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The Cube...

A

alxths

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 3, 2003
353
0
As I understand it, the cube was released in hopes of reaching a portion of the market that doesn't need the fastest processor, and would be willing ot sacrifice speed or a more compact size and no fans. And it failed. I think some people mentioned that price was a factor in the products demise... but wasn't it lowered and lowered when it wasn't selling?

I really think that they were on to something wiht the cube. How many people here don't even play games? Aren't you bothered by whirrrrrrring fans and a big clunky tower sitting on the table beside you? I think the cube would have been perfect for a lot of people... most of them don't realize it though.. tehre's some 'consumer-sense' that just tells them that if they're paying a certain price, then they should have a certain number of MHz... So they looked at the cube, looked at teh price, specs and made up their mind before they'd considered the product on a whole..

Do you think there's a market for this in the PC or Mac world today? Why do you think the cube didn't work, and how, do you think, could it work?
 
Cube?

Cube+LCD=iMac

Virtually silent, plenty of power, a superdrive, great GPU, sufficiant HD, aesthetically pleasing (very), and takes up the deskspace of a cube, and the iMac's monitor takes up no desk space.

BTW, how much did the cube cost? I think that an iMac with a 17" LCD is a better deal than a cube with an external 17" LCD
 
Exactly. The G4 iMac is what the cube should have been. And that's what it will be. The cube was a fantastic computer (and I bought one), but it just didn't work for most consumers, because they had to buy a monitor in addition to the computer: too expensive. The G4 iMac solves that, so don't expect to see the cube come back except as a limited edition item.

Second Coming of the Cube? Don't Hold Your Breath
 
I agree. The Cube back then was a mid-level computer, for those who wanted an LCD moniter but did not need the processing power of the PowerMacs.

Now that the iMac is has an LCD moniter and the eMac is the lowest model, there is almost no market for the Cube. The only type of people I could think of that would buy a Cube would be those who wanted a better/larger moniter or were wary of all-in-one systems.

Another reason that the Cube failed was that it was way overpriced. Even though the machine was very elegant (I happen to have one myself), it was costly even without the moniter, and the Rev. A didn't even come with a CD burner.
 
Yeah I guess the imac does sort of fill that void, but what I'm thinking for now would have significantyl lower specs than the imac... the imac does have a fan doesn't it? That's gotta go... I think the attached monitor really turns a lot of people off... It'd be great if there was something very small, that you could just stick in the corner of your desk or of the room and just forget about it... I guess once a kind of wireless video signal is popularized, this will become a much better thing..

When I look at the imac i see something that's sort of inbetween worlds. Too slow for games, and too much for general usage. I think something that's clearly on the lower end of the spectrum could be a great thing.
 
as i see it, the cube was an attempt to bridge the consumer and pro lines. it's got specs that suggested either a high-end home model, or a stripped-down pro model.

it was overpriced, but i think its real downfall is that they never figured out who its market was. it was too expensive for people who could make do with an imac, but it was either lacking a little under the hood or not expandable enough for the high-end user. does anyone recall who the cube was marketed to? i think it just never found its niche. which is unfortunate, because it definitely exists -- just try to buy one on eBay and compare the prices to any other computer from 2000/2001.

i think if they released a similar product today as a home media hub, it might do very well--it's compact, unobtrusive, and it's got enough juice to handle, say, streaming your MP3s house-wide and serving as your airport hub--and an updated model could also include some tivo-like capabilities. (iBox iBox iBox)

and the thing is, the cube's not so powerful as to be wasted if you just set it to those tasks -- it's not like buying a G5 solely to run iTunes and Snood.
 
I dont know about a cube, but I would love a 2" thick headless, keyboardless "desktop" powerbook. aka a cosmetically pleasing server with battery back up.

I cant believe it is that difficult to design. The basic design is already there ie if you turn a PB on its side with the cd drive at the bottom, you dont lose any accessibility to ports etc and only have to compensate for the venting on what is effectively the bottom edge. Make it twice as thick, and put the $1000 I paid for the screen on my current PB towards a big heatsink, extra slow turning fan, a larger and faster hard drive and a couple of G5 Powermac features to improve the basic spec of a Powerbook.

It would be like a LaCie hard drive - compact, quiet, slick, and works vertical or horizontal.

Market it to people like me who have a laptop and not a beefy desktop simply because they travel ie move "house" regularly, and use their laptop almost exclusively as a desktop. . Easy.:rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by alxths
Y the imac does have a fan doesn't it? That's gotta go... I think the attached monitor really turns a lot of people off... It'd be great if there was something very small, that you could just stick in the corner of your desk or of the room and just forget about it... I guess once a kind of wireless video signal is popularized, this will become a much better thing..

When I look at the imac i see something that's sort of inbetween worlds. Too slow for games, and too much for general usage. I think something that's clearly on the lower end of the spectrum could be a great thing.
Click to expand...


The IMac iMac is not too slow for games... I have a 17" 1.25GHz w/superdrive. I can do anything I want including gaming.

Yes the iMac has a fan but I rarely even notice it at all. The computer is EXTREMELY quiet.

The iMac is perfect... I can position the monitor any direction I want at anytime without scratching my precious desk or pulling on video cables. I can move it with my pinky and it stays exactly where I put it. There is one less power cable to plug in and no video cable to add to cable clutter. What more can you ask for.

Monitor not large enough??? Now they even have a 20 inch to satisfy the crowd who like a large monitor.

Also to add the iMac keeps the drive right there in front of you. I don't need to open a door on my desk or reach over. Hit the eject button and the tray opens right in front. (Its even put at just the right height to open over the keyboard if the space is tight.

The iMac is way too perfect for the general public. Good performance, great LCD, small footprint, little cable clutter, and great looks.

The solution is broader spectrum of performance for iMacs... not a cube. Keep the low end a 1GHz G4 and up to even a G5 when they begin to make them.
 
Originally posted by MIADolFan
Click to expand...

I wasn't criticizing the imac, but differentiating it from what i have in mind. It suits your needs perfectly--great. Some people, however, do not need all that it offers.
 
Cube...

I think the reason that the G4 Cube did not do well is because of the several design flaws. For example, the ports on the Cube are hard to reach and the Cube weighs 50LB so it is hard to move to gain access to the ports. Also the power button is touch sensative making it very easy to accidentally turn it off. Finally the casing of the Cube is known to crack. Another possible reason is the high price and lack of good marketing. And another possible reason is that the Cube was ahead of its time, and maybe it would have done better if released 1 to 2 years after it was first released.
Just a thought
 
I still think the Cube has a place in Apple's line up a notch below an eMac. Just take the same specs (or go even lower) and take out that monitor. So many people pass up Macs because they already have a perfectly good monitor and don't need a PowerMac. Sure it might bite into eMac and iMac sales but I think overall it will be a huge hit for Apple and would drive their sales up. Why worry about plush profit margins when you sell a zillion of them (a la Dell)?
 
Re: Cube...

Originally posted by MacGeek53
I think the reason that the G4 Cube did not do well is because of the several design flaws. For example, the ports on the Cube are hard to reach and the Cube weighs 50LB so it is hard to move to gain access to the ports. Also the power button is touch sensative making it very easy to accidentally turn it off. Finally the casing of the Cube is known to crack.
Click to expand...

the cube weighs about 15 pounds, not 50. and the ports are a bit out of the way, but i don't think they're significantly less accessable than your average tower model that's placed under a desk and against a wall, for instance. the case cracks are more like hairline flaws; it's not like your cube's housing is suddenly going to split in half and drop your cpu onto the table. it's a cosmetic defect at worst. now, the power switch... yeah, it's testy, but accidentally brushing against it only puts it to sleep -- the power switch is probably the most problematic of the flaws you mentioned.

all in all, i think it takes a lot more than a few design eccentricities to make an otherwise solid computer fail.

i think you're more on target with the price and marketing, and probably right about the cube being ahead of its time.
 
Oh my bad I guess I got my facts wrong on the weight, I didn't know if it would put it to sleep or turn it off so I just assumed it would turn it off. And yes I know that they aren't actual cracks.

But still point taken.
 
sorry, didn't mean to sound like i was correcting you about the cracks -- my point was just that as far as product-killing flaws go, these hairline cracks aren't major enough to account for a new product getting deep-sixed less than a year after it was released.

here's a theory: the imac killed the cube. with one fairly revolutionary desktop system only 2 years old and seeing new revs consistently, the apple market just didn't need another new form factor. at that point in time, the cube was essentially an extraneous model, marketed on looks rather than specs, and as such ended up falling between the cracks.

discuss.

extra credit: no apple product has ever sold on looks alone -- they've always had to build their aesthetic on a fundamental amount of technolust. true or false?
 
Re: Cube?

Originally posted by jeff.macaddict
Cube+LCD=iMac
Click to expand...

Not true at all! The Cube is a shrunken tower (Sawtooth). It is not like an iMac at all.

Cube:
1. Easily upgradable hard drive
2. Uses DIMM RAM (3, count 'em, THREE, user-fillable slots)
3. User-upgradable video card slot

The iMac is an AIO and comes from the closed-box heritage of the original Mac. The Cube is a tower and comes from the modular-Mac heritage of the Mac II.
 
What killed the cube was G4 stuck at 500 or was it 450 for a year. cube came to market but the towers didnt go anywhere so cube was loosing to them in expansion( pci, hard drives,zips et) and loosing to imac because imac had a monitor, same speed G3 and lower price. I think if the towers would have advanced by advance i mean motorola moving forward they could have slid the cube in between imac and tower. This is what killed the cube. Apple was competing with apple thanks to Motorolas no advancement. hence they started a crash program to get 2 cpu's in 1 powermac so they could still market Macs against the single but constantly moving faster Intel machines. I know all this because i really wanted a cube but when i was ready to buy they had just axed them. so i got a quicksilver which turned out to be a blessing. Motorola killed the cube. this is one reason i cant stand this company nor their G4 which is still stuck at 1.4 and has been for a year now.:mad:
 
Originally posted by sonofslim
...extra credit: no apple product has ever sold on looks alone -- they've always had to build their aesthetic on a fundamental amount of technolust. true or false?
Click to expand...

Hmmm, what about the 20th Anniversary Mac? That had very few technical merits as far as I know, except for an excellent sound system. It was 5x the price of Performas that were faster, from what I've heard. It didn't do too well though.

I could be wrong though.

Cubes go for around $1000 still, in Japan. Too expensive to add to my collection yet.
 
The G4 Cube is a legend, and a cult -- and I'm proud to celebrate the former, and be a member of the latter. It's one of the most elegant exercises in computers-as-interior-design that we've seen or will ever see. It pains me to think that some day I will have to replace mine with something ten times as powerful but not half as lovely.

As marketing, the Cube was a blunder. But as pure design, it was a triumph. All hail the Cube!
 
I think that the Cube was perfectly suited for productivity because it made almost no noise. Video and sound editors would appreciate a fanless computer with dual monitor support more than any office manager (which were presumably the original target audience).

Perhaps it was ahead of its time due to the limitations of the components that went into it. A modern Cube would be a lot more useful than the original due to the performance and size of a Serial ATA drive, the power of a G5 processor, bandwith of AGP 8X and all the great peripherals now available for USB 2.0, FW800, BlueTooth and WiFi.

Realistically an updated Cube with the latest and greatest components would still cost more than a low-end PowerMac, which most people would prefer for practical reasons (more drives, expandability, etc). Such a Cube would be now, as it was then, a niche Mac. I suspect that Apple cannot afford to waste resources on a Mac that would not make them a lot of money because with a relatively small market-share to begin with, all Macs are more or less niche computers.

Having said that, this is an anniversary year for Apple and in the past they have produced computers for such occasions.
 
i used to have a cube, i think that one of the main problems with the Cube, was the fact that it was not a dual processor. If it could have been a dual processor, then it would have made more sucess. Also, during the time the cube came out, it was when the really really fast Pentium 3's and celeron. But it was not the all time falure like some of my freinds beleive it to be, it was silent, and was fairly fast, though, not as fast as the G5 :cool:
 
Not a Failure??

I would just like to say Amen and I totally agree with the two replies before the most recent. However I do not agree with the reply posted by LnknPrkRawkr.
But it was not the all time falure like some of my freinds beleive it to be, it was silent, and was fairly fast, though, not as fast as the G5
Click to expand...
You seem to be saying this as if you know this for a fact. I don't think that you can say that the Cube was not a failure, but it depends on what you mean by "failure". If you are using the word failure meaning that something did not sell well and did not make the company money, than you really cannot say that the Cube was not a failure because it did not sell well. However If you are saying that the Cube was not a failure in another way than I might agree with you. Explain what you mean by failure.
 
Yes it depends...but it is my oppinion!

look, I feel that the G4 Cube was not a complete failure, because i hate the loud annoying fans on computers and this was a quiet self ventalated macintosh. This is the only reason i liked it. Other then that it was pretty much a failure in the sense it did not sell enough.
 
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