My colleagues and I spent the next 12 hours writing, so that the very second that Apple announced the Cube and a new palette of G3 iMacs , we could drop detailed stories on the web, as if we had known what was coming all along.
Because we did. Later on keynote day I got a chance to see the Cube in person for the first time. It was just as unusual as I had imagined. There are others. One of them is what you might call the ideal of the Black Box.
It was a dense eight-inch 20cm cube of technology, suspended in a lucite sheath. Its ambition is right in the name. The power of a Power Mac—a G4 processor, a vertical slot-loading optical drive, hard drive, RAM, video card, and an array of ports—was all packed into that tiny space.
The reason I finally changed the title was that it was becoming sort of a joke. And I don't want anything at Apple to become a joke. Is there anything about running a media giant that appeals to you?
Jobs: I was thinking of giving you a witty answer, like "Isn't that what I'm doing now? I'm a product person. I believe it's possible to express your feelings and your caring about things from your products, whether that product is a computer system or Toy Story 2. It's wonderful to make a pure expression of something and then make a million copies. Like the G4 Cube. There will be a million copies of this out there.
Levy: The G4 Cube reminds a lot of people that your previous company, Next, also made a cube-shaped machine. Jobs: Yeah, we did one before. Cubes are very efficient spaces. What makes this one [special] for me is not the fact that it's a cube but it's like a brain in a beaker.
It's just hanging from this perfectly clear, pristine crystal enclosure. That's what's so drop-dead about it. It's incredibly functional. The whole thing is perfect. Candice, your question is well justified. In terms of both specs and price, the Power Mac G4 Cube packed quite a punch. You had to buy your own monitor, too!
Despite all of this, however, the G4 Cube never appealed to more than a few hard-core Apple fans. The breathtaking design suffered its faults, though. That was the biggest problem Apple faced when launching the Cube—a computer so far out there in a land of generic beige boxes that it might as well have been an alien monolith perched on a crystal throne.
Sure, there are the open-minded among us who can look past conventional design and appreciate something truly unique. Apple has a habit of making devices that are beautiful only as long as you never touch them, and the Cube is high on that list.
Unfortunately for Apple, many consumers chose never to touch a G4 Cube at all. It was fanless and small. Only a few months after launch, industry analysts revealed that high-end Mac users were usually the ones springing for the Cube.
It seems that more affluent Mac fans were most willing to take a risk on an expensive, unconventional machine with limited configuration and upgrade options.
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