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Steve Jobs isn't my favorite person. Apple's chief executive is a bit too controlling and devious for me. But I have to give credit where credit is due. No one understands Apple and the role it should play the way Jobs does. Unlike PCs, Macs aren't standard issue in the corporate world, but this doesn't seem to bother Jobs. He sees Apple as the stylish alternative, the Oscar Wilde of the computer world.
Sadly, Jobs's predecessors in the 1990s didn't understand this. They nearly wrecked the company in a self-destructive quest for conformity, cranking out boxy computers that were indistinguishable from PCs. What Mac enthusiast would opt for such a thing? Might as well have a PC.
Thank goodness all that ended when Jobs introduced the iMac a year ago. Those colorful units marked the computer's transformation from mere machine into decorative art. (That sounds like a bigger deal than it is. Go to any museum and you'll see that craftsmen have been turning everyday items into art for several millenniums.)
As for Jobs, he's just getting started as a decorative artist. His colorful iMac looks like finger painting compared to what's coming next. I'm talking about the G4 Cube, which Jobs introduced at July's Macworld convention in New York. I'll wager you've never seen a computer like the Cube. With rounded corners, suspended in a clear plastic cover that holds the unit off the desktop, the machine does look like an ice cube -- albeit one about the size of a Kleenex box. The Cube is smooth except for an air vent and openings for plugs and cables.
INNOVATIONS. As Jobs will tell you, style isn't just about looks. It's about doing something in a new way. And the Cube is breaking new ground in several areas. For one, it's the first computer with completely digital circuitry. That's important for many reasons, but speed is the most significant and noticeable of them. This puppy zips along. Also, Apple has consolidated the Cube's two main cables into one, the Apple Display Connector, which carries power as well as digital video signals. Of course, you first have to be able to plug the monitor into the back of your computer using its power source.
My favorite thing about the Cube is what it's missing: a fan and that annoying buzz, which drives me crazy with most Macs. Apple has figured out how to keep the Cube cool with just a large radiating vent on top.
All this neat stuff would be meaningless if the Cube weren't driven by a powerful engine, and it is. At its heart is a 450 MHz G4 processor, one of Apple's most powerful chips. There's also a DVD drive and 64 megabytes of internal memory. That's not enough, but you can buy up to 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. If it were up to me, I would double the amount of standard RAM in all Apple computers. But that's another column.
Style has its price. Starting at $1,799, the Cube is expensive compared with computers that boast similar horsepower. But no one is going to buy the Cube, available sometime in August, just for its microprocessor. This is a computer for people who want to make a statement, who want to say, "You'll never catch me despoiling my desk with a boxy, gray PC."
Haddad, an Apple Computer buff, is an Atlanta-based correspondent for Business Week. If you're an Apple buff, too, follow his weekly column, only on BW Online Edited by Beth Belton
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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