You could say that the day of this Keynote, was the day I became obsessed with Apple. The G4 Cube fascinated the hell out of me. I still think it’s one of the most beautiful computers Apple has ever produced, and between the G4 Cube and the iMac G4, I don’t think Apple’s design team has ever done a better job than those two products.
The G4 Cube, however, was not a success. The device was underpowered and over priced. It was discontinued in 2001, with a promise that it would resurface in another form in the future.
That form was the Mac Mini. The day the Mini was released, I ordered my first Mac. Since then…if you can’t tell…I’ve been hooked.
8 thoughts on “YouTube Find: G4 Cube Intro – Macworld 2000”
The Cube was a clever design but one of their best I dunno. The Mac Mini is a lot better imo. They fit more power into a smaller space, granted its been quite some time since the Cube was introduced, but looking back I think the Mini was a better design choice.
Not the iMac G4 though, that was sweet, I still don’t know how they managed to fit it all in there.
I loved the Cube, but I could never afford it. Sweet design, compaired to every thing else on the market in 2000. Nothing came close. Everything else was just an ugly beige box.
I wonder if there is a mod out there to take the Mac Mini guts and cram it into a G4 cube enclosure. I know I saw a post for a guy do it with a PC mini ITX board.
^^ Cram? you could fit like 6 minis in there. Someone did mod it and put an external hd, mini, and airport station inside the g4. Saw it on TUAW.
Didn’t the hard drive make a racket? I don’t see how it could run totally silent…
Still, it’s an awesome design. I like my G4 iMac–headless now, so it’s even cooler looking. Now it just needs a custom paint job.
@Bryan
What happened to the head?
Found it: Mac Mini in a G4 Cube:
https://www.123macmini.com/macminicube/
Man. Save the nasty “snow-white” iMac, I think Apple’s product line-up back then was so gorgeous. The clear plastic.. It was so futuristic-looking, you felt like you owned a piece of alien technology. Those were the days… Apple hasn’t amazed me in it’s computer design since then, except with the G4 iMac..
I read about the cube as being a super cool design/concept back in 2000 in PC magazine. But I never realized how really cool it was until I watched this video. Thanks Michael for posting it. I think that away from the price point back then, this will always be a one of a kind machine considering the time it was launched in.
@Michael: I have been a mac user back in 2005 since the launch of the first mini too.