The machine is built around the G4 processor and is considered the "Personal Supercomputer" with speeds between 4 and 20 gigaFLOPS.

It is also the first machine to be officially abbreviated to Mac and the last Mac to boot into the classic macOS. The style of the case comes from the 2nd generation Apple Power Macintosh G3
(blue and white) and has remained unchanged in its 5-year existence, although there have been changes to cooling. Both the G4 processor and the case have been discontinued with the introduction of the Power Mac G5.