This is a fair analysis of what probably happened. However it still seems odd to me – I would've thought Apple wouldn't cut corners like this.
As inconsistencies go, it’s incredibly trivial.
Even at the time, none of this came up in community discussions, because we didn’t have social media and forums like this to pan back on what was, then, happening in real time. Apple buyers then were more preoccupied by getting their ordered unit(s) and making sure those units worked. At most, a bulk purchase order filled, in which some boxes read “Power Macintosh G4” and others “Power Mac G4” might have gotten a raised eyebrow by an eagle-eyed spotter in the warehouse, but that’s basically the end of it.
Also keep in mind this was less than two years out from the company getting close to slamming into the hard floor of bankruptcy. Although Jobs may have famously reset the company’s product strategy when he returned, what probably doesn’t get mentioned nearly as much were ways to keep overall production costs down.
Lastly, the goal, when the much-anticipated G4 came out, was to get units into buyer hands asap — barring chip shortages from Motorola. Waiting for new, “Power Mac G4” boxes and rear labels, even as there was existing packaging stock on hand for “Power Macintosh” to label and box new units leaving the assembly line, would have added bottlenecks in Cork (Europe/Africa) and Singapore (Oceania) where getting new boxes might have taken a few more weeks for the shipping containers to arrive — enough of a gap for some units to have gone out with old labelling/boxing rather than be held up by new packaging still en route. Apple corporate were probably all, “Yah, whatever, just get those units shipped asap. Use what what you already have lying around there and ditch the rest when the new labels and boxes arrive.”
Now obviously, we know that the Yikes G4 is really just a reskinned B&W – it makes perfect sense to continue producing the (virtually) same internal components and maintain production lines, especially if there's a surplus. The same thing is essentially done today with iPhones, the SE being a recycled iPhone 8, presumably to cut costs.
Sure, but I don’t think that was the impetus here. I also don’t think the internal company divider was “ok, starting with this tech, the G4 with AGP Velocity Engine™®©, call ‘em Power Macs, please.” Rather, it was a matter of as the new product strategy developed with the aforementioned “iMac” emerging as a metonym for Apple itself, a decision was made to quietly move on from “Power Macintosh” for all but their server-level products (particularly for corporate customers which had been buying the “Macintosh” name since the 1980s — many of the same customer which previously probably bought top-end products like the Workgroup Station 95, Quadra 950, Power Macintosh 9600, and so on).
But would they go so far as to cut costs on product name labels? That seems suspiciously weird.
In real time? Then? No, it really doesn’t.
Be careful not to apply an Apple 2023 lens onto an Apple 1999 view. These were and are very different creatures, as was and is the consumer environment where scrutiny now was not so much the case then.
After all, they still did need to change the label. As far as we're aware, there's no example of a G4 Yikes out there that's been labelled "Power Macintosh G3"; but for that matter, there's also no other Apple product (I can think of) that has an ambiguous name on its label.
Did you forget about the impressive clarity of the Performa model numbers? There must be no confusing between a Macintosh Performa 635 CD and a Macintosh Performa 636 CD!
But real talk: stuffing a G4 into a leftover G3 product box is not a congruous argument, as they were entirely different product cycles, generations and, frankly, different colours. There are also, as far I’m aware, no instance of this situation ever happening.
