A mid-range, expandable machine has been missing from the Apple line-up since around 1998, so the missing "outrigger" may be related partly to marketing as well as design/ form factor issues.
What I, for one, would have liked to see was a sort of "Cube max," a marginally taller but comparable machine in terms of footprint, that could have served either as a small desktop or, on the floor, as a small tower, but with some basic expansion/ upgrade potential built into the design. Unfortunately, we have had an unremitting diet of Jobsian "appliances" at the one end of the market, and the pro range at the other, with nothing much in between. The pro people can afford their gear, with livelihoods depending on it, but what this has meant in practice for the rest of us is that we have had to pay a king's ransom for hardware that could really last if we want to push our purchases as far as possible -- or buy cheap and be obliged in the end to spend just as much out of the need to upgrade by replacement. Apple won both ways.
The G3 desktops are nice machines, quiet and dependable, and even versatile (a little G3 desktop will take three hard drives, plus CD, plus 3 PCI cards, plus something like 768MB RAM), but like others, I much prefer the towers, which were better built and easier to adapt and maintain (e.g., RAM height is indeed a pain in the desktops). Same goes for the 8600/9600s over against, say, the 7300/7600s: the towers were and are the pick of the litter, but it was good at the time to have something on the market usually with just a little less oomph and costing a little less dosh.
What I, for one, would have liked to see was a sort of "Cube max," a marginally taller but comparable machine in terms of footprint, that could have served either as a small desktop or, on the floor, as a small tower, but with some basic expansion/ upgrade potential built into the design. Unfortunately, we have had an unremitting diet of Jobsian "appliances" at the one end of the market, and the pro range at the other, with nothing much in between. The pro people can afford their gear, with livelihoods depending on it, but what this has meant in practice for the rest of us is that we have had to pay a king's ransom for hardware that could really last if we want to push our purchases as far as possible -- or buy cheap and be obliged in the end to spend just as much out of the need to upgrade by replacement. Apple won both ways.
The G3 desktops are nice machines, quiet and dependable, and even versatile (a little G3 desktop will take three hard drives, plus CD, plus 3 PCI cards, plus something like 768MB RAM), but like others, I much prefer the towers, which were better built and easier to adapt and maintain (e.g., RAM height is indeed a pain in the desktops). Same goes for the 8600/9600s over against, say, the 7300/7600s: the towers were and are the pick of the litter, but it was good at the time to have something on the market usually with just a little less oomph and costing a little less dosh.