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Disclaimer: I'm one of those cube-heads

The Mac mini is a nice machine, but it's no Cube. There are atleast two of us who'd still like a small, expandable machine like those insanely popular Small Form Factor PCs were, are and continue to be.

So I see Cubes where there are none... yet. In such a condition, one could categorize mac products like this:

Low cost : Mac mini and iMac
Portability : iBook and PowerBook
(Semi)Pro : PowerMac mini and PowerMac

Now let's look at prices from 2000, when the Cube premiered, and now.

In the year 2000...

iMac DV
G3 450 MHz
$1299

PowerMac
G4 400 MHz
$1499

Cube
G4 450
$1799 (!)

And now in 2005, with a bit of wishful thinking:

iMac 17"
G5 1.6 GHz
§1299

PowerMac
G5 1.8 GHz
$1499

PowerMac mini
G5 1.6 GHz
$1299

So it'd be more or less an iMac G5, with a decent ($) full-size AGP/PCI-Express card thrown in, 4 RAM slot, but more compact and rugged.

Something you could carry/ship around with more power, flexibility, but cheaper and less breakable than a PowerBook. BYOKDM, yada yada

Anyone still up for one, or am I the last of my kind?

J

Why should I pay 1299 for a "G5 mini" when I could have the iMac for the same price.

Apple's mistake with the cube was its market, it was priced too high.
While I'm sure people will be making comparisons to the cube, it is no cube.

Don't get me wrong, I owned one and I loved it, I had to sell it but overall it was a thing of beauty.

Mike

something along the lines of the G5 mini would be perfect for my parents.. something cheapish that can use their current monitor, but will still last them a long time.

The way I see it, it should have the same specs as the iMac, 'cept it should have a swappable graphics card (standard AGP/PCI-e/whatever is appropriate when it comes out) and 4 RAM slots... but two would be okay. Having one PCI/PCI-X slot would be nice, too... and perhaps it should be spread away from the AGP slot enough that big fatty gfx cards don't choke it out... but if they do that, I suppose they might as well put in two PCI slots.

As far as I'm concerned though, size isn't too much of an issue... I just would like to see something fairly strong that doesn't have a monitor built in. I'd prefer it to be a little smaller/more portable than the G5 behemoths, but that's not a priority for me at all...


PowerMac G5 = function, "form" to a certain extent... a huge form, but it's striking.
iMac = form, function... not as much function, but it's there
eMac = ...
Mac mini = form, function (function being the fact that it is cheap, and a Mac)

I'd like a mini G5 to be function first.. if it is pretty, that's nice. The cubes, though, seemed to be pieces of art... I think they were the ultimate triumph of form over function in the Mac line... certainly they were nice computers, but they just fell short in performance and reliability (and sales) for how expensive they were...

I expect the mini to get a G5 as soon as it is technically feasible. That time being shortly after they manage to get it into a PowerBook (when IBM produces a low-power version). Of course, by that time, the PM G5s will probably have moved on to an improved G5 (dual core?) or a G6. Apple is itching to totally drop the G4.

The iMac mini is basically a 12" iBook. You can expect to see a G5 mini sometime around when you see a G5 iBook.

let's hope the mini gets a bigger life span (marketing wise) than the cube!

don't get me wrong, I would love to get a cube, but they just stopped selling those (I know they had several material issues, and I hope the same doens't happen to the mini)