Power Mac G4 Cube

A beautiful Mac, but a square peg in a round hole

You’d have needed a soul bypass to not be enraptured by

the Power Mac G4 Cube. Aiming to squeeze a powerful desktop into a tiny case, the acrylic glass enclosure made this Mac look like it was magically floating above your desk.

There was no fan. Discs popped out of the top as if from a toaster. The on switch was a gesture-driven capacitive sensor. And to get at its innards, you flipped the Cube upside-down and yanked them free.

The snag: the Cube was expensive and lacked upgrade potential. A year after release, it was gone, but the miniaturisation knowledge Apple gained from this informed future designs from the G4 iMac to the Mac mini — which is basically a Cube someone sat on (ish).