[thought_alarm]

Fun Facts about the original Cube:

* A single cable connects the Cube to its monitor (with speakers and microphone). A single cable connects the monitor to the keyboard. And a single cable connects the keyboard to the mouse.

* Neither the Cube nor its monitor have any buttons, switches, or controls. The only way to turn the machine on is by pressing the Power key on the keyboard (which is connected to the monitor). It's basically a giant laptop split into 4 parts.

* Likewise, there's no way to turn the monitor off while the system is running. However, the OS will automatically lower its brightness after a period of inactivity.

* Startup takes a long time. Pressing the power key while the system is booting up will interrupt the boot sequence and begin the shutdown sequence.

* The keyboard has no Caps Lock key. Caps Lock is engaged by pressing Command+Shift which will light up matching LEDs on both Shift keys. The Control key is where it's meant to be, next to the "A".

* The keyboard has no row of function keys. The Escape key is located next to the "1" key, where the tilde would be. But if you press Shift+Escape as if to type a tilde character, you will still get a tilde character.

* The timing of the NEXTSTEP beachball is effectively identical to that of the OS X beachball.

[jcl]

The Cube also burns pretty well, once you get it going.

http://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html

[eru]

I thought this was trolling, but it's actually a good read.

[erikstarck]

The caps lock key just has to be the most useless waste of space on a standard qwerty keyboard. I don't think I have ever used it unless you count the times when you accidentally PRESS IT. Woops.

[pmjordan]

You can easily remap it to another modifier key on OSX in the system preferences. Other OSes/Windowing systems typically require a modified keyboard layout, but you might be able to find software to do it easily.

[davvid]

I map caps lock to be an extra control key. It does wonders for vim.

[akamaka]

Thanks for the tip, I just remapped it to control like on the old Sun keyboards. I wish I knew about this sooner!

[djkivi]

KeyTweak is how I do it on Windows: http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

[berntb]

Standard function these days under Gnome (Ubuntu, at least).

Ask any Emacs users. :-)

[ethyreal]

Every keyboard in my office has had it completey removed! For that very reason.

[jonhendry]

The NeXT printer also had no power buttons or other controls. It was driven entirely by the computer, powering up when needed.

I always liked the voice alerts for printer issues. Recorded people speaking various messages. For English, it was a woman with a British accent saying things like "Your printer is out of paper." Other languages each had their own set of recordings.

[iwr]

You could sort of get a keyboard with an included USB hub and connect a mouse to it. Or better, get a monitor with a USB hub and just connect your peripherals to the monitor. If you want to go overboard, you can even get speakers and a network card that connect through USB.

But sadly, with Intel torpedoing USB3, our dream of a one-cable computer is still far.

[jonhendry]

The NeXT monitor cable also provided power for the monitor.

Apple tried this all-in-one approach again with their ADC connector for the early LCD cinema displays. That carried USB, DVI video, and power for the monitor.

The problem is, it's a hassle if you want to use the monitor with a non-ADC video card or a non-ADC monitor with an ADC video card. You end up buying expensive adapter bricks so you can plug an ADC monitor into a computer with DVI-out.

Interestingly, Apple's latest 24" and now 27" LCD goes the other way: it provides a magsafe power cord for a macbook. You still have separate USB and mini-DVI connectors, though, so it isn't a one-plug affair.