By the late 90's the tide had turned back in Apple's favor though. I was more into AltiVec than iMacs, but the G4 was really a nice box.

The G4 era was actually kind of gut wrenching. I mean, when the G5 was announced (2004?), I was excited that I might actually get a decent replacement for my powerbook...but I had to wait a long time...until 2007 actually, for the x86 macbooks to come out (incidentally, the iPhone came out at the same time). I would say 2007 is where they really turned their trajectory way upwards.