New York – Citing extremely poor sales, Apple this week suspended production of its G4 Cube computer.
Introduced less than one year ago at the Macworld Expo in New York, the G4 initially drew high praise from the Apple faithful, but sales never materialized. To try and boost sales Apple revamped the two cube models with the addition of an internal drive and a offered consumers a mail-in rebate to help make the $1,800 and $2,299 devices more affordable. Neither trick made an impact on sales and Apple ended up placing the blame for the company’s poor financial performance on the Cube.
The Cube’s are still for sale on Apple’s web site, but are expected to disappear for good once the few remaining models are sold out.
When unveiled last year the Cube’s 8-inch square size and translucent casing drew gasps from the Macworld crowd. The Cube was Apple’s first new product class in two-and-a-half years. The two-unit line was essentially a boiled-down Power Mac G4 packing all the power found in the Power Macs into a simply-designed 8-inch cube. The Cube is about one-quarter the size of a Power Mac, but potential customers apparently were unimpressed and continued to favor the larger, fully-featured Power Mac G4 models, said Philip Schiller, Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing.
