How do you take an apple and make it square? Cube it! That's what Apple Computer just did. Steve Jobs pulled another rabbit out of his magical hat and introduced a new Mac supercomputer that's 8 inches square.

At last week's MacWorld Expo held in New York City, Jobs presented the Power Mac G4 Cube, a supercomputer engineered into an eight-inch cube, and suspended in a stunning crystal-clear enclosure. It has to be the coolest thing I've seen.

It may be small but it packs a wallop. With a built-in Velocity Engine, the G4 processor reaches over one billion calculations per second.

The 450MHz (or 500MHz) Cube comes with the latest version of Mac OS 9, 64MB of high-performance RAM, 1MB of backside level 2 cache, a 20GB Ultra ATA/66 hard disk drive, DVD-ROM drive with DVD-Video playback, and the ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics card with 16MB of graphics memory.

It has no fan making it virtually silent!

Price? A supercomputer for $1799. I can show you refrigerators that cost more.

Alongside the Cube is a pair of Apple-designed Harman Kardon stereo speakers that bring great sound to your movies, music and games.

Apple also introduced the new optical Apple Pro Mouse for perfect precision control. It tracks movement 1500 times per second for pinpoint cursor control. The entire surface is a button, so you can place your finger wherever you want click.

Also included in the new 108-key Apple Pro Keyboard with 15 full-size function keys, document navigation controls, full-size inverted T cursor keys, audio control keys and a disk-eject key. USB ports are located on both sides.

Another innovation is the new Apple Display Connector (ADC). A single cord that combines power, video and USB signals.

Obviously you need a great looking video display to attach to your Cube so Apple released three new displays. The 17-inch (16-inch viewable) Apple Studio Display features a Natural Flat Diamondtron CRT that cuts glare and provides images of extraordinary sharpness - for $499. The 15-inch flat panel Apple Studio Display features a liquid crystal screen that delivers a pure digital image from the G4 Cube, with no image degradation and absolutely zero flicker. And the 22-inch all-digital Apple Cinema Display ‹ the largest LCD monitor available ‹ gives you more than two pages of workspace.

Apple also released new models of their great selling iMac. New colors include Ruby, Indigo, and Sage, along with the high end Snow.

You have four models to choose from: iMac, iMac DV, iMac DV+ and iMac DV Special Edition.

In short, all new iMacs have a G3 processor, 10/100 Ethernet, two USB ports, and 56K modems. They can support 1 GByte of RAM and include the new Mouse Pro and Keyboard Pro. All models except the entry-level iMac include two FireWire ports, a VGA video output, AirPort support and iMovie 2. All new iMacs with FireWire support "FireWire Target Disk Mode," the ability to act as a hard drive when connected via FireWire to another Mac. Prices range from $799 to $1,499.

AirPort, Apple's cutting-edge wireless networking technology comes ready in the iMac DV, iMac DV+ and iMac DV Special Edition with a built-in antenna. Just add the optional AirPort Card.

The new iMac has the ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics accelerator‹the same high-powered card that ships with the Power Mac G4.

With the iMac DV+ and iMac DV Special Edition, you can slip the latest DVD title into the slot-loading drive and watch it in the new Theater Mode. Want to create your own movies? Apple released version 2 of it's iMovie making software, bundled free.

The Harman Kardon Odyssey audio system ships with every new iMac.

The entry level price for the iMac is now $799!! Slap in Virtual PC which lets you run any Windows environment (from 92 to 2000) and you now have the most powerful and versatile personal computer for the money.

I would buy the new Snow iMac, but I'm getting myself Cubed!

Oh yeah, Apple also released new Power Mac G4's with dual processors (450 MHz and 500 MHz models only), 10/100/1000 Ethernet Standard (Gigabit Ethernet), larger hard drives, and the new Keyboard Pro and Mouse Pro.

Overall, this is the largest roll out of new products from Apple ever. Another sign that Apple continues to be THE innovative computer company with Steve Jobs at the helm. Watch the other PC makers now imitate the Cube! I can see it now. Welcome to the "Triangle," ah, no, the "Rectangle." Nah, how about the new 500MHz "Trapezoid!"