Mine would be the G4. The G3's were great, but are too under-powered for the modern world. And the G5's simply weren't available in enough variety of systems.
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I'd have to disagree. In my personal experience I've always had G4s seem way more reliable, and have way less quirks than every G3 system I've owned perhaps with the exception of my PowerBook G3 Pismo.I can’t put my finger on it, but the G4/G4e line has always felt like an oddball for me.
My very first Mac was a then-new Yikes! G4 (ordering it the exact same day Jobs back-graded the 400 to 350 and getting stuck with the 350). Years later, a Titanium G4/400 PowerBook was a file server which did fine for maybe 7 or 8 years. And I also used an iBook G4/1.42 as a daily user for a bit over two years. And now, I have that 17" DLSD G4/1.67 and am once more remembering my old machines.
It’s a je ne sais quoi I can’t adequately describe. The G4’s stability and/or quirks have always felt slightly odd, almost as if it was pasted together in haste and is kept together by the chip design equivalent of epoxy resin. In this sense, it doesn't feel as solid, as stable, or as certain as the G3s I’ve owned (which, admittedly, have all been iBook Rev. C clamshells) or used (which has included multiple iMacs, an early G3 Server, pre-B&W, and a PowerBook G3 Pismo for a hot minute in 2000).
And yes, the G5 has its own set of quirks (energy hunger notwithstanding), but the G5 feels more certain when dealing with imaging and audio work than the G4/G4e do. I don’t know to what extent this has to do with chip designs by Motorola/Freescale (G4/G4e), versus IBM (G5), versus total AIM (G3), but of these three, the G3 feels the most solid. Even so, I voted above for G5, which had a lot of potential long after Apple walked away from it. My second choice would be a late G3, ca. PPC750CXe/FX.
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As for the earlier gens, I can’t remark freshly on the 601, 603, and 604/e, because it’s been over 20 years since I’ve touched any of them. I can remember how vexing the 601 in its early iteration was, especially being so accustomed to the 68040s in the Quadra 840AV we used at work. The Power Mac 8100/80 felt like a step backward at the time in areas of stability. Some of that probably had to do with the translation layer from 68K to PPC. Another 601, the Power Mac 6100/60, felt like a nightmare to use, especially when using heckin’ PageMaker. The few 604s I used around 1997 (like the Power Mac 9600) seemed pretty solid, but again, it was a long time ago, and of these three, I used the 601s far more frequently.
G5 2.5ghz QC. I’d use an Intel cpu for any portable needs.
I'd have to disagree. In my personal experience I've always had G4s seem way more reliable, and have way less quirks than every G3 system I've owned perhaps with the exception of my PowerBook G3 Pismo.
I mostly agree. I would go with dual 1.42 MDD and an Intel MacBook. In fact... I may buy myself a couple MDD's.
Why is the x704 not on the list? The answer has to be the x704!
Oh god no! So so wrong!It was never used in any Mac though, and it's essentially a G3 isn't it?
Oh god no! So so wrong!
I actually have a mac with an x704 in it. It’s not exactly “stock” though
And it certainly isn’t a G3. See: Maier, Cliff A. et al. (1997). "A 533-MHz BiCMOS Superscalar RISC Microprocessor". IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Volume 32, Number 11, pp. 1625–1634.
But it was a PowerPC processor that was meant to surpass 604 tech, right? So in the realm of PowerPC that makes it a 3rd generation chip right?
I'm not saying it is an actual G3, but rather a very similar architecture that was meant to compete at the same or greater level as the G3 at the time.
It was actually a competitor to the 603. It was manufactured over a year before the G3. It was not at all a similar architecture, though. Not even close. It was designed for maximum simplicity and maximum clock speed. It ran macOS faster than anything in the world, at the time. And ran windows NT even faster. (macOS was not very efficient back then).
Yeah, we had a lot of orders but Steve Jobs came back to apple and killed the whole thing before any machines were actually sold.Thanks for the info. I'm guessing they were used in the clone market? Like UMAX and Power Computing.
Keep in mind that OS X is obviously more optimized for the G4 than the G5, so what the G4 lacks in raw power, it will generally make up for in tweak and optimization. Running Leopard on an MDD and Power Mac G5 shouldn't be that different.
The Quicksilvers also have L3 caches, which the G5 does not. The MDD also has twice the HD bays, among less power consumption, which makes them superior candidates for general server work as well.
Maybe so but the real questions is can they grate cheese?
I THINK NOT.
G5 for the win with superior cheesy goodness.
Maybe so but the real questions is can they grate cheese?
I THINK NOT.
G5 for the win with superior cheesy goodness.