Translated material
Apple in a cube
Steven Levy (Newsweek)
New Macintosh models: the design is getting cooler, the prices are getting higher
New Macintosh models: the design is getting cooler, the prices are getting higher
New iMacs in fun colors ( Apple Computer, INC. )
“I really think people judge a book by its cover,” says Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computer, as he unveils his new product. “When you see something that smart on the outside, you say, 'Oh, yeah, it's must be very smart inside. And in this case you can’t go wrong.”
At the recent MacWorld exhibition in New York, the most interesting thing for journalists was the new series of Power Mac G4 Cube computers. First of all, they amaze with their appearance. Apple designers, led by Jonathan Ivey, did their best. G4 Cube is really a cube (well, strictly speaking, a parallelepiped with a base of about 20 by 20 centimeters and a height of about 25 centimeters), made of a special type of transparent and durable (it does not leave scratches) plastic. At the top there is a slot for the DVD-ROM drive and holes for the cooling system. That's all! No buttons (only a touch switch that you just need to touch). No noise. Even though the G4 Cube's nodes are packed into a small space, the central heatsink effectively cools the computer using convection, and there's simply no need for fans. “For us, progress is the removal of everything unnecessary,” Jobs explains to a Newsweek correspondent. “It is impossible to imagine that anyone would think of adding another hole or attaching a button here.”
The filling of the cube in a minimal configuration includes a G4 processor with a frequency of 450 MHz (G4 is much more productive than processors from Intel operating at the same frequency - “Results”) and a 20 gigabyte hard drive. In addition, the G4 Cube comes with speakers and a new mouse with optical orientation technology (on the bottom surface of the mouse, instead of a traditional ball, there is a miniature video camera). All this is made in the same style as the system unit.
Steve Jobs calls the new product "the coolest computer ever created." In an interview with Newsweek, he said that the idea to make such a machine did not come from an engineer, but from a user - himself: “I wanted to work with Cinema Display (a 22-inch liquid crystal monitor from Apple, designed for watching videos, for example, movies , recorded on DVD discs. Costs $4,000. - “Results”), but at the same time I didn’t need all the capabilities of the Power Mac.”
The G4 Cube still has one drawback - the price, because it costs $1,800, and the appropriate Apple Studio display LCD monitor (15 inches) costs another thousand. A total of 2800 dollars (in Russia all this will cost even more, since the Macintosh market here is not large, and taxes and duties are high. - “Results”), which is prohibitively high even for such a powerful and stylish computer. And yet Steve Jobs expects to sell at least a million “cubes”. He says that every designer who sees the G4 Cube will want to buy it, and assumes that there will be many more people who were planning to buy an iMac (a popular series of Macintoshes built on the previous generation of processors with PowerPC architecture - G3. - "Results") , but unable to resist the temptation to spend “a couple of extra dollars” on this coveted item (in fact, the price difference between the iMac and the G4 Cube with a monitor reaches two thousand!). "We're confident in his success," he told Newsweek.
Professional machines were also presented at MacWorld. Apple demonstrated dual-processor configurations of the Power Mac G4, allowing for unprecedented performance when working, for example, with the Adobe Photoshop graphics package.
Despite the emergence of new computers with G4 processors, iMacs also continue to evolve. Steve Jobs announced that 3.7 million iMacs had already been sold to date and demonstrated new models and five new colors. An entry-level iMac costs $800 today. (iMac prices started at $1,300, see “Results” #32 for 1998).
Jobs has big plans for the future. Next year he is going to release a new operating system, Mac OS X, which should replace the outdated ninth version. The main advantages of OS X will be performance, user-friendly interface and, of course, design.
(Printed with abbreviations)
The unusual design of the "coolest" Macintosh is intended to help Steve Jobs find a million rich eccentrics ( Apple Computer, INC. )