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GCN Home > November 20, 2000 issue

Mac Cube has power, style—at a price

Mac Cube has power, style—at a price

It has some quirks, like an oversensitive power switch, but the new G4 has many strengths, too

By Joel Sparks
Special to GCN

The compact Power Mac G4 Cube workstation raises at least as many questions as it answers. But there’s no question that the machine is powerful, stylish and unique.

Apple Computer Inc. turned itself around in recent years by simplifying its product line to four types of systems: the popular consumer iMac, its portable iBook version, the powerful G4 desktop system and its portable equivalent, the PowerBook.

Dropping the Cube into the middle of this square confuses the picture. At a starting price of $1,799—less a $300 rebate with a monitor purchase—the Cube is too pricey to outfit an entire office of users.

Hard-core Mac data wranglers might well prefer the blander G4 tower, which accepts dual processors and can be heavily customized and upgraded. In contrast, the Cube’s unique architecture makes adding internal drives and expansion cards difficult or impossible. Before buying, consider whether you have a history of making such hardware upgrades.

The Cube accepts up to 1.5G of RAM, a 40G hard drive and an optional 32M, 3-D graphics card. That’s plenty for most users.



The lack of an obvious market for what was supposed to be the next iMac has contributed to Apple’s recent financial stumble. Is the Cube merely an oddity, like the 20th-anniversary Mac of some years ago? Not necessarily.

It’s still a PowerPC G4 with a 450-MHz or faster clock rate, and it can calculate billions of floating-point operations per second. That’s real power for less money than it takes to buy a dual-processor G4.

The compact form factor is not only attractive but also convenient. Paired with a thin LCD, it frees up considerable desk space. And let’s face it, the thing is cool.

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