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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
"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!"
This is cool and all, but why can't they have 256meg ram and a 20-40gig harddrive and shave several hundred dollars of the price?
On a slightly offtopic rant:
Many have said Apple needs to compete in the (more) lowend market... I would think a headless g3 would be the way to go... $500-$800, 128meg ram, 20gig hdd, etc. in a cube-like case without a monitor would be HUGE for apple, in my opinion. Even to the point shaving off the Apple markup and selling these things at a near no-profit, just to get lots of units sold.
"We at Kemplar.com are proud to offer the upgraded Apple Cube G4 for a limited time."
I guess we'll see how limited . .
Can anyone out there tell my why Apple would send a C&D to this company? All they're doing is buying old stock of Cubes, upgrading parts of them, and reselling them. They're not claiming that they're made by Apple. They're just being a VAR in the used market.
--Mike
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
Apple has no way to shut them down because they don't have to go through apple retailers for the processors. Who doesn't like the cube? This is very smart business. Apple won't be very happy about this.
Granted it only has 512 of ram, but we all now how cheap ram is these days, and i can max out at 2 GB not 1.5.
It's cool. It's got commodity, but its more money and less power than what apple is selling. And like someone else said, mine will definitely work with panther.
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
The cube is one of the most original looking systems. However, the design always struck me as a little impractical. The optical power switch on top was prone to sending the system to sleep unexpectedly. The USB ports, ethernet port and modem connection were on the bottom, keeping the cables in order. However it also meant that you either had to turn the system over or grope around under system to connect peripherals.
You can just as easily get a stylish iMac for the same price.
BTW, I'm a Mac user and I thought the cube was a great looking machine so no flames for this, thankyouverymuch.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
And all in an out of warranty cube which is already maxed (you can add a whole 512MB extra RAM and the controller is only ATA66 so no drives > 120GB for you!) out so no room for future upgrades! for $1879 it sounds like a steal to me, especially with those pokey G5's retailing for a bloated $1999.
Get real.
Unless you have some sort of cube fetish, really - whats the point, for $120 extra you can have yourself a 64 bit workstation that's likely 3x as powerful. With room to grow. And warranty. And new technology like bluetooth and FW800.
I honestly can't imagine Apple caring less either way.
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
The G4 Cube was in my opinion the best Apple system ever introduced. It was nearly totally silent since it used convection cooling, reduced cable clutter since connections were all on the bottom, near full PowerMac performance and had upgradable CPU and graphics cards. Hopefully one day Apple will introduce a new version of the Cube with a G5 (assuming the can get the thing to run cool enough!)
They'll have a C&D letter in by morning, if it isn't already sitting on their FAX machine.
No they won't! Apple has contracts with their dealers which prohibit all sorts of activities they deem undesirable wrt machines bought from Apple intended for retail sale. But Apple has nothing--repeat after me--Apple has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say about the trade in used Macs. They have no legal right to do so, nor would they have any conceivable reason to even try. (And please note that reselling used Macs is quite different from trying to scrounge repair parts, build FrankenMacs, and sell those.)
the basis of the appeal of this deal to me is the cube...i don't think anyone would bat an eye at this if it were an old imac refurb, but apple somehow struck a nerve with the cube. i've never heard anyone describe the cube as anything but sexy. the question then becomes: what premium are you willing to pay for sexy? many people are willing to sacrafice speed for sexiness, many others will not. personally, as a poor college student, i couln't afford either, and thus am stuck with my dual-cracked hinge ti powerbook. (because of the hinges, i have to constantly prop the display up against something. right now, a pillow...sigh...)
This is exactly true. If it weren't eBay and such would have a whole lot of hell to catch from apple for reselling old macs with upgrade cards installed.
- Sherman
While it may be possible to plug a G5 into a G5 motherboard, the FSB speed would cripple it, possibly to below G4 speeds.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
All these guys are doing is taking an existing Cube, upgrading it with Sonnet and/or PowerLogix upgrades, which can be purchased by anyone already, and selling the pre-upgraded unit to anyone who wants to save themselves the effort of upgrading it themselves.
I own a few Cubes, all of which are upgraded with CPUs from PowerLogix and Sonnet, ranging from 800Mhz to 1.2Ghz. One has an internal SuperDrive from MCE. One has a Combo Drive from MCE. The other is a stock DVD-ROM. They all have upgraded video cards (GeForce 2MX, GeForce 3 and ATI Radeon 7500 for dual display). They all have 120GB Seagate HDDs.
Point is, I could sell any one of them at any time (and have sold quite a few in the past), with all these upgrades already installed, much like Kemplar is doing. They're selling existing parts and labor, that's all.
All that aside, taking a look at cubeowner.com, I'd say those aluminum after-market 10x10 Cube replacement enclosures are a much hotter ticket. Looks like it will enable me to put a Dual 1.2 (or better!) in there without a fan! Now that's the Cube I've been waiting for! There's no mention of who is making them, but the pictures of the alleged prototype look pretty cool. I'm not a huge fan of the dark metal shown in the picture, but a clear plastic one or a snow-white one (ala iMac G4) would rock my world, for sure.
Seriously though, the cube (with ADC monitor) has exactly ONE less cable than the new iMac. Claiming that the iMac eliminates cable clutter is a lie. I hope that Apple releases a G5 cube. IMHO the only thing bad about the cube was how the USB speakers slowed the processor. The only thing that prevented it from being a roaring success was the a price point that was a mere $200 too much.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
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).
Forget the 1990s speed - it's a home media center candidate. Existing choices in this market segment are ugly, noisy PCs. A silent beautiful Cube on the other hand...
A more interesting upgrade card design would be similar to the Sonnet G3 upgrade for the PowerMac 7200. It's basically a single-board computer with its own RAM, etc. on the card, but using the MLB for peripherals via the PCI bus. An upgrade card design like that could easily bring reasonable single-processor G5 performance to a G4 or G3 machine, albeit probably at a much higher price than a G4 upgrade card (and possibly at a higher price than a G5 machine itself).
The real question becomes the line between possible and practical, and I'm not really sure where that line might be.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine that the cubes were very carefully designed to remove a certain amount of heat, and all this new hotter stuff may cause serious problems?