I'm betting around 70% of the members here are like me, and probably don't have much flat surface in our offices/ kitchen tables/ hall tables with nothing on it; ie, clutter!
When I saw the first photo of the Mac Cube, and the location of the cooling vents, I immediately thought "That thing's gonna overheat as soon as anyone places a book, magazine, CD case or sammich on top of it, even if it's "temporary". 😁
Did you ever own a PowerMac G4 Cube? If so did you use it regularly and did it ever suffer from overheating?
Imho the above post could be very misleading to many.
The PowerMac G4 Cube did get some bad press and although it was a commercial failure it's true to say that it wasn't due to overheating problems.
Having been a long term user and frequented several dedicated Mac Cube forums in the USA and also in different countries/languages I cannot recall any posts where users suffered from overheating with the baseline 450MHz processor nor the higher-end 500 MHz processor model. Indeed in spite of being passively cooled with heat dissipated via a grille at the top of the case, this was very efficient at keeping the temperatures within sensible limits.
My experience proves this with the first G4 Cube I purchased from a user on the Cote d'Azur of France, a region noted for relatively high ambient temperatures. The photos of the Cube in the ad showed it with several magazines placed on top partially covered the cooling vents. I queried this with the seller assuming that the Cube was in a storage area and no longer in use, and was surprised to hear that the Cube was in constant use as a Home Server. This worried me a little so I offered a lower bid which was accepted.
On receipt to check the overall condition I removed the inner cube assembly from it's striking polycarbonate housing, and noted that there was some minor oxydation on the metal surfaces within the inner housing and assumed this was due to higher temperatures than normal having seen extensive use with the top air cooling grill obstructed. Nevertheless the Cube performed faultlessly and indeed still does after a clean install of OSX 10.4 Tiger.
Since then I've purchased 2 other G4 Cubes which have never experienced any overheating.
A later upgraded Cube I acquired had a 1.25GHz CPU and Nvidia GeForce3 Video card and an essential interior fan installed.
So it's true to say that overseen by Steve Jobs and Jony Ives, the G4 Cube's basic design allowed for efficient passive cooling, which contributed to its stable operation.
