power Macintosh G4 (Yikes!)

one

Dan Knight - 2003.05.13

Second Class Macs are Apple's somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs that didn't meet their full potential. (On our rating scale, the more brown apples, the worse the hardware.)

The "Yikes!" Power Mac G4 is essentially a blue & white Power Mac G3 with a better CPU and the loss of the ADB port. So if the b&w G3 is a Best Buy, why is the Yikes! G4 a Road Apple?

Mostly because it could have been better. The Yikes! G4 was released at the same time as the Sawtooth G4, which supported the G4's faster memory access mode and AGP video. Nor does Yikes! have a slot for an AirPort card, although that's probably not a big deal in a desktop machine.

Although the ATA33 bus on the Yikes! was adequate in its day, it has since been superseded, and the Sawtooth G4 came with the faster ATA66 bus. Both models supports FireWire drives, but the Yikes! model can't boot from a FireWire drive.

The biggest difference is memory bandwidth, which is what feeds the CPU. The Yikes! G4 is rated at 400 MBps memory throughput; the Sawtooth model doubles that.

In the real world, Bare Feats found that because of the faster memory bus, the 400 MHz Sawtooth outperformed the 400 MHz Yikes! by 25% - yikes!

Originally introduced at 400 MHz, the Yikes! G4 was dropped to 350 MHz six weeks later and discontinued six weeks after that. Power Mac G4 The short product life had lead to speculation that Apple introduced this compromised design to unload surplus parts intended for the blue & white G3.

Reusing the Yosemite motherboard design also meant that the Yikes! G4 had a different CPU socket than all the other Power Mac G4s. In terms of upgrades, that means it takes the same ZIF upgrades as the blue & white G3. In brief, Yikes! isn't much different from putting a b&w G3 in a gray case, replacing the G3 with a G4, and removing the ADB port.

It's precisely because of this that Yikes! is a Road Apple. You can buy a used b&w G3 for less, add a G4 upgrade, and still save a lot of money compared with buying a used Yikes! Power Mac G4. This is especially true on eBay, where buyers may not be aware of the differences between the two types of 350 MHz and 400 MHz Power Macs.

On the plus side, since we published Yikes! This Power Mac G4 Just Isn't Worth the Money, the retail price of used Yikes! G4s from Mac dealers has come down significantly, sometimes to the point where it's less costly to buy a Yikes! than a b&w G3 plus a G4 upgrade. That's what we'd hoped for.

"We've got all these old parts we can use" is a terrible reason to design a compromised computer, something Apple should have learned from the über-Road Apple x200 series. At least in this case the end result wasn't nearly as compromised, and the Yikes! only merits a one bullet rating.

In summary, Yikes! isn't a bad computer, just one with several unnecessary compromises. Since it's really little more than a b&w G3 with a G4 CPU, it should be priced accordingly - and when it is, it provides a lot of G4 power for a lot less than the Sawtooth models. It's a bit of a Road Apple, but it can also be a great buy if you know exactly what you're getting and what it's worth.

Additional Resources

Yikes vs. Sawtooth G4/400, Bare Feats, 1999.12.17.
Yikes!/Sawtooth: Both Released, What's the Difference?, PowerBook Zone. Published when G4s were first released - Yikes! at 400 MHz, Sawtooth at 450 MHz (with 500 MHz promised).
Yikes! This Power Mac G4 just isn't worth the money, Dan Knight, Mac Daniel, 2003.03.05.
Looking for a Power Mac G4? Here's why you want an AGP model, Dan Knight, Mac Daniel, 2003.03.06.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: 'WallStreet' PowerBook G3, May 1998 - WallStreet offered 3 screen sizes and CPU speeds from 233 to 292 MHz.
Group of the Day: Mac UK is for Mac users in the United Kingdom.
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