Year: 2000:  

Processor: Motorola MPC7400 (PowerPC)

Manufacturer: Apple Computer, Inc.

Donor: Private, 2024

Another visually stunning work by Apple's legendary designer, Jony Ive, and backed by the style revolution of Steve Jobs' return to the company, the Mac Cube is another desktop computer that completely shed the stereotypical look of a computer.

Its facade includes burying its cables beneath its body, using touch-sensing to avoid any buttons on its surface and neglecting to include an internal cooling fan (a common design choice of Apple products).

The Cube sports the powerful G4 PowerPC processor by Motorola. This processor was the first to include Altivec, the PowerPC's new Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data (SIMD) vector extension with 128-bit wide data operations. It also offered ATI Rage 128 Pro graphics hardware. But its compact and uncluttered design limited options for expandability.

The manufacturing technology required to create the Cube's plastic case was revolutionary and pushed the limits of the time. But these demands drove up the price. Product sales languished, and the Cube remained in production for only one year, from July of 2000 to July of 2001.