MacOS Rumors meldt dat Motorola mogelijk in januari 2001 begint met de levering van 550 en 600MHz G4 CPU's. Dit zou naar buiten zijn gelekt uit onderhandeling tussen Apple en Motorola. De nieuwe G4's zijn gebaseerd op de PowerPC 7410 core en worden gebakken op een 0,18micron procédé, waardoor zij minder energie zuipen dan de huidige PPC 7400's. Het nadeel is een verhoging van de productiekosten met circa 15 tot 20%:
It seems Moto and Apple have been in some very intense meetings of late. There has been good news, as usual, tempered with bad: Mot has been able to get saleable yields on recent batches of PowerPC 7410's at 550 and 600MHz. The bad news? Although saleable, these yields still aren't great. The faster G4s, based on Motorola's new "Nitro" .18 micron process a.k.a. HiP6, will likely cost 15-20% more than high-end PowerPCs typically do. They will also be in short supply; Apple is still leery enough to be cautious about committing to shipping these new chips in Macs until a substantial stock has built up.Final decisions are far from made -- after all, even Motorola is having trouble giving a firm date for having enough faster 7410s to meet Apple's shipping demands, no less for the chips to be available to third parties. Nonetheless, Apple sources are reporting that timetables have been set for dependent projects (Powerbook G4, UMA-2 PowerMac G4) to ship at Macworld January. Take it for what it's worth....