“The new Power Mac G4 with SuperDrive is the industry’s first complete solution for CD and DVD authoring,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The combination of Apple’s amazing SuperDrive, super-fast MPEG2 encoding software and easy-to-use iDVD application is a real breakthrough.”
The standard $3,499 configuration includes a 733MHz PowerPC G4 processor with 256K level 2 on-chip cache and 1MB level 3 backside cache; 256MB of PC133 SDRAM memory; 60GB Ultra ATA/66 hard disk drive; Nvidia GeForce2 MX with 32MB video SDRAM; two FireWire and USB ports; four PCI slots; Gigabit Ethernet; and a built-in 56K V.90 modem. Systems are available through the Apple Store and from authorized Apple resellers.
Apple has said that it expects the recordable DVD technology to appeal to creative professionals in ad agencies and design firms who want to prepare client presentations, and resellers have said that many of their customers have expressed interest in this capability. The SuperDrive, developed by Pioneer, writes to 4.7GB DVD-R media, which Apple sells in packs of five for $49.95.
Update: An Apple spokesperson confirmed with MacCentral sister site, MacWEEK, that the company also began shipping the $2,799 667MHz Power Mac G4 configuration, which replaces the SuperDrive with a CD-RW drive but otherwise has the same specs as the faster model.