EEVblog
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 พ.ค. 2019
- Why did Apple's most beautiful product fail?
A look at the Apple PowerMac G4 Cube designed by Jonathan Ive.
A teardown and power-up.
Forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/ee...
#Apple #Macintosh #Fail
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Nowadays, instead of a convenient handle to access the inside, it would be conveniently soldered shut for "your protection".
More likely glued shut.
I can't wait until they just fill the computers with "non-conductive copper" for "better heat dissipation"
@@dan_loup Commordore filled their power supplies with epoxy resin.
@@dorfschmidt4833 Any good reason in particular, like waterproofing?
@@dan_loup Maybe to eliminate hum from the transformer, I'm guessing.
Replaceable ram AND gpu ! Man the guy who designed that would totoaly get fired today !
AND a replaceable hard drive!
Andrew Joy Well he's still their chief designer. But the head maniac was replaced.
The CPU was also replaceable, they had the CPU on a card even in their laptops back then!
@@s8wc3 CARD????/// I thought those had always been either socketed or bust (bust = BGA junk 😡)
The G3 powerbooks had the cpu on a card along with the ram slots, not sure about the G4s but I think they were bga. Companies made upgrade cards that would allow you to install a G4 into a G3 powerbook, which was awesome. Same goes for the towers except the G3s are socketed and the G4s (except early Yikes models) are on a card. All the G3s and G4s are overclockable afaik, you could swap resistors around on the board to change the clock multiplier, except for the G3 B&W tower which literally just had dip switches right on the motherboard!
I never realised how accurate all the Apple marketing parodies were until I heard Jonathan Ive speak just now.
If you think that's something, you should watch how the iPhone 5c was brandished as 'unapologetically plastic'. That's Ivian for 'cheap on purpose'.
Yeah he's a genius, but like a lot of geniuses, he's a bit "out there."
Yeah, what a disgusting person, pretty sure it is a psychopath.
dan_tm
Jonathan Ive, the brauwn designs you like?
What is the use, adobe or Macpaint?
What did you realized, how accurate what? What is it you cry here, went mad?
And calling it a super computer!
Remember when Apple made computers with repair technician's in mind? Dave Jones remembers.
so do i
Louis Rossmann also remembers.
Every day.
Multiple times.
@@Glasrandkante And goes on about it at length.
Apple has lost its way, this is what made Apple so different they thought about users upgrading so payed attention to detail in the inside and made it as easy as possible to access now every thing Apple makes today is sealed shut, and is a mess inside so many mistakes like running high power rail next to a data line we’re the two go into a header we’re they has been macs fried because of the high voltage arcing over to the data line or bus and fried it, ribbons flex cable too short been tugged every time you close a laptop lid and open it, causing the famous stage light issue they are making one fk up after another and because it’s sealed shut no one will know how bad it is.
Louis also goes into great length about whatever bullshit his cats are doing that day. Really reconsidering my subscription.
"I see you're admiring our MyCube. It's fuelled by dreams and powered by imagination,"
Homer: “What does it do?"
Salesman: "You should ask yourself "What can I do for it?"
Homer is on his knees in front of the cube:OK, what can I do for you?Please I'm begging you..."
Salesman: "Sir, it's not even turned on yet."
Homer: "But it's glowing."
Salesman: "That light confirms that it's off."
This part of the Maple scene came right to my mind. After that Bart is about to get busted and ask the cube for help and start playing a song ... LOL
Ladies and gentlemen, this what is referred to as a meta-comment.
Here's the video - th-cam.com/video/Z90cSmqShLg/w-d-xo.html
We called it the Power Mac toaster (for both the CD ejecting vertically, and the heat from the central core).
Very fitting name for that 😂
Lol, the thermal considerations were the first thing I wondered about when watching this video, considering it wouldn't be the only time they've had great looking designs that sacrifice stuff like that.
13:37 "It's upside down so all the electrons are gonna fall out" Good one haha
Wow, leet
BTW, I'm now lighting both the talking head and bench shots with my 95 CRI Aputure studio lights, let me know if you notice a colour quality difference from previous videos.
I hadn't noticed till I saw the comment, in the sense that I've watched EEVBlog for a long time and the quality has been more than sufficient to enjoy and learn from them for me.
I will be happy to buy that apple mac cube off you
I’ll be honest that I didn’t look at your face til I saw your comment.
Looked awesome 👏Dave
It seemed to be up to the usual high standard Dave. Doc, Marty and Einstein also approve. 👍
keeping cats off the warm air vent flowing from the top was almost impossible. And then the touch sensitive power button would trip.
nah, you're in Australia so upside down electronics won't lose their electrons; it'll actually keep them in!
@BASIL!!!!! Βασίλειος nah, it just comes from underneath instead :P
On a ball, up and down is a human construct.
Haha i wondered if he was aussie with the imperial measurement comment.
Ah, the land down under - where electrons have a positive charge.
I remember when these came out, and I used to drool over them at Fry's. But I was only 11 at the time, and even then I realized the overall price was absolutely outlandish and unobtainable.
I was using a garage sale MacII at the time, and the G4 (or any modern Mac) at the time looked like a space ship... and cost more than one.
MacII? Jeez that was harsh. I would at least dropped a little cash for something with a PowerPC chip, even if it was older. Could probably gotten a good deal on an original iMac.
Ever go to Weird Stuff?
Yes upgradable, one of mine has dual G4 500MHz with Geforce 4mx card, have another with dual 450MHz and an ATI 8500. The space below is for a fan, which you will need to install if you run dual CPU.
Should not pick an MX if you want performance :)
@@ruikazane5123 Do you know of a card that fits the form-factor of a cube and has more performance?
Crissa Kentavr What available space you have? A GTX 1050 is a small card if you have PCI Express
@@ruikazane5123 Can't tell if trolling.
Pandaren Warrior I'm not joking. You might be stuck with a 1030 because of limited power issues.
Someone should just stuff a NUC inside one and run a hackintosh inside a macintosh.
The older style white mac minis fit pretty good inside that case, can even get the optical drive slot to line up. We had a 2.5GHz core 2 duo running in one in our repair shop back in the day. Freaked some folks out, running Mavericks on a "G4" :)
At about a Gazillion times faster than it originally ran
Hideous idea from an aesthetic perspective
Oh, and getting a matching HD was indeed a problem, no rubber dampers and the PC case transmitted every little bit of HD vibration to the table, so it became surprisingly loud.
The HD of choice back then came surprisingly from Seagate, not actually known as a builder of quiet HDs, but the Barracuda ATA IV/V were incredibly quiet and worked great. Great times ;-)
25:12 That CRT is beautiful - certainly a good look for an "end of an era" device to send out the old cathode ray tube display with a bang!
It looks like a huge holder for a box of tissues. LOL
I'm still waiting for my Nintendo Game Sphere.
okama*
Pffft. Wait until the Nintendo GameDodecahedron comes out!
@@mrflamewars Right! With an expandable Quadrilateral Tesseract!
Am I the only one that thinks it looks like a box of kleenex tissue?
That or a napkin dispenser
Nope. Plenty of people have turned an old case into a tissue dispenser. :)
Youre right
The Power Mac G5 is the real beauty queen.
Nope, that's all I see too. Ugly little thing.
I'm sure that inspired the trash can of today.
gudenau the Mac Pro is actually an amazing followup to this, the thermal design is very good and power supply is internal by Delta again with bus bars.
Today? That thing is from 2013 :P
@@MariomasterNSMBHD Aren't they still selling them though?
@@electricsnut Still a trash can.
Lol they actually are. I guess only Apple is able to sell you 5 year old tech for premium prices...
I used it as a 100% silent movie box in my bedroom during the xvid days.
You didn't need to use flash memory, Linux laptop mode and maxed out RAM and the noisy hdd would only spin up once every 24h.
I think you can upgrade the IDE hard drive with a 32GB or 64GB CompactFlash card on a passive adapter board. That gives you solid state storage and eliminates the last moving part in this computer.
How about the DVD drive?
@David HansonI don't know! Maybe there's more of these punks than I thought! What's your story? :)
@David Hanson Nice! I started on FL5, then switched to OpenMPT (the only open-source music production software I could find at the time), then switched to Linux from WIndows XP, then found LMMS and last year switched to Aradour.
@@unfa00 usb drive?
Yeah, I remember people asking what the market was for the G4 cube. Budget users went for the iMac, and power users bought PowerMac towers. It was a cool looking computer to be sure, but sometimes cool-looking just isn't enough.
Not like they learnt their lesson really ($1000 monitor stand)
@@casinowilhelm you mean $1000 marketing stunt. Because you're talking about it. Constantly.
The selling analysis was slightly incorrect. It was marketed as a Pro machine and meant to be sold to the same consumers as the PowerMac G4 tower. It was a flop in the Pro market mainly because the expand ability and performance were limited in comparison to the full tower model. For the standard consumer Apple sold the iMac which was a bundled all in one solution that did well with it's combination of styling and price.
We had one of these at my work back in the day. I was in charge of maintaining this wonderful device. The industrial design was stunning. I love how the pull handle is spring loaded and dampened.
A box. Groundbreaking!
The lack of trays, doors, seamed bezels, and even buttons and always-on LEDs was something approaching groundbreaking. Arguably this is the first Mac to launch Apple into their modern design aesthetic. Prior to this there were the early CRT-based iMacs, the various sleek-ish but definitely modular and bulky towers, the weird hybrid-cased G3s that had both beige plastic an white curved plastic, and the beige PowerPCs like the 5260 and 5500. All had bezels, buttons, lights, hatches, and cables galore.
@@TWX1138 lol. this thing bombed for a good damn reason. It was slow and buggy.
Wasn’t slow for the time. It toasted pentium 4’s. But intel was able to tweak the pentium 4 up to 4Ghz. The original G4 started failing after 500 Mhz. But it performed as a 1.5 Ghz Pentium 4.
The later G4 models that went over 500 Mhz had to change their pipeline. And by that they became less efficient. Still roughly 20 step shorter pipeline than in the pentiums. But almost double the original G4.
Aaah. Back when Apple acutally cared about innovative AND functional design.
I have one of these G4 Cubes serving faithfully as the doorstop to my office. In a previous iteration, I made it into a suggestion box that I placed outside our IT office. Still very useful after all these years!
I'm surprised the enclosure is in such good condition. I understand the acrylic used had a strong tendency to become brittle and crack rather quickly.
7:15 Device’s magical properties greatly diminish in 3, 2....
LOL!!
*jaw falls*
no, seriously, no, that's redonculous
that 20yo cable looks far better than my 6mo iPhone cable that is all peeling away
Going by how many plug/unplug cycles they’ve gone through I think it’s a fair bet that any phone cable would be in worse repair. Unless it’s one of the fancy silicone or braided ones
It doesn’t help that the cables have no real integrated strain relief, just a half hearted implementation, and seem to be made from a plastic that actually degrades and breaks down in use. Oddly, the most worn portions of the cable inevitably turn green (yet are intact) on my lightning cables, no idea why as they are not exposed to moisture or chemicals and there is no bare copper on the exterior. It seems as if they begin to decompose internally from being flexed and oxidize the copper shielding that then infuses the outer insulation sheathing. But the lightning cables are the bane of my existence as well, the phone is great and last for at least a few years but the cords consistently fail over about 6-8 months of heavy use.
I wish that all computers used external power supplies to help with heat management.
+1
Got a G4 Cube sitting on my shelf, with a 23" Apple display. Still works well, and still looks good.
See if you can get your hands on a first generation power mac. I pulled one apart (unfortunately not working) that had active Peltier cooling, that really surprised me.
That vintage of Maxtor HDD were notoriously noisy, would always avoid them in my machines in favour of WD or Seagate.
I dont thing any of them had a TEC stock?
No way it was stock. They rarely even needed a fan until mid-through G4's life or something
@@Chriva It was stock. 601 Powermacs with 100-120 MHz processors had it.
You could by peltier coling blocks pretty much anywhere back then. But they didn't work that well. The only reason they worked on the G3 back then was because it was a rather slow cpu. But with something like a athlon pushing 100W ... It was just not a option
matsv201 They still don't work well lol
- and they still haven't learned anything about heat management.
Did this product have any history of poor thermal management?
How would you have done it?
the passive cooling doesn't do much for the discrete stuff. If your house ambient temperature was above some degrees components would overheat and cause crashing. You'll find hundreds of threads (maybe exaggerating) on arstechnica from 2000.
I would have had added a couple tiny fans for at least some airflow. But I'm not impartial to fan noise as some are.
@@SoftBreadSoftware What peltier cooler? This is just a passive heatsink.
I would have looked at adding a very low RPM and "silent" fan also (*some* forced airflow is always way better than passive convection), but maybe they found they didn't need it. And of course, 100% passive is marketing gold, so you'd shoot for that.
@@EEVblog Perhaps the comment should be "They have since forgotten all they knew about thermal management", like many manufacturers it seems.
@@SoftBreadSoftware I mean, environmental factors can't entirely be blamed on Apple here. However, had they offered what they called the "Thermal Package" which would just be a passthrough for I/O and a set of fans mounted at the bottom of the case (in that open space), then people would have a solution if they were in warmer climates.
Still, if the environment is hostile towards electronics, then you can only blame manufacturers so much. Even today, you can "cause" a Playstation 4 to shut down (overheat) due to dust build-up and having it in an enclosed shelf with no room to breathe.
Dave,
That video card interface is NOT PCI. It's AGP 4x keyed for 3.3v cards. The black 6 pin slot is for the power interface leading to Apple's custom DVI port on that video card, which if you'll notice, is slightly larger and uses thicker connectors than regular DVI port. This is so that the attache Apple monitor could receive its power directly from the DVI port, thus eliminating another power cord from the fully installed system.
he mentioned the power cord thing but who the heck uses a physical PCI connector to transmit AGP signals ???
i HATE it wenn manufacturers do that kind of shit. and it's not just apple.
i think dell did something similar in their slim desktops at one point - you think there's a PCIe slot in there because it looks like PCIe but isn't.
That's nothing.
There are HP thin clients with physical PCI Express X16 slots on them...
That goes to a riser with either a PCIE4x slot, or a regular PCI slot AND extra parallel and RS232 lines. Oh, and power for a fan.
God forbid you use a PCIe card in that x16 looking slot. You let all the magic smoke out.
I remember walking past the display setup of this at Fry's electronics and thinking " I can't afford that, but wow is it beautiful".
$1500 want really cheap in 2000. The G4 was really a quite slow processor (even if Apple convinced there fanbase other vice). Other it's really just standard budget components. It didn't even have a for the time modern gpu.
Hey, but the fanbois could tout the SETI client and that 1 photoshop filter! For the other 99.999% of tasks it was goddamn slow.
Maxtor hard drives didn't fail, they just got so loud that you couldn't bear to spend any more time with them. Having lived through those dark days, it's nice to have hard drives that don't suck now.
If you used Linux on it, for most workloads you could spin down the noisy drive 99% of the time.
I had it set to spin up only for a minute every 24h.
I used to think that until 2004 when my Maxtor 120gb primary, 160gb backup and 160gb backup clone all died within a week of each other before the warranty replacements arrived. I lost all the data and haven't bought the brand ever since. Triple redundancy gone in a week on drives less than a year old? I'd have never guessed that would happen.
@@IanSlatas Seagate did something similar to me with their Constellation enterprise drives. 3 years on the dot at the end of warranty, I had 3/4 in my zpool die. Thankfully they were staggered enough that I was able to replace and rebuild.
WD and SanDisk get my money now. The only mechanical drives more durable are the pre-Hitachi IBM drives that I'm convinced will out live humanity.
20 years later and they haven't learned a thing from this. $1K monitor stands that are sold separately...
but but but inflation!!! :P
The g4 cube was not acrylic but Lexan. There were no "cracks" but seam lines from the mold/injection cooling process. I was one of the early buyers of the G4 Cube, and setup one with the Cinema display for my company CEO. It was coolness factor of 11 at the time..as he would have clients in and you could hear them in awe of the "Job-sian Apple Distortion Field" product.
I called it a tissue box (Kleenex brand had a similar box...). Bought it in July of 2000, had CTO 500mhz, ATI 32MB, DVD-ROM, Airport card, 10/100Enet (there was no Gig option), and 1.5Gig of RAM. I think it was 40GB HDD but I thought it had a 60GB instead. When G5 came out, boss took the cube home to his daughter and I put a "cheesegrater" on his desk. The one with the fans that would ramp up. Somewhere, I have a Service Source CD with take apart on the G4 Cube...
It's a shame how cynical they have become really. You try to take them apart now and there's so many deliberate dead ends.
Say what you will about Apple but this thing was just a delight.
But if you look back at the history of Apple Steve Jobs is the one that didn't want to make kit upgradable. He wanted the Apple 2 to have no expansion ports. It took Steve Woz and others to convince him that it needed expansion options or people wouldn't buy it. Steve Jobs got his way with later products and as predicted they failed.
Steven Whiting the iPhone and iPad can hardly be considered failures. Just saying. He did get his way in the end
And that's how Apple invented feature continued in all of their products: thermal throttling.
Thanks to Intel! It's over now... ^
My favorite part of this video was all the black t-shirts worn in the Apple team interviews. The Cupertino California campus must have looked like a cult compound!
I really liked the aesthetic of Apple's computers around that time. Powermac G5 is a great example. Excited to watch the video!!
That huge aluminum case was gorgeous. Even as a PC user through and through I always thought it'd be cool to snag one and use it to custom make a PC out of it.
The issue I have with the G5 is that is sort is out of scale. It's just so much bigger than it looks.
I have two of these. One is upgraded to max. ram, and 1.8Ghz dual CPU… Best OS 9 machine in my collection. :)
lol. OS9. That was like win3.1
@@joegreene6250 Nah. win3.1 was like System 6… OS 9 was concurrent with Win95,Win 98.
Jobs and I have very different definitions of beautiful. My all black €25 aluminum PC case looks better that this. Especially after 5 years of use :D
But the pull out insides? That is a damn cool solution!
hahahahha €25 pc case looks better.. LOL yeah right. Show me a link xD
Guess what, my Caselabs case (RIP Caselabs, Thermaltake got you ripped off) has that one with a test bench setup. Much better than the cube. No pop out handle and 4 screws for retention.
One of the big issues with these things was the power button. It had a tendency to randomly turn the computer on and off when the computer was heating up. We were going to start replacing computers at a company I worked for, but an article came out warning of the issue, and a friend of one of the VP's confirmed the issue with one they had purchased. Neat design, but with how thick that plastic was, the sensor had to be far too sensitive to the point it could (and as they aged) would turn themselves off if you bumped your desk, turned the music up, or put in a poorly balanced CD/DVD in the drive beneath it.
I still have my G4 Cube. Still in pristine condition. No cracks in the plastic casing. When I got it (in exchange for helping my neighbour set up her new Mac Mini), it would not boot at all. I did some research on it and found that when new memory was added, the G4 Cube cannot auto-detect it. By pressing the J3 jumper (the grey button on the motherboard), it resets the detection of the memory and, voila, the new memory was detected and it successfully booted. I don't actively use it, but once in a while I do. Yes, the original price was considerably high for a consumer computer. Now it is more of design and engineering marvel. It is like having a Van Gogh in my house. Not many were sold. To those who do own one, it is a privilege.
The 22" Cinema Display was 1680×1050, not 1600x1200
Yeah that maxtor may have sounded like that from day 1 or very nearly. Fiendishly loud, even louder when they're failing.
9.2.2 suggests it might have os x installed also on the drive, since that's the last os9 version.
Oh, and the engine in IE for Mac is totally separate from the Windows one, so I'm not surprised it mangled things: it did that even in it's day.
That is Apple's downfall when they stopped supporting 9.2.2. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Os 9 is the only OS that runs Simple Text, Fetch, Filemaker pro, and a few good graphics editors. I only wished they could have merged os9 seamlessly into OSX.
Haven't seen a maxtor drive in years....right on!!! Thanks for the shoutout!
That was great Dave. Exceptional engineering and style, but typically blue chip price tag. Certainly a very beautiful creation and fits in nicely with the rest of the family to follow! Good job with the tear down and commentary. 😊
We're going on an adventure Morty a classic Rick and Morty Bushland adventure. We're going to Bendigo to get me cube!
amazingly curiousmarc (see youtube channel) was testing the power supply out of his IMAC and it was able to deliver something ridiculous - like 10-20 amperes CONTINUOUS - for HOURS
antigen4 10-20 amps at a low voltage is not a lot of power. 20 amps at 5 volts is 100 watts.
I rescued one of these from a technotrash bin at MIT just a few days ago! Thank you for explaining more about it.
Philips had touch buttons on their stereo equipment in the 70s. Turntables and receivers.
I had a Philips 209S electronic turntable from '77 I think, it was destroyed by a shipper when we moved, there was not enough from the insurance to repair or replace it. That turntable was fantastic.
I'm a Yank, and I appreciate the use of inches on our products *thumbsup*
Just accept that the rest of the world refuse to use your garbage metrics lol
@@Chriva It's more so the British last laugh. America wants it's independence? Fine, let's just ratify an entirely different measurement system after they leave!
That said, most everyone here who has a technical background can use imperial and SI interchangeably.
Awesome video! How do you feel about the G4 Globe (iMac). To me that is the sexiest piece of gear in terms of computers ever made!
Heya. Yeah, agree, very tasty, even today. Remember how other computers looked like in 2000 ? ;-).
Pros: Very stylish design/tech, small footprint, no noisy fan. Cons: high price, huge power supply, noisy harddisk and the infamous cracks right were the studs are, called "mould lines" by Appel (BS). No wunder we bought/sold very few of 'em, again, such a great design... Thanks for the timewarp Dave.
Thanks for the video.
The Mac cube is one that still to this day I lust after. Would love to have one up and working.
Still like OS9 it would fun trying to find work around for the OS.
The PPC era macs were for the most part great especially the power macs as everything was upgradeable including third party cpu upgrades.
I'm PC fanboy and to this day I still think the G5 is one of the most beautiful computers ever, this one is delightful tho.
Agreed.
the case would make a killer sleeper or retro build, dual booted with mac os of course.
What is an inch? Is it edible?
Btw, capacitive touch sensors already exist since the 70s.
The speed selection buttons on the Philips 212 Electronic turntable from 1973 is one of the early examples.
It was a novelty back then.
Dude, Otis elevator panels well before that.
@@steadfastcoward nice, from what year are those?
@@dodecahedron1 1948? Impressive!
As crazy as it was I loved the design of the Apple IIc, a briefcase shape makes much more sense than a 8" cube to me. Was very easy to work inside, but thankfully the built-in keyboard never failed.
That removal of the core structure was so sexy, like everything comeing out in one shot and the engineering that went into it
should have used polycarbonate not acrylic. acrylic is prone to cracking.
All clear plastics are prone to cracking. But they can be tweaked so they aren’t that bad. Add color is one way.
@@dbtest117 polyethylene doesn't crack :)
Hearing those designers talk, totally reaffirmed my belief that apple is a doucher product, designed by pretentious douchey guys. It is, indeed, a beautiful box though.
The end result always trumps any doucheyness
for awhile, they had the best laptops. I understand your point about the designers, but at least they care if not love what they made.
I used to love the engineering that went into old Apple computers, the cases always came apart so nicely, with clever sliding mechanisms and removable sections, that made everything so easy to work on. That was back when they made proper computers. It's sad to see that all they make now is overpriced, no serviceable, non-upgradable, glued together crap with soldered in RAM and SSDs
STUNNING!!! The design was so cool that it didn't need a fan.
Like the first Teradyne testers.
neither did any laptops of that era. It was a slow processor that didn't need thermal management.
Someone needs to put a holding post on that VGA port. For some reason it bothers me when i see one of those missing.
$1800 for a 12 watt computer is nowhere near a decent price LOL
Its decent concidering that a new gaming computer back then could cost much more
@@nibhanbaig6675 wut? how is that even a comparison?
Now days they sell 1500W heaters for around $80
Seems like this heater didn't get very hot and was over priced 🤣🤣🤣
18:11 "A _fan_ actually analyzing the heatsink performance..." Now that's a suitable choice of words!
I remember getting one of these at work in 2001. I’d been using some beige G3 monstrosity and the IT guy I befriended came along and replaced it with one of these. The power button on mine would react to a hand wave really far off the button (maybe 3-4 inches in its housing).
Also, Internet Explorer for Mac OS 9 was pretty good. Worked way better than the Windows version (which I think was IE 5.5 or 6).
Always wanted to take the cube home but never got around to buying one. Still have my G4 Graphite and MDD PowerMacs, along with one of those Apple LCDs.
Could that hand wavinf thing mean, that your cat could accidentaly switch on the machine?
3:55 You had easy access to all the components at the time? That's so anti modern-Apple 😜
the 'trash can' mac pro allows easy access.
@@tomservo5007 you shouldn't need to spend 4 grand to be able access the components.
I love the Mac II series. Just like a DOS PC with a desktop case. My IIci even has diagnostic LEDS that flash whenever it does anything.
@@hicknopunk You can't beat a case where everything is accessible. I come from an engineering background and I won't buy anything that I can't open up and service myself
They should have lost the metal case, left only the transparent acrylic cover. The thing looks like a satellite, the "cool factor" would have gone sky high (pun unintended) with the innards exposed, protected only by the transparent cover.
Probably can't do that because it would leak RFI. Dave pointed out their attention to detail in that regard. It would look cool though.
Wouldn't fit with early 2000 apple aesthetics.
@@forrest225 I beg to differ (imac with the coloured transparant back case)
@@gordonwedman3179 Not with the number of cans and ground it's rocking.
I recall my computer teacher saying in 2001, "Why would you ever need a gig of ram?" that was A ton at the time. Then Windows Vista came along and the OS idles at 1gb of ram.
Silk screening on an Apple PCB - A joy to behold...
Jobs was the master of hype for sure.
A professional psychopath, he knew how to use people.
If you don’t rely on your brain thinking ability... yeah, you are affected.
it is trash can but square format
that is why the trash can failed too
Probably my most favourite retro computer, and I generally loathe Apple products. I want one. They should crowdfund a tempered glass one for pc hardware!
Nice teardown Dave... 10/10
When my wife was made redundant in 2005 we needed a decent Apple system for her to go self employed as a graphic designer and I bought
G4 500Mhz system for £50 on ebay. We got a dual 1.8Ghz cpu upgrade for £180 or so & I stuffed it to the max with old RAM. She used that as a work machine for another 8 years. I replaced it with a G5 for £40 which she still uses I filled that with ram & installed an SSD still uses it for work now absolutely nothing wrong with those machines.
In late 90s/early 20s was contracting (programming) in an office where the design dept had one of these. Was in late one night so wander over for a look see. Pretty sure it didn't have the power screen print on the top, as couldn't get the fecking thing to turn on. If can't figure out where the on/off, it's a piss poor design, imo. Just design wank over function.
Must have been an early security feature. :)
Was to stop windows users turning it on due to the IQ barrier 🤣
The best workstation designed is SGI O2, but the cube is very beautiful ...
The trick to the design at that time was how to hide the flux capacitor. They managed to melt that capacitor into the case, hence it was invisible.
so around 2000, the apple fanboys weren't ready to buy everything for every price from Apple?
Most beautiful failure is probably true but there's something about the first iMacs that appeals to me to this date. Hardwarewise they're garbage (not even their new stuff is comparable to a good computer) but at least it's beautiful
Christian Ivarsson
Why you use MAC, creative guy?
Why you still love the cheap iMac originals??? never used them????? Replaced all peripherals? Mouse/keyb?
@@lucasrem I just happen to like the design they had back in the early 2000's I'm NOT using macs :P At least not as my daily. I do have an old Powerbook I do some powerpc assembler on when I feel like it but that's about it
The case didn't crack, the thin visible lines were merely mold lines where the molten polycarbonate (not plexiglass or acrylic, c'mon! ;-)) met when flowing around the holes for the holding screws. They would have been better off milling those holes afterwards. But all the perceived problems with the Cube were basically non-existent, it was a rock-solid machine that was sold for way too much money at first. When they drastically lowered the price after a couple months it became a great choice if you wanted a G4.
In 2000-01, CRTs weren't dying, they were the most practical and best monitors available, and they dominated retail shelves. Those early LCDs were very expensive, and had ugly response times and image quality. The only reason to buy an LCD back then was for aesthetics, or if you had a serious problem with desk space. Otherwise, you were just spending more money for an inferior display.
This did put the G4 Cube in an awkward position though. The aesthetics of the Cube would look really nice next to an LCD, but would be lost with a CRT. But it was too early for LCDs to be practical yet. As soon as a customer figured that out, I imagine they'd lost interest and moved on.
LCDs needed a few more years of improvement before they'd replace a quality CRT.
This is an impressively designed computer though.
I'm a maxtor fan I have the 80g maxtor diamond Max 16
I swapped it for an sata ssd via pata Bridge: th-cam.com/video/rxaR2dkUpLI/w-d-xo.html
That looks like a pretty foot rest..
These along with the G4/5’s case design,and the first iphones,tablets and iPods-all beautiful,slick looking.No dustbin in sight!
Such a great teardown!!
Perfect raspberry pi case XD
A cluster of Raspberry Pi-s would fit nicely :)
8 inch is 20 cm - so a mini-ITX board (17x17 cm) should fit too ;)
I never got why people think this thing is beautiful. It always looked like a fancy deskside trash bin with an apple logo on it to me.
Reminds me what they said about the round can version from a few years ago (do they still make that?)
Thank goodness I am not the only one.
First thing I thought of was an upturned desk side bin XD
@@diablorojo3887 lmao found the assdamaged apple fanboy. How do you get so triggered over someone not liking something?
Just looks like a failed try of case modding by a kid from a Shuttle XPC, the Apple on it was the only reason they could sell it, most people are so degenerated, you could sell them their own shit as a delicy, as higher the price as higher the possibility they will buy it.
@@yucannthahvitt251
That gets my vote.
Probably poinless replying as he won't be listening.
I convinced my mum to go with a Cube when we upgraded from an ancient Mac Performa. I realize it was a "failure" but I never had any problems with it and I'm probably what most would consider a "power user".
7:12 No mention of the programmer button? Shame on you!
17:25 I can almost guarantee that the "secret button" was a power button so you could turn the computer on while it was disassembled (since I don't think the capacitive sensor would work without the case).
I think this "secret" button is PMU reset
That function is handled by a key combination on boot, I don't think they usually have a dedicated button for it.
@@StarkRG You mean PRAM reset? This is something else. PMU is Power Manager Unit, you would press that if the computer wont turn on at all. Only the G3-G4 units had it.
@@michvod fair enough, I could have sworn there was a pmu reset key combo
Never could understand those huge tin can computers, especially since computers have USB that allows upgrades exterior to the case. The small factor desktops are so much nicer.
I like your comment that you don't use any of these Apple wiggly wooose.... or something like that.
I stopped buying computers in the late 1990's, and never bought a proprietary one that you couldn't use anything but their keyboards or mouse.
After discovering how easy it was to build a computer I stuck with doing that and upgrading my own for a fraction of the cost of a ready made build model.
lol and they keep pushing this Small Computer Crap that you cant expand or upgrade..
This entire machine is like a spit on all modern crap:
It's tiny, upgradable, repairable, AND APPLE. All at the same time.
Just that one thing stays true to it's roots tho: the price
That should run (up to) MacOS 10.4; at least the round-base G4’s will, I don’t see any reason why the cube wouldn’t. Definitely paint the exterior of the plexiglas to look like a Borg cube from Star Trek, though! 😋
didn't PPC macs run up to OSX 10.5 - i think that was the last mac os with PPC support
I always hate it when people call it a flop, because that's only from a marketing standpoint. The design and usability are great. I still have one, and yes it still works. Have both the 15" and the 17" LCD monitors too. Upgraded the VRM (PSU) board. Had a GeForce 3 video card in there until the GPU burned up, probably due to the lack of heat dissipation. Added a fan in the base for added cooling, and a faster G4 processor. Had some great discussions in the Cubeowner forum many years ago. Works great with OS9 but also with OS X Tiger. Works as a wonderful bridge machine between modern Macs and more vintage Macs like the SE/30 from 1989. The G4 Cube was truly a design masterpiece and still looks great even to this day.