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Apple Businesses

Pictures Of New Apple Cube? 230

Margin Walker writes "AppleInsider doesn't seem to be scared of Apple's legion of legal representation. They've posted photos of the G4 Cube and nifty new CRT and flat-screen displays." The site is pretty hosed, so if some folks could get some mirrors up, that'd be bitchin'. Update: 07/19 12:11 AM by CT : The Mac Junkie has mirrors of the pics, and claims that they are frauds along with some good arguments to back it up. Update: 07/19 01:27 PM by CT : Apple Legal shut both of them down with Cease & Desist orders. Mirrors are all over the place.
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Pictures of New Apple Cube

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  • Did you read the MacJunkie article? Look at the screws on the top in both pictures. In the front-on view, there are two dark screws and in the corner-perspective view, there are 3 white/clear ones. While Apple might just actually be showing off a new cube, those are not the pictures.

    I also loved the 15" Apple Studio Display from the site. Funny how it looks identical to the 22" Apple Studio Display. "But it's smaller! No, really, it is!"
  • a) You shouldn't have leaked it. If I hand a stranger a bag of money to hold, its academic whether or not it's his fault for running off with it. In the same sense, if you allow proprietary/confidential information to get out, it's pretty silly to blame the sites that received it for posting it. Some would argue that information ceases to be proprietary if you fail to take appropriate measures to protect it.

    No arguments from me on this one. I didn't leak it, and if I ever catch the *&^&%-er who did, I'll tear their thieving arms off quicker than you can say "hot grits". But I don't believe that the immoral action of one disloyal employee should prevent a company from seeking to protect its property, intellectual or otherwise.

    b) You should have patented/trademarked it earlier. See argument above. If you build your house on a fault, don't blame the earth for moving when an earthquake knocks it down - blame yourself for not buying insurance BEFORE it happens.

    Again, this is a good point. Unfortunately, the legal process of filing these things is often slow, and the design and production process is often very "deadline intensive", if you know what I mean. Sometimes its just not possible to get everything done in the ideal fashion.

  • The pic was probably doctored... but that doesn't neccesarily mean the AppleInsider is defrauding its browsers. It could be that these pics were leaked to them by someone in Apple, where they are known to be doctored-up "artists's renditions" of a new product in the works...

    One thing that lends credibility to the general idea of a cube-shaped server from Apple: Remember the NeXT Cube? Wasn't that Jobs's? :)

  • You're right that most software does the conversion, but it doesn't have to pull that data from the DVD disk or process it in any way, it just says, "next frame, next frame, next frame, play the last frame again, next frame".

    So you do wind up with it being 20%+ less intensive on the disks and processor to play film vs. video content.

    I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
    Q.Tell me what the trail was.
  • Yeah i agree competely .. that grate on the top looks very retro. Im dont care much for designed computers myself - i prefer my computers rackmounted and tucked away in another room - but this mac cube thing looks really cool.
  • a good place to see what the fuss is about is right here: http://www.angelfire.com/md/nny/ ... no illegal "linking" in this post. i can tell people where an image can be found... right??
  • I remember this too, I first saw it in PC Magazine. I think that would have been cool to have sitting on my desk :)
  • It all depends on graphics adapter when it's about playing movies. For example I have big problems to play more than one movie at time with my G400. Not because my processor (K6-2 500Mhz) couldn't handle it but because G400 is unable (or only damn slow) to use overlay graphics for more than one window at time.

    Playing MP3 isn't that much different - for example my computer uses much more CPU power (sometimes near 10%) playing MP3 now that I have SB Live instead of SB 64 I had earlier - but it's not because SB Live been worser but because it's drivers are worser (in CPU usage). That's all in Windows.

    Under Linux it takes about 0.5% to play MP3 stream with the same computer - I can easily play that many streams I want (SB Live can mix them in hardware) but there is no reason to play multiple MP3 streams (not at least for me).

    If your hardware cannot provide any support for movie playback (namely scaling) or audio channels mixing you need much more CPU power no matter how nice your OS is.

    And finally IMHO Windows Media Player beats QuickTime hands down any day (Where the heck is my menu bar? Why I cannot see this in fullscreen?). I just hope we could see something like DivX;-), legally.
    _________________________

  • That may be the case, I'm not a Java expert, but their report on Wireless networking (posted today) was right on the money. And generally, so is their update information. They hardly belong in the world of MOSR and AI, two groups that spout so much bullsh*t you'd think they were fertilizer companies. Between the two of them, they have debated on a cobranded Palm and other such vaporware products not even on the drawing boards. Macintouch doesn't do much of that.
  • Seems like the images have been removed at Aplle's request.

    Doea anybody have any local copies so i can see them. I really wonder what thay look like...

  • BTW, the purpose of /. is to post links to OTHER articles, not to author new articles, and check the credibility of it. Someone submitted this story, and link, and they looked at it, and decided to post it. It is not their responsibility to validate the news, that is the job of the original article authors.
    Now that that's cleared up, I don't know anything about apple insider, but if it is a rumor site, then /. shouldn't be posting articles from rumor sites. If apple insider is just an apple news site, then that's fine.
    At least they corrected the issue later on, most ''professional'' news sources tell out right lies, and skew the news w/out ever admitting they were wrong.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • and then apple can hit cobalt for a lawsuit for stealing the look and feel of the nextcube, then cardboard box manufacturers can sue apple... and it can go on forever!
  • They took the image down, "Under Threat of Apple Legal Action Images Have Been Removed".... guess they are scared of "Apple's legion of legal representation." Did anybody save the image?
  • Well, I have a 650. The main reason I have this Rage Pro II still, is that it works well under Linux. What else should I use that works? I have a DVD card, so I don't need my video card to do that for me.
  • First the Nintendo Star Cube, now this. Cubes are big nowadays, it seems...
  • the reason your K7 cant get 30fps is cause you got a crappy video card. get a better one - ive got 30fps on a 333Mhz p2. PCs dont "stutter" either. latencies in your OS are to blame not the PC itself.
  • So much technology. So little space. [apple.com] This is the cube you're looking for.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    The Cube images are real, and when you get to watch the other images in the same series youll see why.

    1. All pictures are sized to fit perfectly with apple.coms splash page. Thats no coincidence.

    2. All pictures are graphite, taken from favourite apple angles. I would love for whoever wrote that piece on MacJunkie to go over to apple.com and use the same arguments as to why every single other pic up there are fake too! After all Apple uses photoshop as well ...

    2.1 If the Cube is doctored, then they would have had to doctor all the other ones as well. Theyd have a very hard time indeed, making up a translucent 17" display in profile!! (which looks pretty darn cool, btw)

    3. There is no need for handles on a 7-inch box, for crying out loud! Even you love handles, this beauty is so small there just isnt any space for it (notice how it is just slightly wider than a CD-ROM unit (5" + a little space on the side)).

    Point is, the cube is s.m.a.l.l. With that in mind, i think most of the doubts from macjunkie disappears with a bearly noticeable "woosh".

    /penhead

  • well if you've got a hollywood plus (or other hardware DVD card) then make sure you're using the right software, because there's something really wrong for stuttering at that point. I was playing DVDs on a classic Pentium 233 with a hollywood+ card last year. It was when I got the celeron (and faster motherboard) that I could dump the card and do all-software (higher-quality) playback.

    I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
    Q.Tell me what the trail was.
  • Heh. People thought Steve Jobs had finally achieved his dream of a "slotless, fanless" computer with the iMac, and now this.
  • Apple's website is kind of down right now but I got it to load the first page without the pictures, and the alternate text for the images were about the new Apple G4 cube. Looks like that part at least is true.
  • I personally hadn't heard of The Mac Junkie until the MOSR cube fiasco. I'm a bit of a huge Apple fan (not to the point of a zealot, I think, but definitely a fanatic). I check out Apple Insider and MacOS Rumors daily, and, since they don't cover everything, As the Apple Turns [appleturns.com] for a bit of variety.

    The Mac Junkie just might be trolling. First, the email to Ryan Meader. Okay, Meader runs a rumor site. Maybe he'll post the rumors he hears? So he does. And then TMJ calls Meader a fraud. The hits go up. The readership increases. CHING CHING!

    Now, several other rumor sites jump into the cube fray, and all recieve Apple attention. Apple Insider (who has posted pictures/drawings of new Apple products several days in advance before) posts some pictures, which will no doubt get a lot of hits. Mac Junkie calls Apple Insider frauds. The hits go up. The readership increases. CHING CHING!

    That's just my theory, nothing else.

    -tsunake
  • I have been reading this thread all afternoon, whilst at work, and THAT is the funniest thing that I have EVER seen. Almost. Otherwise, what a fuss about NOTHING !
  • New article [theregister.co.uk] seems to confirm it anyway.

    -A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • by Pope ( 17780 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:36PM (#923446)
    Have you ever tried to quickly swap cards, RAM or drives in a regular ol' PC tower case? it sucks. The Blue+White G3 and G4 cases rock hard when in comes to this sort of thing.
    I have no comment on the iMac cuz I don't own one.

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • Why go to a mirror? Why not go to the Apple Site [apple.com]? Lots of pretty pictures of the eight inch box they call a computer.
  • by theseum ( 165950 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:36PM (#923448) Homepage
    I disagree with your assesment that the problem is the hardware, not the OS. First of all, what kind of movie are we talking about here? I have had trouble with the FPS playing "A Bug's Life" DVD on a G4. Secondly, what OS are you using on the Intel box? If you are using windows, like most people, than I see why you are having problems. In my experience, it takes the full resources of a pentium II 300 to play one MPEG or Quicktime movie in a small window in windows(never played fullscreen.) If you are running linux, I don't have much experience, but from what I have read, it isn't the best OS for media handling, and when I used it X seemed to be taking up a lot of resources... Anyway, have you ever tried BeOS? Now that's an OS that puts MacOS to shame. Back in 1994 the Be people were doing things like, in real time, playing 6 movies mapped to the sides of a 3D, rotating cube. That was on dual powerpc boxes... It is even better on the latest (intel) hardware.
  • I had to wait a minute to access the page, here's so others don't have to:

    http://www.sheepdot.org/cube.htm
  • > Why not go to the Apple Site?

    Because it gives you 403 Forbidden?

    --

  • the worst part of that letter (and the silliest)

    Therefore, Apple demands that you cease and desist from disseminating the material posted at the referenced web site immediately, including any hyperlinks to other locations where the information may be available from all web sites and servers under your control

    Hey Apple, I demand a new G4 AND you should stop selling them to other people. Immediately.

    --
  • You might need a "3d accelerator".

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • It was announced at MacWorld. In fact, I'm watching CNN and I can see it.
  • BWAHAHA. Sorry, but this is why I love Apple-- flawless execution of great ideas *smirk*. You can still see a picture at www.apple.com, and I've been browsing the pages just fine. But you're absolutely right, it's messed. I get very spotty servage from them on this. I've gotten 403 and pages w/o pix. But it's there.
  • Personally, I read the rumour sites for laughs, rather than actual information ;)

  • becuase all the images have been removed (except macjunkie) Someone else had a mirror of the CRT (BTW, why the hell is apple still designing 17inch CRTs? they claim to be a graphics professional choice but no real graphics pro would use something that small [except maybe in dualhead]) but i wanna see the flatpanel (maybe it has as bad of a viewing range as the 22" one).

    Mark Duell
  • Here's why the vents on the top are most likely total unadulterated BS:

    -The cubes are supposed to stack one on top of the other right? (The AppleInsider article itself says so).

    Gee, it sure would be fun to block the only air vents on the machine--especially with a big hollow plastic base. Burnt translucent goo anyone?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder how much money apple insider generated with this fraud?
  • "The Mac Junkie has mirrors of the pics, and claims that they are frauds along with some good arguments to back it up."

    the biggest problem with this story is that AppleInsider has posted alot of stuff conflicts with reports in ZDNet, and other sources (in the past). I wouldn't be surprised if someone just sat around all day fabricating stories to post to rumours sites like them.

    The cube they have on the site looks like it is a render (unless it was amazingly shot, there doesn't seem to be any radiosity from the blue apple logo).

    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
  • Proof that /. moderators have no balls (as if proof were needed):
    Moderation Totals:Overrated=2, Total=2.

    That's right, 2 overrated mods. Why, because they're scared shitless of meta moderation that's why.
    "Oh no, we might lose a point of karma. Better moderate as vaugely as possible."
    Fucking cowards. You can hear them whine at sid=lostkarma
    --Shoeboy
  • Depends on whose root zone you use. If you use the ICANN/NSI root zone, then you're right, the TLD .mp3 doesn't exist. I guess there are some things you haven't discovered, yet.
  • When can I get a duel proc. G4? A friend brought a regular G4 into work the other day, and going over it's spec's, I'm drooling! I'd LOVE to build an SMP linux box out of one of these! It could EASILY handle my mail, web pages, etc.
  • The pictures appear to have been removed! The mirror that is listed also does not contain the suspect photos.
  • by CrayDrygu ( 56003 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:10PM (#923464)
    I don't think much of your company's business acumen if you waited until two days before your product ships before filing for trademarks and patents...

    I take it, then, that you've never seen the words "Patent Pending" stamped on a product? I see it all the time. Companies are greedy, and they want to start making money off their products as soon as possible. If that means releasing them before they've actually been issued the patent, then so be it.

    Shows up in the most unlikely places, sometimes, too. Last time I went to a concert (Summer Sanitarum Tour at the Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, MA, FWIW), the tiles that were covering the football field had "patent pending" stamped on them, if I remember right.

    --

  • Depends how much they made b4 we well and truly h053d their server. Long live the slashdot effect :-)
    Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
  • I also have the monitor pics up now also
  • Man I love how everyone with a computer company can scare anyone else with the magical word of "Lawsuit". Well Apple Insider seems to have been the ones to get hit with what they claim is legal action against the online magazine.

    And if they're so inside why exactly did they get the okay to run the mouse, but not the pictures? ... Looks like the bluff was called though the paper shredder/washing machine would have made a really great workstation ...

    Remember the days when it was cool to paint your box or just get a bunch of stickers?

  • MacJunkie has it right. (new) Apple loves handles and there would be no way on earth you could pick this up.

    But if someone wants to fake pictures of a rack mounted G4 with OSX, I'll fall for that if you like.

    Dave :)

  • Poll: what will happen to the MacJunkie tomorrow?

    1. MacJunkie will be proven right, and Apple will release something that doesn't look at all like those photos
    2. Ben Apple will eat his hat, as he said he would
    3. Ben Apple will eat his hockey puck mouse, as he said he would
    4. Ben Apple will eat both his hat and hockey puck mouse, forced by angry Slashdotters shouting something about the news media being bought
    5. MacJunkie will quietly let the days pass by and mysteriously remove the page claiming the photos were fake. (And of course, subsequently get slashdotted by rabid slashdotters who want to show everbody and their mom how dumb MacJunkie is)
    6. There will be 1000 posts to the next article on the Mac about why slashdot sucks and shouldn't post every article it has posted and should post everything else in the universe.
  • Maybe that headline ought to read: Slashdot discovers Apple Cube pictures are fraudulent, reports anyway

    More seriously.. is slashdot becoming the national enquirer of the tech industry.. reporting on rumors and half-truths? I, for one, am still waiting for the headline Natalie Portman's pregnancy due to troll on famous nerds for news site, film at 11! Or maybe the headliner - Jon Katz beaten at subway station outside hacker convention in New York.. where Mr. Katz explains in an exclusive interview that this is how geeks typically welcome new people into the fold.. *insert mandatory columbine reference* and after the doctors figure out how to remove the 13 bullets he'll be back on slashdot reporting fast as ever...

    Disclaimer: The above was satire. If it offends you, try decaffe.

  • Is CT in europe? Or is zir clock just confused?

    -Kahuna burger

  • The photos are doctored really well (The author could make a living doing some good artwork, if he could work with his own sources). However, the logo is ripped directly off of apple professional photo gallery. I am looking forward for tomorrow keynote, planing to watch it with much enjoyment over quicktime. Anytime steve jobs does his song and dance, its a great show.
    I DO hope apple makes an entrance into the professional market. It looks like they'll be putting Radeon cards into some machine they are releasing tomorrow.
    And apple has tried the modular route before, it was called the preforma series, you could slide out the motherboard without having to disconnect anything. It was a bismal failure (not because of the modular motherboard)
  • I have a Rage Pro II with 8 megs of Ram. The MB is the FIC SD11. What's the next excuse? An 8 meg card isn't good enough? Why does it work on the Mac then?
  • It's depressing that a non-event like new stylings for cases or monitors could been seen as a reason for legal action.

    Perhaps this should tell you that industrial design isn't a non-event? Since Apple moved away from producing beige boxes and actually started caring about industrial design (amongst other things) its turned around from a company loosing $1 billion a year to one making $1 billion a year. Clearly a lot of actual computer users care a lot about what their machines look like. Equally clearly a lot of geeks don't care. That's fine, but fortunately there's room enough in the world for both viewpoints to be okay.

    At the end of the day, leaks like this can help draw attention to a company and its products. But since SJ came back, there seems to be a dedicated effort to clamp down and control everything about Apple.

    Earth to Steve: Support and encourage users and enthusiasts. No users == no more Apple.

    And yet the number of Mac buyers has shot up since Steve took over.

    Real World to Steve: Keep on truckin' your users love what you're doing with the Mac.

  • Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.

    It's a good think you aren't in marketing. I know ALOT of people who bought an iMAC just because of what it looks like. And almost ANY retail store in seattle that wants to look hip has an iMac sitting on the front desk. Looks matter, looks sell.
  • by Skyfire ( 43587 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:38PM (#923476) Homepage
    Brings new meaning to the term i-Toaster.
    Either that or Steve Jobs is going into the breadmaker business.
  • This is just one of the last straws for rumor sites trying to get people to visit their site instead of their compeditors. Being a (mostly) mac person, and reading the various usenet groups ie: comp.mac.advocacy this is just a prick war between the rumor sites to see if they can guess at what Apple is going to release next.
    There is alot of hatred and fingerpointing between all these sites to try to get visitors. It is just pathetic if you look at it.
    Another fish I have to fry is that of all places Slashdot is following this. I mean, I remember the"good ol days" when you were lucky to even get news about Apple. I have come to expect more of social issues, and Open source stuff, then mac stuff that I can see 8 different perspecives by visiting http://www.macsurfer.com So for the Love of God, please don't post this stuff until it is final. For the last couple of weeks, it seems like there has been more news on Apple than many other companies that are just as important. I just hope slashdot doesn't degenerate into a rumor mill like some other sites that shall be unamed.
  • Follow this link from the fella that started the whole mac cube rumour off. 'nuff said. http://www.themacjunkie.com/archives/7.11.00.rumor s.html
  • Jobs already made the mistake of releasing a cube-shaped computer once in his career. The original NeXT computer was a black cube, 12 inches on a side. You don't see too many of them around any more.

    And I'd be willing to bet that the Cobalt Raq systems sell better than the Cobalt Qubes.

    Here are the specs of the NeXT cube, according to "The NeXT Book", by Bruce Webster, first edition, 1989. 68030 CPU at 25MHz, 68882 FPU, 56001 DSP, 8MB RAM, expandable to 64MB (16 SIMM slots!), 330MB or 660MB 5.25" hard drive, 256MB optical drive (the only removable storage!), built-in SCSI, built-in Ethernet, 1120x832 gray-scale (2 bit-plane) 17" display, 256K video buffer, passive backplane with 4 slots (similar to NuBus, but the cards are about 11"x11"; the main board takes up one of the slots), nice keyboard (includes power, volume, and brightness control), decent mouse, black cast magnesium case.

    The hardware was definitely impressive for its day (1989) but a bit pricey. Actually, much of it was ahead of its time. Nobody had 17" monitors back then; nobody had that kind of resolution. And the optical drive was a flop. The color slabs were the really nice boxes. They came out a year or so later than the cube.

    The really impressive part of the NeXT was the software though. You can see its legacy in a lot of some Linux GUI software, and the Mac OS X is based on NeXTStep. One of the best things about NeXTStep is its use of Display PostScript. WSYIWYG, because the display and the printer are written to in exactly the same way.
  • Yes, the pics are definitely computer-generated, but MacJunkie has a few things wrong. Point-by-point:

    > 1. In this form, the machine would be very much top-heavy

    Not necessarily--the transparent base could be solid plastic, in which case the case would be very, very stable (more so than a current G4 minitower).

    > 2. Look at the size of those air vents. You could drop a pencil through there,
    > or spill a cup of coffee

    Much about Apple's current crop of cases is aesthetic, not functional; there could be mesh and foam inside those huge vent louvers to protect from accidents like that, anyway.

    > 3. While in the photograph taken from a diagonal angle there are three screws
    > on the top of the machine, there are
    > only two in the head-on photo. Why?

    Because the third screw, the one in the middle, is shielded from view by the raised border of the vent cutout.

    > 4. There are no handles. Apple loves handles, and furthermore, anyone who expects to
    > get a good grip on a computer with plexiglass sides has got another thing coming.

    Those raised bars on the top of the case are handles which retract into the case when not in use, and can be pulled up into handles when needed. This was noted in the first articles about this alleged case design, so I wish the person who wrote this debunking article would do his homework.

    > 5. The front of the machine has at least a couple tell-tale Photoshop
    > fingerprints. First, look at the Apple logo in the second image. Does it look
    > a little smushed to you? It is. The artist had to use Photoshop's Distort tool
    > to get the image to be angled correctly, but this tool doesn't take 3D
    > measurements into consideration.

    This is complete BS. The logo in question looks distorted because it is being viewed at an angle, from above, to the side, and on the diagonal--a very complex angle. The distortion visible is in line with the angle of observation, with only a little deviation. I disagree that this is a Photoshop image, and here's why.

    It is definitely computer-generated, but most likely by a 3D design and rendering program, not by a 2D tool like Photoshop. The attention to detail in shading and angle and contour in these images is certainly doable in Photoshop, but at the cost of a huge amount of time.

    In contrast, I could create the same images in 3D Studio Max and similar programs in a fraction of the time required to do them in Photoshop, plus I'd have an interactive 3D model to move around easily and get as many 2D image captures from as I want. 3D Studio Max, I know, isn't available for Macs, but similar products are (not as good IMHO, though). In particular, the attention to details like very accurate lighting and shading points to a 3D app creating these images, not a 2D app like Photoshop; this guy's concluding remarks about a lighting source being out of place are BS, the images appear to have pretty accurate lighting and shading. Doing these images in Photoshop would be too much of a bother, especially when so many good 3D apps are widely available (even the dongle protection for 3D Studio Max has been broken, and it's food for the warez kiddies now).

    Plus, the pics on AppleInsider have been removed and replaced with images with a message about Apple's legal dept. making them take the pics down. This supports earlier claims, which were disputed, that Apple had done so on other sites hosting these pics. This indicates that there may be a grain of truth to these computer-generated images. My personal opinion is that the images are, indeed, authentic in that they come from Apple design mock ups, not necessarily of a design that will be used any time soon, but of a design that is or was being considered. My guess, unsupported by anything but Apple's stupid lawyermongering, is that these were taken from early 3D computer-generated designs from Apple's case-styling guys. But Apple is pissing me off with their lawyer-whoring bullshit; I was considering buying an Apple since I used to use them in college, but now they can fuck off. I hate ity when people try to stifle freedom of the press, important enough that the framers of the constitution put it first in the bill of rights.
  • by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:40PM (#923501) Homepage
    Now that was a cool computer. Fuck transparent plastic, i want cold, black steel on my desk.
  • 30FPS is already a rate.
    A rate per unit time is a change in rate over timem or acceleration, by definition.

    Every != per.
  • by crayz ( 1056 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:46PM (#923514) Homepage
    Apple legal has apparently contacted both AI and TMJ with a threat that they remove the images.

    Therefore, I've posted my own copy here: http://home.rochester.rr.com/crayz/ [rr.com]

    BTW, this is what an Apple legal threat would look like:

    -----------

    From cpyrt@apple.com Fri Jul 7 20:56:43 2000
    Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 17:28:28 -0700
    From: Copyright Admin.
    To: Ryan Meader
    Subject: NOTICE OF INFRINGEMENT

    *Apple Confidential*
    -NOT FOR POSTING OR REDISTRIBUTION-

    Dear Ryan,

    Re: www.macosrumors.com

    It has been brought to our attention that you have posted an article on the above web site titled, 'Apple's "Cube" desktop Mac confirmed' (hereafter referred to as "the Article").

    By posting the Article, you are improperly disclosing Apple's trade secrets. Apple believes that the person(s) who disclosed the information in the Article to you violated their non-disclosure agreement with Apple. Consequently, Apple has never authorized the information to be disclosed or published and your continued display of the Article could result in your company being held for violating Apple's proprietary rights. Your continued dissemination and use of this information is in violation of Apple's statutory and other rights.

    We believe, in good faith, that the information posted is being used in a manner that is not authorized by Apple and that the information contained in this email is accurate. Therefore, Apple demands that you cease and desist from disseminating the Article posted at the referenced URL immediately, including any hyperlinks to other locations where the information or Article may be available from all web sites and servers under your control.

    Please immediately remove the Article and confirm in writing by Monday, July 10, 2000 that you have removed the Article from your web site. Apple reserves its right to seek immediate equitable and other relief, including damages claims, should you fail to remove this material.

    Thank your for your courtesy and immediate cooperation. I can be reached at (408) 974-9994 should you have any questions.

    Sincerely, Sue Runfola Apple Computer, Inc. Legal

    Sue Runfola Apple Legal Copyright Administration 1 Infinite Loop, MS: 38-I Cupertino, CA 95014

    Phone: (408) 974-9994 Email: copyright@apple.com Fax: (408) 974-5436

    THIS TRANSMISSION MAY BE PRIVILEGED AND MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION INTENDED ONLY FOR THE PERSON(S) NAMED ABOVE. ANY OTHER DISTRIBUTION, RE-TRANSMISSION, COPYING OR DISCLOSURE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS TRANSMISSION IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY ME IMMEDIATELY BY TELEPHONE OR RETURN E-MAIL, AND DELETE THIS FILE/MESSAGE FROM YOUR SYSTEM.

  • I just want to point out the insanity of this letter. It begins and ends with statements to the effect of, "you can't distribute this message because it's Apple confidential."

    Am I missing something, or is that totally unsupportable? After all, the recipient has not asked for this letter. They have not signed a non-disclosure with Apple. What the hell gives Apple the right to restrict distribution of this letter? I can see claiming copyright over the contents, but fair use does allow for reproducing small sections or paraphrasing and summarizing.

    Of course, what appears here is neither small sections nor a summary.... Oh, and for those in the cheap seats: I am not a professional. Don't try this at home.
  • Over at MacSlash [macslash.com], we have some intense coverage planned [macslash.com] for MacWorld New York. Our team arrived on site today and will be providing our daily dose of mac news, straight from the Big Apple. We'll have at least four people sitting in on Steve's Keynote tomorrow morning, so if any announcements are made, including this (IMHO) ridiculous "cube" thing, we'll have complete reports online as soon as our people can get to their computers. Stop by and join in the discussion.
  • put linux on that box with ingos real time patches for 2.2 so you can do soft real time scheduling, dump uncompressed 30fps video stream on the hard drive, tune the hard drive with the following options (if IDE) hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hda and if your card is AGP, turn on the framebuffering. then you should be able to play the entire video stream without too many problems.
  • Begging your pardon, but I'd say Macintouch has a pretty good reputation. They have been right on the spot with their reports regarding various Mac issues and software upgrades. To put them in the same sentence as MOSR and AppleInsider is ludicrous. MOSR and AI are sights that are based on crap, while Macintouch prints legitimate news instead of 98% rumor.

    I used to think that, but in the last couple of months Ric Ford at MacInTouch has been posting some real stinkers. His recent stuff on Apple's Java was so wide of the truth it wasn't even funny. In my opinion he is burning through what little credibiility he had faster than a pre-IPO dotcom burns through its VC cash.

  • Once the marketroids get desperate to separate themselves from the pack by starting new trends, I bet we'll see a dodecahedron...
  • Following up on Apple's threats to get the rumors sites to remove news on their new products: the same thing has happened to the much more reliable Mac news site MacInTouch [macintouch.com]. They've posted Apple's letter and their response [macintouch.com] which is quite well written. MacInTouch was also reporting about a Cube system, which actually increases the chance that it's not a hoax since MacInTouch is much more accurate than other sites like MacOSRumors [macosrumors.com].
  • AppleInsider - "Look at new Mac Cube"
    Mac Junkie - "Pictures are bogus"
    Apple Computers "Remove pictures NOW"

    I don't care if the computers are for real. It's just funny to see this happen.

    What ever Apples reasons for suing everyone it's not a smart busness move...
    (Isn't Apples law sute spree how Apple became "The bad guy" of the 1980s?)

    I don't want Apple to be the bad guy... I want Apple to be around to pick up the user side.
    [Mac is a power system but it's a better Newbe system than Linux and Mac dose the job better than Windows]

    Anyway... this is a bit silly.... and Apple is just making things more surreal by throwing lawyers around
  • Well APPL must read /.

    Why not? There are thousands of employees there, some portion of which are working on open source projects.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:51PM (#923559)
    A squat, top-vented computer might not be completely nuts. It would make a good foot stool/warmer.
  • Gah! The NeXT cube was a horrendous manufacturing nightmare. There's plenty of juicy details in "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing" but IIRC notable problems were:

    *Steve insisted that it be a PERFECT cube. Normally there would be an inperceptable slant so that it could drop out of the mold. Special molds had to be developed at great expense to get the cubes out

    *It had to be made out of magnesium, and it had to be black. Magnesium is not all that easy to work with; getting paint on it is even harder. Getting black paint on in such a way that it doesn't reveal all of the normal, minor defects in the case (e.g. teeny dents) was really tough. They had to talk to a lot of car manufacturers about it.

    *The production facility had to be presentable so that when people who ordered NeXT cubes came over to the FACTORY to pick them up (yeah, this happens all the time in the computing world) they would be impressed. Particularly the production line had to move in a particular direction. It turned out that it didn't, and _everything_ had to be rearranged so that it looked good to Steve. Oh, and no one ever came to the factory to pick up cubes.
  • by KFury ( 19522 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:54PM (#923567) Homepage
    Looking at the cube picture, it appears that there are two ridges on the top to facilitate stacking. This presents two problems:
    • First, how can you get DVDs in or out of a stacked cube? This of course is assuming there's a DVD slot tucked near one of those plastic ridges.
    • Second, is this some sort of 'in-series' ventalation? With three stacked macs, the same air would chimney through three machines!

    Other points:
    • The power button (the 'third screw') would never be on the top of a machine.
    • The font used in the picture is a variant of Adobe Garamond, and is slightly shorter than Apple Garamond.
    • One of the ideals of the new Apple aesthetic is no hard lines, yet this has hard lines on thp and bottom.
    • A true Apple product would have the Apple logo on the sides as well.
    • It looks like a lucite office trash can turned upside down and apple-ified.

    I bet there will be an Apple Cube, and I bet it'll be released tomorrow. It's right in line with Fred's comments today that iMac sales are getting flat. I just think it'll look more like the earlier sketches with the contrary handles and front-faced design.

    BTW, I have a mirror [fury.com] for this pic and the 17" CRT, which is beautiful and I wish is real, but I fear isn't bulbous enough to be legit.


    Kevin Fox
  • Sure, you can find a lot more sucky PC cases then you can find sucky Mac cases, but you'll find a lot more PC cases period, too.

    The problem, like you say, is finding a good PC case. It's easy to find a good Mac case, while no more than 5-10% of PC's sold have anything that is close to acceptable. I am saddled with a Compaq Presario at work, and that thing SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS compared to the Mac that sits next door to me.

  • Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.

    The hardware matters, sure, but the case does too. A lot. Or at least, it probably will in the future. There aren't many other ways for computer companies to differentiate their products especially in the home PC market. The only one I can really think of is service plans and software doo-dads that you don't really need anyway.

    The hardware in PC's is pretty much set, anything that goes into it is rarely made or controlled by a PC manufacturer. Motherboards are one exception, made by some of the larger PC manufacturers, but these are largely transparent to the user and have to conform to given standards anyway (intel/AMD chips, PCI, current RAM standards, etc).

    I have similar complaints with the Imac's because they are a lot of packaging hype, but i can't help but think they'd be more affordable and
    more servicable if they came in a standard gray box


    You don't seem to understand why the iMac is so successful...it looks cool. To the non-geek anyway, who make up the majority of computer users. The price doesn't matter, people want things that look nice, or even better, cool. The beige box is ok with me, but I'd still like a box that has better access. And I'm not the average computer user either.

    We haven't seen any remarkable changes in the way computers look for one main reason, IMO: there is no room for error in the computer world. Margins are thin as it is, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Apple had to take a risk because they were on their death bed, and it paid off, bigtime.

    Since hardware hardly gets even your average geek excited anymore, I think we'll start to see more "stylish" computer cases out there. Especially when sales start to drop since the upgrade cycle time is increasing, and prices are so low.
  • by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:14PM (#923579)

    These sites (AppleInsider [appleinsider.com], MacOSRumors [macosrumors.com], MacInTouch [macintouch.com] etc.) have a really lousey track record of posting half-truths and downright lies. Their quality control is really poor.

    What's more, they can do real damage. I was involved in a product that Apple Insider leaked images of, two days before it was publically launched. As a result, we lost most trademark and patent rights outside the US. In most other countries, you cannot trademark and/or patent something that has already been released into the public domain.

    So when you wonder why companies like Apple don't like these kind of sites and often seem heavy-handed in dealing with them, remeber that leaks like this can cost a company substantial amounts of money.

  • Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
    Now I don't mean to be an anti-apple biggot, i have a similar spanking to hand out to SGI over the O2 workstations (one of which i've been sort of stuck with as a desktop workstation at work). They concentrate so much on the sleek, modern, and powerful look that they somehow fail to make the actual hardware sleek, modern, or powerful. I have yet to find a way to get better than 60hz refresh out of that system, and it has the buggiest CDROM drive on earth.
    I have similar complaints with the Imac's because they are a lot of packaging hype, but i can't help but think they'd be more affordable and more servicable if they came in a standard gray box. Plus any computer that is round enough that you can't accumulate a pile of odds and ends on top of it is too whacked out for me =:-)
  • I would like to suggest that Apple has become another part of Microsoft's evil empire... as has Nintendo. Consider the following:

    1) Leaked information about Nintendo's next console system being called "Star Cube".
    2) These photos of Apple's new cubic G4 design.

    All obvious signs that The Microsoft Borg has its fingers in everything.

    love,
    br4dh4x0r
  • Have you ever tried to quickly swap cards, RAM or drives in a regular ol' PC tower case? it sucks. The Blue+White G3 and G4 cases rock hard when in comes to this sort of thing.

    It depends entirely on the case. With some of the new Dell cases I've been working on for a client, or the generic CasEdge PC cases we by ourselves, you simply push a button, pop the side and front panels, and pull the drives out on a rails. Even the rails are screwless; they use spring clips.

    Sure, you can find a lot more sucky PC cases then you can find sucky Mac cases, but you'll find a lot more PC cases period, too. When you only have one supplier, quality control better be good, or you'll soon have zero suppliers.
  • Oh my, you're dense :)

    [soe linear measurement such as frames] per second per second is a unit of acceleration.

    That would mean each second, your coputer is processing at a rate 30 frames/second more than the last second.

    IE, within a few seconds it will be pushing 120 frames/second, the next second it will be doing 150 frames/second, etc

  • ... ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

    Come on... The keynote starts at what... 8am??? 9am??? New York time tomorrow?

    That's either five or six AM in San Francisco/Valley time. By the time we're all awake tomorrow, we'll know, once and for all, if this whole "Mac cube" thing is true, or if ryan meader and mosr.com are the lieing, idiotoc gasbag that he is held to be by most of the Mac community.

    By the time everyone's awake, the truth'll already be up out all the news sites, Slashdot, and, probably, apple.com itself.

    (unless anyone's REALLY planning on getting up that early (I pity the fool)... Well, if you just stay up all night, I guess that's okay... but only if you're codeing something *REALLY* cool :-P)

    So hows about we give it a rest, and just see where the chips fall in the morning?

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • It's borderline, if the rest of your system is great you'd be fine (I'm surprised the 750 isn't fast enough to run DVD in software alone).

    The ATI chips didn't have any real DVD/MPEG accelerator functions until the rage 128, and that was minimal. Make sure yu're using DVD player software that takes advantage of the AMD optimizations (most of the big ones do, I believe - PowerDVD, WinDVD, but check that it's using them). Check that you've got the AMD-optimized drivers for the video card, too.

    And the DMA setting on the drive -- I've had it mysteriously turn off, especially on CD/DVD drives, and it makes a HUUUGE difference in how smoothly anything off a disc plays.

    It definitely wouldn't HURT to drop a few bucks on a video card, but you really should be able to play full-screen video in software on a 750 anything, so check over the other settings/hardware to make sure something isn't goofy/underpowered...

    I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
    Q.Tell me what the trail was.
  • Begging your pardon, but I'd say Macintouch has a pretty good reputation. They have been right on the spot with their reports regarding various Mac issues and software upgrades. To put them in the same sentence as MOSR and AppleInsider is ludicrous. MOSR and AI are sights that are based on crap, while Macintouch prints legitimate news instead of 98% rumor.
  • rather than the perpetual also ran they've become.

    Don't confuse market share with influence. They are two very different things.

  • Too late, those koo-koo nutty guys and gals at MacAddict [macaddict.com] already built an iBorg, an iBook that can roll itself around and eventually be controlled from the web. It has a long and somewhat sordid past at the magazine (including being stolen), but according to the latest update [macaddict.com], it is actually up and running.

    OT: I love MacAddict; it's the Car and Driver of the computer world (informative, intelligent, and irreverent), kind of how MacUser was when it first started.

  • Regarding the 3/4 view, at least. MacJunkie says the logo looks a little "smushed". Umm no. Look closer. That's a combination of a specular surface, JPEG compression, and small pixel dimensions. If this box is real, my bets are that the corner of the Apple just got a bit blown out by the studio strobes in this particular photo and, with shrunk dimensions and jpeg compression, it makes the corner seem to not be there at all. Course, I could be wrong. But that 17" display? Man that thing is beautiful. (BTW, Apple's monitors have standard vga connectors instead of mac video, meaning you too can own a purty monitor if you like the way it looks. if not... get a radius blue.)

    ----
  • Who the heck wants a cube? I'm lobbying for pyramid myself. I'm sure everyone else is sick of their box shaped computers too. It's so much more leet if your neighborhood script kiddy can say "Hey man, wanna check out my new pyramid?". What was Apple thinking?

    -Antipop
  • by Macdude ( 23507 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:21PM (#923621)
    I was involved in a product that Apple Insider leaked images of, two days before it was publically launched. As a result, we lost most trademark and patent rights outside the US.

    I don't think much of your company's business acumen if you waited until two days before your product ships before filing for trademarks and patents...

  • by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:23PM (#923624)

    Its not as if they knew it was a fraud and decided to post it anyways.

    Yeah, and I've got this nice bridge to sell you :-) They could have figured it out themselves if they'd taken five seconds to look at the images, like the MacJunkie guys did. Instead they went for the "post first, figure out the truth later" approach. They are shoddy amateurs.

    They found out later that the story 'could' be a fake. I agree with MacJunkie that it looks like a fraud, but who knows.

    Exactly, who knows? So at the very least AppleInsider should have done some due diligence and tried to figure out what they had. Then if they decided to post, they should have put some caveats on their web page instead of telling us these definately were photos of the Cube machines.

    Maybe Apple will see it, and decide to scrap the old design. Thus making it true. Who knows.

    Well, if the machines are going to be unveiled at the MacWorld keynote tomorrow, I doubt they'd have time to redisgn the cases. Look I know Apple are cool and all, but even they can't redesign a case in less that 24 hours...

    It came from a reputable source. It should get the benefit of the doubt.

    How do you know it came from a reputable source? Who said it did? AppleInsider? Their "reputable sources" are wrong at least half the time, so they aren't reputable at all. Don't give them any benefit when they have such a poor track record.

  • Otherwise Apple would have filed a cease-and-desist by now, surely? :-)
  • by Anonymous Coward
    They can't stop us all.

    Damn, I wish I wasn't posting anonymously. Karma would be nice. :)
  • ...to give Apple a taste of it's own medicine. It'd crack me up if they came out with a cube-shaped computer and Cobalt sued using the very same justification that Apple uses to go after everyone who comes out with an all-in-one computer.
  • I have removed any proprietary Apple information from the image [195.115.63.44].
    --
    Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?

  • Sorry, I know the situation you're currently in. You see, I too used to be a MOSR victim. Yes, I read all the Mac rumors sites back in the good old days before Steve Jobs took the helm and clamped down on any legit product info. I watched as site after site closed down or started spewing crap, but I didn't know that they were spewing crap for over a year.

    Ryan Meader is full of crap. The Mac Junkie site documents [themacjunkie.com] in good detail how willing MOSR is to take anything and post it up as from legit sources. My eyes were opened by parody site mosr.net [mosr.net] and other sites, and my own critical eye has caught Apple Insider fibbing on occasion, though they seem to be less obsessed with putting something, anything out no matter how blatantly false it is.

    If you want legit news, go to Macintouch [macintouch.com] or MacNN [macnn.com], but don't trust the rumors sites. They haven't had good hit-miss ratios for over 2 years or so, and since they are in the entertainment business, they don't really care. I just regret getting my Dad hooked on the damn site.
  • I'm waiting for cobalt to hit apple with a look and feel copyright lawsuit for a "cube" design.. :-)
    --------------------------------
  • It's easy to find a good Mac case ...

    Yah, but I'd still rather have the choice. Apple says "Thou Shalt Have This Case, And Thou Shalt Like It". With choice comes the inevitable sucky products, but it also brings a larger number of good products.

    ... while no more than 5-10% of PC's sold have anything that is close to acceptable.

    Sure, 90% of PC cases are crap. 90% of everything is crap. Sturgeon's Law.

    FYI, CasEdge is at http://www.casedge.com [casedge.com], and the particular model that sits on my desktop is the LX734A [xenus.com].
  • a) You shouldn't have leaked it. If I hand a stranger a bag of money to hold, its academic whether or not it's his fault for running off with it. In the same sense, if you allow proprietary/confidential information to get out, it's pretty silly to blame the sites that received it for posting it. Some would argue that information ceases to be proprietary if you fail to take appropriate measures to protect it.

    b) You should have patented/trademarked it earlier. See argument above. If you build your house on a fault, don't blame the earth for moving when an earthquake knocks it down - blame yourself for not buying insurance BEFORE it happens.

    (The analogy engine is running hot tonight.)

  • Well, someone is doing live updates from the keynote speach - and the Cube lives! PowerMac G4, from the page:

    10:38 One more thing! (PowerMac G4 Cube)

    - 1.5 GB of RAM

    - 40 GB of Hard Drive Space

    - Modem, Ethernet, Firewire, USB

    - 8" Cube

    - No Fan

    - DVD Slot Load Drive on the top

    - Handle on the bottom to lift out the entire machine from the enclosure

    - 450 MHz G4; 64MB of RAM; 20 GB; Firewire; DVD-ROM; iMovie; $1799

    - 500 MHz G4; 128mb of RAM; 30GB; Firewire; DVD-ROM; iMovie; $2299

    Which of course makes you wonder - why the hell did Apple have such a shit fit over some leaked pictures that weren't even that far ahead of thier anouncement anyway?!

  • I agree, it's seems to be fake. But suggesting that it's fake because no one would put have vents that size (or, ostensibly, on top) because they'd be vulnerable to spills is silly.

    I know for a fact (for a fact) that monitors are quite vulnerable to water spills. Multiple water spills. Angled just right to let the entire glass spill into them.
    -----
  • "Nobody had 17" monitors back then; nobody had that kind of resolution."

    I think you're thinking about the wrong kinds of monitors, as I have my HP 98751A 19" Sony Triniton monitor which does 1024x768x60hz from 1988 here.. and it works just fine. Thats a high resolution, and a huge tube. The thing weights about 35kg, or 77lbs. It's way bigger than the piddling monitor PCs had back in the late 1980s, which might be what you meant.

    The processor on the NeXT Cube is much more powerful than the processor in the HP 300 which mates with the monitor, though. But then I also have a Personal DECstation 5000/25 which has a 25Mhz R3000 processor which would likely edge it out (especially with its whopping 40mb of ram) :-)
    ---

"Right now I feel that I've got my feet on the ground as far as my head is concerned." -- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky

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