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Third Party Selling Upgraded G4 Cubes
cybercyph writes "A 3rd party is selling upgraded G4 cubes. The upgraded cubes have a 1.2 GHz G4 processor, GeForce 3 card with 64 MB RAM, 1 GB RAM (upgradable to 1.5) and a 120 GB hard drive! I can't imagine this making Apple too happy..." They are asking $1879, which is comparable to a similarly equipped new G4 from Apple.
If you want a third party upgraded laptop, MCE is selling iBooks equipped with DVD-R/CD-R optical drives.
There was another company back in the day who's name skips my mind, but they also sold upgraded Macs until Apple gave them the cease and desist. So I would expect the same thing to happen here eventually.
Vonal Declosion
You heard incorrectly.
What has been nerfed are the old machines that were never really qualified to run OS X, but can be tricked into doing so if you have a 3rd party CPU upgrade card. Of course, there will be hacks to get them to work again. I wouldn't be too worried.
The other thing that you may have heard is that it will be almost impossible for a G=4 machine to be upgraded to a G5. This is because the G5 board architecture is *vastly* different than the G3 and G4. That being said, "impossible" has been done before.
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
If you already own a G4 cube there are a variety of upgrade options. I recently found them myself.
PowerLogix and Sonnet both offer upgrade cards. Many video cards fit (and can be made to submit) inside. These upgrades usually imply removing the heat sinks and adding a fan.
The hard drive isn't too have to upgrade - if you have a 10T Torx wrench just lying about.
www.cubeowner.com is a great resource.
Dav
IIRC, the Cube sold about 28,000 units during its entire run. That's pretty bad considering that they sold about 127,000 desktops during the last quarter alone, when everyone was waiting for the G5s to be announced.
one word: hearing
:-)
yup, ever since i got my hearing back because of the fan less cube, i've cared less and less for higher end machines. thought about upgrading but fans drive me nuts.
my friend was at WWDC and played with the G5... when that baby is going, you can HEAR the sucking sound. independently controlled my ass!
anyways, i'll enjoy the music i buy from the iTunes store without the background hiss
From the FAQ at cubeowner.com. Click on "Miscellaneous FAQs and Figures".
They [Apple] sold a total of 148,000 Cubes during the entire lifetime of Cube.
It sold 12,000 units in the quarter ended in March, 2001.
The Cube was introduced at a price of $1,799 in July 2000; the price was cut to $1,499 in January 2001.
I got my Cube (original version) for $899 when the CD-RW equipped appeared to displace it. If Apple could have hit that price point profitably, they would have sold a whole lot more. Despite its limitations, it is a very nice machine (and still my main home computer).
Every rule has an exception (except this one).
Just a quick note...
ATA66 can support greater then > 120GB drives if the controller support 48b LBAs. ATA66 was defined as part of the same standard revision that define 48b support, AFAICR it simply wasn't required.
So having ATA66 doesn't automatically imply that you cannot use larger then 120GB drives... in the case of the Cube, to my knowledge, its controller does not support 48b LBAs (as you noted).
ok, 256mb ram, $40, Now you've chopped $100 off the price, 120 to 40g harddrive... still about $100 so no real savings here (maybe $10?).
So for $1700 I can get the exact same thing with 256mb ram instead of 1 gig... for $1800 it better be a hell of alot more machine than what they are already selling for me to buy it, not less.