There will be a lowend and a highend version of the new clear, silver and graphite PowerMac G4. The lowend version, starting from $1499, appears to have the G3 internals with an upgraded 400/450 MHz G4 CPU and a few other tweaks. The highend version, starting from $2299, sports a new motherboard with up to 500 MHz G4 CPU, a faster video (AGP 2x 133 MHz) slot, faster hard drive, more RAM up to 1.5 GB, higher RAM bandwidth up from 400 to 800 MBps, an additional 400 mbps FireWire port, USB ports support 12 mbps each (24 total) rather than 12 mbps total and a $99 AirPort wireless network option. Apple's USB mouse and keyboard and Mac OS 8.6 round them out. I haven't seen a photo yet but I expect that the keyboard and mouse will be the same as the B&W model but appropriately colored. Using Intel's own tests, according to Steve Jobs the new G4 (500 MHz) is 2.94 times faster than the Pentium III (600 MHz). The G4 CPU runs at so-called Super Computer speed, i.e. a sustained speed of over 1 gigaflop (1 billion floating point operations per second) and a peak of 4 gigaflops with its new "Velocity engine" (formerly AltiVec) in addition to its branching, integer and floating point engines.
According to Brian Nakamoto, "Steve, Phil Schiller and Dr. Richard Crandel showed the G4 easily destroy the top of the line Compaq Pentium III 600 MHz system running Photoshop, MediaCleaner 4, SETI@Home & heavy NASA stuff. Just wait until the G4 PowerBooks...."
The new 450 MHz highend version will ship in 30 days and the 500 MHz model at the end of October according to the Apple Store. The 400 MHz lowend model is shipping today according to Steve. [I'm saving my pennies for the highend model--Bill]. [Apple Press Release]
Apple Cinema Display is a 22" diagonal flat panel LCD monitor. It costs a whopping $3999 and is bundled with the highend PowerMac G4 only, i.e. it is not available alone. Its format is 1600x1024 pixels and it can display an entire 11x17 image. It is digital rather than analog.[Apple Press Release]