The mashup of an M1 and G4 is the best of early 2000s design with today’s power

Apple is releasing cool new desktop Macs once more, however individuals are nonetheless doing loads of enjoyable tasks utilizing older Apple machines. A enjoyable instance that we noticed just lately (h/t Enter) was this mod by somebody named Connor, who took the internals of an M1 Mac Mini and put them into certainly one of Apple’s most iconic desktops, the iMac G4.

As Connor exhibits in a YouTube video, the G4 nonetheless has all of its unique performance after his mod — it could possibly play DVDs from an inner drive (although they did should swap out the unique one, which related utilizing IDE) — and at first look, it hasn’t been modified in any respect. However with the display on, it’s apparent the pc is working the fashionable macOS Monterey, as a substitute of OS X 10.5 Leopard, the final working system that formally supported the G4’s unique {hardware}.

Connor is much from the primary particular person to mod the iMac G4. Their put up even cites one other MacRumors consumer who did an M1-based G4 construct and offers credit score to a information from the (oft-cited within the Mac modding group) Dremel Junkie. Looking YouTube reveals that loads of others have completed G4 mods. You’ll discover a number of Hackintosh PC builds, a Raspberry Pi-based arcade machine, some upgrades and restorations, and even somebody who’s turned it into an exterior show. The Verge has even made one — certainly one of our producers, Creighton DeSimone, modded a G4 utilizing a Floor pill so hosts of a reside YouTube present might use it.

It’s no surprise individuals are drawn to doing enjoyable issues with this pc. It’s bought a novel design (so long as you’re not evaluating it to lamps), however its internals are sufficiently old that you just’re not risking loads by tearing it aside.

To me, although, Connor’s construct is the gold normal with regards to doing this type of mod. It retains enjoyable issues just like the CD drive and display from the unique, whereas updating the components that had been outdated and creaky, just like the precise pc and I/O. They’ve additionally posted an extremely in-depth look into their course of over on the MacRumors discussion board, so in case you’re considering all of the blood, sweat, and complex electronics work that went into this mod, you should definitely give it a glance.

Once I dropped this mod in our Slack, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel responded “I need this so unhealthy.” I completely agree, however given simply how a lot work went into making it, I feel I’ll persist with admiring it on YouTube for now.

Correction March 14th, 4:42PM ET: The unique model of this story incorrectly mentioned Mac OS X 10.5 was codenamed “Snow Leopard,” the code title for OS X 10.6. The newest OS the final iMac G4 revision can run is 10.5 Leopard. We remorse the error.