Slashdot Mirror
Pictures Of New Apple Cube?
Margin Walker writes "AppleInsider doesn't seem to be scared of Apple's legion of legal representation. They've posted photos of the G4 Cube and nifty new CRT and flat-screen displays." The site is pretty hosed, so if some folks could get some mirrors up, that'd be bitchin'.
Update: 07/19 12:11 AM by CT : The Mac Junkie has mirrors of the pics, and claims that
they are frauds along with some good arguments to back it up. Update: 07/19 01:27 PM by CT : Apple Legal shut both of them down with Cease & Desist orders. Mirrors are all over the place.
Did you read the MacJunkie article? Look at the screws on the top in both pictures. In the front-on view, there are two dark screws and in the corner-perspective view, there are 3 white/clear ones. While Apple might just actually be showing off a new cube, those are not the pictures.
I also loved the 15" Apple Studio Display from the site. Funny how it looks identical to the 22" Apple Studio Display. "But it's smaller! No, really, it is!"
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
a) You shouldn't have leaked it. If I hand a stranger a bag of money to hold, its academic whether or not it's his fault for running off with it. In the same sense, if you allow proprietary/confidential information to get out, it's pretty silly to blame the sites that received it for posting it. Some would argue that information ceases to be proprietary if you fail to take appropriate measures to protect it.
No arguments from me on this one. I didn't leak it, and if I ever catch the *&^&%-er who did, I'll tear their thieving arms off quicker than you can say "hot grits". But I don't believe that the immoral action of one disloyal employee should prevent a company from seeking to protect its property, intellectual or otherwise.
b) You should have patented/trademarked it earlier. See argument above. If you build your house on a fault, don't blame the earth for moving when an earthquake knocks it down - blame yourself for not buying insurance BEFORE it happens.
Again, this is a good point. Unfortunately, the legal process of filing these things is often slow, and the design and production process is often very "deadline intensive", if you know what I mean. Sometimes its just not possible to get everything done in the ideal fashion.
Sailing over the event horizon
One thing that lends credibility to the general idea of a cube-shaped server from Apple: Remember the NeXT Cube? Wasn't that Jobs's? :)
11*43+456^2
You're right that most software does the conversion, but it doesn't have to pull that data from the DVD disk or process it in any way, it just says, "next frame, next frame, next frame, play the last frame again, next frame".
So you do wind up with it being 20%+ less intensive on the disks and processor to play film vs. video content.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Yeah i agree competely .. that grate on the top looks very retro. Im dont care much for designed computers myself - i prefer my computers rackmounted and tucked away in another room - but this mac cube thing looks really cool.
a good place to see what the fuss is about is right here: http://www.angelfire.com/md/nny/ ... no illegal "linking" in this post. i can tell people where an image can be found... right??
~clearcutting prevents forrest fires
I remember this too, I first saw it in PC Magazine. I think that would have been cool to have sitting on my desk :)
Playing MP3 isn't that much different - for example my computer uses much more CPU power (sometimes near 10%) playing MP3 now that I have SB Live instead of SB 64 I had earlier - but it's not because SB Live been worser but because it's drivers are worser (in CPU usage). That's all in Windows.
Under Linux it takes about 0.5% to play MP3 stream with the same computer - I can easily play that many streams I want (SB Live can mix them in hardware) but there is no reason to play multiple MP3 streams (not at least for me).
If your hardware cannot provide any support for movie playback (namely scaling) or audio channels mixing you need much more CPU power no matter how nice your OS is.
And finally IMHO Windows Media Player beats QuickTime hands down any day (Where the heck is my menu bar? Why I cannot see this in fullscreen?). I just hope we could see something like DivX;-), legally.
_________________________
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Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
That may be the case, I'm not a Java expert, but their report on Wireless networking (posted today) was right on the money. And generally, so is their update information. They hardly belong in the world of MOSR and AI, two groups that spout so much bullsh*t you'd think they were fertilizer companies. Between the two of them, they have debated on a cobranded Palm and other such vaporware products not even on the drawing boards. Macintouch doesn't do much of that.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Seems like the images have been removed at Aplle's request.
Doea anybody have any local copies so i can see them. I really wonder what thay look like...
BTW, the purpose of /. is to post links to OTHER articles, not to author new articles, and check the credibility of it. Someone submitted this story, and link, and they looked at it, and decided to post it. It is not their responsibility to validate the news, that is the job of the original article authors. /. shouldn't be posting articles from rumor sites. If apple insider is just an apple news site, then that's fine.
Now that that's cleared up, I don't know anything about apple insider, but if it is a rumor site, then
At least they corrected the issue later on, most ''professional'' news sources tell out right lies, and skew the news w/out ever admitting they were wrong.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
and then apple can hit cobalt for a lawsuit for stealing the look and feel of the nextcube, then cardboard box manufacturers can sue apple... and it can go on forever!
They took the image down, "Under Threat of Apple Legal Action Images Have Been Removed".... guess they are scared of "Apple's legion of legal representation." Did anybody save the image?
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Well, I have a 650. The main reason I have this Rage Pro II still, is that it works well under Linux. What else should I use that works? I have a DVD card, so I don't need my video card to do that for me.
First the Nintendo Star Cube, now this. Cubes are big nowadays, it seems...
the reason your K7 cant get 30fps is cause you got a crappy video card. get a better one - ive got 30fps on a 333Mhz p2. PCs dont "stutter" either. latencies in your OS are to blame not the PC itself.
So much technology. So little space. This is the cube you're looking for.
I do not have a signature
1. All pictures are sized to fit perfectly with apple.coms splash page. Thats no coincidence.
2. All pictures are graphite, taken from favourite apple angles. I would love for whoever wrote that piece on MacJunkie to go over to apple.com and use the same arguments as to why every single other pic up there are fake too! After all Apple uses photoshop as well ...
2.1 If the Cube is doctored, then they would have had to doctor all the other ones as well. Theyd have a very hard time indeed, making up a translucent 17" display in profile!! (which looks pretty darn cool, btw)
3. There is no need for handles on a 7-inch box, for crying out loud! Even you love handles, this beauty is so small there just isnt any space for it (notice how it is just slightly wider than a CD-ROM unit (5" + a little space on the side)).
Point is, the cube is s.m.a.l.l. With that in mind, i think most of the doubts from macjunkie disappears with a bearly noticeable "woosh".
well if you've got a hollywood plus (or other hardware DVD card) then make sure you're using the right software, because there's something really wrong for stuttering at that point. I was playing DVDs on a classic Pentium 233 with a hollywood+ card last year. It was when I got the celeron (and faster motherboard) that I could dump the card and do all-software (higher-quality) playback.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Heh. People thought Steve Jobs had finally achieved his dream of a "slotless, fanless" computer with the iMac, and now this.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
Apple's website is kind of down right now but I got it to load the first page without the pictures, and the alternate text for the images were about the new Apple G4 cube. Looks like that part at least is true.
I personally hadn't heard of The Mac Junkie until the MOSR cube fiasco. I'm a bit of a huge Apple fan (not to the point of a zealot, I think, but definitely a fanatic). I check out Apple Insider and MacOS Rumors daily, and, since they don't cover everything, As the Apple Turns for a bit of variety.
The Mac Junkie just might be trolling. First, the email to Ryan Meader. Okay, Meader runs a rumor site. Maybe he'll post the rumors he hears? So he does. And then TMJ calls Meader a fraud. The hits go up. The readership increases. CHING CHING!
Now, several other rumor sites jump into the cube fray, and all recieve Apple attention. Apple Insider (who has posted pictures/drawings of new Apple products several days in advance before) posts some pictures, which will no doubt get a lot of hits. Mac Junkie calls Apple Insider frauds. The hits go up. The readership increases. CHING CHING!
That's just my theory, nothing else.
-tsunake
I have been reading this thread all afternoon, whilst at work, and THAT is the funniest thing that I have EVER seen. Almost. Otherwise, what a fuss about NOTHING !
Still trying
-A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Have you ever tried to quickly swap cards, RAM or drives in a regular ol' PC tower case? it sucks. The Blue+White G3 and G4 cases rock hard when in comes to this sort of thing.
I have no comment on the iMac cuz I don't own one.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Why go to a mirror? Why not go to the Apple Site? Lots of pretty pictures of the eight inch box they call a computer.
I do not have a signature
I disagree with your assesment that the problem is the hardware, not the OS. First of all, what kind of movie are we talking about here? I have had trouble with the FPS playing "A Bug's Life" DVD on a G4. Secondly, what OS are you using on the Intel box? If you are using windows, like most people, than I see why you are having problems. In my experience, it takes the full resources of a pentium II 300 to play one MPEG or Quicktime movie in a small window in windows(never played fullscreen.) If you are running linux, I don't have much experience, but from what I have read, it isn't the best OS for media handling, and when I used it X seemed to be taking up a lot of resources... Anyway, have you ever tried BeOS? Now that's an OS that puts MacOS to shame. Back in 1994 the Be people were doing things like, in real time, playing 6 movies mapped to the sides of a 3D, rotating cube. That was on dual powerpc boxes... It is even better on the latest (intel) hardware.
I had to wait a minute to access the page, here's so others don't have to:
http://www.sheepdot.org/cube.htm
Because it gives you 403 Forbidden?
--
Everything I know in life I learnt from
the worst part of that letter (and the silliest)
Therefore, Apple demands that you cease and desist from disseminating the material posted at the referenced web site immediately, including any hyperlinks to other locations where the information may be available from all web sites and servers under your control
Hey Apple, I demand a new G4 AND you should stop selling them to other people. Immediately.
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+&x
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It was announced at MacWorld. In fact, I'm watching CNN and I can see it.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
BWAHAHA. Sorry, but this is why I love Apple-- flawless execution of great ideas *smirk*. You can still see a picture at www.apple.com, and I've been browsing the pages just fine. But you're absolutely right, it's messed. I get very spotty servage from them on this. I've gotten 403 and pages w/o pix. But it's there.
I do not have a signature
becuase all the images have been removed (except macjunkie) Someone else had a mirror of the CRT (BTW, why the hell is apple still designing 17inch CRTs? they claim to be a graphics professional choice but no real graphics pro would use something that small [except maybe in dualhead]) but i wanna see the flatpanel (maybe it has as bad of a viewing range as the 22" one).
Mark Duell
Here's why the vents on the top are most likely total unadulterated BS:
-The cubes are supposed to stack one on top of the other right? (The AppleInsider article itself says so).
Gee, it sure would be fun to block the only air vents on the machine--especially with a big hollow plastic base. Burnt translucent goo anyone?
I wonder how much money apple insider generated with this fraud?
"The Mac Junkie has mirrors of the pics, and claims that they are frauds along with some good arguments to back it up."
the biggest problem with this story is that AppleInsider has posted alot of stuff conflicts with reports in ZDNet, and other sources (in the past). I wouldn't be surprised if someone just sat around all day fabricating stories to post to rumours sites like them.
The cube they have on the site looks like it is a render (unless it was amazingly shot, there doesn't seem to be any radiosity from the blue apple logo).
kick some CAD
Proof that /. moderators have no balls (as if proof were needed):
Moderation Totals:Overrated=2, Total=2.
That's right, 2 overrated mods. Why, because they're scared shitless of meta moderation that's why.
"Oh no, we might lose a point of karma. Better moderate as vaugely as possible."
Fucking cowards. You can hear them whine at sid=lostkarma
--Shoeboy
Depends on whose root zone you use. If you use the ICANN/NSI root zone, then you're right, the TLD .mp3 doesn't exist. I guess there are some things you haven't discovered, yet.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When can I get a duel proc. G4? A friend brought a regular G4 into work the other day, and going over it's spec's, I'm drooling! I'd LOVE to build an SMP linux box out of one of these! It could EASILY handle my mail, web pages, etc.
The pictures appear to have been removed! The mirror that is listed also does not contain the suspect photos.
I take it, then, that you've never seen the words "Patent Pending" stamped on a product? I see it all the time. Companies are greedy, and they want to start making money off their products as soon as possible. If that means releasing them before they've actually been issued the patent, then so be it.
Shows up in the most unlikely places, sometimes, too. Last time I went to a concert (Summer Sanitarum Tour at the Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, MA, FWIW), the tiles that were covering the football field had "patent pending" stamped on them, if I remember right.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I also have the monitor pics up now also
And if they're so inside why exactly did they get the okay to run the mouse, but not the pictures? ... Looks like the bluff was called though the paper shredder/washing machine would have made a really great workstation ...
Remember the days when it was cool to paint your box or just get a bunch of stickers?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
MacJunkie has it right. (new) Apple loves handles and there would be no way on earth you could pick this up.
:)
But if someone wants to fake pictures of a rack mounted G4 with OSX, I'll fall for that if you like.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Poll: what will happen to the MacJunkie tomorrow?
Poll Mastah
More seriously.. is slashdot becoming the national enquirer of the tech industry.. reporting on rumors and half-truths? I, for one, am still waiting for the headline Natalie Portman's pregnancy due to troll on famous nerds for news site, film at 11! Or maybe the headliner - Jon Katz beaten at subway station outside hacker convention in New York.. where Mr. Katz explains in an exclusive interview that this is how geeks typically welcome new people into the fold.. *insert mandatory columbine reference* and after the doctors figure out how to remove the 13 bullets he'll be back on slashdot reporting fast as ever...
Disclaimer: The above was satire. If it offends you, try decaffe.
-Kahuna burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
The photos are doctored really well (The author could make a living doing some good artwork, if he could work with his own sources). However, the logo is ripped directly off of apple professional photo gallery. I am looking forward for tomorrow keynote, planing to watch it with much enjoyment over quicktime. Anytime steve jobs does his song and dance, its a great show.
I DO hope apple makes an entrance into the professional market. It looks like they'll be putting Radeon cards into some machine they are releasing tomorrow.
And apple has tried the modular route before, it was called the preforma series, you could slide out the motherboard without having to disconnect anything. It was a bismal failure (not because of the modular motherboard)
I have a Rage Pro II with 8 megs of Ram. The MB is the FIC SD11. What's the next excuse? An 8 meg card isn't good enough? Why does it work on the Mac then?
It's depressing that a non-event like new stylings for cases or monitors could been seen as a reason for legal action.
Perhaps this should tell you that industrial design isn't a non-event? Since Apple moved away from producing beige boxes and actually started caring about industrial design (amongst other things) its turned around from a company loosing $1 billion a year to one making $1 billion a year. Clearly a lot of actual computer users care a lot about what their machines look like. Equally clearly a lot of geeks don't care. That's fine, but fortunately there's room enough in the world for both viewpoints to be okay.
At the end of the day, leaks like this can help draw attention to a company and its products. But since SJ came back, there seems to be a dedicated effort to clamp down and control everything about Apple.
Earth to Steve: Support and encourage users and enthusiasts. No users == no more Apple.
And yet the number of Mac buyers has shot up since Steve took over.
Real World to Steve: Keep on truckin' your users love what you're doing with the Mac.
Sailing over the event horizon
Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
It's a good think you aren't in marketing. I know ALOT of people who bought an iMAC just because of what it looks like. And almost ANY retail store in seattle that wants to look hip has an iMac sitting on the front desk. Looks matter, looks sell.
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
Brings new meaning to the term i-Toaster.
Either that or Steve Jobs is going into the breadmaker business.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
This is just one of the last straws for rumor sites trying to get people to visit their site instead of their compeditors. Being a (mostly) mac person, and reading the various usenet groups ie: comp.mac.advocacy this is just a prick war between the rumor sites to see if they can guess at what Apple is going to release next.
There is alot of hatred and fingerpointing between all these sites to try to get visitors. It is just pathetic if you look at it.
Another fish I have to fry is that of all places Slashdot is following this. I mean, I remember the"good ol days" when you were lucky to even get news about Apple. I have come to expect more of social issues, and Open source stuff, then mac stuff that I can see 8 different perspecives by visiting http://www.macsurfer.com So for the Love of God, please don't post this stuff until it is final. For the last couple of weeks, it seems like there has been more news on Apple than many other companies that are just as important. I just hope slashdot doesn't degenerate into a rumor mill like some other sites that shall be unamed.
Welcome to the Entropy Bar, may I take your order?
Read it again; that's not silly. They're not saying you can't link to other sites, just that you can't link to other pages on your own site that have the same information.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Steve Jobs just announced it... try www.apple.com.
The hardware was not *that* pricey. At the time, unix boxes and OSs were extremely expensive. (Remember, that's why Linus wrote Linux). The NeXT surpassed much of the "low end" unix boxes which were out there.
yea, in that split second after my jerking knee hit the submit button I saw "under your control".
:)
I still want the G4 tho.
--
+&x
Annoys us greatly or, at least, many of us.
Evidently their email address, phone and fax are now widely available.
I'd like to suggest that we all take the time to send them a short note, fax, or call, exercising our Constitutional right to express our opinions -- a right Apple seems to have little respect for...
Follow this link from the fella that started the whole mac cube rumour off. 'nuff said. http://www.themacjunkie.com/archives/7.11.00.rumor s.html
If Google can, why not Slashdot?
.sigs:
This makes perfect sense. Slashdot's only getting bigger, and the Slashdot Effect is just getting more and more annoying. We should put this in our
"End the Slashdot Effect! Support local caching!"
I might just do that.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Jobs already made the mistake of releasing a cube-shaped computer once in his career. The original NeXT computer was a black cube, 12 inches on a side. You don't see too many of them around any more.
And I'd be willing to bet that the Cobalt Raq systems sell better than the Cobalt Qubes.
Here are the specs of the NeXT cube, according to "The NeXT Book", by Bruce Webster, first edition, 1989. 68030 CPU at 25MHz, 68882 FPU, 56001 DSP, 8MB RAM, expandable to 64MB (16 SIMM slots!), 330MB or 660MB 5.25" hard drive, 256MB optical drive (the only removable storage!), built-in SCSI, built-in Ethernet, 1120x832 gray-scale (2 bit-plane) 17" display, 256K video buffer, passive backplane with 4 slots (similar to NuBus, but the cards are about 11"x11"; the main board takes up one of the slots), nice keyboard (includes power, volume, and brightness control), decent mouse, black cast magnesium case.
The hardware was definitely impressive for its day (1989) but a bit pricey. Actually, much of it was ahead of its time. Nobody had 17" monitors back then; nobody had that kind of resolution. And the optical drive was a flop. The color slabs were the really nice boxes. They came out a year or so later than the cube.
The really impressive part of the NeXT was the software though. You can see its legacy in a lot of some Linux GUI software, and the Mac OS X is based on NeXTStep. One of the best things about NeXTStep is its use of Display PostScript. WSYIWYG, because the display and the printer are written to in exactly the same way.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Cubes were made out of magnesium---they even had an article in NeXTWorld showing them burning a Cube at JPL or some such place.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
This is the classic tell-tale sign of a photoshop fake. My eye isn't trained enough to tell the difference, but if it's not Apple Garamond, then it's not from Apple.
Two other things struck me about this photo:
Having said all that, I can't believe we're picking this apart in such great detail. I'm not even convinced they're fakes - can we really second-guess Apple?
You're probably thinking of Intel's Legacy Free PC. Some of the pictures are, well...strange.
Exactly. The combination of a crappy video card and OS problemsare to blame for bad video performance, not the platform. I can watch videos in Windows without stuttering with a Celeron 566 and a TNT2. Hell, in BeOS I can run four or five videos in different windows and not have any of them stutter. Anyone who thinks you need a Mac for decent video performance is brainwashed or just stupid.
MacInTouch Response:
From: [Pittas \\ Koenig] Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 09:30:12 EDT Subject: Att: Sue Runfola, Legal To: cpyrt@apple.com CC: [Ric Ford, Above Net]
Dear Ms. Runfola:
Your communication to Ric Ford at macintouch.com has been forwarded to me. This firm, PITTAS \\ KOENIG, is legal counsel to MacInTouch, Inc. Kindly direct any future correspondence on matters of a legal nature to me at my e-mail address or P.O. Box 980, Winchester, MA 01890.
Regarding your stated concerns: First, it appears that the information published by MacInTouch has been available to and published by others. For that reason among others, we disagree that the four items to which you refer are "trade secrets." Second, if, as you claim, a confidentiality agreement was breached in the dissemination of the information Apple finds objectionable, it certainly was not an agreement as to which my client was a party.
Third, my client owes Apple no duty to refrain from publishing information which Apple objects to, whether "in good faith" or not. Nor does my client owe Apple a duty to refrain from posting notices received from Apple's legal department, regardless of the statement added to your e-mail directing that it not be posted or reproduced. Contrary to the positions you have taken regarding each of the previous points, my client's Freedom of Speech rights protect its good faith publication of newsworthy information about Apple, including the fact that Apple's legal department has objected to that information.
Fourth, you have no right to state your concerns to third parties with whom my client does business. Your having sent a copy of your message to my client's internet service provider can have only one purpose, and that is to interfere with the advantageous business relationship between my client and its i.s.p. It was a willful and knowing attempt to harm my client, whose livelihood depends on the hosting of its web site by its i.s.p. Kindly inform the i.s.p. that you have withdrawn your concerns, and then cease and desist from any further such communications.
Despite the foregoing four points, my client has decided - this time - to remove the four items Apple has found objectionable from its web site. Why? For one reason and one reason only: to avoid further costs of legal representation. Accordingly, this matter is now terminated. Apple should think again, however, before engaging in a similar course of action in the event it "objects" to a future internet posting. Even a little guy eventually might decide there is no choice but to take up a slingshot.
Very truly yours, Sydelle Pittas
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/07/18/2344203&cid=207
Yes, the pics are definitely computer-generated, but MacJunkie has a few things wrong. Point-by-point:
> 1. In this form, the machine would be very much top-heavy
Not necessarily--the transparent base could be solid plastic, in which case the case would be very, very stable (more so than a current G4 minitower).
> 2. Look at the size of those air vents. You could drop a pencil through there,
> or spill a cup of coffee
Much about Apple's current crop of cases is aesthetic, not functional; there could be mesh and foam inside those huge vent louvers to protect from accidents like that, anyway.
> 3. While in the photograph taken from a diagonal angle there are three screws
> on the top of the machine, there are
> only two in the head-on photo. Why?
Because the third screw, the one in the middle, is shielded from view by the raised border of the vent cutout.
> 4. There are no handles. Apple loves handles, and furthermore, anyone who expects to
> get a good grip on a computer with plexiglass sides has got another thing coming.
Those raised bars on the top of the case are handles which retract into the case when not in use, and can be pulled up into handles when needed. This was noted in the first articles about this alleged case design, so I wish the person who wrote this debunking article would do his homework.
> 5. The front of the machine has at least a couple tell-tale Photoshop
> fingerprints. First, look at the Apple logo in the second image. Does it look
> a little smushed to you? It is. The artist had to use Photoshop's Distort tool
> to get the image to be angled correctly, but this tool doesn't take 3D
> measurements into consideration.
This is complete BS. The logo in question looks distorted because it is being viewed at an angle, from above, to the side, and on the diagonal--a very complex angle. The distortion visible is in line with the angle of observation, with only a little deviation. I disagree that this is a Photoshop image, and here's why.
It is definitely computer-generated, but most likely by a 3D design and rendering program, not by a 2D tool like Photoshop. The attention to detail in shading and angle and contour in these images is certainly doable in Photoshop, but at the cost of a huge amount of time.
In contrast, I could create the same images in 3D Studio Max and similar programs in a fraction of the time required to do them in Photoshop, plus I'd have an interactive 3D model to move around easily and get as many 2D image captures from as I want. 3D Studio Max, I know, isn't available for Macs, but similar products are (not as good IMHO, though). In particular, the attention to details like very accurate lighting and shading points to a 3D app creating these images, not a 2D app like Photoshop; this guy's concluding remarks about a lighting source being out of place are BS, the images appear to have pretty accurate lighting and shading. Doing these images in Photoshop would be too much of a bother, especially when so many good 3D apps are widely available (even the dongle protection for 3D Studio Max has been broken, and it's food for the warez kiddies now).
Plus, the pics on AppleInsider have been removed and replaced with images with a message about Apple's legal dept. making them take the pics down. This supports earlier claims, which were disputed, that Apple had done so on other sites hosting these pics. This indicates that there may be a grain of truth to these computer-generated images. My personal opinion is that the images are, indeed, authentic in that they come from Apple design mock ups, not necessarily of a design that will be used any time soon, but of a design that is or was being considered. My guess, unsupported by anything but Apple's stupid lawyermongering, is that these were taken from early 3D computer-generated designs from Apple's case-styling guys. But Apple is pissing me off with their lawyer-whoring bullshit; I was considering buying an Apple since I used to use them in college, but now they can fuck off. I hate ity when people try to stifle freedom of the press, important enough that the framers of the constitution put it first in the bill of rights.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Over at the register, details on ATI's contribution to the new iMac/g3's. And the lawyers haven't gotten to it yet.
./sux
--
Naaah .. Play has had a cube shaped system for much longer than the Qube has been around. and IMHO it is a much better system than apple would produce for quite a while anyway.
For 98% of the population, color matters
I suggest you do the following: ask 10 people you meet how many cylinders are in their car's engine. Then ask the next 10 people what color their car is. You will quickly find out what matters more to most people.
This is how GM overtook Ford: Henry Ford refused to make any color other than black. People bought GM instead, and Ford never recovered.
For large ticket consumser goods, color matters
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
No, guys! Those vents? It's a coffee machine. --W
Looks like a trash can to me! hmmm.
Now that was a cool computer. Fuck transparent plastic, i want cold, black steel on my desk.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I wonder if the next article will be that CmdrTaco has found a time machine, this article was:
Update: 07/19 12:11 AM by CT:
rtnz
I'm using Windows 98 Se with all the updates. I've heard that Be is cool, but haven't checked it out.
I don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, that could be kind of cool. Just think. You could paint it black, attach some green LEDs inside the case, and call it an iBorg. You could even rig up SimpleText to say things like "you will be assimilated", etc. Yes, it'd be more creepy if it were a windows box saying that, but hey, take what you can get. Also, if your computer looks like a Borg cube, you can steal spare parts from your roommate's computer, and if he asks where his new 3d card went, just say "it has been assimilated..."
Well, the Presarios are ugly half-attempts to copy the iMac (5000 series, anybody?) and the Deskpros are decent looking, but not wonders of industrial design.
The only really good Compaq case designs are the older Proliant towers, and the rackable Proliants.
Once again, I would like to say that the Presarios are amazing ugly and tasteless.
Apple Insider was just about the most stupid link I ever followed in Slashdot. Go ahead, visit Apple Insider and learn how to Suck this sort of crap into your machine at three times your normal speed.
I think Slashdot needs a holiday. In any case, I'm going to give them one.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
For those of you who didn't get a good look at the image, you can find it at http://www.sheepdot.org/cube.htm
moox. for a new generation.
But that is my whole point!!! I'm talking about running that box with LinuxPPC. Not that it seems to matter, I've been moderated down for dairing to suggest that Mac's are superior. Guess the moderator Nazi's found me...
Therefore, I've posted my own copy here: http://home.rochester.rr.com/crayz/
BTW, this is what an Apple legal threat would look like:
-----------
From cpyrt@apple.com Fri Jul 7 20:56:43 2000
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 17:28:28 -0700
From: Copyright Admin.
To: Ryan Meader
Subject: NOTICE OF INFRINGEMENT
*Apple Confidential*
-NOT FOR POSTING OR REDISTRIBUTION-
Dear Ryan,
Re: www.macosrumors.com
It has been brought to our attention that you have posted an article on the above web site titled, 'Apple's "Cube" desktop Mac confirmed' (hereafter referred to as "the Article").
By posting the Article, you are improperly disclosing Apple's trade secrets. Apple believes that the person(s) who disclosed the information in the Article to you violated their non-disclosure agreement with Apple. Consequently, Apple has never authorized the information to be disclosed or published and your continued display of the Article could result in your company being held for violating Apple's proprietary rights. Your continued dissemination and use of this information is in violation of Apple's statutory and other rights.
We believe, in good faith, that the information posted is being used in a manner that is not authorized by Apple and that the information contained in this email is accurate. Therefore, Apple demands that you cease and desist from disseminating the Article posted at the referenced URL immediately, including any hyperlinks to other locations where the information or Article may be available from all web sites and servers under your control.
Please immediately remove the Article and confirm in writing by Monday, July 10, 2000 that you have removed the Article from your web site. Apple reserves its right to seek immediate equitable and other relief, including damages claims, should you fail to remove this material.
Thank your for your courtesy and immediate cooperation. I can be reached at (408) 974-9994 should you have any questions.
Sincerely, Sue Runfola Apple Computer, Inc. Legal
Sue Runfola Apple Legal Copyright Administration 1 Infinite Loop, MS: 38-I Cupertino, CA 95014
Phone: (408) 974-9994 Email: copyright@apple.com Fax: (408) 974-5436
THIS TRANSMISSION MAY BE PRIVILEGED AND MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION INTENDED ONLY FOR THE PERSON(S) NAMED ABOVE. ANY OTHER DISTRIBUTION, RE-TRANSMISSION, COPYING OR DISCLOSURE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS TRANSMISSION IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY ME IMMEDIATELY BY TELEPHONE OR RETURN E-MAIL, AND DELETE THIS FILE/MESSAGE FROM YOUR SYSTEM.
Well look at it this way; If apple had been playing around with the idea of a cube-shaped box (the next logical case design after the iMac and their spiffy G3 cases & what not..), then they proabably wouldn't want anyone else outside of apple talking about it and giving it a bad name before it went to market.
either that or this is a very round-about way of getting mass critisims about new case designs : )
moox. for a new generation.
Hahahaha! No FSCKing $H!T !!! Man, I hate it when they want us to call them for anything at all. My typical response is "Why? Just look it up on TechNet. At least the lies will be consistant."
Macjunkie blasts the whole cube concept, including claiming
In this form, the machine would be very much top-heavy. bzzzzt wrong answer.
My Cobalt Qube2 has been working wonderfully for 1 1/2 years -- and has a form factor almost identical the rumored Apple cube (7 1/2" x 7 1/2" by 7 1/2").
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
The case of all of the NeXT cube was magnesium, and it was painted black.
The NeXT slabs also had a magnesium case/chassis, but they were clad in a dark grey plastic.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>I take it, then, that you've never seen the words "Patent Pending" stamped on a product?
You CAN do this.. it's not recomended...
It means BTW that you FILED for a patent. Your not waiting around for the patent process to finish.
You can file the stupid thing during the R&D phase as well as all the trademarks etc.
Patents are going to take longer than TradeMarks.
On a side note... You should get better legal advice... I doupt you could get or hold a TM in any nation that is so ready to void a TradeMark.
Publication on a website dosn't count as public domain...
I don't actually exist.
OK, so maybe I'm paranoid conspiracy theorist, but what if...
Apple arranges with someone to post a few shots (fake or otherwise) of the upcoming product, then sensationalise it to get as many people to see it/drool over it, finally ordering the posting site to remove the shots or else.
In the world of ultra-corrupt corporations we live in, I don't think my little theory is too far fetched.
-----
If you can spare the bandwidth for a 50mb download, go check it out... It hauls.
http://free.be.com/
Wow, I almost forgot about that Far Side!
Anyways, the G4 Minitower was not designed for expandability. They have 3 PCI and 1 AGP slot. They also have 3 IDE headers. Why? Because they are expandable than most PC mobos. There is one header for the DVD-ROM/RAM and Zip Drive, one for The primary and secondary drives, and another for another two drives. The mobo is mounted to not only get at RAM, but to get the mobo out of the way so you can work on everything else. Compare that to single plane PCs where the mobo, drives, cards and cables are all on one side of the box. You can see where the G4 is a space-efficient and compact but workable design. The only place in the case you really need to get to is the drives, and they are right along the bottom of the case. It can fit 4 drives in there, bringing the internal capacity of the system to 300 gig using IBM deskstar drives.
Word to the wise: do not buy anything more than the base model (whatever processor speed) with 64 MB of RAM and 10 GB of HDD space. Do not upgrade it until you get it. Go to any memory store, and get Apple branded RAM for about 1/4 the price Apple charges on Built-to-Order. instead of paying $6500 for 1.5 GB of RAM, you only pay $1600. That is a savings of $4900!
Lowmag.net
I heard it when my clock radio went off. "analyst expect apple to release a cube computer and newmouse today at MW expo.., "
from the citizens bank news report
Apperently they have.
They have!
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Head over there now, and noticed they've been slapped with a CDA by the lovable Apple.
Ham on rye, hold the mayo please.
thelocust[dot]org
Who says 'abysmal failure?' He probably meant to say 'dismal failure' but got the b and the d mixed up.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
You'd think with all the hype surrounding this damn thing, that Apple was acutally still a force in the computer industry, rather than the perpetual also ran they've become.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Over at MacSlash, we have some intense coverage planned for MacWorld New York. Our team arrived on site today and will be providing our daily dose of mac news, straight from the Big Apple. We'll have at least four people sitting in on Steve's Keynote tomorrow morning, so if any announcements are made, including this (IMHO) ridiculous "cube" thing, we'll have complete reports online as soon as our people can get to their computers. Stop by and join in the discussion.
Justin Miller
Associate Editor and Geek at Large,
MacSlash.com
put linux on that box with ingos real time patches for 2.2 so you can do soft real time scheduling, dump uncompressed 30fps video stream on the hard drive, tune the hard drive with the following options (if IDE) hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hda and if your card is AGP, turn on the framebuffering. then you should be able to play the entire video stream without too many problems.
I have a celeron 333 overclocked to 500mhz, playing full screen 30fps mpegs takes 10% of the cpu according to task manager. Playing a mp3 doesn't even register. Strangely enough the MS media player is the best program I've ever used. My old p200 played mpegs and even highly compressed ASF files with no problem. You must be doing something wrong.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Why is it that my k7-650 can't get 30 frames per second, per second for the entire length of a movie? Mac's don't studder like PC's do
I don't know, but there's something wrong (or at least sub-optimal). Maybe a bottleneck somewhere. My home entertainment system runs off a Celeron 433 and no problems with 30fps video (though DVD is frequently 24 fps - film speed).
Do you have DMA enabled on the drives? Old video/drivers? You'll get more bang from upgrading your video card than you will by going to a new processor.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I've got Linux (Mandrake 7.1) on the /dev/hdc - I'll try that! Thanks!
The images are mirrored at the front page of www.holymac.com as well.
MacinTouch hardly belongs on that list. It's a legitimate news site, not a rumor mill. The only story they posted on the supposed new cube was in relation to the legal threats against MOSR.
Begging your pardon, but I'd say Macintouch has a pretty good reputation. They have been right on the spot with their reports regarding various Mac issues and software upgrades. To put them in the same sentence as MOSR and AppleInsider is ludicrous. MOSR and AI are sights that are based on crap, while Macintouch prints legitimate news instead of 98% rumor.
I used to think that, but in the last couple of months Ric Ford at MacInTouch has been posting some real stinkers. His recent stuff on Apple's Java was so wide of the truth it wasn't even funny. In my opinion he is burning through what little credibiility he had faster than a pre-IPO dotcom burns through its VC cash.
Sailing over the event horizon
In the photo, it looks like the plexiglass goes all the way around from top to bottom. As long as the footprint is > or = the top diameter (which it appears to be) it should be pretty sturdy. Also the guts of the cube look like they take up the upper 2/3 of the thing, preventing it from being truly top-heavy.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
I'm still using a 4MB Matrox Millenium with a 6MB Canopus 3DFx add-on accelerator. 8MB should be okay, since my combination actually runs games pretty well. Half Life is rather pretty with my old hardware, so yeah, me wonders.
As for PC's stuttering? When it comes to multitasking, I do believe they win hands down compared to my Macs. My iMac DV 400MHz runs "A Bug's Life" rather prettily, but playing movie files and such makes everything else slow down to a crawl. On the other hand, I've used smpeg to play movie files on my 400MHz Linux box (with the same amount of memory) while playing mp3's, using several Netscape windows, GIMP, a bunch of Eterms, gAIM, and licq with no noticeable slowdown. CPU usage, of course, goes up a bit, but the thing is, resources aren't hogged by any single process.
If stuff is running that slowly for you, there's a problem somewhere. I love Macs, but I can't wait til they get a REAL OS.
And don't even get me started on their TCP/IP stack, either.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
Following up on Apple's threats to get the rumors sites to remove news on their new products: the same thing has happened to the much more reliable Mac news site MacInTouch. They've posted Apple's letter and their response which is quite well written. MacInTouch was also reporting about a Cube system, which actually increases the chance that it's not a hoax since MacInTouch is much more accurate than other sites like MacOSRumors.
AppleInsider - "Look at new Mac Cube"
Mac Junkie - "Pictures are bogus"
Apple Computers "Remove pictures NOW"
I don't care if the computers are for real. It's just funny to see this happen.
What ever Apples reasons for suing everyone it's not a smart busness move...
(Isn't Apples law sute spree how Apple became "The bad guy" of the 1980s?)
I don't want Apple to be the bad guy... I want Apple to be around to pick up the user side.
[Mac is a power system but it's a better Newbe system than Linux and Mac dose the job better than Windows]
Anyway... this is a bit silly.... and Apple is just making things more surreal by throwing lawyers around
I don't actually exist.
. In most other countries, you cannot trademark and/or patent something that has already been released into the public domain.
I don't believe that without further proof, sound more like jingoism to me - if someone effectively steals something and discloses it, it has not been RELEASED - and only some banana republic would rule otherwise.
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I had a PC that was called the Qube. It was a cube but it stood on it's point axis in a special base. This was about 5-6 years ago. It use standard PC parts, Hell we were able to swap motherboards in it to upgrade to Pentium II.
this is not a new design, it's a copy of someone else's - prettied up a bit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That said, there's nothing wrong woth MOSR... I read their site regularly just for fun; I wouldn't base important decisions on their news, though.
BTW, I have a mirror for this pic and the 17" CRT, which is beautiful and I wish is real, but I fear isn't bulbous enough to be legit.
You mean you HAD a mirror, right?
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I'm very happy to be a corporate lawyer, but will be sad if you don't remove the story.
Please be afraid, because all of Apple's lawyers are adults over 21!
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Well APPL must read /.
Why not? There are thousands of employees there, some portion of which are working on open source projects.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I recall reading a few reviews about the ATI video playback in those days when the card was the top of the ATI line.
That's why I bought a Hollywood card. ATI's dvd playback implementation is only partial, the rest of the playback being done with the CPU running a very crappy set of DLLs.
And haven't you heard of Apple's troubles with the dvd playback?
Anyway, I originally had a lowly $79 K6-2 350mhz zipper in a super 7, trailing-edge-technology cheapo motherboard. Of course, DVD movies play perfectly (I'm not kidding). Never any problems, except when I try and playback movies on Linux. Now that I'm skating with a whizzy 550mhz K6-2, I can also do internet gambling while Leaving Las Vegas plays along without a blip.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
No! He said NOT to start a flame war!
Oh, the Humanity!
Lowmag.net
The gripe I'd have with space efficiency is that the curvy handles/feet of the case make it something less than ideal in terms of its external space, which is important when trying to squeeze 'em into racks or on shelves.
Generally speaking, though, the case really is the least important element IMHO. When I build a new system, the first week or two I leave the case apart for tweaking, but after that it generally stays buttoned up for long periods of time.
And before you say "Apple would never be so stupid" I'll say "hockey puck mouse".
Images are gone.
--- Tulsa T. Nawi, On Display @ Shattered.com
Oh, that's easy. How about I just launch my player application and watch it instead of futzing with the computer?
that's why Mac users buy Macs. they work.
A squat, top-vented computer might not be completely nuts. It would make a good foot stool/warmer.
Don't you mean, "The advantage of true multitasking hardware... Things like background tasks don't take up any valuable processor time when they've been farmed out to something else in the box with instructions not to bug the CPU about it until it really needs something"?
... but I'd take a hypercube-shaped case any day!
I make my coffee so thick that with smaller holes, I might be able to catch a spill before it oozes through -- unless, of course, it makes a run for the door before I can get to it.
Is an 8 Meg Rage Pro II AGP good enough? That's what I have.
Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
Uh-oh, the secret's out! I'm gonna have to sell my stock in the Gap and Starbucks now that everyone will be looking beneath the surface! (g)...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Other points:
I bet there will be an Apple Cube, and I bet it'll be released tomorrow. It's right in line with Fred's comments today that iMac sales are getting flat. I just think it'll look more like the earlier sketches with the contrary handles and front-faced design.
BTW, I have a mirror for this pic and the 17" CRT, which is beautiful and I wish is real, but I fear isn't bulbous enough to be legit.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Sure, you can find a lot more sucky PC cases then you can find sucky Mac cases, but you'll find a lot more PC cases period, too.
The problem, like you say, is finding a good PC case. It's easy to find a good Mac case, while no more than 5-10% of PC's sold have anything that is close to acceptable. I am saddled with a Compaq Presario at work, and that thing SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS compared to the Mac that sits next door to me.
Compaq DeskPro's also rock in this department - to get the case open, simply depress the two buttons on the side of the case, and slide it forward - instant access!
Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
The hardware matters, sure, but the case does too. A lot. Or at least, it probably will in the future. There aren't many other ways for computer companies to differentiate their products especially in the home PC market. The only one I can really think of is service plans and software doo-dads that you don't really need anyway.
The hardware in PC's is pretty much set, anything that goes into it is rarely made or controlled by a PC manufacturer. Motherboards are one exception, made by some of the larger PC manufacturers, but these are largely transparent to the user and have to conform to given standards anyway (intel/AMD chips, PCI, current RAM standards, etc).
I have similar complaints with the Imac's because they are a lot of packaging hype, but i can't help but think they'd be more affordable and
more servicable if they came in a standard gray box
You don't seem to understand why the iMac is so successful...it looks cool. To the non-geek anyway, who make up the majority of computer users. The price doesn't matter, people want things that look nice, or even better, cool. The beige box is ok with me, but I'd still like a box that has better access. And I'm not the average computer user either.
We haven't seen any remarkable changes in the way computers look for one main reason, IMO: there is no room for error in the computer world. Margins are thin as it is, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Apple had to take a risk because they were on their death bed, and it paid off, bigtime.
Since hardware hardly gets even your average geek excited anymore, I think we'll start to see more "stylish" computer cases out there. Especially when sales start to drop since the upgrade cycle time is increasing, and prices are so low.
Maybe it's just me, but I think it looks like a 1950's era washing machine.
not_anne
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
Don't get me wrong... I love my Mac to death... it's the best computer I have ever owned, but what I want to know is why is it that Apple product rumors are always being hyped up on Slashdot? I mean, when Compaq has their new "box design" or whatever, it does'nt ever make Slashdot news... why is that?
no complaints, just kinda looking for an explination.
djsw
This isn't the first time AppleInsider has posted stuff before the announcement. TheMacJunkie is probably feeling a bit stupid about now, after proving an ass of themselves (regarding the MacOS Rumors thing).
;) Disappointed because I've watched a lot of the streaming broadcasts and enjoy the surprises immensely. It's still really damn cool :)
I'm thoroughly convinced that the cube will prove itself to be a reality tomorrow and am both excited and disappointed. Excited because, well, it's a cube! It's cool
-tsunake
As thin as computer hardware margins are, I would think that it would be in your best interest to sell as many computers as possible.
Most manufacturers of specialized hardware try to make their products seem exciting and fun, not mysterious and secretive. If you want people to buy your machines, you should show them off, not keep them in a dark room under armed guard.
It seems to me that the Macintosh news web sites are doing you an invaluable service by generating interest in and excitement around your new products. To stop them makes your look like a killjoy and only fosters a negative image for your company.
If what they propagate as rumors are true, then you are guaranteed a lot of free publicity and possibly even higher sales. If they are not, then the reporting agency loses credibility. In any case, Apple would stand to gain a great deal and lose nothing!
In conclusion, Mr. Jobs, perhaps its time you count your blessings. Some people still want Macintosh computers. I don't. Maybe if you didn't try so hard to ailenate the people that are on your side you'd sell more machines.
Jeff
Macs still blow.
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
These sites (AppleInsider, MacOSRumors, MacInTouch etc.) have a really lousey track record of posting half-truths and downright lies. Their quality control is really poor.
What's more, they can do real damage. I was involved in a product that Apple Insider leaked images of, two days before it was publically launched. As a result, we lost most trademark and patent rights outside the US. In most other countries, you cannot trademark and/or patent something that has already been released into the public domain.
So when you wonder why companies like Apple don't like these kind of sites and often seem heavy-handed in dealing with them, remeber that leaks like this can cost a company substantial amounts of money.
Sailing over the event horizon
The only reason you'd need a gigabit card is if you were to run an OC3. This is 155mbit, and is more than even Slashdot can use. A 10/100 on a G4 running OS X with 512MB of RAM and Apache would be fine.. But do you really want to share your G4 with others? Personally, I'd wait till my site got popular before shelling beaucoup money on a server. Start with a little 200mhz Linux or BSD system. I suppose it would be better to go with BSD considering OS X will be based on it. Good luck, because even MacSlash gets very few hits.
Lowmag.net
I notice both MacJunkie and AppleInsider have been told to remove the pictures by Apple's Legal Deparment. I wonder if the speed with which they've done this means someone in a significant position in Apple reads /.? I also wonder if it means those pictures are more accurate than we've been given them credit for? One thing that has occured to me is that the pictures may be a fake made by someone who has seen the real thing.
If you want some real pretty Mac pictures, you can see this Des Moines Register MacAquarium story. Note at the end that he's also tinkering with a hamster house of Macs.
If you look carefully at the light refraction within the plastic, you can see that at least the plastic case is a real object in a photograph. Even minor imperfections in the shape of the plastic are magnified by the refraction of light within the material. These cannot be simulated in 3-D rendering programs, since these programs tend to achieve too-perfect results. Simulating these in a paint application is extremely time-consuming and so hard not to mess up. It's a lot of work to make complex refraction look "real" with all of the imperfections in real-life objects, and I can see no evidence of tampering within these refractions.
For example, look at the front top edge of the plastic. Within it you can see where the front slot penetrates the top plastic. Even an expert Photoshop user probbaly would not have thought of this, and most likely would not have known how to handle it properly if he had. The light reflections inside this section are too irregular to have been generated by a 3-D program. Looking at other areas within the case, and at the two camera angles provided, all of the refractions and shading are consistant with a real object under real lighting.
On a side note: In my opinion, these "slots" look like DVD and CD-RW slots, which are becoming an increasingly popular drive pairing in today's machines, not retractable handles or stacking slots.
Agreed. I will admit that no matter how you look at it, they DO look pretty darned real. I could go either way on this one. Guess we'll see in the morning. (I'm not foolish enough to make the claims MacJunkie did: He may well find thousands of Slashdotters with torches and pitchforks waiting for him to eat his mouse... ;)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
Now I don't mean to be an anti-apple biggot, i have a similar spanking to hand out to SGI over the O2 workstations (one of which i've been sort of stuck with as a desktop workstation at work). They concentrate so much on the sleek, modern, and powerful look that they somehow fail to make the actual hardware sleek, modern, or powerful. I have yet to find a way to get better than 60hz refresh out of that system, and it has the buggiest CDROM drive on earth.
I have similar complaints with the Imac's because they are a lot of packaging hype, but i can't help but think they'd be more affordable and more servicable if they came in a standard gray box. Plus any computer that is round enough that you can't accumulate a pile of odds and ends on top of it is too whacked out for me =:-)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
I would like to suggest that Apple has become another part of Microsoft's evil empire... as has Nintendo. Consider the following:
1) Leaked information about Nintendo's next console system being called "Star Cube".
2) These photos of Apple's new cubic G4 design.
All obvious signs that The Microsoft Borg has its fingers in everything.
love,
br4dh4x0r
Anyhoo, whether it's a fake or not, I'm dying to see what they unveil. People will bitch and moan about it no matter what, but you can bet it'll be pretty darned cool despite some weird stuff you know Apple will throw in. ;-)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
the old NeXT cubes. Doesn't anyone else see the simularities here? Things that make you go 'hmmm."
-- DuckWing
If in fact this is a hoax, what right does Apple have to ask that it be taken down? After all, it's not revealing what their trade secrets *are*, but rather, what they *aren't*. Which, I suppose, can be equally damaging in the right situations.
Perhaps one tactic they could use is to protest the misuse of the Apple logo.
Not having seen the letter, this is all pure speculation.
I'l just use gimp to remove the apple Logo, that way they can't claim it's using any property of theirs.
mailto: once@sky.fr
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Have you ever tried to quickly swap cards, RAM or drives in a regular ol' PC tower case? it sucks. The Blue+White G3 and G4 cases rock hard when in comes to this sort of thing.
It depends entirely on the case. With some of the new Dell cases I've been working on for a client, or the generic CasEdge PC cases we by ourselves, you simply push a button, pop the side and front panels, and pull the drives out on a rails. Even the rails are screwless; they use spring clips.
Sure, you can find a lot more sucky PC cases then you can find sucky Mac cases, but you'll find a lot more PC cases period, too. When you only have one supplier, quality control better be good, or you'll soon have zero suppliers.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Come on... The keynote starts at what... 8am??? 9am??? New York time tomorrow?
That's either five or six AM in San Francisco/Valley time. By the time we're all awake tomorrow, we'll know, once and for all, if this whole "Mac cube" thing is true, or if ryan meader and mosr.com are the lieing, idiotoc gasbag that he is held to be by most of the Mac community.
By the time everyone's awake, the truth'll already be up out all the news sites, Slashdot, and, probably, apple.com itself.
(unless anyone's REALLY planning on getting up that early (I pity the fool)... Well, if you just stay up all night, I guess that's okay... but only if you're codeing something *REALLY* cool
So hows about we give it a rest, and just see where the chips fall in the morning?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
A couple of years ago, I read a story in one of the industry trade rags that claimed Intel had built a prototype and (Pentium, I think) mother board that forsook all of the compatibility stuff that goes on a standard PC. It used USB for keyboard and mouse instead of the old, standard interconnects for example, and got rid of something like 80% of the BIOS. The chassis was a pyramid about ten inches high and twelve inches on each side of the base. The mobo was something like seven inches square.
And it's more humorous since, just today, just 6 hours ago or so, my Web site had an article going off on people who use "parameter" when they mean "perimeter".
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It's borderline, if the rest of your system is great you'd be fine (I'm surprised the 750 isn't fast enough to run DVD in software alone).
The ATI chips didn't have any real DVD/MPEG accelerator functions until the rage 128, and that was minimal. Make sure yu're using DVD player software that takes advantage of the AMD optimizations (most of the big ones do, I believe - PowerDVD, WinDVD, but check that it's using them). Check that you've got the AMD-optimized drivers for the video card, too.
And the DMA setting on the drive -- I've had it mysteriously turn off, especially on CD/DVD drives, and it makes a HUUUGE difference in how smoothly anything off a disc plays.
It definitely wouldn't HURT to drop a few bucks on a video card, but you really should be able to play full-screen video in software on a 750 anything, so check over the other settings/hardware to make sure something isn't goofy/underpowered...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Maybe he meant "bismol failure", like when you feel sick and Pepto-Bismol doesn't seem to work.
AppleInsider's been working fine today, and was okay until the story hit, well, here.
Regarding the 3/4 view, at least. MacJunkie says the logo looks a little "smushed". Umm no. Look closer. That's a combination of a specular surface, JPEG compression, and small pixel dimensions. If this box is real, my bets are that the corner of the Apple just got a bit blown out by the studio strobes in this particular photo and, with shrunk dimensions and jpeg compression, it makes the corner seem to not be there at all. Course, I could be wrong. But that 17" display? Man that thing is beautiful. (BTW, Apple's monitors have standard vga connectors instead of mac video, meaning you too can own a purty monitor if you like the way it looks. if not... get a radius blue.)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
... from the movie "The Yellow Submarine" is much more interesting to imagine.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Forget rectilinear. I want a sphere. I'd even settle for a hemisphere or a buckyball, to keep it from rolling around.
Who the heck wants a cube? I'm lobbying for pyramid myself. I'm sure everyone else is sick of their box shaped computers too. It's so much more leet if your neighborhood script kiddy can say "Hey man, wanna check out my new pyramid?". What was Apple thinking?
-Antipop
Stay tuned!!!
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
DVDs may be encoded at 24FPS, but the output you're getting from your DVD player is 30FPS. It does a conversion.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I seem to remember this design as a water tower cooling unit for an older Trane(tm) model industrial/commercial air conditioner. Add on some louvers on all four sides and the constant scream of about 12 fans, and probably add about 30 feet in all for directions and I bet that sucker could cool down a dual-cooled condenser coil in a matter of minutes [without the plexiglas... I mean, come ON! That's just WRONG!]
Seems they did a pretty good job on the image, but there's a few things that say that it's fake.
I didn't get to the sites before Apple.
Otherwise Apple would have filed a cease-and-desist by now, surely? :-)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I still have an Everex Mega-Cube setting in the house, which has fallen into disuse. Originally, it was a 486 with a very nasty proprietary motherboard in it, but, I did some case hacking and put a much higher end machine in it (ok, a P166 - back when a Pentium 166 was a sweet machine)
The Everex Mega-Cube is an almost perfect Borg Cube - and that's what we ended up dubbing it, not just for it's size and shape, but, because it also had a habit of ending up absorbing the drives, etc., from older machines that died.
The Mega-Cube is a dark grey, almost black. It's almost the size of my 21 inch monitor. The drive bays are covered by a cover that recesses a little bit and slides down into the case. Basically, when you have the drive bay cover closed, it's flush with the rest of the case, which form a giant black metal cube with one little lit display that show(ed) the state of the machine.
Time to resurrect the Borg Cube again, me thinks... it was just too damned awsome :-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
6
white
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Sheesh, Ryan just scored some HUGE credibility points. I want to see pictures of the MacJunkie guy eating his mouse.
They can't stop us all.
:)
Damn, I wish I wasn't posting anonymously. Karma would be nice.
Apple can't touch this one!
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Seems to me as if AppleInsider is indeed trying to go out with a bang. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has noticed AppleInsider's title tag..."Causing Tens of Millions of Dollars in Irreparable Damages". And no matter how many threats they get, they keep posting new rumors/information, like they're dumping all their garbage before making a jump. -spikeovsky
The fraud article is correct in at least one aspect: the screws definitely give it away. 3 in one picture and 2 in another? Definite fraud.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
...to give Apple a taste of it's own medicine. It'd crack me up if they came out with a cube-shaped computer and Cobalt sued using the very same justification that Apple uses to go after everyone who comes out with an all-in-one computer.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
It seems that the original site has taken down the pictures. This is the second time this week that the original site was changed after being posted on Slashdot; the first time, the site had gone down because being slashdotted, it had gone past its bandwidth limits.
:)
Here's an idea for slashdot: how about caching a local copy of the articles cited? Obviously, it'll keep the content from being changed; it'll also make sure that in the older, archived articles, we can still refer to the pages referred, even if it was on a news site that changes content rapidly. Of corse, they should still keep a link to the original site, so people can check the original.
So... does anyone agree? And does anyone have a copy of the pictures so I can see them?
I have removed any proprietary Apple information from the image.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I'm waiting for cobalt to hit apple with a look and feel copyright lawsuit for a "cube" design.. :-)
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It's easy to find a good Mac case ...
... while no more than 5-10% of PC's sold have anything that is close to acceptable.
Yah, but I'd still rather have the choice. Apple says "Thou Shalt Have This Case, And Thou Shalt Like It". With choice comes the inevitable sucky products, but it also brings a larger number of good products.
Sure, 90% of PC cases are crap. 90% of everything is crap. Sturgeon's Law.
FYI, CasEdge is at http://www.casedge.com, and the particular model that sits on my desktop is the LX734A.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
At the end of the day, leaks like this can help draw attention to a company and its products. But since SJ came back, there seems to be a dedicated effort to clamp down and control everything about Apple.
Earth to Steve: Support and encourage users and enthusiasts. No users == no more Apple.
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Well, someone is doing live updates from the keynote speach - and the Cube lives! PowerMac G4, from the page:
10:38 One more thing! (PowerMac G4 Cube)
- 1.5 GB of RAM
- 40 GB of Hard Drive Space
- Modem, Ethernet, Firewire, USB
- 8" Cube
- No Fan
- DVD Slot Load Drive on the top
- Handle on the bottom to lift out the entire machine from the enclosure
- 450 MHz G4; 64MB of RAM; 20 GB; Firewire; DVD-ROM; iMovie; $1799
- 500 MHz G4; 128mb of RAM; 30GB; Firewire; DVD-ROM; iMovie; $2299
Which of course makes you wonder - why the hell did Apple have such a shit fit over some leaked pictures that weren't even that far ahead of thier anouncement anyway?!
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I agree, it's seems to be fake. But suggesting that it's fake because no one would put have vents that size (or, ostensibly, on top) because they'd be vulnerable to spills is silly.
I know for a fact (for a fact) that monitors are quite vulnerable to water spills. Multiple water spills. Angled just right to let the entire glass spill into them.
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-Multi Processor G4s. 2x450@ $2500, 2x500@ $3500
-4 New iMacs; generally upgraded and new colors (Indigo, Ruby, Sage, and Snow).
-Full sized Keyboard and Optical Mouse w/o button.
-Office 2001.
-Same old OSX stuff.
-Bungie, Microsoft, & Apple teaming up to make more games available on Mac.
-Circuit City carrying iMacs.
-iMovie 2... free as in beer.
-Some iTools stuff... new homepage builder.
-New desktop machine: G4 powered, up to 1.5 GB RAM, up to 40 GB HD, 8" Cube case, convection cooled, suspended in clear enclosure, top load slot CD/DVD, white with grey logo, little Harmon/Kardon external speakers. $1799-2299. Available in august.
-3 new monitors. 17" flat CRT $499, 15" flat LCD $799, 22" Cinema display $???. All are powered by the video cable?!
IMHO, the cube is super fly. As one of the guys in their prerecorded piece said: "Holy shit, they've done it again."
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You're right AI is down currently due to a bombardment of requests and probably Job's emotional reaction this the images. They're being posted elsewhere on the net, so we'll see.
ATI has leaked info on accident. Spoke with an anonymous Apple employee today who said "I bet ATI won't have the chance to make that mistake again."
Now Apple bombards the MacNN/AI servers.... we'll see what happens tomorrow. Fact of the matter: It's gonna be a great MacWorld Expo.