(NOTE: The following scene was produced but not broadcast before Apple's official announcement of the Cube's death-- er, suspension; we are broadcasting it unedited in memory of one damn fine computer.)

Fashion-forward cubic Macs with no sales pull never die, they just fade away-- or, at least, that's what we originally thought. We figured that once Macworld Expo rolled around in a couple of weeks and Steve took the wraps off a slew of shiny new toys, the Cube would simply vanish when Apple updated its web site and price lists to include the latest additions to the line-up (and to drop any and all references to Apple's biggest sales embarrassment in years). Dazzled by LCD-sporting iMacs and gigahertz G4s, the average Mac fan may never even have noticed that Apple's eight-inch "brain in a box" had quietly dropped off the radar. The only acknowledgment we expected to see of the Cube's passing during the keynote was Steve subtly wearing black from the waist up.

Now, though, we're hearing that the Cube won't even make it to its first birthday before getting flatlined. A nebulous faithful viewer known only as Garibaldi has donned his swami hat to make the bold prediction that the Cube is being deep-sixed tonight. How he claims to know, we cannot say. Whether he's correct or not is anyone's guess. But we pass along his premonition in good faith, knowing that Cube fans the world over may want to hold candlelight vigils or pray silently while facing Cupertino, just in case the Cube does indeed get stamped with the dreaded "End of Life" designation sometime after the sun sets.

As for us, we've always been big fans of the Cube here at AtAT-- but, like so much of the rest of the world, not big enough fans to shell out the cash and actually buy one. Partially that was because of purely rational arguments: it was pretty expensive (at least at the start), some people were having problems with spontaneous shutdowns, and we really need a primary production system that can host two Ethernet interfaces. Deep down, though, we suspect that the biggest reason we never bought one is because it would be hideously out of place in the AtAT studios. The Cube is a gleaming piece of modern sculpture that lifts the spirits of all who cast eyes on it; the AtAT compound, on the other hand, looks rather like a junkyard that's been vandalized and then set fire to. Simply put, we couldn't provide the Cube with a setting that would do its design justice. Indeed, we wonder if that was the biggest factor in its failure as a product: potential customers who ultimately decided subconsciously that the Cube was just too good for them.

Still, both despite and because of the fact that the Cube looks like it'd be more at home in a museum than on a desk, we'll be sorry to see it go. Personally, we think it lends a touch of extra class to Apple's product line; ideally the company should just keep ten of them in a warehouse somewhere and jack up the price to, say, a million dollars each. No one will ever buy one, but then the Cube could live forever, always giving the world something to ooh and ahh over when taking a peek at Apple's product list. If Garibaldi's right and the Cube departs tonight for that Great Scrap Heap in the Sky, here's hoping it rates a classy pedestal in the Mac afterlife.