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Comment by podperson | Hacker News Reader

The design seems pretty ugly to me, but it is functional. It's essentially a wind tunnel with all the circuit boards placed against it.

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It's a pure cylinder. How can a basic form be ugly?

I'm pretty impressed that they didn't slap a logo on the front.

A cylinder is not a Platonic solid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

Good point, I haven't seen any logo. Maybe it's still in the works and will later.

On the animation titled "Expansion, vastly expanded" you see an apple logo on the case briefly before the animation stops. Top/center.

Yeah, the cylinder design seemed a little bit "what?" at first, but after seeing the airflow demo... it makes a lot more sense.

Just like the good old Cube. Only the guts are in a triangle.

Yep, exactly my thoughts. Also, didn't Tim Cook say the mini was going to be manufactured in the US as well? And could it also be the case that the Mini will follow the Pro's form factor because it would save money in manufacturing an entirely separate low-margin unit?

After seeing the Pro, I fantasized how fun it would be to have a desktop machine with several symmetric displays.

My bet, the entry level Pro will be $1899-$1999.

My bet is that Apple will be hard pressed to keep the current 2,500 base price. Three next generation Thunderbolt connectors, expensive Xeon processors, expensive ECC RAM, expensive PCIe flash disk. They basically took all the cheap, legacy and physically large stuff off the Mac Pro and folded up the remainder into a triangle that goes into a tube.

Can you believe that the old Mac Pro case and fundamental design was launched 10 years ago with the Power Mac G5?

Pretty incredible run. Both the PowerMac G5 and aluminum PowerBook G4 helped pave the way for the Intel transition. A good way to re-use R&D and save money!

But with a fan! The Cube could have used a fan in there.

And the Cube was slower than the midrange Power Mac of the day, and was encased in a thick plastic case, and -- worst of all -- had a capacitive power switch which would trip by itself in humid weather.

Although I'm amazed at the thermal core design, it still looks like a litter bin somehow.

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