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Description #
Unbox with me as we take a nostalgic look at the original Mac Mini G4! This is the very first Mac Mini Apple released 20 years ago, and I picked it up on eBay to see how it holds up today.
In this video, I’ll walk you through: 🔹 The Mac Mini G4’s ports and design (USB, FireWire, DVI, Ethernet) 🔹 Classic Apple quirks like the chunky power brick and slot-loading drive 🔹 A glimpse at Mac OS 10 with vintage software like Office 2004 and Skype 🔹 How it connects to modern monitors with a DVI to HDMI adapter
This Mac Mini may be old, but it’s a reminder of Apple’s digital hub vision. If you enjoy retro tech, unboxings, or just seeing how old Apple gear works today, you’ll love this video!
👉 Want to see more Mac Mini videos and software explorations? Check out my main channel here: @will_termini
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#MacMiniG4 #MacMiniUnboxing #RetroApple #UnboxingVideo #TechUnboxing #MacMini #AppleRetro #VintageApple
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSrfeuQoR-g
Transcript #
M4 — no, G4. Today we’re looking at the very first Mac Mini from 20 years ago, the Mac Mini G4. This was a recent eBay pickup. If we look on the back of the box, it says “unpack your Mac.” It has a slot-loading drive, USB, and DVI out — you can adapt it to VGA if you want, and you plug it into your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. When Steve Jobs announced this he called it BYODKM — bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse. They were also really emphasising iLife. The idea was that this was a tool to unify your digital life, and this and the iPod were all part of that. On the side it says “organise your photos, compose music, create playlists, make movies, watch DVDs” — all of that could be done with iLife. Apple wanted to be the hub of your digital life, the place where you create and consume media.
Let’s open it up and see if it lives up to that promise. We have a nice little handle here. This is used — I got it on eBay. Inside we have a chunky, chunky power brick, which we’ll put off to the side. And here we have the Mac. Does it come with any manuals? Nope, just the Mac. Here it is: the Mac Mini G4.
Even 20 years later this is still an impressively small computer. We have the slot-loading DVD drive on the front, aluminium on the sides, polycarbonate on top. On the back we have the power button, power, Ethernet, a modem, and DVI for video out — which can do DVI and VGA, and can be adapted to HDMI. We’ll look at that in a second. Two USB ports, my favourite FireWire, audio out, and a Kensington lock. And there’s the exhaust fan. The bottom is looking a little grody, but not a problem.
Let’s plug it in and see what it does when we boot it up. As I said, this Mac doesn’t have HDMI, so I’ll be using this UGREEN HDMI-to-DVI adapter. Plug it in, tighten it up, and we’re good to go. Welcome to my auxiliary desk. I found this monitor in my apartment’s trash and sure enough, it works. The trash gods always bless me with great things — people are so incredibly wasteful. Thanks, I guess.
To turn it on, just push the power button, which is conveniently located on the back of the system — unlike the M4 where it’s underneath — back when Apple had some common sense. And there’s our Apple logo. The seller also included a few anachronistic accessories. This keyboard is from a few years later than this Mac Mini, and I’m personally not a huge fan of these chiclet keys. And this mouse, which I also think was a bit later — I’m not sure if Apple was selling this at the time. I’m not personally a huge fan of this mouse either, but it works. This is probably the nicest-looking one I’ve ever seen; they can get a bit grody.
It’s finally booted up — that took a while. It has a 40GB IDE hard drive in there, which I plan on upgrading. It started up Office 2004, I think, and Skype, which is a blast from the past. It looks like we’re running Mac OS 10.5.8, which is Leopard. We have a 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 — single core, the slower version of this Mac — and it looks like 1GB of RAM, which has probably been upgraded after purchase.
That about wraps up this quick look at the Mac Mini I got on eBay. If you’re interested in a Mac Mini and want to adapt DVI to HDMI, I’ll put a link to the UGREEN adapter. As I said, I’ll do a video on the hard drive upgrade process, and I plan on a few more videos on this Mac Mini — mostly about software — on my main channel. I’ll drop a card to it somewhere. Hope you like those videos coming in the future. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you next time. Bye.