Random Apple Memory
Adam Banks recalls when Apple tried and failed to reinvent the desktop computer for the 21st Century
Why the Power Macintosh G4 Cube ultimately failed to reinvent the desktop. Plus, what to expect next issue…
As the 1990s drew to a close, Steve Jobs, reinstalled as “interim CEO,” had revitalized every strand of Apple’s computer range. But Jobs and his industrial design protégé, Jonathan Ive, wanted to mark the millennium even more strongly.
The concept was simple: A Power Mac would be stripped to its essential components, housed in the minimum possible space; yet desktop-class performance, connectivity, and accessibility would be preserved.
To achieve this, the motherboard, graphics card and storage were shoehorned into a cubic chassis – echoing Jobs’ earlier NeXTcube workstation – suspended in a polymethyl methacrylate enclosure. A twoinch gap above the desktop allowed cables to emerge invisibly from sockets in the machine’s bottom panel and trail away through a large cut-out. Apart from a large Apple logo on the front, the case was otherwise blank except for the top, which featured a large grille for heat dissipation (achieved without a fan), a DVD slot mirrored by an additional grille, and a touch-sensitive power button.
This button drew the first complaints from users, who found themselves accidentally turning off the computer. Other grumbles followed. The transparent acrylic looked wonderful until cracks appeared in it; those bottom-mounted sockets were awkward to reach; and while the internals slid out beautifully, few upgrades were practical. Its high-end 450MHz G4 processor made the Cube more expensive than the more flexible 400MHz G4 tower, but, likely due to heat issues, it actually performed no better.
The G4 Cube, discontinued after just a year, remains a groundbreaking design – and its legacy is obvious in today’s Mac Pro.