Hey, Carnivore! Monitor this!
Apple seems to go through phases. Its passion for peripherals seems to come and go. It’s back again, revamping the monitor line. As nice as they are, one has to wonder: what are they thinking? Three words:
Apple Display Connector.
You want one of these monitors? Better buy a new Mac, because with a cable that supplies digital video, USB, and power all in one, no other machine will drive it.
Sure, there’s a 17-inch CRT, complete with the see-through styling ($499); there’s the 15-inch LCD (still 4:3 though, $999), and the certainly not-to-be-forgotten Cinema Display, updated for the all-in-one connector. The price hasn’t been updated, though, as it will still set you back as much (or more) as the system you plug it into.
These seem to be nice monitors, certainly. However, after recently moving to industry-standard connectors, the choice to make them Apple-specific again certainly seems odd. What will all those PC people who’ve been throwing money at Apple for displays do now? Call 1-800-ViewSonic?
I find your lack of faith ... disturbing.
Sometimes you’re the dog, sometimes you’re the pony ... and sometimes, you’re the ringmaster. See if you can figure out who’s who in this particular passion play. Steve brings up Ed Fries, Microsoft’s head of gaming. What’s the first thing out of his mouth? Xbox. The second? Bungie. Somewhere after that came MacOS, Halo, and Alex Seropian, who looked decidedly uncomfortable on stage. For that matter, Fries did too, but in a different way. Maybe he was thinking about how the free publicity Halo was getting would look to the Xbox bottom line? Regardless, Halo was blasted to the masses, complete with the capitulation, “Coming soon to a Macintosh near you.”
See also
Zmonk’s Game Cage, 14 July
Oh yeah, one more thing. Apple’s likely to be footing the bill for it, as a new company is being formed to get Microsoft’s games onto the Mac platform. One of the major investors? Apple, of course. Good thing there’s $3.8 billion in the bank, eh? In the grand scheme of things, maybe it shouldn’t take Apple funding a game production startup in order to get these games, but at least they’re doing it.
Speaking of boxes...
The iToaster: now with DVD-ROM!
That’s not really fair, but it’s what the new PowerMac G4 Cube looks like. That, or a bread machine with an attitude. Take a low-end PowerMac G4 and suck out all the air. Go on, keep sucking. Don’t stop until the case implodes, collapses in on itself, and you get a graphite dwarf, 8 inches cubed, enclosed in a clear casing, drop-in DVD loading (yes, vertically, in the top), and expandability like there’s no tomorrow! (That is to say, because waiting until tomorrow isn’t going to do you any good.) You want more memory? Okay. You want a bigger hard drive? Okay. You want anything else? Well ... are you sure you don’t want more memory or a bigger hard drive?
The Cube comes with plenty of ports: USB, FireWire, VGA, Apple’s special monitor port, etc. (check the further specs at the [should link this?] Apple Store), so it is expandable. Sort of.
Who would want this box? Well, that’s still a matter of some contention. There’s certain to be plenty of discussion of this on the web over the next few weeks. It might seem obvious except for one thing: the price.
This puppy has a serious case of the “high-school beauty queen” syndrome: it’s expensive and it feels it’s worth it. So is it? You may have to take it to the prom just to find out. By that time, if it’s not, you’ll have a while to wait before you can try something else. It’ll set you back $1799 for the base configuration, $2299 for the high-end, without Gigabit ethernet, regardless of what you hear about that particular feature being on “all G4s” now.
Is it cool? Absolutely. When dressed with the Harmon/Kardon speakers and one of Apple’s new monitors, it’s a sexy machine. Let’s put it this way – “The G4 Cube: It’s what’s NeXT”.
Confus... er, conclusion
Apple announced quite a bit of new hardware, refreshing lines that, in computer time, had grown rather long in the tooth. If you’re in the market for a new Mac, these announcements should make you quite happy; the choices within all the price ranges have been expanded.
If you’re not already in the market, would these offerings be compelling enough to change that? Maybe, maybe not. MacEdition would like to hear from our readers. Do you have to have an MP G4 or will you wait until MacOS X comes out? Is the Cube really that damn sexy or more akin to cubic zirconium? Did you ever plug your Apple display into something else? Will you ever do so again?
Let us know this and whatever else you want to tell us at: letters@macedition.com.
PS – And if you know anything about the product that will fill that mysterious sixth slot, whisper your sweet nothings to thegayblade@macedition and a signature edition mole rat could be yours!