One day while I was writing a review at the office, I heard someone at the
front of the office exclaimed "The cube is here!". Upon hearing that, I immediately
dropped what I was doing and rushed to see what the commotion was all about. Indeed, there were two very
distinct boxes lying on the floor beside the delivery guy from the Apple Singapore
office. "Cool man!", I exclaimed. I was waiting for Apple to send the G4 cube
for quite sometime now as Apple promised to send us one to review. Immediately,
I took the boxes to the reviews lab and set it up. I cleared up a table and
opened the boxes to set up this beautiful machine. It drew gasps, "oohs" and "aahs"
from my fellow colleagues, proof that it is indeed a very sexy machine. Someone
then said, "Hey! where is the power button?" Upon hearing that, I said, "Watch
this!". I then placed my finger on the power icon at the bottom right corner
of the LCD monitor. The button lit up and the Cube came to life with the familiar
PowerMac chime. Another round of gasps and wows were heard. "This is really
cool!", someone said. "Gee.. can I get one?", another said. The kind of response
this machine drew from people who had seen it for the first time is just amazing.
The crystalline look of the case and its peripherals really make the product
a showpiece and a talking point. The cube is no geek machine. In fact, it is a machine
that is reverred by people from the creative and design profession. It is people like them whom I feel Apple's Cube would be greatly appreciated and prized. Remember the 20th anniversary limited edition
Mac. It drew the same kind of response from the people who first saw it.

One thing's for sure - the Cube is quiet. I can barely hear its hard disk or DVD-ROM drive spin during an intense
disk access. You can only hear the hard disk or DVD-ROM drive spin only if the
environment is dead quiet (like in the dead of night). Under ambient noises
say, in an air-conditioned room, it is practically silent. This is truly a machine
for those thinkers that cannot bear the noise of those cooling fans that is
so common among its G4 and iMac siblings (and not forgetting PCs).

 

In order to know the Cube, one really has to be up close and personal with it. Only then will one fall in love with it. It may look sexy and attractive on the outside but it also projects the appearance of being arrogant or snobbish (kind of like, out of reach). That, I think is probably what puts some people off. On the inside, it is really a Macintosh at heart. It runs Mac OS, breathes
Mac OS and feels Mac OS. So, let us take a closer look at the hardware. Here
are the specifications of the Cube.

• 450MHz PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine


• 1MB of backside level 2 cache


• 64MB of PC100 SDRAM, expandable to 1.5GB


• 20GB 5400rpm Ultra ATA-66 hard disk


• DVD-ROM with DVD video playback capability


• ATI RAGE 128 Pro 16MB graphics card with both DVI and analog RGB connections


• 2 400Mbps FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports, cable for connecting DV cams supplied


• 2 USB ports


• Built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet


• Built-in AirPort card slot (dual antenna built-in)


• Built-in 56K V.90 modem (RJ-11 cable supplied)


• Apple Pro keyboard


• Apple Pro mouse


• Apple-designed Harmon/Kardon speakers with digital audio amplifier with
  headphone jack


• MacOS 9 comes standard together with QuickTime, iMovie 2, IE Explorer, Microsoft
  Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, FaxStf and Palm Desktop.

The unit that came to us for review also came pre-installed with MacOS X
Public Beta. The MacOS X review will be in a separate article, so watch out for it.

The Power Mac G4 Cube with the Apple 15" Studio Display.

The power button.

The optical Apple Pro Mouse, seen here on its flipped side.

Clockwise from top left : Ethernet port, 2 IEEE-1394 Firewire ports, two USB
ports, a modem port, female power jack, an analog monitor output and a digital monitor output port.

A convenient handle to help you remove the cube from the shell.

A view of the cube without the shell. Here's where the hard disk is located.

Another view of the cube. Here's where you can add more SDRAM. This is where
the ATI Rage Pro AGP card is located as well.

The grey box in the center is the built-in AirPort antenna.

The AirPort slot is located just beside the antenna.

The Cube works just like a standard G4 PowerMac. The exception is the feel and user experience. It feels quite different. For instance, the power button is no longer located on the keyboard so those users familiar with the power key on the keyboard will be left clueless as to powering up the Cube. If you are looking for a mechanical power button, good luck. You'll never find it since the power button is a touch activated sensor integrated into the Cube. The LCD display also has a similar touch activated sensor integrated so you can choose to do the same from the display. Users expecting to tweak the monitor for horizontal/vertical position, pin cushioning, synchronization will also be caught dumbfounded since these controls don't exist for the Studio LCD display (as these controls aren't required for a digital display). The way the mouse button works is also quite different. The proper manner to use the mouse button may not be immediately obvious to the average user, but when held correctly, the behaviour for mouse usage remains the same. The mouse does seem a little strange to hold at first but it still feels way better than the iMac mouse. The Pro mouse is also optical so there isn't any ball to clean. It is fully maintenance-free except for that occasional wipe on the bottom to clear it from accumulated dust picked up from the desk or mouse pad. The CD/DVD slot is also not obvious to the uninitiated, since it blends nicely into the Cube's case. In short, the Cube is really a cube, and it doesn't sport any other exterior features apart from the grille, CD slot and the distinct Apple logo in front.

The Power Mac G4 Cube.

The top of the cube with ample room for ventilation and a slot below for DVDs
or CD-ROMs. Look ma! No fans!

The bottom of the cube - where all the ports are located.

As with the PowerMac G4, the only I/O interfaces you will find on the Cube are the USB, FireWire, modem, AirPort and the 10/100BASE-T Ethernet ports. Any additional peripherals like printers, CD-RW or external hard disk drives you buy will need to connect to either one of the USB or FireWire ports. Serial and parallel port devices will not work without converters or adapters. They are also difficult to use and are available to support only legacy devices. As for networking, a modem and Ethernet port is built-in although wireless networking with AirPort is possible but that comes with extra cost of course. The amount of desk space that the Cube saves is incredible, as it takes up about half the space required by the PowerMac G4. With the Studio LCD display, the depth requirement is easily reduced by half. This is great especially for those of you who want performance but reduced space requirement. Audio quality and clarity from the Cube's tiny speakers is also quite incredible. It is quite difficult to imagine great sound from those little speakers. You have to listen to them to believe it. According to Apple, the frequency response of the little speakers go from 80Hz to 20kHz. 80Hz response at the low end is amazing for tiny speakers like these. The drivers are also capable of handling 20 watts of power. Since the speakers are fully digital, distortion and electrical noise is greatly reduced, thus producing crisp and clean sound.

The Harman/Kardon USB speakers.

The amplifier also has a minijack for stereo headphones.

Apple supplied us with the simply gorgeous Apple Studio 15-inch LCD display. There is virtually no settings required (besides brightness) when using this display since the interface is fully digital. The display employs a TFT active-matrix technology so the viewing angle and clarity is tops compared to other display technologies. Unlike analog displays, one does not need to adjust the display frequency to ensure that the display frequency matches the
frequency of video output from the video card. This phenomenon is also known as
pixel jitter. You will not see this phenomenon on the Apple Studio LCD since the signal that travels from the Cube to the display is fully digital. Apple has adopted the DVI standard and this standard seems to be gaining popularity amongst video card makers and chipset. The ATI Rage 128 Pro is one such chipset that has this capability. The display also doesn't require a separate power cable nor a separate USB cable. All these connections are already incorporated into the same cable which connects to the video connector on the Cube. This simplifies setup tremendously and is what I like about setting up Apple products. They make it so simple that it becomes almost child's play. I set up the Cube in less time than it takes to boot MacOS 9. There are less than half a dozen cables in total to connect to three different interfaces namely USB, video and power.

The Apple Studio 15" LCD display.

You'll find just two USB ports and the monitor cable located at the back of
the display.

The DVI connector.

The internal electronics is easily accessible for memory, hard disk or AirPort upgrades. There really isn't much need to access the Cube innards frequently unless one likes to marvel at the mechanical design (although Apple has made it really very easy for one to do so). I can't think of any other reason. There's a slot for a Kensington Notebook MicroSaver security cable, which secures the Cube from unlawful removal. Performance-wise, the Cube is every bit like its older sibling, the PowerMac G4. Apple has packed the performance of the PowerMac G4 into the Cube minus the additional PCI expansion slots. In that sense, there isn't any performance surprizes here. What is surprising is the amount of hardware cramped into that little space and yet no compromises are made in terms of performance. This means that performance is virtually identical for both PowerMac G4 and G4 Cube on the same CPU level. Occasionally, I did find the Cube a little sluggish compared to the PowerMac G4 but that could be due to the 64MB of memory compared to the 512MB of memory in the PowerMac G4 I was comparing the Cube with. In my opinion, 64MB is barely enough, as virtual memory gets frantically swapped in and out of pages of memory to disk. I think at least 128MB should come as the standard configuration.

 

The Cube is an amazing piece of hardware. The cost of the Cube isn't
cheap but so is the PowerMac G4. If you are looking for a G4 Macintosh with
style and performance to boot, this is the Mac to get. You can also get some
peace and quiet while working on the Cube which you relatively can't with the other Macs.
It is also an excellent showpiece and an excellent conversation topic. It
will surely amaze your friends and family. It is a piece of equipment that will
not feel out of place even in the living room. I wished I still have the money
to buy the Cube. Unfortunately I have spent it on a PowerMac G4 instead but
that was before the Cube arrived on the scene. I can't wait to see what Apple
has in store next. I am sure it will be another stunner. Apple always has and
always will when it comes to innovative products.