Someone put an M1 Mac into the stunning iMac G4 and it's awesome

M1 In G4 Imac (Image credit: Colby Sheets)

What you need to know

Someone took an M1 Mac and put it inside an old iMac G4 chassis.
The iMac G4 was announced 20 years ago and still looks stunning.

The iMac G4 was first announced almost 20 years ago and yet it still looks like it could go on sale today — but maybe without that disc drive on the front! As stunning as the machine looks though, it's going to need some new internals. Developer Colby Sheets thought so, too. The result is an M1 Mac crammed into a lampshade iMac and I need it in my life.

Created as a celebration of Steve Jobs' life, the machine was first appeared in a forum post before popping up in video form on Twitter.

I've always wanted the iMac G4 since I was a kid and I knew a few people made some hackintosh's with them but I didn't want that, I wanted a real Mac. I always thought about putting the Mac mini internals in it but with intel chips it wouldn't work for a couple reasons (size, heat/airflow). Well now with the M1 how thermally cool it runs, I thought I'd give it another shot!

In celebration of Steve Job’s life and his inspiration to many, I wanted to show a passion project I’ve been working on that I think Steve would be proud of. Something that wasn’t possible 20 years ago but is now.

Hello, iMac G4 with an M1 chip. pic.twitter.com/q6zUpyFrwuIn celebration of Steve Job’s life and his inspiration to many, I wanted to show a passion project I’ve been working on that I think Steve would be proud of. Something that wasn’t possible 20 years ago but is now.

Hello, iMac G4 with an M1 chip. pic.twitter.com/q6zUpyFrwu— Colby Sheets (@ColbySheets) October 5, 2021 October 5, 2021

I still remember the first time I saw an iMac G4 and it looks every bit as beautiful today as it did back then.

The original iMac G4 came with an IBM PowerPC chip and 256MB of RAM. This re-worked machine now has an Apple M1 chip inside, bolstered by 8GB of RAM — to say the two are different is an understatement of epic proportions. As is to say that I want to put one of these on my desk.

I need to do it!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.