Ladies and gentlemen, we have seen the dark side of human nature-- and believe us, it ain't pretty. Do you really want to know why Apple can't rely on stunning industrial design as the primary method by which it can grow its customer base? It's because taste is a virtue in awfully short supply out there in Consumerville. While Apple might be able to lasso a few converts from the Wintel world who wound up there by accident in the first place, the sad fact appears to be that there are plenty of people who honestly can't tell the aesthetic difference between a Power Mac G4 Cube and... well, this thing. (Warning: graphic depictions of the emptiness of the human soul ahead.)

Yes, faithful viewer Mike Walsh sent us a link to an eBay auction of what we can only refer to as "the Bizarro Cube," because it appears to be a dangerously misguided attempt to-- well, we hesitate to use the word "duplicate"; perhaps "hold up to a dark mirror"?-- Apple's luscious Cube in the Wintel universe. It's like some kind of Satanic Mass-style mockery of all that's good and decent. Instead of no fans, this behemoth's got at least three-- and two of them appear to be mounted right on the front for maximum noise and ugliness. Right above them are three LEDs: red, yellow, and green, in a perverse and perhaps unintentional replication of the Mac OS X Aqua window controls. The whole thing is transparent, but instead of subtly revealing the elegance of the underlying design, the clear case just shows off a nasty mess of parts stuck together willy-nilly. The LCD digital temperature readout doesn't help matters much, either, and the "Intel Inside" logo is right on the front, just to make things really scary-- but hey, at least you can turn out the lights and bathe the thing in classy blue neon.

As Mike says, this just proves "yet again that some Wintel users really don't get it." The seller boldly claims that "you will not want to put this under your desk!" Okay, we agree with that; we'd rather put it in a closet. Preferably in someone else's house. But the really scary part? Not only did someone build this monstrosity, but at broadcast time, two other people had also actually bid on it. (Granted, one of them goes by the handle "intelengineer," but still.) Great... here come the nightmares...