Too little too late. Even if they could get this machine out to consumers for less than $599 USD, so it might be barely competitive the iBook with these ridiculous legacy components, I personally, as much as I would love too, couldn?t even bother. I would be interested in such a machine, if it had a 970 in it. Then, I?d even pay a premium for it. Say, $999 USD?
Doom III, (and games based on that engine) will force a lot of ppl to upgrade their machines in the next 6-18 months. The Cube2, as it is spec?d now by you ppl, is not going to attract anymore ppl then the original cube. It will be too little too late. Mac ?gamers? who might be interested will grab a PlayStation3, a PC or whatever, (and maybe an iBook/pBook), and be done with it.
[quote] The onboard chip would reduce costs and price, and make it easier for Apple to make the standard configuration silent or nearly so. Then, as with the original Cube, it would then be up to the user to decide whether they wanted a loud, fast card for maximum graphics performance, or a second card whose main purpose was to drive one or two more monitors (so that it ran cool).
<hr></blockquote>
Nice idea. Apple allowing the user to make those decisions rather than Apple making the machine a dead end with no choices. Allowing the user options. Now, there's a thought.
Onboard graphics on a 'headless' Mac would bring the price down along with a lack of monitor.
Like you say, users could add their own graphics monster card etc.
iCube could really lower the cost of entry to the Mac market.
But it begs the questions, if the superb iBook can hit £795. Why haven't we got the desktop equivalent? An iCube that is even cheaper and occupying £495 to £795? And with better components?
I'd love to be able to run my wife's iBook through a 23 inch Cinema display! But...
From mini-tower Cube 2, to headless cheap iCube...the Cube could be a modular 'life style' design desktop computer. A desktop that Apple could built onto. Something that would offer the flexibility that the iMac2...simply doesn't offer. (The iMac2 is valid. It's doing okay. But I feel the 'Cube 2' idea is more valid. My opinion...)
Especially so in terms of the well rounded posts on this topic.
Yeesh, if only you guys were on Apple's marketing and design team...Apple would be well onto 10% market share...
<strong>Doom III, (and games based on that engine) will force a lot of ppl to upgrade their machines in the next 6-18 months.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There was a thread around here a few months or so ago containing some drawings of a 'stackable/modular' tower prototype. That idea was really interesting. Anyone have those pics around? Was that something you posted Outsider?
I'd be happy to see a 970 Cube (going to have to retire this G4 Cube sometime), but the real requirements of a successor are tiny footprint, low noise, ease of hard drive upgrade and external device flexibility.
Graphics cards only seem to be getting bigger because there's the space in a tower for them (I thought electronics got smaller as they evolved?), but it's only really hard-core gamers who need ultimate graphics performance, and that's not the biggest market.
The Cube never really found its core market, probably due to the price, but it is out there, and I really hope Jobs is prepared to eat his hat and repeat the experiment.
If Apple could take its software commitment to an 'Open Office ala Aqua' to take out M$ Office. That cuts the 'cord'. Eh?
Could really drive sales.
Bundle it with a low cost Cube to small to medium business? Bundle it to schools? Low site license fees? (Our school had to dish out a couple of K just to run XP and Office. What a rip off.) It's not offering much the 2000 and the last Office had. Especially for what our kids do...)
I read that they have bad reputation because of monitor's problems. Nobody want them ! They are dead.
Maybe Apple can replace them with the equivalent of the Shuttle SFF. Cool form factor in a nice box. All you need is 1 AGP, 1 PCI, 2 RAM slots, 1 Optical Drive, 1 HD and 1 G4 processor.
But here is the twist.
Sell it like Shuttle ! Without Drives, RAM and graphic card. You can choose to configure it on the Apple Store the way you want, or simply buy it with nothing (use your own HD, graphic card, RAM or go shopping everywhere on the web for the best price). For the "nude" version, the mobo must include a G4 (with and without L3 Cache) and an integrated graphic chip like a GF4MX 32 MB.
For compatibility they can include a list of optical drive fully compatible with OS X, iTunes and iDVD.
I think that this Mac can be price beginning for a nude version at $649 with a G4 867 without cache. $749 with a G4 1000 with cache. For a full version with 1 combo drive, a 60 GB HD and 256 MB RAM something like $949.
It will be cool no ? Imagine an aluminum enclosure you can in some way build yourself... totally the opposite of steve jobs thinking btw...
Edit : iLife is not included. Must be purchased separately.
That would be cool. I am seriously considering buying a Shuttle, putting some cheap components in it, and having myself a pretty good box for Kazaa, CD burning, games, SETI, etc. My iBook would still be my main computer, but the Shuttle would be perfect for my dorm room which is quite crowded.
Games are the primary engine that drive consumer PC boxen. (Well, that and warez'd music). And on both scores Macs are way behind. This is the market Apple is targeting, no?
Nobody needs a new machine for surfing the net or type up a word document. We already bought those gum drop machines 3 years ago.
I'm glad to see a collection of the faithful thinking for once. The shuttle's I've seen are not too expensive at all unless you upgrade the Mobo components. If you use the builtin video and audio,just add drives, they're very affordable. Anyway I also like the slab idea. I'd LOVE to rack-a-mac, slap 2 big Hdds in to and use it as an A/V server/HDD-DVD recorder. I wanted to say the bit about AGP8x or PCI-express too, you coulod build that chipset onto the Mobo but leave a slot open for future upgrades, even easy dual head (or tri/quad head) operation.
Original Cubes. TOO BLOODY EXPENSIVE. What this thing needs to do is shadow the iMac/eMac. There's no bloody need for THREE AIO's in the lineup, not even 2. ONE is enough. iMac can be made for 999, the iBook can and it and it has to include a battery and more expensive drive and PS. Once you can make an iMac for 999 there's little or no reason to sell people eMacs. iMac CRT, cute, for 399, but not at 799+.
Apple has a problem in that just about anyone who would buy an AIO from them, has done so, these people will upgrade ever so often, but the numbers are pretty much maxxed. Consumers WANT a cube-like headless CPU/GPU upgradable machine, they can't buy it from Apple. I REFUSE to buy anything less. Choice is a good thing. Run two consumer lines, dammit.
iMac 899/999-1799
CUBE 799-1699
You can choose what fits you best. A built-in display or expansion and more power. Let the buyer decide. That covers a better range than 3 overlapping AIO's, one of which ought to be dead and the other of which is 2 years past it's sell before date.
Come on Apple, this PB is looking for a roommate! Make headless expandable consumer machine at a CONSUMER price, will sell.
PS, Outsider, I actually liked you cube concept, not perfect, but I could see it being funky and cool in the way all of Apple's consumer products have a sort of stylish kitsch about them.
Amorph, new shape huh? Since the original cube, I keep think big and little cubes, pro and consumer, but who the El-cap has evolved into the best tower case design going, bar none, and it still looks good to my eyes, though not as elegant as the QS. hmm...
I think it definitely needs a standard AGP slot, but I'm not sure it NEEDS a PCI slot. Whatever it takes to get the price low and to differentiate it from the towers.</strong>
There is plenty to differentiate with the Power Macs. More than enough, even with G4 processors. Apple has just been very relunctant to do so. Maybe they know their business model can't make a profit or something, but differentiating is easy. Imagining systems that could be out today if only Apple made them:
Power Macs:
Dual 1 GHz G4 with 1 MB L3 per CPU
AGP slot with 64 MB graphics card
4 RAM slots for 2 GB RAM support
4 full length PCI slots with support for 12" cards
2 external bays for opticals or backup
4 internal full height 3.5" hard drive bays
Firewire 800
~1800 USD
Cube 2:
1 GHz G4 w/o L3
AGP slot with 32 MB graphics card, 7" length only
1 RAM slot for 1 GB RAM support
1 PCI slot, 7" card length only
1 external bay for optical
1 internal 1" height 3.5" hard drive bay
no Firewire 800
~900 USD
They have Firewire 400, Airport Extreme, USB and Bluetooth in common. This makes sense to me. The Power Mac will always be faster and smoother running due to dual G4s, L3 cache, and faster drives, while the cheaper cube 2 will drop the cost of entry into the Mac market nearly a $1000 less.
<strong>Anyway I also like the slab idea. I'd LOVE to rack-a-mac, slap 2 big Hdds in to and use it as an A/V server/HDD-DVD recorder. I wanted to say the bit about AGP8x or PCI-express too, you coulod build that chipset onto the Mobo but leave a slot open for future upgrades, even easy dual head (or tri/quad head) operation.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Funny how every once in a while we think along very similar lines. The first thing I thought when I saw BJNY's post was, "whoa, Marathon could build a 1U rack around that and audio pros would buy it by the truckload."
[quote]<strong>There's no bloody need for THREE AIO's in the lineup, not even 2. ONE is enough.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It would have to be the eMac, then, because the iMac LCD is not acceptable as a school computer for a number of reasons (LCD is fragile, computer can be knocked around too easily, etc.).
The iMac LCD and eMac are different enough to stick around - the former for home and some business use, the latter for education and budget-conscious customers.
I'm waiting for the old iMac to die.
[quote]<strong>Amorph, new shape huh? Since the original cube, I keep think big and little cubes, pro and consumer, but who the El-cap has evolved into the best tower case design going, bar none, and it still looks good to my eyes, though not as elegant as the QS. hmm...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not thinking of a new shape so much as a new twist on the Cube shape. Have it be horizontally oriented, cooled by the same basic tech used in the iMac and PowerBook, and have it open by the case sliding off the machine, rather than by flipping the machine over and sliding it out of the case. I like the idea of a PowerBook-style aluminum case, too. But it would still be a Cube: Small, elegant, quiet, powerful. And without the absurd profit margin that killed the first one.
My vision of the Cube wouldn't be cheap, but it wouldn't start at $1800 either. I'm thinking of it as remaining a professional machine.
Expandability goes hand in hand with power. After the Cube fiasco, people realised that.
The only viable Pro machine is a Power Mac. An expandable Cube is a Power Mac.
The only way the Cube would ever return is as a radically different concept, eg a stackable or modular computer. You have the core module, then expansion modules.
Why most people bring up the Cube is because somehow it would be radically cheaper than the Power Mac. This is fundamentally impossible, as giving the cube expansion capabilities is akin to turning it into a Power Mac.
The argument for a cheap, expandable Cube is dead, kaput, finished. It is torn apart in 30 seconds. It is purely wishful thinking.
I loved the Cube. Unfortunately it was too expensive for me.
I hope that one day we will see a cube reintroduced:
Pretty close to the original one in formfactor. Convection cooled and thus the optical drive has to be mounted vertically and the powersupply has to stay outside.
To solve the "grab-underneath-to-access-the-ports" problem they could make "MDD-syle-turbo-holes" - but keep them hidden on the back or maybe the side, please. ADC on the bottom because that's where the slot benches are.
<strong>Why would you say that?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Possibly because I have a slightly more sophisticated view of real-world computing.
[quote]<strong>Games are the primary engine that drive consumer PC boxen. (Well, that and warez'd music). And on both scores Macs are way behind. This is the market Apple is targeting, no?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The real money in the global computer market is in cubicle workstations (to generalise massively, but you know the market I'm after): I'd hate to even think how many boxes the average corporation has, let alone government departments. Compared to that the consumer market is peanuts, particularly when you dial in licensing and the fact that corporations actually buy all their software rather than warezing it. Certainly I don't see lots of people sitting at a desk in an office downloading MP3s: they tend to be doing email, spreadsheets and word processing documents.
Apple's quite obviously shown it's after the business market with the XServe, and I think it's fairly obvious why.
[quote]<strong>Nobody needs a new machine for surfing the net or type up a word document. We already bought those gum drop machines 3 years ago.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Quite true, but there are several areas to consider here: first, many companies lease their hardware, which means it gets chopped every three or four years no matter what. Second, the Wintel cycle has ever-more-hungry software requiring ever-more-powerful hardware, which reinforces the need for upgrades. Lastly, Macs have traditionally been employed in graphics and video environments, where the speed of the machine is directly proportional to the amount of money you can make and the amount of creative freedom you have to try out ideas: you want to do more, you need to upgrade.
I regularly visit graphics houses that run 400MHz iMacs at reception and a couple of chunky Power Macs for serious Illustrator/Photoshop/QuarkXpress work, let alone the video houses with seriously pumped Avid-running Power Macs plugged into 200TB RAIDs and big f***-off video-capture/output cards.
For day-to-day WP/email/surfing/spreadsheet work, a modestly expandable machine is more than adequate, and a new Cube would fit that niche just perfectly.
- 1 usb and 1 fire wire upfront under pop up cover
- choice of dvd/cd or combo drive slot loading
- positive pressure cooling (induction fan on bottom w/ one way valve, vents on top)
- modem and ethernet port
- VGA and DVI port
- bottom hinged flip down left side door (sort-a like powermac but with no hardware on it) exposes 3 ram slots (one with standers 256) and airport slot
- no pci slot to prevent powermac sales
- four rubber sphere feet to keep bottom of mac off table
let's say that this Cube is built with the mobo from the iMac/PowerBook 12 with one more thing : an AGP bus. How much that mobo would cost to apple ? $200 max. (it's still the double of a nForce2 mobo for a end user).
The aluminium case ? $100 max. also. A G4 867 without cache ? Again $150 max.
So this new cube could cost to Apple something like $450.
And they can sell it for $649. That's a pretty big margin ! +/- 30%
So now I'm on the Apple Web Store and configure a built-to-order (with Apple regular prices).
256 MB RAM $100
60 GB HD $100
Combo Drive $150
ATI 9000 Pro $250 because I have an ADC screen. (remember that the built-in graphic chip as only a VGA port... too bad).
That's $1249 without screen ! or $999 without the ATI 9000 !
And don't tell me it take an iMac sale: it's $1299 with a 15" LCD.
Sure the entry PowerMac will be cannibalized _ a little_. But remember that with the PM you've got AGP Card with ADC/DVI, PCI, Dual Optical, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800 and iLife included for $1499.
This new Cube is perfect for Business, School, Family (you know I need a PowerMac for me but for my wife or my little girl, 2 cube will be enough and good for my wallet).
The real money in the global computer market is in cubicle workstations (to generalise massively, but you know the market I'm after): I'd hate to even think how many boxes the average corporation has, let alone government departments. Compared to that the consumer market is peanuts, particularly when you dial in licensing and the fact that corporations actually buy all their software rather than warezing it.
.
.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Fine. Then that should be the focus of Apple's marketing campaign(s). But it?s not. Is it? In fact, what little foothold they had in this market, (and here I include School/colleges/small graphics shops) is being quickly eroded by Dell. Maybe, that will change with the introductions of the 9xx series from IBM, but I really don?t see how, given Apple?s pricing adventures. Corporations generally don?t lust over uber designed boxes. Consumers do. Well, enough to keep Apple going for a while longer, I hope.
Edit:
In case I come across as overly harsh and critical, I say these things as a shareholder of AAPL stock. I want Apple to succeed.
Comments
Doom III, (and games based on that engine) will force a lot of ppl to upgrade their machines in the next 6-18 months. The Cube2, as it is spec?d now by you ppl, is not going to attract anymore ppl then the original cube. It will be too little too late. Mac ?gamers? who might be interested will grab a PlayStation3, a PC or whatever, (and maybe an iBook/pBook), and be done with it.
<hr></blockquote>
Nice idea. Apple allowing the user to make those decisions rather than Apple making the machine a dead end with no choices. Allowing the user options. Now, there's a thought.
Onboard graphics on a 'headless' Mac would bring the price down along with a lack of monitor.
Like you say, users could add their own graphics monster card etc.
iCube could really lower the cost of entry to the Mac market.
But it begs the questions, if the superb iBook can hit £795. Why haven't we got the desktop equivalent? An iCube that is even cheaper and occupying £495 to £795? And with better components?
I'd love to be able to run my wife's iBook through a 23 inch Cinema display! But...
From mini-tower Cube 2, to headless cheap iCube...the Cube could be a modular 'life style' design desktop computer. A desktop that Apple could built onto. Something that would offer the flexibility that the iMac2...simply doesn't offer. (The iMac2 is valid. It's doing okay. But I feel the 'Cube 2' idea is more valid. My opinion...)
Especially so in terms of the well rounded posts on this topic.
Yeesh, if only you guys were on Apple's marketing and design team...Apple would be well onto 10% market share...
Lemon Bon Bon
<strong>Doom III, (and games based on that engine) will force a lot of ppl to upgrade their machines in the next 6-18 months.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is a joke, right?
...and software is the key. Gee, Apple finally waking up and realising they're a software company that push some hardware
Excellent. And just the open statement of Apple saying, 'We're going for it.' About time.
...but I wonder what kind of desktop machines will aid Apple in its growth?
Headless Mac?
Lemon Bon Bon
<strong>Headless Mac?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Which brings us very much full circle...
I'd be happy to see a 970 Cube (going to have to retire this G4 Cube sometime), but the real requirements of a successor are tiny footprint, low noise, ease of hard drive upgrade and external device flexibility.
Graphics cards only seem to be getting bigger because there's the space in a tower for them (I thought electronics got smaller as they evolved?), but it's only really hard-core gamers who need ultimate graphics performance, and that's not the biggest market.
The Cube never really found its core market, probably due to the price, but it is out there, and I really hope Jobs is prepared to eat his hat and repeat the experiment.
If Apple could take its software commitment to an 'Open Office ala Aqua' to take out M$ Office. That cuts the 'cord'. Eh?
Could really drive sales.
Bundle it with a low cost Cube to small to medium business? Bundle it to schools? Low site license fees? (Our school had to dish out a couple of K just to run XP and Office. What a rip off.) It's not offering much the 2000 and the last Office had. Especially for what our kids do...)
Heh. The Cubes would walk out the stores...
Lemon Bon Bon <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
I read that they have bad reputation because of monitor's problems. Nobody want them ! They are dead.
Maybe Apple can replace them with the equivalent of the Shuttle SFF. Cool form factor in a nice box. All you need is 1 AGP, 1 PCI, 2 RAM slots, 1 Optical Drive, 1 HD and 1 G4 processor.
But here is the twist.
Sell it like Shuttle ! Without Drives, RAM and graphic card. You can choose to configure it on the Apple Store the way you want, or simply buy it with nothing (use your own HD, graphic card, RAM or go shopping everywhere on the web for the best price). For the "nude" version, the mobo must include a G4 (with and without L3 Cache) and an integrated graphic chip like a GF4MX 32 MB.
For compatibility they can include a list of optical drive fully compatible with OS X, iTunes and iDVD.
I think that this Mac can be price beginning for a nude version at $649 with a G4 867 without cache. $749 with a G4 1000 with cache. For a full version with 1 combo drive, a 60 GB HD and 256 MB RAM something like $949.
It will be cool no ? Imagine an aluminum enclosure you can in some way build yourself... totally the opposite of steve jobs thinking btw...
Edit : iLife is not included. Must be purchased separately.
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: jeromba ]</p>
<strong>
This is a joke, right?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why would you say that?
Games are the primary engine that drive consumer PC boxen. (Well, that and warez'd music). And on both scores Macs are way behind. This is the market Apple is targeting, no?
Nobody needs a new machine for surfing the net or type up a word document. We already bought those gum drop machines 3 years ago.
Original Cubes. TOO BLOODY EXPENSIVE. What this thing needs to do is shadow the iMac/eMac. There's no bloody need for THREE AIO's in the lineup, not even 2. ONE is enough. iMac can be made for 999, the iBook can and it and it has to include a battery and more expensive drive and PS. Once you can make an iMac for 999 there's little or no reason to sell people eMacs. iMac CRT, cute, for 399, but not at 799+.
Apple has a problem in that just about anyone who would buy an AIO from them, has done so, these people will upgrade ever so often, but the numbers are pretty much maxxed. Consumers WANT a cube-like headless CPU/GPU upgradable machine, they can't buy it from Apple. I REFUSE to buy anything less. Choice is a good thing. Run two consumer lines, dammit.
iMac 899/999-1799
CUBE 799-1699
You can choose what fits you best. A built-in display or expansion and more power. Let the buyer decide. That covers a better range than 3 overlapping AIO's, one of which ought to be dead and the other of which is 2 years past it's sell before date.
Come on Apple, this PB is looking for a roommate! Make headless expandable consumer machine at a CONSUMER price, will sell.
PS, Outsider, I actually liked you cube concept, not perfect, but I could see it being funky and cool in the way all of Apple's consumer products have a sort of stylish kitsch about them.
Amorph, new shape huh? Since the original cube, I keep think big and little cubes, pro and consumer, but who the El-cap has evolved into the best tower case design going, bar none, and it still looks good to my eyes, though not as elegant as the QS. hmm...
I think it definitely needs a standard AGP slot, but I'm not sure it NEEDS a PCI slot. Whatever it takes to get the price low and to differentiate it from the towers.</strong>
There is plenty to differentiate with the Power Macs. More than enough, even with G4 processors. Apple has just been very relunctant to do so. Maybe they know their business model can't make a profit or something, but differentiating is easy. Imagining systems that could be out today if only Apple made them:
Power Macs:
Dual 1 GHz G4 with 1 MB L3 per CPU
AGP slot with 64 MB graphics card
4 RAM slots for 2 GB RAM support
4 full length PCI slots with support for 12" cards
2 external bays for opticals or backup
4 internal full height 3.5" hard drive bays
Firewire 800
~1800 USD
Cube 2:
1 GHz G4 w/o L3
AGP slot with 32 MB graphics card, 7" length only
1 RAM slot for 1 GB RAM support
1 PCI slot, 7" card length only
1 external bay for optical
1 internal 1" height 3.5" hard drive bay
no Firewire 800
~900 USD
They have Firewire 400, Airport Extreme, USB and Bluetooth in common. This makes sense to me. The Power Mac will always be faster and smoother running due to dual G4s, L3 cache, and faster drives, while the cheaper cube 2 will drop the cost of entry into the Mac market nearly a $1000 less.
<strong>Anyway I also like the slab idea. I'd LOVE to rack-a-mac, slap 2 big Hdds in to and use it as an A/V server/HDD-DVD recorder. I wanted to say the bit about AGP8x or PCI-express too, you coulod build that chipset onto the Mobo but leave a slot open for future upgrades, even easy dual head (or tri/quad head) operation.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Funny how every once in a while we think along very similar lines. The first thing I thought when I saw BJNY's post was, "whoa, Marathon could build a 1U rack around that and audio pros would buy it by the truckload."
[quote]<strong>There's no bloody need for THREE AIO's in the lineup, not even 2. ONE is enough.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It would have to be the eMac, then, because the iMac LCD is not acceptable as a school computer for a number of reasons (LCD is fragile, computer can be knocked around too easily, etc.).
The iMac LCD and eMac are different enough to stick around - the former for home and some business use, the latter for education and budget-conscious customers.
I'm waiting for the old iMac to die.
[quote]<strong>Amorph, new shape huh? Since the original cube, I keep think big and little cubes, pro and consumer, but who the El-cap has evolved into the best tower case design going, bar none, and it still looks good to my eyes, though not as elegant as the QS. hmm...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not thinking of a new shape so much as a new twist on the Cube shape. Have it be horizontally oriented, cooled by the same basic tech used in the iMac and PowerBook, and have it open by the case sliding off the machine, rather than by flipping the machine over and sliding it out of the case. I like the idea of a PowerBook-style aluminum case, too. But it would still be a Cube: Small, elegant, quiet, powerful. And without the absurd profit margin that killed the first one.
My vision of the Cube wouldn't be cheap, but it wouldn't start at $1800 either. I'm thinking of it as remaining a professional machine.
The only viable Pro machine is a Power Mac. An expandable Cube is a Power Mac.
The only way the Cube would ever return is as a radically different concept, eg a stackable or modular computer. You have the core module, then expansion modules.
Why most people bring up the Cube is because somehow it would be radically cheaper than the Power Mac. This is fundamentally impossible, as giving the cube expansion capabilities is akin to turning it into a Power Mac.
The argument for a cheap, expandable Cube is dead, kaput, finished. It is torn apart in 30 seconds. It is purely wishful thinking.
Barto
I hope that one day we will see a cube reintroduced:
Pretty close to the original one in formfactor. Convection cooled and thus the optical drive has to be mounted vertically and the powersupply has to stay outside.
To solve the "grab-underneath-to-access-the-ports" problem they could make "MDD-syle-turbo-holes" - but keep them hidden on the back or maybe the side, please. ADC on the bottom because that's where the slot benches are.
Just my thoughts.
<strong>Why would you say that?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Possibly because I have a slightly more sophisticated view of real-world computing.
[quote]<strong>Games are the primary engine that drive consumer PC boxen. (Well, that and warez'd music). And on both scores Macs are way behind. This is the market Apple is targeting, no?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The real money in the global computer market is in cubicle workstations (to generalise massively, but you know the market I'm after): I'd hate to even think how many boxes the average corporation has, let alone government departments. Compared to that the consumer market is peanuts, particularly when you dial in licensing and the fact that corporations actually buy all their software rather than warezing it. Certainly I don't see lots of people sitting at a desk in an office downloading MP3s: they tend to be doing email, spreadsheets and word processing documents.
Apple's quite obviously shown it's after the business market with the XServe, and I think it's fairly obvious why.
[quote]<strong>Nobody needs a new machine for surfing the net or type up a word document. We already bought those gum drop machines 3 years ago.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Quite true, but there are several areas to consider here: first, many companies lease their hardware, which means it gets chopped every three or four years no matter what. Second, the Wintel cycle has ever-more-hungry software requiring ever-more-powerful hardware, which reinforces the need for upgrades. Lastly, Macs have traditionally been employed in graphics and video environments, where the speed of the machine is directly proportional to the amount of money you can make and the amount of creative freedom you have to try out ideas: you want to do more, you need to upgrade.
I regularly visit graphics houses that run 400MHz iMacs at reception and a couple of chunky Power Macs for serious Illustrator/Photoshop/QuarkXpress work, let alone the video houses with seriously pumped Avid-running Power Macs plugged into 200TB RAIDs and big f***-off video-capture/output cards.
For day-to-day WP/email/surfing/spreadsheet work, a modestly expandable machine is more than adequate, and a new Cube would fit that niche just perfectly.
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: Overhope ]</p>
- 8.5X8.5 cube
- G4 cribbed from 12ALUbook
- 1 fierwire (back)
- 2usb (back)
- 1 usb and 1 fire wire upfront under pop up cover
- choice of dvd/cd or combo drive slot loading
- positive pressure cooling (induction fan on bottom w/ one way valve, vents on top)
- modem and ethernet port
- VGA and DVI port
- bottom hinged flip down left side door (sort-a like powermac but with no hardware on it) exposes 3 ram slots (one with standers 256) and airport slot
- no pci slot to prevent powermac sales
- four rubber sphere feet to keep bottom of mac off table
- internal power supply
- option of radon or nvedia card
- fold down handle on top for carrying
- baseing at $899
Continued from my proposition :
let's say that this Cube is built with the mobo from the iMac/PowerBook 12 with one more thing : an AGP bus. How much that mobo would cost to apple ? $200 max. (it's still the double of a nForce2 mobo for a end user).
The aluminium case ? $100 max. also. A G4 867 without cache ? Again $150 max.
So this new cube could cost to Apple something like $450.
And they can sell it for $649. That's a pretty big margin ! +/- 30%
So now I'm on the Apple Web Store and configure a built-to-order (with Apple regular prices).
256 MB RAM $100
60 GB HD $100
Combo Drive $150
ATI 9000 Pro $250 because I have an ADC screen. (remember that the built-in graphic chip as only a VGA port... too bad).
That's $1249 without screen ! or $999 without the ATI 9000 !
And don't tell me it take an iMac sale: it's $1299 with a 15" LCD.
Sure the entry PowerMac will be cannibalized _ a little_. But remember that with the PM you've got AGP Card with ADC/DVI, PCI, Dual Optical, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800 and iLife included for $1499.
This new Cube is perfect for Business, School, Family (you know I need a PowerMac for me but for my wife or my little girl, 2 cube will be enough and good for my wallet).
I think I'm not alone on this one.
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The real money in the global computer market is in cubicle workstations (to generalise massively, but you know the market I'm after): I'd hate to even think how many boxes the average corporation has, let alone government departments. Compared to that the consumer market is peanuts, particularly when you dial in licensing and the fact that corporations actually buy all their software rather than warezing it.
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Fine. Then that should be the focus of Apple's marketing campaign(s). But it?s not. Is it? In fact, what little foothold they had in this market, (and here I include School/colleges/small graphics shops) is being quickly eroded by Dell. Maybe, that will change with the introductions of the 9xx series from IBM, but I really don?t see how, given Apple?s pricing adventures. Corporations generally don?t lust over uber designed boxes. Consumers do. Well, enough to keep Apple going for a while longer, I hope.
Edit:
In case I come across as overly harsh and critical, I say these things as a shareholder of AAPL stock. I want Apple to succeed.
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: zKillah ]</p>