Let's face it-- it's rare for a sequel to surpass the quality of the original. In fact, we're not even going to rattle off the short list of movies that have successfully pulled off that stunt, because every time the Star Wars vs. The Empire Strikes Back debate arises anew, things get really tense around the AtAT studios, and frankly, we just don't need that right now. In any event, we can probably all agree on one thing: regardless of quality, commercial flops generally never get sequels in the first place, since the whole point of a sequel is to reap further profits from the success of the original. But Apple, as always, is thinking different. Ly. Whatever.

By now you've probably figured out what we're talking about, because in the past few years, Apple's really only had a single commercial failure: the everybody-loves-it, nobody-buys-it Power Mac G4 Cube. It takes a very discriminating breed of shopper to plunk down the extra ducats for a computer as stylish and well-designed as the Cube, and unfortunately for Apple, that type of shopper has turned out to be a rare breed indeed-- hence the ensuing rebates, price reductions, and that sizeable quarterly loss. But never forget that the Cube is Steve's baby, even more so than the iMac ever was; it's his own NeXT Cube taken to a higher level. That means he's not likely to drop the product, no matter how unprofitable it's been in the past. And so, word has it that he's called upon his merry band of worker elves to transform the Cube into the success story we all know it can be.

Mac OS Rumors watchdog David Triska informs us that those happy little rumormongers are rattling off all sorts of fun possibilities for the Cube's sequel. First, the grapevine whispers that the only Cubes still for sale are ones that are already in the channel; Apple's not currently producing any more of the current models. Yes, kids, if you look carefully, the Cube as we know it might have that "End Of Life" tattoo etched demurely into its lucite behind.

That sets the stage for a new model to strut its stuff sooner rather than later, and MOSR's extremely preliminary specs are intriguing, if not altogether trustworthy. Picture, if you will, the current Power Mac G4's 133 MHz bus and 4x AGP graphics slot paired up with processors running at up to 600 MHz. Now toss in a new nVIDIA graphics card, shoehorn in a pinch of expandability (we're guessing "CardBus slot," ourselves), wrap the whole thing up in a revamped "seamless" and "sleeker" enclosure that boasts a "very different appearance," slap an after-bundle-discount sticker price of $1299 on the low-end model, and voilà: a star is (re)born. Now all we need to do is wait for this puppy to premiere, and then see if it fares any better at the box office than its predecessor.