Slashdot Mirror
Apple Dumps the Cube
bac_mit writes: "I guess we all saw this coming with the dismal sales, but Apple has finally decided to stop
making the cube. There's an article about it here. It's always sad to see a beautifully designed product die." A year ago, the Cube was being hyped like crazy. What happened?
Unlike most of the posters here, I actually have a Cube in my home -- it's my wife's machine, which she uses for 'net stuff and work-at-home layout & image work. She didn't want an iMac because she already had a flat-screen display, and she didn't want a G4 tower because she didn't want to take up the space in her small office.
The machine is a delight, to be honest. Utterly, completely silent and, when combined with a flat-screen display, a very calming experience to use. No low-level buzzing droning in the background. Just a quiet box on the corner of her desk.
Expandability? She had an external CDR from an earlier machine, and a USB scanner works just fine. Because of the internal 802.11b card, she doesn't have to worry about network wiring. She currently has half a gig of RAM in it. And with OS 9.1, it's been rock-solid. It's a great machine.
So what happened? As others have said, the price kept a lot of people away. If the Cube had been a sub-$1K system, Apple would have cannibalized their (more profitable) iMac sales, but they wouldn't have been able to keep the Cubes on the shelves.
If it wasn't for the Macintosh, I'd never have discovered Linux. It worked like this:
- Apple abandons the Apple II line in favor of the Macintosh.
- I abandon Apple and go to the IBM-PC, which still has a useful CLI interface in the form of Microsoft DOS.
- In the drive to compete with Apple, Microsoft abandons DOS in favor of Windows. At first (v3.x), this is just annoying, but later (Win95 and after), it really gets shoved down your throat.
- I abandon Microsoft as soon as a friend introduces me to an early version of RedHat Linux, which still has a useful CLI.
- Six years later, I wonder how the hell I ever got along without bash. I occasionally hear that Apple and Microsoft are still in business, but it's no longer relevant.
So thank you, Steve Jobs! If not for your insistence on twiddleware, I'd probably still be buying Apple products.--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The Cube should really have been marketed towards the 3D Gamer / LAN Party go'er. A nice 3D chipset (Radeon, Nvidia) and a 20 gig hard drive. Try to make the price point as low as possible and they would have sold like hotcakes for LAN Parties. I used to think a Mac sucked for games (1 button? What is that!), but then a group of all Mac gamers showed me that if it can use USB... it can use a USB 3 button mouse :).
:) )
(I still want one for LAN Parties and Linux..
-Tom
In September came out with their most unique computer in atleast a decade. It was fanless, had an entirely different shape and form and was running with a top notch processor. Yet what happened?
Well #1, and I think this goes for all of Apple's line, the lack of the new exciting OS to go with the new exciting hardware caused people to hold back from buying new computers. The fact was that Apple had a very bad release despite releasing great equipment. They took a loss for that quarter.
#2. Typical of Apple, they had problems getting the machines into the hands of the users. Alot of folks I knew ordered them and discovered they were not coming when they expected. Then there were issues with the powerbuttons and expectation of upgrades and a struggle with the atypical monitor cables and such.
#3 In the end, business users did not need the quiet elegant but limited expanssion machine. It was closer to the old Mac Classic design then the Mac II and in comparison to the Powermac G4's this just wasn't a business machine. Probably they should have worked to get it into college dorms and such. But the price is just too high compared to the iMac and the pc compatibles.
In the end it is a shame. I also wanted a Cube. Hopefully they will find a way of dropping the price (iCube?) on a similar technology.
d
If you think about it, the machine was basically a G4 with the power supply pulled out... and if you ever saw both (the cube & the supply) you can imagine how that supply would fit right where the heat 'chimney is'. I wonder if they were going for a cube with the power supply inside but couldn't get enough convection current going without a fan... so they had to pull it out!
Anyway... So the main issues as I see them:
1. The cube idea is not new. (nextcube, cobalt servers, etc.)
2. The ONLY innovation on the machine, the ultra-cool touch power button, but unfortunately is susceptible to RF glitching. that sucks!
3. The main appeal of the machine, it's 'look', was marred by poor manufacturing quality (many of the cubes had visible, highly refractive seams)
4. To have a complete system, you had to have a huge mass of cabling going into a very small opening at the bottom and then steeply angling into the machines ports... just bad design.
One way they could have really improved the cube is to include a vid card that has s-video out and pitch the machine as an entertainment device with full DVD/CD/3D-Sound/Gaming capabilities and:
-Put the power supply back in the cube, with a fan!
-And get rid of those stupid orb shaped speakers... they look cool, but aren't practical.
Happy Birthday USA!
-t
It's pretty odd that Apple did the Cube at all, really. Anyone remember the original four-box strategy that they implemented to prevent themselves from going overboard on models, like they used to?
In the old days, Apple had Quadras, Performas, Centrises and Classics, and no one could tell from the name or even case design which Mac was which. Futhermore, within each line (Centris/Performa/Quadra) there were myriad variations that made little sense, and often there was overlap. This confused both customer and sales team, and caused a lot of trouble.
Enter the four-box strategy:
Consumer portable: iBook
Consumer desktop: iMac
Pro portable: PowerBook
Pro desktop: G3/G4
This strategy worked just fine, and then Jobs got a wild hair and decided to add the Cube, which was neither cheap enough to be a Consumer box (like an iMac) nor powerful and expandable enough to be a Pro box. Sure, it looked great, but it was just a bad decision (unless they had cut the price dramatically, but then they would have run into problems with the Cube cannibalizing iMac sales).
They should stick to a simple product line, like they started to do, much in the same way that carmakers recycle chassis designs and parts to keep things simple and costs down.
For all the coolness of the Cube, it was simply a blunder IMO.
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
coming.
:)
This is one of those cases where it seems like everyone on the web was in on one big secret that Apple didn't discover until they started looking at quarterly reports and doing the math.
Notice that everyone likes the look of the Cube, the silence of the Cube, and in general the concept of the G4 Cube. I know that I personally have been lusting after an old NeXT Cube for years now, despite the fact that the hardware is so hopelessly out of date and there's really nothing for me to do on OpenStep. The concept of a computer in a Cube form factor is just so appealing to me that I'd be willing to spend the $400 or so that it costs to pick up a decent NeXT Cube used.
However, if you're going to create a silent cube computer, you have to realize that those are perks. Those are "neat things". Those are *not* important enough issues to justify a purchase at full new retail price for 99% of customers.
Sure, you read here about how Joe Sixpack bought it for his wife and she loves it, or how Fred Smith bought it to add to his stereo as a digital computer component and thinks it's pretty fantastic. Most of us do not have $1800 or $2000 or whatever a decent Cube costs these days (or did cost, heh heh) just to throw away on a whim based on a cutesy design.
Someone here mentioned Rolex and Bentley. These products are *extremely* high priced within their markets, but they are also the acknowledged *BEST* at what they do. The layman thinks "high-end watch", he thinks ROLEX. That makes a Rolex watch 1) a quality piece of equipment and 2) a status symbol.
Any Apple based computer these days is only a status symbol for a small subset of the community. I think Apple had starry-eyed visions of Dot-Com millionaires eating up Cubes like chocolate to put on their glasstop desks right next to their expensive LCD panels and stack of $400 motivational tapes. It just didn't happen. Within the computing industry, Mac owners are more often reviled than revered. Macs are seen as a toy, or at best, as a tool for an artist or graphics designer.
There aren't enough image-conscious artists or graphics designers to buy Cubes. Most of them are still probably holding onto their 9600s for the 6 PCI slots.
Which is the other issue - the Cube is NOT the best in its class. No, it is not "in a class of its own", it's a personal computer. There are much better machines in terms of functionality and quality of components than the Cube - even within Apple's own product line!
That's the one-two punch. The bonuses of the machine are not worth enough to most people in and of themselves, and the machine does not contain amazing whiz-bang hardware to drive the purchases. If the Cube had been the fastest piece of hardware Apple manufactured by a measurable amount and been delivered at a cost of only a few hundred dollars more than the G4 Tower (to make up for the lack of expandabiltiy, etc... even though it'd be the fastest, it would be a static configuration), I think it would have sold very well.
If the G4 Cube was delivered as-is but at a price point closer to the iMac than the G4 Towers, I think it also would have sold.
It was neither. It didn't sell.
In 10 years I'll probably buy one on eBay for $400 to sit next to my (at that point) 20 year old NeXT cube in the museam of cool machines that could've been.
For those of us who don't have all kinds of space, the Cube was an excellent idea. From what I've heard, Apple was expecting to sell a whole lot of Cubes in Japan, for example.
The fact that Apple mispriced the Cube, making the G4 tower a much more cost-effective bet, and that they mistimed it by releasing it before OS X was available, doesn't take away from the fact that they had the right idea in a small form-factor CPU that actually looked nice.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Other Macs, with far better price/performance, outsold the Cube. The Cube has exactly two things going for it:
it looks cool
it is silent
Well, other Macs look cool enough, and are quiet enough, and cost less for what they do.
And, by the way, while you can make money by selling a product that is expensive but really cool -- consider Rolex watches, or Bentley cars -- a few visible cracks in clear plastic just may be enough to disappoint the folks who are motivated to buy such products.
The Cube is the only Mac that remotely tempts me. A truly silent box would be a nice thing. If I ever decide to buy a Mac, I'll probably get a used Cube, perhaps on eBay. Apple may not make any more new ones, but there will still be a few around.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I don't know how many here actually remember the original release of the Mac, but there are some substantial similarities between that product and this one. Why did the Mac survive while the cube didn't? Therein lies the key...
Those were the days of the Atari 800, the C-64, and even Apple's own ][+ (e, xe, c, whatever). The Atari and C64 had the ability to do 256 colours at about 320x200 (with some seriously clever programming) and had 16-bit sound! Then came the Mac. Lunky, clunky, tiny B+W built-in monitor, bad sound, and this goofy interface. (Remember this was the first home compute with a mouse, and the original mac mouse was _ugly_ to use even after you got used to it)
But it worked! It caught on. It singlehandedly began the next wave of computing, despite its severe limitations. Why?
1) Apple had the money to support it for more than eight months or so.
2) It was absolutely unique! There was nothing like it out there, and what it was offering was a whole new experience.
3) They could _deliver_ the damned things when the orders started rolling in.
4) There was no real concept of a standard platform. You bought your computer, and bought the software for that platform. When the largest company only had 15-20% of the market, there was less feeling of picking the 'right' or 'wrong' platform--just the one you wanted.
Now we have (or rather, had) the cube. Although it was intriguingly sexy, it lost out on all of the above points. Apple cannot afford to keep flogging the things until they start selling. Furthermore, they can't get production up to match demand anyways. The fact that they're perceived as being a (nearly) dead company vs. Microsoft is a huge handicap as well.
But the killer is this: The cube isn't unique enough. It's beautiful, it's advanced (fanless case? It's already becoming the Next Thing--except to see fanless desktop processors from Intel and AMD again in about 18 months), but underneath the skin it's still Another Mac--just like the G3/G4 Macs which are still available, better machines, and cheaper to boot.
Apple has been a computer _design_ company from day 1. This design just wasn't revolutionary to overcome its flaws.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I'm sure they're moving on to more interesting shapes. A dodecahedral computer, that'd be neat. Or a sphere, floating in the air... Of course, if you lost power, crashing would take on a whole new meaning... I guess it's true every technological benefit introduces new problems!
--------
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
The G4 cube casing was a problem that people continued to complain about. Around the rivets on the top of it people were finding what they thought were hair thin cracks. Apple said it was a normal part of manufacturing and not a defect but I think it bothered a lot of people getting the cube. There was also an issue with the power turning on and off. There wasn't an actual power on/off, and some people were having problems with the power touch detection working correctly. Heres a link from Sept 2000 about the cases:
:(
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2885165.html
Despite these small issues, it is sad to see it go. On the G4 Cube webpage there is now a heading about it being "put on ice"
http://www.apple.com/powermaccube/
bbh
The cube had "microfractures" around where the screws went into the plastic, and they grew to be less-micro over time. I don't think apple ever admitted it, though a lot of people thought there should have been a recall. I've only seen a couple cubes, but the one that used to be on display at my local compusa did indeed have the cracks around the screw holes.
;-)
I also heard that the thing got hotter than fuck, which I know is an issue with some of apple's other machines too (*cough*titanium*cough*).
Oh well. They still make the coolest hardware. And I still want an iBook...
___
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Apple has always been an innovative system builder with a strong emphasis on design, playing at being Ferrari while the rest of the industry was happy playing at being Ford - the Mac Classic, the 20th Anniversary Mac, the iMac, even today's standard G4's all have design features that have critics and users alike begging for more.
Unfortunately, the Cube also had its share of faults. Its fanless silence, case design and touch sensitive on-off switch were all great but were all problematic - the units overheated often, cases became cracked and the switches sometimes failed. Apple buried its head in the sand over these for a while, but it was inevitable that the writing was on the wall for the Cube, not least of all because of all the negative press that these failures generated.
Will Apple stop being innovative in terms of case design? Not likely while Steve Jobs is still at the helm, and a good thing too. Without the influence of Jobs and Apple we'd probably all be stuck with a CLI. That's not to say that CLIs are a bad thing but Apple bought the GUI to the mass market, and the mass market appeal of an easy to use PC made PCs cheaper for all of us.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg