by Jason Snell
Memories of the Power Mac G5
Stephen Hackett just took a deep dive into the story of the Power Mac G5, which introduced the “cheese grater” design also used by many years of Intel-based Mac Pros. His piece’s title, “The Broken Promise of the 3 GHz Power Mac G5,” is a reference to the infamous guarantee Steve Jobs gave that the G5 chip would reach 3 GHz, which it never did. Instead, Apple switched to Intel. (It wasn’t the only reason—G5 laptops were also seemingly impossible—but it didn’t help.)
But then there’s this line in the middle of Stephen’s story:
Jason Snell addressed this his review of the Power Mac G5 in Macworld back in September 2003:
Yep, there’s nothing like having you from 22 years ago quoted back to you. That cover story for Macworld was unique—it was such a new and interesting computer that I managed to talk Apple PR into letting me sit with product marketing’s Greg Joswiak and Apple head of hardware Jon Rubinstein, in front of an open G5, and get them to tell me the story about how it was built. The piece quotes “Joz and Ruby” at length, because it really was one of the most remarkable product briefings I’ve ever received.
Also remarkable: the only time they could do it was in the afternoon on July 3, right before everyone went off for the long Independence Day weekend. My family and I were going to spend the weekend in L.A., so my wife and 20-month-old daughter were in tow at Infinite Loop. A very nice Apple PR person was tasked with showing them around, and they ended up buying an Apple-logo onesie in the Company Store.