Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Power Mac G5 Desktop M9032LL/A (Dual 2.0-GHz PowerPC G5, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD-R/CD-RW Drive)

I've been using this perfect machine since late November '03 for film-quality motion graphics and huge layered Photoshop files and I'm in love.

I really cannot understand a negative review of this G5.
I just don't get it.

I've been a design professional for a dozen years and Apple's technology has made my career fun again.
Period.

The guy who is obviously dumping on Apple and the G5 to get his jollies needs to go elsewhere. I'm quite sure he knows nothing about Macs or Apple. The hardware on this Mac blows Intel out of the water and it's OS blows XP away. Early reviews before the latest version of OS X called "Panther" showed slower results than the new version of the OS which is designed for the G5 and is much faster. For the guy who gave it one star because it doesn't run Virtual PC all I can say is Puh-lease. First of all that is no reason to give it one star plus it is not true that the G5 can only run one OS it can also run multiple versions of Linux. Finally there IS a new version of Virtual PC coming out soon that will run on the G5.

I've been a PC user since the good old days of the soldering iron, my last mac was an old powerbook running OS 6 or 7, either way - it was a long time ago. The main thing thats been keeping me from getting a Mac was price, and I must say - it's getting a lot better. I bought the dual 2.0Ghz configuration from the apple store along with the new 20" LCD (that still hasn't shipped ~_~) and it rocks. The biggest problem people have mentioned on the various reviews is the 64mb card - if it means that much to you, go to the Apple Store on their site and configure your own system with a 9800 or an x800 or a different 9600 if you'd like. I got a 9800 personally. I don't understand how anyone can claim a PC runs faster than this, perhaps with video games but for standard use (this coming from a person to whome standard refers to compiling java) its much better.

The G5 is meant to be "the professional's machine" for graphics and video. After you get past the "platform war reviews" on this list and look at the unit and what it can do, it does all it claims and more. Mac has and I hope always will dominate the digital video, audio and graphics markets. Anyone who cannot get this machine up and running out of the box in a few minutes, should probably invest in a toaster; because its obvious you were not meant to use a computer. The latest OS, Panther is sleek easy to use and pretty much runs the machine for you. Its also the only unix based OS on the market with a GUI. Which means that you can slip into terminal mode and run lines of code, while doing several other, heavy duty tasks in the background; that's background tasks that would bring any PC to its knees. By the way, Panther is the only system on the market that truly takes advantage of multi processors built into these boxes.

No matter what the semi pro's and novice users, who are loyal to PC's post, this machine simply blows any windows based/intel system out of the water. I have used every machine available for 25 + years as a film and video editor, (the toughest job for any machine) and Mac is the king of the hill for power, ease of use and reliable service.. for the pro user PERIOD. Anyone who claims to work in a pro graphics shop that is PC based, really does not work in a pro shop; because there are no truly pro graphics shops that are PC based.

The price is as always a bit higher on a Mac, because you get what you pay for. If you are not a professional computer user, get a PC and you will be happy. If you are a professional that needs the fastest machines available, as well as the most reliable machines on the market, you need a Mac G5.

From having read all of the reviews and my experience as an owner of a dual 2ghz G5 and a custom built, XP Pro pentium 2.6ghz overclocked to 3.2ghz. This is what I have to add.

For a long time, I used only PCs. Then about a year ago, I grew fed-up with the idiosyncracies and virus problems, that consumed huge amounts of my time. Another factor was how loud PCs are.

Also, I was enticed by Apples applications such as Final Cut Pro, Logic, DVD Studio Pro. They are first-rate, and offer some of the best features. I do a lot of graphics and video related work so this is significant.

As for other reviewers gripes about Apple marketing, I agree. Many of the adds are misleading and overblown. The marketing on it is a lot of hype that is aimed at less computer savvy users. But that is just marketing.

The actual product is very well made. There is an attention to detail, in the design, function and integration, that is unrivalled by any PC manufacturer. You do pay slightly more, but the return was worth it for me, and I am frugal.

In Summary. The G5 is pretty quiet compared to the PC. In terms of functionality, it was ready to use out of the box, unlike the PC, which requires a more extensive knowledge to get similar performance. Speed wise, it is faster than my XP P4, for rendering and compositing graphics applications. Both systems are pretty realiable. However, I do experience lock-ups and crashes occasionally on both systems.

Final recommendations, in the end, it depends on how much you use a computer, and what you use it for. For the gamer/custom builder enthusiast, PCs are still the only game in town. For graphics artists, multimeda, internet oriented users and those concerned about ease of use, I would say Apple is a better deal, and the current G5s are competitive in performance to the best PCs.

Another thing that was not mentioned by any of the other reviewers is that OS X is completely compatible with Windows in terms of file transfer. This was not the case with OS 9. As a result, you can take word files, excel, powerpoint, windows media, just about any file type and transfer it to and from your PC and Mac without any problems.

As for the negative reviews, one reviewer accused all of the negative reviews coming from a disgruntled single user, as there are two reviews with the same reviewer name. However, a positive review, with that same user name was also posted, and that person mentioned that he was unable to change the user name.

So it seems that the system defaulted to "PC enthusiast" for the user name. In which, case there is more than one person with a negative review. But hey, of those, one person gave it a bad review because a third party vendor's software didn't work on the computer. That has nothing to do with Apple or the G5. Another negative review was based upon apples overblown marketing, and not the performance or craftsmanship of the computer, which leaves one negative review due to faulty customer service. If I saw more similar experiences, I would be concerned.