Is An Incredible PowerMac G4 At 400-450-500 MHz For The Price Of A Slower G3 Too Good To Be True?

Not to mention AirPort support, AGP graphics, dual USB, triple FireWire and higher RAM bandwidth. Well, it is too good to be true now. Yesterday Apple lowered the G4 CPU speed on its PowerMac G4 lineup as posted on The Apple Store. For the same prices, the Yikes model gets a 350 MHz G4 in place of its 400 and the two Sawtooth models get 400 and 450 MHz G4's, 50 MHz less for each model. This was explained by demand for the 450 MHz G4, no availablility of 500 MHz G4 fromMotorola and the recent increase in RAM prices. Of course, Apple has charged and still charges $350 for an extra 50 MHz but 128 MHz RAM chips certainly haven't gone up by much more than $100 *RETAIL* in the past few months so the latter explanation is pretty lame. Still a MHz for MHz G4 in place of a G3 plus the other technology is well worth the the same price. If only Apple hadn't promised the moon, raising expectations and then retracted it. The most egregious aspect is cancelling current 450 backorders intead of changing the CPU for new orders. Apple had little choice to do something in the face of Motorola's failure to deliver the 500. But I'm afraid that this move was miscalculated and is going to be seen as an incredible gouge and spitting in the face of its loyal customers, backfiring on Apple. It certainly will in the Wintel press. An accompanying price reduction of $200 or so would have made more sense except for the effect on sales of the remaining PowerMac G3s. Apple also announced that the 500 MHz G4 won't be available until next year and IBM will begin producing the G4 to augment Motorola's flagging manufacturing effort.