Return of The Cube. Could it work?
With the recent Mac Pro update, the base price of Apple's Pro model went up by $500. in Canada.
I've been thinking that's a lot of space between Apple's two headless lines of computers.
The price point for the Cube when it was announced in 2000 was U.S. $1799.
At the time, the Cube was $200. more than the entry-level price of the Power Mac, (US$1599.)
That's why the thing didn't sell. (In addition to the cracking plastics...)
Since you can't get a Mac Pro for less than US$2499. today, could Apple bring back a "special version" of the Cube based on the most-requested features for the Mini? (faster replaceable drives and RAM etc.)
In the past, the answer would be no. But Apple ditched the four-product quadrant awhile back and now actively makes niche lines like the MacBook Air.
If Apple were to create a single-model version of the Cube in 2009, what would it need to succeed?
Given that plastic is out and aluminum and glass are in, what should it look like?
I've been thinking that's a lot of space between Apple's two headless lines of computers.
The price point for the Cube when it was announced in 2000 was U.S. $1799.
At the time, the Cube was $200. more than the entry-level price of the Power Mac, (US$1599.)
That's why the thing didn't sell. (In addition to the cracking plastics...)
Since you can't get a Mac Pro for less than US$2499. today, could Apple bring back a "special version" of the Cube based on the most-requested features for the Mini? (faster replaceable drives and RAM etc.)
In the past, the answer would be no. But Apple ditched the four-product quadrant awhile back and now actively makes niche lines like the MacBook Air.
If Apple were to create a single-model version of the Cube in 2009, what would it need to succeed?
Given that plastic is out and aluminum and glass are in, what should it look like?
Comments
Mac Pro
- 3GB RAM (4 slots; 8GB max; 16GB really)
- 4 SATA 3Gb HD bays
- 2 Optical bays
- Quad processor Xeon 3500 Nehalem (2.66GHz)
- 4 PCI Express slots (2 x16, 2 x4)
- $2499
Mac
- 3GB RAM (3 slots; 6GB max; 12GB really)
- 1 or 2 SATA 3Gb HD bays
- 1 Optical bay
- Quad processor Core i7 Nehalem (2.66GHz)
- 2 PCI Express slots (1 x16, 1 x4)
- $1699
Most shops and people would go for the Mac over the Mac Pro. They would really have to drop the low end Mac Pro line or make it more valuable. Like give it 6 memory slots. I would not even bother giving the Mac Penryn processor and chipset.
So what would it need to succeed?
Fix the low end Mac Pro (it's weak memory configuration) or drop it altogether.
Price it right. Less than $1800.
Give it enough expandability for pros on a budget. Graphics card options via PCI Express, and an empty PCI Express slot for future tech like USB 3, Firewire 3200, eSATA, etc.
What would it look like?
Like a mini Mac Pro, but with a 50/50 aluminum and plastic mix. The sides of a Mac Pro but with a front grill, top, bottom and back made of the same black matte plastic of the iMac.
Integrated Power Supply, 500 watts at least.
Front ports with audio out, 1 USB and 1 Firewire.
To protect Mac Pro sales, I doubt Apple would include PCI slots other than the graphics card.
Then to that I say, why bother with another Mac. You got the mini and the iMac. Drop the price of the low-end, rip-off, quad Mac Pro.
The point is moot anyway. With the introduction of the specific quad processor tray on the low end Mac Pro, and pricing it like they did, they killed any hope of having an in between Mac.
mini / iMac / Mac Pro is the line up for the foreseeable future.
One complete generation behind, with PCI slots, PCI Express x16 single slot won't cramp the style of any Mac Pro and will shut up those of us who don't want an iMac or a Mac mini.
Only possible if the Cube isn't an Core i7 variant. It has to be a Core2Duo/QuadCore Duo.
One complete generation behind, with PCI slots, PCI Express x16 single slot won't cramp the style of any Mac Pro and will shut up those of us who don't want an iMac or a Mac mini.
I don't think they would bring out a new line with old tech. it would be new technology. one angle I forgot was the Core i5 due out soon. It has DDR3 dual-channel, and enough PCI Express lanes for a x16 and a x4 slot. Processors will still be 'new' but with performance between the Penryn and Core i7. I see that as a possibility.
Apple should have retired the mini and introduced a CUBE 2. Not a replica. But mini tower size. Like a shuttle. By making their macs so small and thin, apple is limiting its potential. They've run into a corner and have nowhere to go.
Exactly. A mini is a desktop, so by definition, it's meant to live on the desktop; and not be moved willy nilly. There is no reason for it to be so small. Especially how they market it. They don't market it as a entertainment system that goes in a cabinet. Then the small size would make sense. It's just a basic Mac, a switcher's Mac, and a home computer. It could be 4 times the size and still smaller than anything out in the PC world, but that would allow it to be faster, hold more storage, and offer some expandability. The mini is popular because there is no competition for it. It's the only low priced headless desktop that runs MacOS.
At the beginning of next year, we will get quad core mobile chips and they scale to 6-core by the end of 2010 - Intel cancelled some of the 45nm Core i5 chips because of this. Right now, we have 9400M graphics, which perform very well and next year, we can probably expect an improvement on it.
Once you take into consideration all these things, what would a cube really give you? Right now it gives us Core 2 Quad, which is great as Apple have no quad core under £1800 or so. But in just over a year, that benefit is practically gone so Apple would likely just have to kill it off again.
With the last Mini, I desperately wanted a cube and a quad core. With my new Mini with 4GB Ram, 7200 rpm hard drive and 9400M, not so much. Sure the CPU is a little slow but in just over a year, the quad core chips will make up for that. They will start out as dual core but hyoer-threaded so they show up as 4. This is a very capable consumer desktop.
I've tested out the current Mini on some modern games and it performs very well. 3D modelling, it can cope with over 5 million polygons in Zbrush and around 1 million polys per scene in a standard 3D app - 100k polys per object, which it's not a good idea to exceed anyway. Photoshop, it can deal with 10k images easily and opens large HDR files in seconds as well as write large files out in seconds too.
A quad cube would have the edge by having 2 extra CPU cores but you can buy/build a Core i7 PC if you need to render things plus, OpenCL is going to change a few things regarding CPU intensive tasks.
As time goes on, a larger desktop becomes less and less necessary and I have a feeling that they are too late for the cube. I know that right now, it makes sense but a product line should have a future too.
At the beginning of next year, we will get quad core mobile chips and they scale to 6-core by the end of 2010 - Intel cancelled some of the 45nm Core i5 chips because of this. Right now, we have 9400M graphics, which perform very well and next year, we can probably expect an improvement on it.
Once you take into consideration all these things, what would a cube really give you? Right now it gives us Core 2 Quad, which is great as Apple have no quad core under £1800 or so. But in just over a year, that benefit is practically gone so Apple would likely just have to kill it off again.
With the last Mini, I desperately wanted a cube and a quad core. With my new Mini with 4GB Ram, 7200 rpm hard drive and 9400M, not so much. Sure the CPU is a little slow but in just over a year, the quad core chips will make up for that. They will start out as dual core but hyoer-threaded so they show up as 4. This is a very capable consumer desktop.
I've tested out the current Mini on some modern games and it performs very well. 3D modelling, it can cope with over 5 million polygons in Zbrush and around 1 million polys per scene in a standard 3D app - 100k polys per object, which it's not a good idea to exceed anyway. Photoshop, it can deal with 10k images easily and opens large HDR files in seconds as well as write large files out in seconds too.
A quad cube would have the edge by having 2 extra CPU cores but you can buy/build a Core i7 PC if you need to render things plus, OpenCL is going to change a few things regarding CPU intensive tasks.
Yah, and if I want a better gaming rig I can get a reasonable one for around $700 to hide somewhere in addition to my $600+ mini for less than the probable cost of a cube. Then not bother bootcamping.
Mostly though my mini is good enough that I probably wont bother. I DO wish they had used one of the USB ports as a dual USB/eSATA port but that's about it.
As time goes on, a larger desktop becomes less and less necessary and I have a feeling that they are too late for the cube. I know that right now, it makes sense but a product line should have a future too.
At the beginning of next year, we will get quad core mobile chips and they scale to 6-core by the end of 2010 - Intel cancelled some of the 45nm Core i5 chips because of this. Right now, we have 9400M graphics, which perform very well and next year, we can probably expect an improvement on it.
Once you take into consideration all these things, what would a cube really give you? Right now it gives us Core 2 Quad, which is great as Apple have no quad core under £1800 or so. But in just over a year, that benefit is practically gone so Apple would likely just have to kill it off again.
With the last Mini, I desperately wanted a cube and a quad core. With my new Mini with 4GB Ram, 7200 rpm hard drive and 9400M, not so much. Sure the CPU is a little slow but in just over a year, the quad core chips will make up for that. They will start out as dual core but hyoer-threaded so they show up as 4. This is a very capable consumer desktop.
I've tested out the current Mini on some modern games and it performs very well. 3D modelling, it can cope with over 5 million polygons in Zbrush and around 1 million polys per scene in a standard 3D app - 100k polys per object, which it's not a good idea to exceed anyway. Photoshop, it can deal with 10k images easily and opens large HDR files in seconds as well as write large files out in seconds too.
A quad cube would have the edge by having 2 extra CPU cores but you can buy/build a Core i7 PC if you need to render things plus, OpenCL is going to change a few things regarding CPU intensive tasks.
Marvin, you don't have to apologize for wanting a fast Mac. With all the modifications to your mini, what did you actually get for your money? Looks like to me all you bought was a motherboard, cpu and enclosure.
Apple screwed this last update up as far as I'm concerned. Why not a a quad core iMac? Why not fast dual core minis? Hell 2.0 ghz C2 duos were fast 2 years ago, not now.
Maybe they're 'fast enough' for the stuff you do today, but what about tomorrow? It puzzles me how people are pumped about GC and open cl in SL and yet Apple makes exactly one Mac that'll be capable of taking full advantage of these features when its released. Is GC a big fraud? Is it *not* going to be able to leverage the power of multi core cpus?
The mini reminds me of a deprived step child whose parents takes him/her to MacDonalds, buys him a happy meal and then brags about what great parents they are. The mini update only looks good because we've been conditioned to expect so little.
With today's quite hot CPUs, I think it woud be impossible to just have convection cooling. You'd need a couple of fans in there.
At which point the old cube design doesn't really offer any huge advantage over the Mac mini.
Sure you could fit regular DIMMs and a 3 1/2" HD. But as has been argued before the days of big HDs are numbered with 2 1/2" SSDs advancing fast and SO-DIMMs aren't a huge drawback either.
Which basically makes the former cube design redundant. Get a mini!
However,
there might be a chance for a slightly larger cube design.
One that can fit:
- 2 large 3 1/2" HDs
- 1 standard size DVD or Blu-Ray drive
- 6 RAM slots
- 1 large GPU like the ATI 4780
If Apple could fit that into a slightly larger cube shape, I can imagine that this might attract a few buyers.
It would however kill the singe CPU Mac Pro.
But that's OK, it is supposed to replace it.
Although, as Marvin said, just these specs might not actually have a long future.
Yet Apple could turn this machine into a home server / stereo of sorts that's also a dock for iPods, iPhones and iTablets has decent stereo speakers and HDMI ports.
I wouldn't call it 'Media PC' as it would be much more. It's a NAS, Time Machine, Apple TV, iTunes station, Blu-Ray player and Mac all in one.
Marvin, you don't have to apologize for wanting a fast Mac. With all the modifications to your mini, what did you actually get for your money? Looks like to me all you bought was a motherboard, cpu and enclosure.
Apple screwed this last update up as far as I'm concerned. Why not a a quad core iMac? Why not fast dual core minis? Hell 2.0 ghz C2 duos were fast 2 years ago, not now.
It all follows from Apple skipping the quad core mobile penryns. So without it, the Mini has to stay slow.
Marvin (and I) got a cheap desktop mac for under $800. I mean come on...$56 for memory and $80 for a 320GB 7200 drive is hardly some uber upgrade that outweighs the rest of the system.
The mini reminds me of a deprived step child whose parents takes him/her to MacDonalds, buys him a happy meal and then brags about what great parents they are. The mini update only looks good because we've been conditioned to expect so little.
The mini is closest in performance to the iMac in a very long time. Mostly because the current gen iMacs are waiting for Nehalem. In an ideal world when the iMacs bump up to dual/quad Nehalems the mini's get bumped to faster Penryns. Not too likely though but TODAY, the mini's represent a good bang for the buck within the Apple desktop lineup.
Marvin, you don't have to apologize for wanting a fast Mac. With all the modifications to your mini, what did you actually get for your money? Looks like to me all you bought was a motherboard, cpu and enclosure
I just upgraded the RAM and HDD but that's all that's needed to make it a decent performing machine. I am disappointed they didn't move to the Core 2 Quad chips in some models - it probably wouldn't have fit in a Mini - but I think I got a decent machine for the money.
Comparing a current PC tower, I could have bought a 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad with 4GB Ram, 7200 rpm drive and average graphics card for about £450-500 without a display. The Mini I got for £580 with dual 2GHz, 4GB Ram, 7200 rpm drive and 9400M. So for maybe £100 less, I could have had a machine with over twice the CPU performance and more drive space but I personally don't need the extra storage and the machine would also be much bigger.
Maybe they're 'fast enough' for the stuff you do today, but what about tomorrow? It puzzles me how people are pumped about GC and open cl in SL and yet Apple makes exactly one Mac that'll be capable of taking full advantage of these features when its released. Is GC a big fraud? Is it *not* going to be able to leverage the power of multi core cpus?
Every Intel Mac except the ones with GMA chips and X1600s have a minimum of 16 GPU cores and will be able to benefit from OpenCL. If GC is only for managing CPU cores then it is largely worthless on all but one model in the lineup but it would only really apply to 8-core machines anyway or quad cores with hyper-threading as this is when typical threading tends to break down. Next year, the addition will be worth it for the new models in the rest of the lineup. GC isn't as important as OpenCL anyway.
The mini reminds me of a deprived step child whose parents takes him/her to MacDonalds, buys him a happy meal and then brags about what great parents they are. The mini update only looks good because we've been conditioned to expect so little.
To some extent this is true but other than the CPU, what problems does it have? You trade the CPU speed for the size and quietness.
If they had used a Core 2 Quad, the machine would be just over double the speed for rendering tasks. For anything else, there's not much difference that you would notice.
I use a massive aluminium G5 quad 2.5 at work and besides raw rendering, my Mini at home feels the same when using it. Comparing the sizes (1/36th - you would fit 30 actual Minis in the same space), weight (1/13th) and cost (1/5th), the Mini is a great value machine. The new Mac Pros are cheaper so the cost is around 1/3rd but it's still decent value.
Does this mean I wouldn't have bought a Cube if they offered one? No, it doesn't. I would have paid more for the quad because they load balance better and keep the machine running cooler when doing average tasks and have double the raw CPU performance. But I'm content that my current Mini will tide me over to next year when quad core mobile chips come out and OpenCL has shown its advantages. As I say, by then the need for a larger machine will be far less significant.
I don't think they would bring out a new line with old tech. it would be new technology. one angle I forgot was the Core i5 due out soon. It has DDR3 dual-channel, and enough PCI Express lanes for a x16 and a x4 slot. Processors will still be 'new' but with performance between the Penryn and Core i7. I see that as a possibility.
The iMac must have old tech.
Throw in the E8700. Oh wait! It's not out yet. You're not going to see a Mid-tower, not Mac Pro use the same damn CPU class as the Mac Pro.
It all follows from Apple skipping the quad core mobile penryns. So without it, the Mini has to stay slow.
Marvin (and I) got a cheap desktop mac for under $800. I mean come on...$56 for memory and $80 for a 320GB 7200 drive is hardly some uber upgrade that outweighs the rest of the system.
Without a keyboard, mouse and monitor. You've got one and I don't, but from where I'm sitting it doesn't look like a great value to me. I've got a crap display that I'd have to replace. The keyboard and mouse are the only items I could recycle if I were to get a mini. Its not that appealing given that it needs more RAM and a faster HDD to provide decent performance.
Does this mean I wouldn't have bought a Cube if they offered one? No, it doesn't. I would have paid more for the quad because they load balance better and keep the machine running cooler when doing average tasks and have double the raw CPU performance. But I'm content that my current Mini will tide me over to next year when quad core mobile chips come out and OpenCL has shown its advantages. As I say, by then the need for a larger machine will be far less significant.
Well I hope it works out for you and Vinea.
It really feels like you've given the mini a tepid endorsement and I don't blame you. Its limitations aren't your fault.
Without a keyboard, mouse and monitor. You've got one and I don't, but from where I'm sitting it doesn't look like a great value to me. I've got a crap display that I'd have to replace. The keyboard and mouse are the only items I could recycle if I were to get a mini. Its not that appealing given that it needs more RAM and a faster HDD to provide decent performance.
It used to be a lot worse. Today, it's a better deal than either of the low end iMacs.
Today:
Mini 2.0Ghz $600
7200 WD Scorpio Black 320GB HDD $70
4GB RAM $50
Apple Keyboard $50
Logitech VX Nano Wireless Laser Mouse $50
Dell Ultrasharp 2707WFP 27" Refurb $500 OR Dell SP2309W 23" $300
$1120 23" 2048x1152 TN Panel w/HDMI and DVI
$1220 27" 1920x1200 SPVA Panel (Refurb)
2.66Ghz iMac
2GB RAM
320GB HDD.
Apple keyboard and Mighty Mouse (ugh).
$1250 20" 1680x1050 TN Panel (4GB RAM Upgrade from Newegg)
$1500 24" 1920x1200 TN Panel (4GB RAM, 640GB HDD)
Bang for the buck wise, the mini is better than the two low end iMacs. Especially if you knock $100 for keyboard and mouse.
Personally I'd get the Dell UltraSharp 2709 ($629 NEW) over the Dell UltraSharp 2707 Refurb because it comes with HDMI AND DisplayPort inputs.
$1350 27" 1920x1200 SPVA Panel w/Display Port (NEW)
Hell, I can go dual 23" for $1450.
Yah, I can't go to 8GB RAM and I lose 0.66Ghz of CPU but any of those monitors are better than either of the 20" or 24" iMac monitors...and I get to use them again with my next Mini or as small TVs.
With the extra space avaible Apple could make some cost saving with componet selection.