PowerMac Cube redux
I made some pics and posted them on my once defunct site.
<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/mac/outsider/home.html" target="_blank">http://www.angelfire.com/mac/outsider/home.html</a>
Check them out, I also listed some details. My target pricepoints are $999, $1199 and $1399
G4 1GHz, 256MB, 60GB, Combo drive, GF4 MX 32MB
G4 1.2GHz, 256MB, 80GB, Combo drive, Radeon 9000 64MB
G4 1.2GHz, 512MB, 100GB, Super drive, Radeon 9000 64MB
What do you think? Also I am up for posting people's ideas if they email them to me. I have 20MB to burn on the site
<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/mac/outsider/home.html" target="_blank">http://www.angelfire.com/mac/outsider/home.html</a>
Check them out, I also listed some details. My target pricepoints are $999, $1199 and $1399
G4 1GHz, 256MB, 60GB, Combo drive, GF4 MX 32MB
G4 1.2GHz, 256MB, 80GB, Combo drive, Radeon 9000 64MB
G4 1.2GHz, 512MB, 100GB, Super drive, Radeon 9000 64MB
What do you think? Also I am up for posting people's ideas if they email them to me. I have 20MB to burn on the site
Comments
much of what makes the cube elegant is how it is not just a miniature tower. What makes it bad is where design conflicts with functionality like the "toaster" cd-slot, and the "ops, i did it again!" too easy to turn off, power-button.
But I don't think I'm sure about a 'power'Mac redux.
I still think it was wrongly positioned.
The materials were too expensive and superfluous. (The 'suspended in air' acrylic skirt was a complete waste of space and expensive. Trim that clear crap off and give it bloody white rubber feet...)
The chrome grill at the top gave the unfortunate 'toaster' nickname. Gotta be pricey too. Tempting to pour liquid in or a pencil or something falling into it. The 'vent' should have been on the back!
The brick adapter..? Nope. Should be inside the computer.
I think they made it slightly too small for industry standard components.
A 9 or 10 inch cube would have been fine. Cheap white plastic. Front loading CD/DVD drive. Discreet 'carry' latch, handle, grip/whatever. Great 'Lan' party gaming machine.
To me, the 'iCube' is: ideal 'Switcher'/Dell crippler.
It's: Cheap. 10 inch white plastic box. Apple logo slapped on front. Rubber feet. 1 gig G3. 256 megs of Ram. barebone everything else. Firewire 400/usb 1 port. Integrated Geforce2mx graphics.
A capable 'X' machine. iBook £795? iCube £595 and £495. Ideal 'Switch' machine. Reduces the cost of entry to 'X'. Play great games. Can do e:mail and other stuff.
Not cutting edge. Looks kinda cute for skinflints/small office/edu' machine. Shelf life of a couple of years.
If Apple are making profits off a £795 iBook laptop (which offers more oomph than the iBook we bought last Christmas...) then Apple can sell and make profit off a £595/£495 iCube.
Bundle with AppleWorks and iLife! And a 'discount' combi deal with the iPod would make a nice 'deal' for promos!
After the price drops I've seen in the last two months...I KNOW Apple can be aggressive on price. And if they want to hold onto what's left of their Edu' market or really get growth heading to 10%? They must adopt the consumer game. Go for the short term jugular. There's plenty of 'it'll do' people out there. They make up alot of that 'other' 97%.
Lemon Bon Bon
[ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
I think that would make a mighty fine comsumer computer.
That's why I was waiting before, and that's what was missing (IMHO) in the first go.
I thought of it with ease of production in mind. Make it inexpensive but small. It needed to fulfill certain things for that.
1.Internal power supply
2. Normal active cooling instead of elaborate passive cooling schemes.
3. Use standard size CD drives that insertfrom the front and normal sized hard drives.
4. Ability to accept normal AGP and PCI (the original Cube made the mistake of requiring special sized AGP cards)
How about this. A new "cube" that uses some of the case ideas from the AlPowerBooks?
Cheap, single fast G4, agp, pci, vga, dvi, fw800, usb2, audio in/out, bluetooth. $1000.
[ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Scott ]</p>
<strong>I'm with Lemon Bon Bon.
How about this. A new "cube" that uses some of the case ideas from the AlPowerBooks?
Cheap, single fast G4, agp, pci, vga, dvi, fw800, usb2, audio in/out, bluetooth. $1000.
[ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Scott ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Hey, you just described my machine!
edit: I think "Cube" has too many bad connotations. I'm changing the name of the title.
[ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Outsider ]</p>
<strong>I like the design, sans the feet. Price and features also seem reasonable.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Feet are the best part!
All the engineering and design stuff Apple has learned from the original G4 Cube, the domed LCD iMac and the super-thin PowerBooks could be brought to the table on this.
It would indeed be cool to buy a pretty honkin' G4-based system in the $600-800 range with all the standard I/O and all.
And to go with it, I'd love to see Apple update the design they used a few years ago for those early Apple flat-screen monitors. They had one that came on a pedestal sort of thing, BUT could also be removed and simply set on a desk, propped up by a picture frame type of "kickstand" in the back. You get that awesome choice: static and flat on the desk like a picture, OR (when on the pedestal) full height, tilt and swivel mobility.
Both cube and display in glossy white and on the Cube have the power switch ON THE FRONT, along with one USB port, one FireWire one and a headphone jack.
If the Mac is the center of the whole "digital hub" thing, it gets REALLY annoying to (especially on the LCD iMac and the towers) to always have to fumble around back for the USB and Firewire ports.
You could split them up: if the Cube came with 3 USB ports (like the LCD iMac does), put 2 on the back for scanners, inkjets, etc., but stick that remaining one on the front for digital camera transfers and stuff. Same with Firewire: 2 on board? Fine: one in back (for permanent, always-connected devices) and one in front for digital camcorders and the iPod.
Simple. And a headphone jack too.
I'm convinced Apple could - in all their recent history of cool, luscious design - make a "3 ports on the front" type of thing attractive and not as ugly as we've all seen in implemented on other computers. Either recessed in a bit or hidden by a little sliding door or something.
It can be done.
Chrome Apple logo on front, glossy white, sleek, rounded corners, etc.
Take the iBook and a G4 Cube and put it into a blender and see what happens.
But for all you others, continue with the critique! I would like to make some modifications.
I forgot how many pop-ups there were in Angelfire. Can't wait to get home to my Mac where Safari would block their obtrusive a**!
[ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Rhumgod ]</p>
<hr></blockquote>
Something like that!
Lemon Bon Bon
The Cube, the laptops and the iMacs all work as silently as they do because all of the variables are known. There is very little or no internal expandability. To flip the coin, any machine with internal expandability will either have to go through serious contortions to be silent, or it will have to ship with the caveat that the user will have to be careful not to put too hot a card into it. There is no way Apple would attempt the latter (although many PC makers do), so that leaves the former. The PowerMacs are as loud as they are for a reason (I'm not referring to the first-gen MDDs, which were much louder than they needed to be for various reasons, but to the others).
So, if a small, silent machine is what is most important, then you will want something with the approximate expandability of the Cube. (Remember, FW1600, FW3200 and kernel-level clustering are imminent, so this is not as restrictive as it once was.)
If what you want is a not-quite PowerMac, then you'll have to live with a certain amount more size and noise.
Also, remember that a full-size PCI or AGP slot is 12" deep. If you really want your graphics card options to be wide open, you need to account for beasts like the GeForce FX (which doesn't even fit in an AGP slot!). Otherwise, it's a matter of how much you're willing to compromise for size, quiet and cost.
<strong>There needs to be some settling on exactly what features are desirable.
The Cube, the laptops and the iMacs all work as silently as they do because all of the variables are known. There is very little or no internal expandability. To flip the coin, any machine with internal expandability will either have to go through serious contortions to be silent, or it will have to ship with the caveat that the user will have to be careful not to put too hot a card into it. There is no way Apple would attempt the latter (although many PC makers do), so that leaves the former. The PowerMacs are as loud as they are for a reason (I'm not referring to the first-gen MDDs, which were much louder than they needed to be for various reasons, but to the others).
So, if a small, silent machine is what is most important, then you will want something with the approximate expandability of the Cube. (Remember, FW1600, FW3200 and kernel-level clustering are imminent, so this is not as restrictive as it once was.)
If what you want is a not-quite PowerMac, then you'll have to live with a certain amount more size and noise.
Also, remember that a full-size PCI or AGP slot is 12" deep. If you really want your graphics card options to be wide open, you need to account for beasts like the GeForce FX (which doesn't even fit in an AGP slot!). Otherwise, it's a matter of how much you're willing to compromise for size, quiet and cost.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Good points Amorph. People will just limit themselves to AGP and PCI cards that are smaller than 8 inches or so. Most are, but beasts like the FX are quite large. I don't see much 12" PCI anymore, and if you need PCI cards that long, the PowerMac is more of a machine for you.
After some thinking, is there really a need for PCI in a lowend machine? Maybe not. iMac users have gotten by with out them. AGP certainly is useful for future upgrades but with Firewire 800 and most things built into the motherboard, there is little need for a real PCI slot. Maybe a Type III PC-card slot? They're small and pretty standard, and opens up an upgrade market for the machines.
As far as cooling goes, 2 main areas need attention. By bringing the power supply in the case, you need to get rid of the heat it produces actively, with a fan. Secondly, the CPU is the second mail cuplit for case heat. A rear fan blowing out heat through the heatsink will remove heat on the lower part of the case keeping things nice and cool.
<strong>
As far as cooling goes, 2 main areas need attention. By bringing the power supply in the case, you need to get rid of the heat it produces actively, with a fan. Secondly, the CPU is the second mail cuplit for case heat. A rear fan blowing out heat through the heatsink will remove heat on the lower part of the case keeping things nice and cool.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually, HDDs and SuperDrives are both major heat generators, and if you want an AGP slot (whether open, or basically fixed like the Cube's) then so is the graphics card.
If you have an open AGP slot, you have to engineer for the hottest graphics card you can think of or run the risk of releasing a machine that will be fried by the first FPS addict to stick some fire-breathing video card into the case.
Also, keep in mind that if this is aimed at Apple's traditional base of professionals then the primary consumer of the video card will be Quartz. Most of the apps that Macs run professionally have little to no need for 3D acceleration of any kind. If it's aimed somewhere else then that requirement may change, but the 2D professional market is a huge one for Apple, and I can easily see them snapping up a small, quiet workstation without the Cube's ostentatious premium. And, perhaps, without an open AGP slot.
[ 02-01-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
Here's what I mean... a friend of my brother has a blueberry iMac DV and the ethernet port has recently died. Because of the dead ethernet port, and because of the complete lack of internal expansion, the computer became essentially worthless to someone who wants to connect through anything other than a modem. I wouldn't want the ethernet port or anything else on my iBook to die... which is why I am still a bit unhappy about the lack of a PC card slot. I suppose that is why one purchases AppleCare, but the iMac would have been past its warranty anyway.
BTW, it looks like an awesome design, actually somewhat similar to a certain Sony desktop a friend of mine has, but shorter.