|
Nothing Square Can Stay (4/25/01)
|
 
|
| | |
Whither the Cube? Apple has expended an unusual amount of energy to insist that the slick but unfortunately slow-selling product isn't going away anytime soon. Steve categorically denied rumors that the Cube development team had been laid off, for instance (that's interesting in itself, since the company's policy is never to comment on rumors), and Apple has continued to juice its compact little hexahedron with better feature options, like a CD-RW drive and an nVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics card. But we just can't shake this nagging suspicion that the Cube is sadly not long for this world.
Certainly that's what AtAT's Little Birds™ are tweeting: that production on Cubes is about to cease and that once Apple's sizeable stock is gone, the Cube will quietly vanish from Apple's price list, with nary a eulogy to mark its passing. Bearing firmly in mind that believing anything a bird tells you about the goings-on at One Infinite Loop is at best a dodgy practice (and at worst something that can get you committed), all we can say is that the latest numbers make that scenario pretty plausible. In a recent Ziff Davis Internet article, longtime Mac dude Matthew Rothenberg reveals that while Apple sold a whopping 115,000 titanium PowerBooks last quarter (a figure that Apple trumpeted from the hilltops), the company only managed to move 12,000 Cubes into the channel. That's particularly frightening considering that it represents a steep 59% drop from the still-anemic 29,000 Cubes it sold the quarter before. (Cue ominous chord.)
Perhaps the most upsetting thing about the Cube possibly dying a slow, ignominious death is the fact that every Cube owner we hear from-- really, every single one-- loves his or her Cube like a first-born child. Between the unparalleled critical acclaim and the raves from the people who actually bought it, it's a shame that the Cube did so poorly at the box office. We're still pulling for a delayed-action "sleeper hit" sort of dynamic, but the chances of that ever happening seem to be dropping off sharply. All we can say is, if you want a Cube, we wouldn't wait too long to buy one if we were you.
| |
| |
 |
SceneLink (3013)
|  |
 |
 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/25/01 episode: April 25, 2001: Gee, all these site outages just when speculation about Apple's May 1st press event is reaching a fever pitch; sounds like Steve's been busy. Meanwhile, dismal Cube sales numbers have some people concerned for the product's future, and Apple's latest plan to win back the hearts of educators is a series of free workshops called the Apple Teacher Institutes...
Other scenes from that episode: 3012: The Hands-On Approach (4/25/01) Man, Captain Steve sure has his covert black-ops ninja sabotage team working overtime these days. Regular viewers are no doubt all too familiar with AtAT's seemingly futile struggle to maintain a steady broadcast signal over the past few weeks, and judging by the contents of our inbox, more than a few conspiracy-minded viewers are looking askance at the sudden vaporization of Mac OS Rumors about a week ago, as well... 3014: An Apple For The Teacher (4/25/01) We're starting to suspect that someone really wants his crown back. Rack up another initiative in Apple's both-guns-blazing push to get back the education market share it lost to Dell: as outlined in an official press release, the company's latest strategy involves a new program called the Apple Teacher Institutes, a bunch of "hands-on technology workshops" at which K-12 teachers can learn how "to effectively utilize technology to maximize planning and instructional time, expand their individual areas of expertise, engage an increasingly diverse student body, and discover new ways to individualize instruction."...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
|
|
