Apple Releases iMacs [Archive] - Page 2

Dave Marsh

Feb 4, 2003, 04:30 PM

I hear a lot of frustration in this thread, and I can truly empathize with it. Those of us who are longtime Mac users and are completely comfortable with the OS would love to have a state of the art CPU, bus, and other components to go along with our great user experience. Perhaps the IBM 970 will get us closer to that goal. But, first and foremost it's the OS that makes us Mac users.

Apple has made a lot of marketing mistakes over the years, but somehow managed to stay in business even so. It's a company that has to do everything itself, including the OS, the industrial design, working with CPU companies to build chips to support its OS, and now even writing some critical apps, just to stay in the game. That makes it incredibly difficult to compete with companies that do nothing more complicated than assemble components, throw them into a case, and perhaps copy the latest design fad du jour they can get away with without facing a lawsuit.

How does such a company turn a profit? It would be nice to have all the latest technology, but that means Apple has to cut some corners somewhere. It has to look at what's available, and select those components that provide the best collective overall experience for the general user. And that means that users who focus on single interest items will likely never be satisfied, since they're only one segment of the total customer pool.

I personally think Apple is making most of the right decisions. Would I like to have the industry's fastest, most powerful processor? Sure. Am I willing to switch to another OS to get access to that power? No. First, and last, it's the MacOS that I pay for. It's the integration of the complete user experience that I pay for. Can a computer geek put together his own PC running one of the Windows variants that's stable, fast, and provides a great experience for him? Sure. Can I do the same for myself? No.

I've built PC's, installed Windows, and produced a fully functioning computer that would meet the needs of most users. But what a dreary user experience. The interface options were garish. Whenever I wanted to uninstall software I was never quite sure that I had removed all the components (dlls, whatever) without accidentally removing something that something else shared and needed. When something went wrong, I was left with the option of starting from scratch, doing an enormous amount of research in some Microsoft database, or hoping to find some true Windows guru who could help out. If the computer worked, all was fine. It it didn't...

On the Mac side, uninstalling was dragging something into the trash. A misbehaving app could often be fixed by throwing away a corrupted preferences file, or simply replacing the app executable itself with a simple copy from the master CD...no requirement to run a wizard or installer app, answer a bunch of questions that may or may not be understandable to a non-tech, no reregistering with Microsoft because the computer configuration changed. In short, it was a user experience I could deal with following a short list of common fixes. For more obnoxious problems, I'd run Symantec's Disk Doctor, or some similar utility that I trusted to try to fix the problem. However, even in MacOS X I've hardly ever had to resort to starting from scratch. To put it another way, a logically thinking non-computer tech could learn to take care of his/her OS without incurring a $20k MCSE training experience.

So, what about today's updates? I paid $2400 for my first generation 233MHz iMac, with 32MB RAM and a 4GB HD. I'm running MacOS 10.2.3 on that same box today with 96MB RAM, and while not peppy by any stretch of the imagination, it's fine for basic web surfing and email. I recently upgraded my old Sawtooth G4 450MHz Tower with a Sonnet 1GHz G4 card, and it works great...and it's EXTREMELY peppy. I'm typing this note on my 600MHz iBook, and even with its old Rage Mobility video chip, works just fine. I even watch movies in bed with headphones on this laptop with NO jerkiness. I think Apple's done a great job with its OS updates, and all my Macs work without a hitch. I run Disk Doctor and Speed Disk once a month or so, back up my HD's with Retrospect Express over Firewire to a bootable external Que HD, and...that's it. If something truly awful goes wrong, I can boot up my tower or my laptop with the Que Firewire HD and fix it immediately. In the worse case, I can simply erase the bad volume and copy the backed up volume from the Que and be fully operational in an hour.

So, $1800 for a 1GHz iMac sounds quite good to me. And under $1000 for an eMac sounds outrageous for a Mac that's four times faster, at least, than the iMac sitting in my kitchen that I'd like to replace. And, by the way, that video problem with the eMac was a bad video cable...Apple found that they were repairing the same Macs over and over again, even after they replaced all the electronics, which left only the wiring.

As with most of you, I wait yearningly for the 970 Macs. But, in the meantime, I'm not suffering by any means. I'm not much of a gamer, but the adventure games I do play occasionally work just fine. It's only in the intensive shoot-em ups that I'm left in the dusk. So, for fence sitters, and potential switchers, I'd suggest you take a moment and think just why you're even considering a Mac. If it's system reliability, OS stability and user experience, ease of user OS maintenance, and just having a computer that you're happy to not hide under your desk, why not stop by an Apple store, or CompUSA, and spend a few moments hands-on with a Mac?

Macs aren't the fastest, and don't have the latest state of the art hardware, but they do provide the best, overall integrated user experience...at least for me. And Apple continues to do what few in the industry seem willing to do...innovate. USB was Intel's baby, but no one used it until Apple made it a standard. Firewire is Apple's technology, and has become a standard in its own right. When third party vendors failed to produce a browser better than Microsoft's IE, and Microsoft failed to update it, Apple took up the mantle to create its own. And, with the iApps, Apple is taking the out-of-the-box user experience to the next level by actually creating a digital hub, not just talking about it.

Now, back to the disappointed Mac users... (This, of course, includes me, but I at least accept that a bankrupt Apple will never give me the toys I desire.):D

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 04:51 PM

Drastik,

How nice of someone to finally call me on it. ;)

I am a Mac liker... if that makes sense. I like them, I use my friends machines on occassion (new ibook and pismo) and have been impressed with OS X since the original beta. It is just that the policies of the company regarding their hardware, and the vendors they choose to buy from (frickin' Motorola!!!), irks me.

OS X was supposed to be the Windows Killer(tm). It could be that it is. But with this sorry state of the hardware, it will never happen. About the time Apple figures it out we will have seen 2 newer Windows OS' since then.

iLife is cute... but it won't convince more than a few people to buy a Mac instead of a PC.

Price would bring them over in droves.

So would comparable hardware specs. Most everyone wants newer, better, and faster.

That is the market. Apple needs to figure this out and respond accordingly.

That is why I keep saying:

COMPETE OR DIE

Look at the sales of the iPod. Great hardware, great software, and reasonable price. The push was so big, tht Apple actually sold a Windows version! That is what competition is all about.

This niggling over Consumer vs Professional desktops is pointless. What is this... Macintosh vs Apple ][ again or what???

Abercrombieboy

Feb 4, 2003, 04:51 PM

If the iMac costed $599 and included a 3.06 Ghz processor what would we even discuss on these message boards? Funny but true. I am getting a better feeling about this new iMac and after looking at Apple's site it looks like a solid update.

Chisholm

Feb 4, 2003, 04:56 PM

Originally posted by flyfish29

So how does this really affect me running some older software. Much of the software will be for my kids...things like Math Munchers, etc. that never took too much computing power anyway (will these run in classic?) I do have an old version of Quark (3.2 I believe) that I would like to run but only a few times a year to modify things I have already created in it and don't have a major use for a new version of Quark. Would it run on Classic?

So what revision of Jaguar is not bootable in OS9? 10.2.?

On a side note: There have always been things Apple has done that have not been right, and there will always be things that Apple does that we don't think are right and they end up working. Just remember to give Apple feedback. Your voicing major negative concerns in public forums like this do in fact push people away. If you have a complaint then voice it, but be careful not to push people away.

I think that version of Quark uses a serial dongle, so you'll need an adapter. Check Quark's website for more info.

MorganX

Feb 4, 2003, 05:00 PM

Originally posted by nickgold

You grow up, man. I can't afford a BMW. I bought an Echo. I don't make too much money, but I could save up for a Mac if I tried. Does Apple somehow owe it to you to price things inexpensively, even if it means losing money for them? They are a corporation that exists in a (semi)capitalist system. There are there to make money. They charge a specific price for a given thing, based on market pressures. Does the fact that you can't afford one, or do not think it is worth what they are charging, give you the right to beeyatch and moan?

Sure, you have the right, I guess. It's just sort of obnoxious, I suppose.

I don't think you understood my post. I just ordered an iMac today. My post was a reply to someone suggesting that anyone here complaining about the cost were windoze users or Microsoft marketing people.

That's silly. Most of them own Macs and can't afford to upgrade again. This is a negative aspect of Apple's business model and all-in-one's in general. And I agree with you, Apple can charge what it likes. And people who cannot afford one are out of luck, and those who want more price/performance are out of luck. Apple has, with this latest round of iMacs met my "minimal" price/performance ratio. With a small luxury tax (memory costs) tacked on to pay for having a "deluxe" model of Macintosh.

MorganX

Feb 4, 2003, 05:04 PM

Originally posted by Abercrombieboy
If the iMac costed $599 and included a 3.06 Ghz processor what would we even discuss on these message boards?

We would discuss the fact that the iPod needs to be able to generate playlists on the fly... :D

iJed

Feb 4, 2003, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
From the reviews i have read the 900 pro(64 video ram) is about the same as geforce4mx(64 video ram) dont confuse geforce4mx(32) with the geforce4mx(64)! I would also guess that will get notched up again but remember you cant step all over the toes of the powermac line!

The 9000 Pro is superior to the GeForce 4MX in many ways. The 4MX (incredibly) lacks vertex shaders making it all but useless for DOOM III. The place where the 4MX does win over the Radeon is in raw polygon count, but this is not as important as it once was since modern games are using all sorts of special effects. I'm not even going to mention how obsolete the 2MX is.

As for the PowerMacs, they shouldn't even be using low end graphics cards. These machines are meant for professional graphics work so why can't Apple ship a professional graphics card like a nVidia Quadro or an ATI FIRE.

I'm really getting sick of Apple cripling the iMac graphics performance with ultra-cheap cards such as GeForce 2MX and 4MX. Put a GeForce 4 Titanium on a high-end model Apple.

3777

Feb 4, 2003, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by MacBoyX

THEN GET A POWERMAC i mean come on guys. This is again what I am saying about wanting everything in all product lines. The iMac is a consumer market machine. If you want 1.25Ghz get a PM MDD. Why are we comparing iMacs to PowerMacs?

Next you're gonna start comparing Apples to Oranges...sorry for the pun.:p

No Apple should have set the high end iMac at 1.25GHZ. I agree with the other guy. The iMac isn't competing with the Powermac, it's competing with 2ghz PC's like the Gateway profile. Apple should have set the single processor 1.25ghz as high end, and 1 ghz for low end. The time has come to end the sale of mhz machines all together.

iJed

Feb 4, 2003, 05:12 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

A few reasons:

cost

size

heat generated

noise generated

The iMac is using a mix of notebook and desktop components to minimize the size, heat, noise, and costs involved.

GF4 Pro and the Radeon 9000 series cards don't fit inside the iMac enclosure. If they did, people would just compain about the noise and heat anyway... ;)

You can get a GeForce 4 Ti in many PCs that cost a fraction of the price of an iMac. There are also mobile versions of the Radeon 9000 and the GeForce 4 Ti. Apple should have used the mobile Ti in the PowerBook G4 17"

Mr. MacPhisto

Feb 4, 2003, 05:21 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

Your friend did not purchase a machine based on what he wanted to do with it. He bought it for the price.

You can make a custom machine, with top notch hardware, for a comparable price.

AMD alone saves hundreds of bucks...

And AMD also causes many, many more headaches. They draw more current, run hotter, and still don't get along with everything out there.

I have built many a top-notch machine over the years and they seem to have problems too with the software. No matter how hard you try, after Windows has been loaded on a machine for a long time, you will almost always have issues. It's the nature of the beast. That's mainly because MS cheats as much as possible or takes easy ways out. DLLs, the registry, and other features will always drag down the OS. You must also remember that NT was built off of IBM's OS/2 originally and MS has not changed the structure completely. So you can compensate for the hardware, but not the software. A poorly done patch, a poor installer, or a poor program will all sink you - and MS doesn't keep very good tabs on these things.

Ever since switching, I've gained so much in functionality that it is not even funny. Things are easier on the Mac and, under X, it is more reliable - and my iBook 700 is actually plenty fast for what I do, and it was inexpensive. Laptops is where Apple really struts their stuff and that is where they are focusing, This is wise, because many, many people want an Apple for a portable. They are far more dependable and power efficient - and they are also lighter, smaller, and cooler. That's why the iMac may not have been the focus for as much attention, because Apple is attracting people to the laptops. Realise that the new 17" iMac is priced the same as the 12" PB. This is not coincindence.

brian0526

Feb 4, 2003, 05:27 PM

In spite of the fact that all you whiners have almost made me regret the decision to switch, I'm stiil going to go ahead and get an iMac :p

But, I called the Apple store (twice). The first time the guy who answered told me he had just seen the announcement (10:30AM Eastern time) and had no idea when they'd have the machine. He told me to call back tomorrow. The second time I called, the guy told me the 15" was in. But, he didn't know when they'd get the 17".

After waiting for two months for this update. I want a machine ASAP. Has anyone found the 17" at any of the Apple stores? I'm trying to get an idea of when I'll actually finally be able to get my hands on one.

Thanks,
Brian

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 4, 2003, 05:39 PM

This is for all the ram geniuses out there,the new imac has ddr at 266mhz WHY? has the architecture changed or are they just shoving that in for marketing? seems like they would not have needed the ddr unless it was being accessed by the system controler?we know they have a 133 bus so did they change the architecture to the same as the powermacs?

Shrek

Feb 4, 2003, 05:39 PM

I have absolutely nothing to say about this. Absolutely nothing. I am so speechless, it hurts. :(

MacBoyX

Feb 4, 2003, 05:40 PM

Originally posted by flyfish29

So how does this really affect me running some older software. Much of the software will be for my kids...things like Math Munchers, etc. that never took too much computing power anyway (will these run in classic?) I do have an old version of Quark (3.2 I believe) that I would like to run but only a few times a year to modify things I have already created in it and don't have a major use for a new version of Quark. Would it run on Classic?

So what revision of Jaguar is not bootable in OS9? 10.2.?

On a side note: There have always been things Apple has done that have not been right, and there will always be things that Apple does that we don't think are right and they end up working. Just remember to give Apple feedback. Your voicing major negative concerns in public forums like this do in fact push people away. If you have a complaint then voice it, but be careful not to push people away.

Fly...

It's not Jaguar, it's the hardware. You can run all of your OS 9 apps in classic via OS X.

I agree with you about pushing people away. I really don't want new users to get discuouraged. I think it's great they are reading these groups. Remember a 800Mhz iMac will rock just abt everything u want.

yosoyjay

Feb 4, 2003, 05:40 PM

I've upgraded my response to the iMacs from disappointed to ambivalent.

The high end model is a very good deal for everything it includes. However, I still think there should be a 17" mid-level model with a 1GHz chip and a combo drive. I would probably buy that option if it existed because I have no use for a SuperDrive at this time. I still think the low-end model should be Bluetooth & Airport Extreme ready for it's price. Why not a low-end model with just a cd burner?

MorganX

Feb 4, 2003, 05:44 PM

Originally posted by nuckinfutz

Well I was overly harsh but I object to people saying FW800 is for Prosumers or fast Hard Drives. My Proof

http://www.barefeats.com/fire34.html

FW800 in addition to offering twice the theoretical speed of FW400 also offers.

It's bad enought that there's no L3 cache or Airport Extreme as well. These machines will be out in the cold in 2 years...sitting on ebay waiting for some sucker.

I understand. But we're not maxing out FW400 on anything yet. I believe FW800 devices will work with an adapter at FW400 speeds. I liken this to the fact that most PCs don't come with Ultra SCSI 160. I'd like to have much more power in the iMac, but with the processor family topping out at 1.4GHz, I can accept 1GHz in the iMac.

It would be nice if Apple offered Motherboard upgrades with L3 or with the next gen of G4. I'm sure many people would pay $500 in a year or two to upgrade to a 1.4GHz/FW800/L3 iMac motherboard.

Apple does need to be creative and offer longer "meaningful" life in its products. But we are talking about an all-in-one here. That's why they failed on the PC side. It says a lot that Apple is able to get people to buy into it. Like I said, it cost too much, but Apple has reached a price/performance ratio at which I'm willing to pay a little extra to get what I want. And I want to try Apple's digital lifestyle solution. I've been trying Microsoft's for a long time and I'm still unsatisfied with the Windows UI, so what do I have to lose? I'm willing to pay $500 just to use iTunes and iCal with my iPod... at the same time, I'm not interested in paying $200 for an extra 256MB DDR when I can get it off the shelf for $45.

Nothing is perfect.

Shrek

Feb 4, 2003, 05:47 PM

Looks like I'll be buying a PowerMac soon enough, though that is NOT the machine that I want! :mad:

FlamDrag

Feb 4, 2003, 05:53 PM

Loaded 17" iMacs ship from the Apple online store in 5-7 days.

I'm not sure how anyone can be too upset with the specs. When the powermacs came out, it pretty much set the ceiling.

Price however... I don't have any qualms with what their charging, but it's hard to woo ignorant users (over 50%) who know the following:

2.4 Ghz is more than 1.0 Ghz
$599 is less than $1200

Yes yes yes yes they CAN buy a snow iMac, but that doesn't really Look like a computer to these people. Base + monitor = computer. new iMacs are what people see at on the "low end" of Mac products. There just isn't a Mac (no matter how crappy) that meets the price point and comparisons for the average dumb computer buyer. These people are the market share.

Heck, if they'd just put the CRT iMac in a different box it'd probably be OK.

Then again, maybe Apple doesn't really want to dominate. That's fine.

digitalgiant

Feb 4, 2003, 05:55 PM

Originally posted by Abercrombieboy

Well this looks like it might perform a little better. I would like to order the new 1Ghz 17" iMac. Does anyone know what type of a difference I will see moving from a 400Mhz iMac DV? I have lost so much faith in Apple when I read the message boards, many times I am not sure if they are moving ahead or going backwards... ;o(

Is it a good buy or not for someone moving up from a 3 year old iMac???

Dude,,,,,it will be like night and day. I to have a iMacDV and when i got my PB 667(non-DVI) I stopped using the DV all together. Dear God man its G3 vs a G4, 8 megs of video vs 64 megs. Neither have an L3 cache,,,,,,so what are you waiting for? Any new comp will be faster than our DVs.

3777

Feb 4, 2003, 05:56 PM

Originally posted by Shrek
Looks like I'll be buying a PowerMac soon enough, though that is NOT the machine that I want! :mad:

Just do what I'm doing......... I'm going to wait till the 12" Powerbook is 1ghz, and the iMac is 1.25 with maybe firewire800 .......... just wait till around June.......... it will happen eventually

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 06:03 PM

Originally posted by iJed

You can get a GeForce 4 Ti in many PCs that cost a fraction of the price of an iMac. There are also mobile versions of the Radeon 9000 and the GeForce 4 Ti. Apple should have used the mobile Ti in the PowerBook G4 17"

I am not sure... but I think the specs for the mobile G4Ti had not been finalized when Apple was designing the new 17" PB.

Mainly, I am thinking of power consumption (don't want bad battery life or the users will complain) and size ("sure... it will fit..."). Both seem valid to me. You?

Again, I might be wrong.

Shrek

Feb 4, 2003, 06:04 PM

Originally posted by 3777
just wait till around June..........

I've already waited since June of 2002. I'm not going to wait much longer. The only thing I need to do now is get a steady job (I already have a temp job) and start making some serious moolah! :D

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 06:05 PM

I'm so depressed they didn't release radeon 9700s and dual G4 2GHz for < 600$, damn.

i was pretty impressed with this. apple has turned nearly its entire line inside out in the space of, hmm, a month. the only one that remains is the iBook, which is still in generally good shape. everywhere i turn on the page, i see GHz processors or better, wheee. 1800 for a desklamp with a G4 and a big, gorgeous screen is a great buy.

but i'm sure we've all heard that one, huh? the old Gigahertz trick, eh? they won't get your pocketbook with that one!

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 06:06 PM

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
This is for all the ram geniuses out there,the new imac has ddr at 266mhz WHY? has the architecture changed or are they just shoving that in for marketing? seems like they would not have needed the ddr unless it was being accessed by the system controler?we know they have a 133 bus so did they change the architecture to the same as the powermacs?

DDR runs at double the bus speed. That is why it is called Double Data Rate (DDR).

sphereboy

Feb 4, 2003, 06:10 PM

they'll probably update the iMac again in two months...

Dave Marsh

Feb 4, 2003, 06:11 PM

Since the new 17" iMac has a 133MHz bus, and the low end 15" iMac appears to just be the old 17" iMac with a 15" screen and 100MHz bus, it appears they've upgraded the new high end with a new motherboard (which includes the AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth connectivity, and Firewire 800 omitted). I've also read elsewhere that the Mac uses direct memory access for its peripherals, I believe. So, doesn't this mean that hard drives, CDs/DVDs, video card, and the like are all accessing the DDR memory via the new 133MHz bus directly, thus taking advantage of the higher speed DDR RAM?

I'm asking because I keep hearing people complain about the Mac's use of DDR memory, but it seems to me that the only part of the system NOT taking advantage of it is the CPU, and it CANNOT because the Motorola 7455 G4 doesn't support it. I believe I also read that the first Motorola G4 to support it will be the RM version of the 7457 which isn't due for a year. So, why is everyone blaming Apple for this? It seems to me they've upgraded the infrastructure as best they can.

While we can wish for better, the technology has to exist first. Hopefully, Apple will take advantage of the 970s.

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 06:13 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

DDR runs at double the bus speed. That is why it is called Double Data Rate (DDR).

no it isn't. it sends twice as much info at the same clock speed, because it sends data 2 times every cycle, instead of once like PC133.

in the old days, they would call DDR something like "DDR266" and note that it was really clocked at 133, but acted like 266 MHz normal ram because is was DDR.

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 06:14 PM

Originally posted by FlamDrag
Loaded 17" iMacs ship from the Apple online store in 5-7 days.

I'm not sure how anyone can be too upset with the specs. When the powermacs came out, it pretty much set the ceiling.

Price however... I don't have any qualms with what their charging, but it's hard to woo ignorant users (over 50%) who know the following:

2.4 Ghz is more than 1.0 Ghz
$599 is less than $1200

Yes yes yes yes they CAN buy a snow iMac, but that doesn't really Look like a computer to these people. Base + monitor = computer. new iMacs are what people see at on the "low end" of Mac products. There just isn't a Mac (no matter how crappy) that meets the price point and comparisons for the average dumb computer buyer. These people are the market share.

spec ceiling - sad but true

price - money is not as abundant for most of us as it was in the '90's. Now we want better value for the dollar. iLife is not it either, for me. iPhoto is nice though... but that is cuz I use linux, and their support of "new" cameras is abysmal :(

snow - neither does the eMac ;)

Don't call people dumb because they can't pay $2500 to have a decent gaming machine. Some are referred to as smart for getting what they want, at a decent price.

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 06:16 PM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

no it isn't. it sends twice as much info at the same clock speed, because it sends data 2 times every cycle, instead of once like PC133.

Please explain the difference to me.

When I read your post and mine... I am failing to see the difference, other than semantics.

</confused>

Thanks

Archmage

Feb 4, 2003, 06:25 PM

Originally posted by possible switch
The 15 inch one is just the old model, but cheaper. The middle-of-the-line one calls my name, but I don't have $1800 for the computer, $200 for Office X, and the extra bucks for a memory upgrade because 256 seems low.

AppleWorks comes on the iMac, and it can read and write Word and Excel files. Granted, it doesn't have a lot of the whiz-bang features of Office, but most people who use Office don't know about these features anyhoo...

So that's $200 less for you to spend :-)

jettredmont

Feb 4, 2003, 06:30 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

Both the PowerMac and the iMac are consumer machines. As someone else on this forum has said, there is no "pro" machine in Apple's line. This is a market they have tried to invent to account for their pricing. It's BS.

Only if you take "Pro" to mean "business server". "Pro" to most of the world means suitable for those who make money working on their computers. That includes artists and musicians and developers, along with a whole host of others.

The key characteristics that differentiate a "professional" machine from a "consumer" machine are upgradability and durability. If you are making money on your machine, you need to be able to hug the "state of the art" curve a little tighter than grandma surfing the web. Downtime doesn't mean sending out the Christmas family letter on Dec 22 instead of Dec 21; it means losing money.

The iMac line is and has always been aimed at the consumer. Consumers generally do not need to continually upgrade their hardware. If the monitor gets broken for some reason they can live without the machine while the monitor gets fixed. On the other hand, consumers far more than professionals demand a compact and simple design that has an appealing look to it.

The XServe is as close as it gets. And that thing flopped, big time. Again, due to Apple not analyzing the market... just wandering in and saying "this is how WE do it..."

Huh? The stats I've seen show the XServe selling like gangbusters, far ahead of what analysts had predicted when it was introduced. I've personally seen a rack full of Sun equipment swapped out for XServes, and they do live up to their promise.

In any case, XServe is not "Pro" level; it is corporate level. XServe is, as the name would imply, a server. While it would fit into a rendering farm fairly nicely, it's not exactly geared towards being a developer's workstation or fitting under an artist or graphical designer's desk.

That having been said, IMHO the key differential between the markets is not sheer horsepower, but form factor. Except, of course, for the "Pro" and "Consumer" lines of laptops (where the form factor is a fairly minor differentiating factor), the reason Apple puts Processor X in one line and Processor Y in another is to keep the price of the consumer line down and the capabilities of the pro line as high as possible.

While I'd love to see a dual-1.42GHz iMac with a 19" screen and FW800, such a beast would be far more expensive to produce than Apple's iMac line has traditionally been, and would sell pitifully. I mean, imagine you had such a machine, priced at, say, $2624 (basing this on differential between 17" iMac and similarly configured head-less PowerMac at $1724, a $75 lower amount for the iMac). Who would buy it? I'd drool over it, but ultimately not purchase because I need to be able to upgrade components (and, frankly, even the 20" wide-screen LCD is a bit small for me ... I work solely with 21" CRTs running 1600x1200 and there just aren't that many pixels on Apple's 20" display!) For home, I'd buy a less-expensive unit.

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 4, 2003, 06:40 PM

Originally posted by Dave Marsh
Since the new 17" iMac has a 133MHz bus, and the low end 15" iMac appears to just be the old 17" iMac with a 15" screen and 100MHz bus, it appears they've upgraded the new high end with a new motherboard (which includes the AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth connectivity, and Firewire 800 omitted). I've also read elsewhere that the Mac uses direct memory access for its peripherals, I believe. So, doesn't this mean that hard drives, CDs/DVDs, video card, and the like are all accessing the DDR memory via the new 133MHz bus directly, thus taking advantage of the higher speed DDR RAM?

I'm asking because I keep hearing people complain about the Mac's use of DDR memory, but it seems to me that the only part of the system NOT taking advantage of it is the CPU, and it CANNOT because the Motorola 7455 G4 doesn't support it. I believe I also read that the first Motorola G4 to support it will be the RM version of the 7457 which isn't due for a year. So, why is everyone blaming Apple for this? It seems to me they've upgraded the infrastructure as best they can.

While we can wish for better, the technology has to exist first. Hopefully, Apple will take advantage of the 970s. thanks dave, there should be good gains made just about everwhere if this is true! i guess xserve type architecture

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 06:43 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

Please explain the difference to me.

When I read your post and mine... I am failing to see the difference, other than semantics.

</confused>

Thanks

RAM is transferred at a given rate, right? PC 100 sends info 100 times a second, yielding whatever thousand megabytes per second transfer rate. PC 133 RAM is clocked at 133MHz and sends info 133 times a second... you see, these are following a sinewave model..each rise and fall is a cycle. normal SDRAM sends data once each clock cycle, with the rise of the cycle; DDR SDRAM, on the other hand, sends data at both the rise and fall of the cycle, effectively doubling the information passed for the same actual clock speed. so formerly, they would call DDR SDRAM that was clocked at 133 MHz "DDR 266," because it behaves like normal RAM at 266 MHz, even though it's at half that. i don't know if this is the case with Apple's DDR 333, though i would bet it's really at 166 MHz (someone correct me? everything else is at 166 (167) MHz....

does that help, at any rate?

jettredmont

Feb 4, 2003, 06:45 PM

Originally posted by Frump
My First Post!

I am a PC user who just switched.

Welcome!

I have just ordered the new 17 imac as is. One thing that dissapoints me is that Apple is still treating RAM like Hen's teeth and the graphics card is also abit of a let down.

Hmmm ... lots of complaints about memory being expensive.

I looked up PC2700 DDR memory at crucial.com and found that a do-it-yourself memory upgrade (assuming 2 DIMM slots available) from 256MB to 1GB would run about $180 ($120 for a 512MB DIMM and $60 for a 256MB DIMM, both guaranteed to work on the MDD PowerMacs, although I suspect the slot in the iMac is identical ...)

Apple is charging $400 to have that pre-installed. Yeah, that's expensive, but if you find it too much you can always just hop over to crucial.com and pick up memory there after your system arrives from Apple and do it yourself! As for "the most expensive memory ever", well, this doesn't even come close! A few years back you couldn't get 512MB SDRAM for $400! And, of course, ordering memory pre-installed on a system has always been more expensive than buying it and installing it yourself, and a 2x markup isn't unheard of there.

Note: the "ultimate" 17" iMac also has Airport and Bluetooth built in (not just "ready"), which adds $150 to the base price. The difference isn't "all" memory!

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 06:46 PM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

RAM is transferred at a given rate, right? PC 100 sends info 100 times a second, yielding whatever thousand megabytes per second transfer rate. PC 133 RAM is clocked at 133MHz and sends info 133 times a second... you see, these are following a sinewave model..each rise and fall is a cycle. normal SDRAM sends data once each clock cycle, with the rise of the cycle; DDR SDRAM, on the other hand, sends data at both the rise and fall of the cycle, effectively doubling the information passed for the same actual clock speed. so formerly, they would call DDR SDRAM that was clocked at 133 MHz "DDR 266," because it behaves like normal RAM at 266 MHz, even though it's at half that. i don't know if this is the case with Apple's DDR 333, though i would bet it's really at 166 MHz (someone correct me? everything else is at 166 (167) MHz....

does that help, at any rate?

yes, very much so.

thank you!

cr2sh

Feb 4, 2003, 06:46 PM

Originally posted by Abercrombieboy
If the iMac costed $599 and included a 3.06 Ghz processor what would we even discuss on these message boards?
Put simply... Underwear gnomes.

Motorola should adopt an arbitrary method of rating their processors. Similar to the old pentium scale that cyrix and amd used to use, and the new + scale that amd uses now. It couldn't be anymore meaningless than intel's "533" system bus.

yzedf

Feb 4, 2003, 06:52 PM

Pro level machines are usually leases, unless we are talking about very small offices (such as mine), or people that work from home. Upgrading is not a factor, the machine is turned in and a new one is delivered (that is how I got this laptop I am typing on right now... turned in 2yr lease that was then sold by the leasing company).

XServes sold 6,000 machines last quarter, IIRC. That is not good. And your "beat expectations" remark reminds me of Microsoft. They "always" beat expectations, because they understate them.

pixels - what is the deal with apple's display densities? seems odd to me...

For me, all of my dollars are precious. And the iMac does not give enough to me in this market to inspire me to buy one.

My money is on the iBook... when there is enough of it around :rolleyes:

dricci

Feb 4, 2003, 06:55 PM

Originally posted by possible switch I was in the market for a new iMac. I almost bought the old low end iMac before I stumbled across macrumors.com. I've since waited patiently for upgrades. FINALLY, they're here. I just don't know what to do though.[/B]

Have you looked at the eMacs? For $1,299 you can get an 800 SuperDrive (I have one). Pretty good machine. For $1,499 you can get a 1GHz Tower.

Just because they goofed on the iMacs doesn't mean there are no other options.

GeeYouEye

Feb 4, 2003, 06:55 PM

Nice enough... I can't see it as much more than a stopgap though. While I certainly appreciate the speed-bump and the price drop, if I was in the market for an iMac, I wouldn't wait for the next revision, though I might consider a PowerMac instead. OTOH, I'm not right now, since I just got a new iBook (whose Radeon 7500 is plenty fast enough for anything I've thrown at it, including a transparent terminal window, Aquamon, DVD Player [playing Monty Python] and the iTunes visualizer, all simultaneously.)

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 07:14 PM

if motorola released a 5 GHz processor that performed operations once every 15 clock cycles, i bet most of you whiners would stop complaining that apple is so far behind, even though such a processor would underperform a 1.2 GHz G4.

cr2sh

Feb 4, 2003, 07:25 PM

My question is where do we go next? The g3 was put into the powermacs/books until the g4 was introduced. Everyone stepped up a level at that point, the ibooks/imacs got a g3, the powermacs/books got a g4. When the ppc970 is introduced sure.. they powermacs/books will step up to the 970, but what will be done with the imacs/books?
Right now, everyone (cept the ibook) is pushing a g4, with ram and specs differences sure... but when we get the 970, the iMac should not step up as well. It should reside with the g4, but they'll probably cease manufacturing them... and then what? Unless Apple/IBM has something up their sleave, this type of updating (where all the lines get slight variations and RAM types) will be the norm.

Will we continue to get dual pro systems?
I think what I want, maybe what we all want, is a superchip introduced for pro-level and a lower level chip for the consumers. What I'm talking about is sheer power4 and ppc970... but I don't understand what Apple is doing. :confused:

Dunepilot

Feb 4, 2003, 07:40 PM

Just thought that I had better post up a quick message to those who say that they might upgrade the iMac's RAM after purchase.

Do bear in mind that OS X is very picky about the quality of RAM you put in your machine .

If you do use RAM you get free from a third-party vendor (even extra RAM installed before you buy your Mac, from a mail-order reseller) you do run the risk of having kernel panics in OS X. There is a lot of documentation of this on macintouch.com.

Personally, I've found Crucial's RAM to be pretty safe, but it is just a thought worth bearing in mind that you are more likely to enjoy solid-as-a-rock stability if you buy Apple's RAM despite the premium they charge. This wasn't always the case (when most people were using OS 9), but it does need to be borne in mind these days.

aethier

Feb 4, 2003, 07:44 PM

I find the new imacs to be not bad... i am a little disapointed though. i thought that apple would
1- at least upgrade all models to a ati radeon 9000 with 64 megs. or keep the low end with the mx.

well i guess i have no "2" i thought i would but w/e..

anyways.. i wuold like a new 17 inch 1gig imac with the whole shabeel.. but the graphics card is a little of a turn off.. so i guess i will just have to save more money and buy myself a dual 1.25 g4
;)

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 07:49 PM

Originally posted by aethier

anyways.. i wuold like a new 17 inch 1gig imac with the whole shabeel.. but the graphics card is a little of a turn off.. so i guess i will just have to save more money and buy myself a dual 1.25 g4
;)

i appreciate that mentality towards apple. i think it'd be wicked cool for them to have a nicer vid card in the iMac; i would be personally attracted to it. as it is, my powerbook still outperforms it. but at the same time, you realize that the computer tailored to your tastes is something else and you are prepared to save to buy it, rather than complain about the iMacs.

GPTurismo

Feb 4, 2003, 07:54 PM

My problem is people not understanding the market.

Sun, IBM, SGi, HPUX, Tru 64 and other high end machines only make up between 5 to 10% of the market, but they make 80% of the overall money spent in the market. And these are machines that usually run between 500 megahertz and 1.5 gigahertz. The OS is more stable and reliable (posix) and the archetecture is totally different than that of the OH SO WONDERFUL x86 archetecture. I mean, SGi machines have no real system bus, all the components are fast enough and smart enough to talk to each other at full speed, not relying on a FSB or the Processor. Plus higher bittage.

MS is desperately trying to bust in this area of the market because of the $$ and it's the only area they haven't been able to bust into. The only real mid range os to get into this market is Linux. Even then it's not taking down the super huge oracle databases that run on sun and aix and the supercomputers that our science communities heavily rely on.

Apple is stepping up to the plate, and they can with the new PPC970, going into the 64 bit arena with a new achetecture and the scalability of posix apps (MOSX.)

And I am sorry, you're dual p4 running at 2.9 gigahertz a piece isn't going to get into the pants and rule my dual Power4 when I need a serious app running a humoungous database or running humongous calculations.

Also, if you are running Windows on those "big powerful" p4's, you're running unnecessarily bloated code, and running an os with privacy and security issues. Not like, MOSX for example, that is Necessarily Bloated in a sense, which is simply apple releasing an os a wee bit before that had the real horsepower to drop it onto the market.

I like MS, i personally think they will become to software what IBM is to hardware, because they are exactly in the exact same shoes. I think they will open up, and become more of a benefactor to the industry once they realise they don't have to be so tyranical and so closed to be so successful and large. Maybe even see a MS desktop environment running in Linux one day O:-)

But if processor speed and price is all that matters to you, not quality, not good design, go ahead and get a p4, shut your whining, and get of the mac forums :)

Peace
GPT

freemidnight

Feb 4, 2003, 07:56 PM

I think I'll wait 10 years before upgrade computer.

Then I'll be safe for 2 years!:D :D :D

TyleRomeo

Feb 4, 2003, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

Huh. 1GHz sucks when you look over at machines with DUAL 1.42GHz

1.25GHz woulda been nice. It's still a single proc dude...

ohh just so you know a dual G4 Power Mac doesn't automaticly make it twice the stated GHZ. I have the original 1.25 Dual and its not a 2.5 GHZ G4, sure in dual processor tasks it performs nicely. But its a dual becuase its a prosumer machine and not a consumer machine. 1 GHZ with DDR ram and 133 bus are a step up with a price decrease.

Ohh and to anyone complaining about the specs, put a sock in it, just remember what OS is inside. and if OSX isn't good enough for you, then get a Dell.

Tyler

IndyGopher

Feb 4, 2003, 08:06 PM

Is the Open Firmware hack that enabled dual video (non-mirrored) on Radeon iBooks and 17" iMacs still going to work on these new 17" iMacs? I suppose we won't know until they ship, but that will be the deciding factor for me.

carl

Feb 4, 2003, 08:16 PM

Unbelievable!
after a year you would think the so called digital hub would finally rise to the occassion. I wanted to switch but, the value just isn't there for an attractive outdated PC, except for its LCD screen and software. I've been waiting for the 17"wide with @ least 120HD, Radeon 9000 w/64meg and 512mem for 1799. What about a video capture device (PVR)? Come on Steve wasn't 40mil bonus enough? If you are going to supply a non upgradeable PC, put some real stuff in it. Where is the cache, today's bus speed standard, and memory? Still playing with sdram, unbelievable...
Not switching just yet. Where is maklar when you need it...
I will commend the price decrease on the studios. I geuss Steve figured he robbed enough people.

bentmywookie

Feb 4, 2003, 08:42 PM

Originally posted by MacBoyX

I recommed you get out there and get the most iMac you can afford. And also buy yourself the following book...Macintosh...The Naked Truth...you'll love it.

Good Luck...Godspeed...Rock on witcha bad self!

Ha ha, sorry, I know this is a little OT, but I had to chime in and say that the above-mentioned book, "Macintosh: The Naked Truth" is such a funny quick read. I can imagine pretty much anyone on this forum getting a kick out of it.

Good recommendation MacBoyX!

freemidnight

Feb 4, 2003, 08:52 PM

brian0526

Feb 4, 2003, 09:08 PM

Originally posted by Dunepilot
Just thought that I had better post up a quick message to those who say that they might upgrade the iMac's RAM after purchase.

Do bear in mind that OS X is very picky about the quality of RAM you put in your machine .

If you do use RAM you get free from a third-party vendor (even extra RAM installed before you buy your Mac, from a mail-order reseller) you do run the risk of having kernel panics in OS X. There is a lot of documentation of this on macintouch.com.

Personally, I've found Crucial's RAM to be pretty safe, but it is just a thought worth bearing in mind that you are more likely to enjoy solid-as-a-rock stability if you buy Apple's RAM despite the premium they charge. This wasn't always the case (when most people were using OS 9), but it does need to be borne in mind these days.

Whoa. Is this true? What do I look for on macintouch.com to find documentation on this? I don't want to pay a premium for this machine and then find the RAM I slapped in it from a third party is causing kernel panics. Or worse yet, have kernel panics and not know the cause. I'll pay the premium for Apple's memory if it is indeed more stable than what I can buy at a reputable third party. I've had good luck with Crucial's RAM. Is there any reason to believe Apple's is better?

Brian

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by freemidnight

Does this means that the information is redundant (repeated) or that each half cycle there is new information!

i guess you could make it redundant, but then it'd just be like "highly faultless normal RAM."

so no, it's new info at each half-cycle, which is why it transfers twice as much info for the same clock rate. got it?

bentmywookie

Feb 4, 2003, 09:26 PM

At first I was totally dissapointed with these upgrades. Right now though, I think they are ok, except for the price!! Honestly, the "Ultimate" iMac needs to be somewhere around $1800-$2000, not $2400. I just feel that the iMac is now totally not competitive with regard to price.

Also, 256 mb base ram for $1800? I really hate how Apple is so intent on charging more (which I would say is usually worth it) and giving so little RAM, especially when OS X needs it. 512 mb really should have been the base. And sticking with the GeForce MXs after over a year? Those things must cost a nickel by now. Radeon 9000s should have really been in there.

As an upgrade though, this is a real dissapointment (especially for a year).

arn

Feb 4, 2003, 09:31 PM

Greenlightboi

Feb 4, 2003, 09:51 PM

I hope everyone realizes that PC's are using 533 Mhz bus... and yes, this makes a difference. Also, the video ram in these machines.... blah. you can get a 128 MB card for dirt cheap. Also, Motherboards in the PC world supporting USB 2.0 and DDR are also dirt cheap. But ok apple, I see your marketing thing you have with Firewire 800... but where is that at? :-/ People, macs are much slower then PC's now.. it gets worse everyday and its a sad thing. It isn;t just the processor, its the whole computer, and the price is unbeleivable. I mean, apple is up to speed let alone cutting edge. Cutting edge would have been a equivlent to a 2.5 GHz P4, 533 Mhz bus, 768 at least of RAM, 128 MB of video ram ON THE BASE MODEL and 256 on the top, USB 2.0 AND FireWire 800, bluetooth on everything, and a cool industrial design bluetooth keyboard and mouse to make a mark.

Apple = :-( for a long time to come...

iJon

Feb 4, 2003, 10:06 PM

Originally posted by Greenlightboi
I hope everyone realizes that PC's are using 533 Mhz bus... and yes, this makes a difference. Also, the video ram in these machines.... blah. you can get a 128 MB card for dirt cheap. Also, Motherboards in the PC world supporting USB 2.0 and DDR are also dirt cheap. But ok apple, I see your marketing thing you have with Firewire 800... but where is that at? :-/ People, macs are much slower then PC's now.. it gets worse everyday and its a sad thing. It isn;t just the processor, its the whole computer, and the price is unbeleivable. I mean, apple is up to speed let alone cutting edge. Cutting edge would have been a equivlent to a 2.5 GHz P4, 533 Mhz bus, 768 at least of RAM, 128 MB of video ram ON THE BASE MODEL and 256 on the top, USB 2.0 AND FireWire 800, bluetooth on everything, and a cool industrial design bluetooth keyboard and mouse to make a mark.

Apple = :-( for a long time to come...
yeah yeah, we hear this all the time. i have a bling bling pc i built which is very very nice. I also have a dual 1.25 mac and a 12 inch powerbook. but i HATE working on my pc, i have it for games. i know a lot about windows and macs, but its just when i sit down at my pc it just plain isnt fun. yeah im sure my 2ghz pc is faster than my dual 1.25, but i dont care. It's just they gui is so friendly and nice to be around, i love just browsing the web and pulling up itunes and listening to somthing. windows media player just plain sucks and i hate it. i love the interface of mail, i refuse to check my mail in outlook any more on my pc because outlook is way to messy and bloated. i could go on and on. i work with computer customers every week, and if you were in my shoes you would learn that about 70% percent of the people i talk to dont give a rats ass about the speed. These people get so caught up in me showing them iPhoto, iMovie, Mac OS X that they dont even look at the spec sheet, they just tell me i want one and i want one know. I recently had an old lady, between 60-70 years old who was dying to breast cancer. She came in and told me she wanted to make the most of her final years and really wanted to have some cool stuff and have soem fun. We spend quality time together on the computers and I showed her the things she, a normal person could do. This is what she purchased from me that following week. She purchased a high end 17 inch imac, best canon powershot money can buy, a very nice canon camcorder, and a 20gb ipod and much much more. I talk to her all the time when she comes in and she can never thank me enough. She is living life to the fullest now and filming vacations, saving those precious moments listening to music all on her mac and doing things she never though possible, and none of it on a 2ghz windows machine. these are a majority of customers and this is what peopl want to do, apple cant switch everyone. but like i said, i got the pimp mac and the pimp pc, and i am always at my mac unless im playing a game. if apple cant do it for you, go to pc, its ok, itjust a computer. but just to let you know your telling us an old arguement and nobody can ever win.

iJon

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 10:21 PM

Originally posted by iJon

yeah yeah, we hear this all the time. i have a bling bling pc i built which is very very nice. I also have a dual 1.25 mac and a 12 inch powerbook. but i HATE working on my pc, i have it for games. i know a lot about windows and macs, but its just when i sit down at my pc it just plain isnt fun. yeah im sure my 2ghz pc is faster than my dual 1.25, but i dont care. It's just they gui is so friendly and nice to be around, i love just browsing the web and pulling up itunes and listening to somthing. windows media player just plain sucks and i hate it. i love the interface of mail, i refuse to check my mail in outlook any more on my pc because outlook is way to messy and bloated. i could go on and on. i work with computer customers every week, and if you were in my shoes you would learn that about 70% percent of the people i talk to dont give a rats ass about the speed. These people get so caught up in me showing them iPhoto, iMovie, Mac OS X that they dont even look at the spec sheet, they just tell me i want one and i want one know. I recently had an old lady, between 60-70 years old who was dying to breast cancer. She came in and told me she wanted to make the most of her final years and really wanted to have some cool stuff and have soem fun. We spend quality time together on the computers and I showed her the things she, a normal person could do. This is what she purchased from me that following week. She purchased a high end 17 inch imac, best canon powershot money can buy, a very nice canon camcorder, and a 20gb ipod and much much more. I talk to her all the time when she comes in and she can never thank me enough. She is living life to the fullest now and filming vacations, saving those precious moments listening to music all on her mac and doing things she never though possible, and none of it on a 2ghz windows machine. these are a majority of customers and this is what peopl want to do, apple cant switch everyone. but like i said, i got the pimp mac and the pimp pc, and i am always at my mac unless im playing a game. if apple cant do it for you, go to pc, its ok, itjust a computer. but just to let you know your telling us an old arguement and nobody can ever win.

iJon

rock on! i think your dualie 1 1/4 is way faster than a 2 GHz P4, honestly, though not the 3 GHz they have out. but shoot, that's a non-issue. my Tibook is just unbelievable on so many levels. what's this ***** envy-has-to-be-the-fastest-thing-by-the-most-respected-benchmarks? my 1 GHz G4 and M9000 Radeon can run SO MANY QT videos at once, never drops frames on DVD watching, and runs smooth as butter in photoshop. so it isn't the fastest thing that ever saw the light of day. it's such a divine pleasure to sit and work on it; i practically feel like kissing it when i see it. it's so beautiful externally, and the OS is just better than anything ever. it doesn't need a pimpin 3 GHz fast computer to run it. it needs a fast machine, not the fastest, and that is what i got. windows XP is fine, i guess, but there is nothing even remotely endearing about it at all. the default GUI looks pixelated, for god's sake. not that that is what i base the experience on. there is something about it that is just not pleasant. maybe it's having seen a mac. i mean, i used to like XP a lot, thinking, wow, so much better than 98 and 2000! until i got my powerbook i thought, well, this is not so bad. now, having the powerbook, any time i do something on my PC, i just think, darn, this is unpleasant! why would i settle for this, even if it saves me 300-400$? it's just nothing like the mac experience. but maybe that's just me. and hence, this is not an argument, just pointless back-and-forth "expression of preference" with PC users.

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 4, 2003, 10:32 PM

I hear a lot of wining from the peeeceee"s wanna bees sorry but macs have allways been the sum of the whole machine and the sum of the whole experience! go with your wintel- oooraa - oooraaaa specs and billys jam it down your throat software that stinks and leave the mac site and dont worry about It! all you pee cee cryers out there have mac envy that is obvious. cry cry cry! they lower the price 200 bucks, they increase the cpu g4 by 200 mhz,add all kinds of stuff and still boo hooo . My made in a garage pc has this bus and a intel that has to run at super high speeds to get anything done! Go to wal mart and get that hunk of junk! Now if you want a total computer experience with style that will do everything you ask it and more and that will hold its value and make computing fun instead of a nightmare then the mac is your answer. Also funny how this lil old imac keeps getting the awards and the press saying how great it is which you dont hear of on the wintel side!when i take a photo and plug my camera into my keyboard and my computer simply says you want em and with 1 click i have it all and then think of someone i know who has been struggling with her pc for a year and still cant figure why the dam thing wont load her pictures i can only laugh!-Macs are just easier to use and the coolest computers on the planet. And with that said i am hitting the sack knowing full well that tomorrow my mac will be there waiting to do whatever i ask it! good nite!:D

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 10:52 PM

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
I hear a lot of wining from the peeeceee"s wanna bees sorry but macs have allways been the sum of the whole machine and the sum of the whole experience! go with your wintel- oooraa - oooraaaa specs and billys jam it down your throat software that stinks and leave the mac site and dont worry about It! all you pee cee cryers out there have mac envy that is obvious. cry cry cry! they lower the price 200 bucks, they increase the cpu g4 by 200 mhz,add all kinds of stuff and still boo hooo . My made in a garage pc has this bus and a intel that has to run at super high speeds to get anything done! Go to wal mart and get that hunk of junk! Now if you want a total computer experience with style that will do everything you ask it and more and that will hold its value and make computing fun instead of a nightmare then the mac is your answer. Also funny how this lil old imac keeps getting the awards and the press saying how great it is which you dont hear of on the wintel side!when i take a photo and plug my camera into my keyboard and my computer simply says you want em and with 1 click i have it all and then think of someone i know who has been struggling with her pc for a year and still cant figure why the dam thing wont load her pictures i can only laugh!-Macs are just easier to use and the coolest computers on the planet. And with that said i am hitting the sack knowing full well that tomorrow my mac will be there waiting to do whatever i ask it! good nite!:D

shouldn't stir up the hive man, but i hear you.

..... in my history class, we were doing powerpoints of dictators. everyone else put theirs on a CD to put into my teacher's laptop, who then plugs that into he (very very nice) LCD projector. my group went first, and brought my PB G4 to do my presentation. i plugged it in, and it auto detected the 2nd screen and had it displaying literally the instant i opened up the lid (it was sleeping). then when i was done, they used my teacher's Dell to do everyone else's presentations. it took, seriously, 5 minutes to get it all set up right and aligned and all that. and it was in mirrored mode, for god's sake! lol.

job

Feb 4, 2003, 11:07 PM

After comparing the baseline tower and the top-end iMac, the tower for once seems to be the better buy.

meh 2cents.

TyleRomeo

Feb 4, 2003, 11:11 PM

Originally posted by cr2sh
My question is where do we go next? The g3 was put into the powermacs/books until the g4 was introduced. Everyone stepped up a level at that point, the ibooks/imacs got a g3, the powermacs/books got a g4. When the ppc970 is introduced sure.. they powermacs/books will step up to the 970, but what will be done with the imacs/books?
Right now, everyone (cept the ibook) is pushing a g4, with ram and specs differences sure... but when we get the 970, the iMac should not step up as well. It should reside with the g4, but they'll probably cease manufacturing them... and then what? Unless Apple/IBM has something up their sleave, this type of updating (where all the lines get slight variations and RAM types) will be the norm.

Will we continue to get dual pro systems?
I think what I want, maybe what we all want, is a superchip introduced for pro-level and a lower level chip for the consumers. What I'm talking about is sheer power4 and ppc970... but I don't understand what Apple is doing. :confused:

interesting point...well if apple decides to continue its pattern of CPUs then it will switch back to IBM for the G5 and that will be introduced in the power macs first then trickle down into the powerbooks.

Then the iMacs and iBooks will use the left over G4 chips, like the 7457 and whatever Motorola has left in the bank. Just like the current iBook is using the left over G3 chips by IBM. I'll predict right now that after the iBook goes 1GHZ G3 then we will have a major apple chip revelation. Only time will tell.

Tyler

flyfish29

Feb 4, 2003, 11:27 PM

Originally posted by yzedf
Drastik,

How nice of someone to finally call me on it. ;)

I am a Mac liker... if that makes sense. I like them, I use my friends machines on occassion (new ibook and pismo) and have been impressed with OS X since the original beta. It is just that the policies of the company regarding their hardware, and the vendors they choose to buy from (frickin' Motorola!!!), irks me.

OS X was supposed to be the Windows Killer(tm). It could be that it is. But with this sorry state of the hardware, it will never happen. About the time Apple figures it out we will have seen 2 newer Windows OS' since then.

iLife is cute... but it won't convince more than a few people to buy a Mac instead of a PC.

Price would bring them over in droves.

So would comparable hardware specs. Most everyone wants newer, better, and faster.

That is the market. Apple needs to figure this out and respond accordingly.

That is why I keep saying:

COMPETE OR DIE

Look at the sales of the iPod. Great hardware, great software, and reasonable price. The push was so big, tht Apple actually sold a Windows version! That is what competition is all about.

This niggling over Consumer vs Professional desktops is pointless. What is this... Macintosh vs Apple ][ again or what???

I beg to differ...not everyone wants newer, better, and faster!

Competition is not at all just about price. Walmart may have us thinking that is the basis for competition. Uggg.

So do you think that a shirt from Walmart will perform the same as the shirt from LL Bean? I hope not!

Competition is not just about price or even quality componets. It is also about service, reliability, quality construction, durablility, etc. Apple computer controls everything about their computers (hardware,software, construction, distribution)! That is why their reliability is second to none, their performance is outstanding, and why Windows will never run like the well oiled machine.

When you factor in the lost revunue, time on hold, replacement of hardware and software, you end up paying much more for a PC than a Mac. Countless studies have been done to prove this fact! However, I think it is difficult to prove this fact to people.

I have only owned Mac's for over 15 years. I have only purchased three Macs in that time period (about to get my fourth) and have NEVER had a hardware problem that I had to pay for. There was one problem on my All In One PowerPC, but Apple recalled them and paid for the repair. In this same time period my two sisters have purchased 4-5 PC's each and collectively bought three extra hard drives, a mother board, and three video cards, and two modems all to replace the "factory supplied components" that were supposed to last the life of the computer.

If Apple continues with software development like it is, keeps on the cutting edge on technology (they have made some mistakes in this area, but who doesn't) then they will keep getting return business as well as new customers who most likely will return to purchase another Mac down the road.

This is what real Competition is about. Giving the customer the best value...cost vs quality are on opposite sides of the scale when weighing a purchase decision. If you want a higher quality product then the cost will most likely go up.

Remember....we vote with our dollars. If you believe in what a company makes, sells, services,etc. then vote with your damn dollar. If you don't, then don't. Be willing to pay a little extra for a company's extra effort!

Slipping off soapbox now!

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 11:28 PM

Originally posted by TyleRomeo

interesting point...well if apple decides to continue its pattern of CPUs then it will switch back to IBM for the G5 and that will be introduced in the power macs first then trickle down into the powerbooks.

Then the iMacs and iBooks will use the left over G4 chips, like the 7457 and whatever Motorola has left in the bank. Just like the current iBook is using the left over G3 chips by IBM. I'll predict right now that after the iBook goes 1GHZ G3 then we will have a major apple chip revelation. Only time will tell.

Tyler

you think it will take them until the fall to get to 1 GHz? that seems really slow to me. not that i know much, but still.... 200 MHz in 9-11 months seems too little for this time when they really need to get it up. i think they should be mounting G4 1 GHs/933 MHz in them within 2 months of the PPc 970's advent, personally. by then, they should have the 970s in powerbooks at at least 1.25, don't you think? maybe not, though.

i wonder if they will keep the 970s to JUST the Pmacs for a few months? i dunno at all, lol. all speculation.

shadowfax

Feb 4, 2003, 11:40 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

That is why I keep saying:

COMPETE OR DIE

well, it's quite clear apple is competing. they sure as hell aren't dead, or even dying. for a recession, they are doing darn well. so they are following your extremely vague, simplistic maxim.

have you read Good as Gold by Joseph Heller? you'd be a good candidaet for the treasury secretary there.

"We need to balance the budget."

yosoyjay

Feb 5, 2003, 12:35 AM

Originally posted by arn

this is pretty true...

If you have kernel panics regularly... it's most likely a hardware problem - and that's most likely "faulty" ram... even though it doesn't come up as a problem in the diagnostics.

arn

I've often found that people who install third party ram may have cause the problem themselves because they didn't take any esd precautions.

Use that groundstrap.

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 12:38 AM

Originally posted by yosoyjay

I've often found that people who install third party ram may have cause the problem themselves because they didn't take any esd precautions.

Use that groundstrap.

what's ESD?

praetorian_x

Feb 5, 2003, 12:56 AM

Originally posted by GPTurismo
Btw Prat, prat means idiot in old english O:-)

<laugh/> Nice. And, for the most part, correct.

Tragically, even an idiot can see these updates are max lamer.

Cheers,
prat

bigizzy

Feb 5, 2003, 01:02 AM

what the market really needs is a fully customizable Mac. Why not introduce a Mac which can be assembled by the end user into a cabinet. Introduce a mac where the user can choose which mother board (single processor or dual processor, different number of ports, expansion slots etc), which processor, type and amount of ram, type of display card, type of sound cards (if sound is not on board the Mother board), choice of monitors and a standard mac mini/tower cabinet.

This will allow all mac heads to build a mac to the specification they want. Definately this will not give them the cool looks of an Imac but then this might very well spur the sales of the mac which is what apple needs.

praetorian_x

Feb 5, 2003, 01:06 AM

Originally posted by chubakka
a jump from 800 to 1 Ghz is a 25% increase. that's not miniscule...
and a Xeon 2 Ghz is no speed demon.

Aaaaahhhaahaaaahaaahaaa!

That is *awesome*!!! 2 ghz Xeons! SLOW! From a Mac user! Well lets start the insansity!

Ahhhhahahaha! Wooooooo.

Oh... geeze... Oh... hold on... heh... Oh, man, my sides hurt... heh heh...

Cheers,
prat

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 01:07 AM

Originally posted by bigizzy
what the market really needs is a fully customizable Mac. Why not introduce a Mac which can be assembled by the end user into a cabinet. Introduce a mac where the user can choose which mother board (single processor or dual processor, different number of ports, expansion slots etc), which processor, type and amount of ram, type of display card, type of sound cards (if sound is not on board the Mother board), choice of monitors and a standard mac mini/tower cabinet.

This will allow all mac heads to build a mac to the specification they want. Definately this will not give them the cool looks of an Imac but then this might very well spur the sales of the mac which is what apple needs.

you can fit an XServe into the wall, LOL. i don't think they need to make customization a big option. that would be WAY too expensive to support as a single company (notice no single PC company does this on a large scale).

i think anyone who rants off on how "letting people make macs from scratch would help their business" are out of his mind. that would take some drastic, expensive changes, and the market for such is miniscule at best. you think droves of PC users made it from scratch? ha! not many at all, not many at all....

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by praetorian_x

Aaaaahhhaahaaaahaaahaaa!

That is *awesome*!!! 2 ghz Xeons! SLOW! From a Mac user! Well lets start the insansity!

Ahhhhahahaha! Wooooooo.

Oh... geeze... Oh... hold on... heh... Oh, man, my sides hurt... heh heh...

Cheers,
prat

i was pretty consistently beating a 1.9 GHz p4 with my 1 GHz TiBook in photoshop....

compare to the current midrange "nice" mac, the DP 1.25 GHz.... you are talking easy rapage of a single Xeon... now, DP some Xeons and put a linux/Unix server on it, and i will start to say, yes, your system cooks most macs (if not all), but can you iMovie/iTunes/iPhoto with it? nah... X86 owns in low end servers and games, and neither of those strongly appeals to me.

cr2sh

Feb 5, 2003, 01:17 AM

Originally posted by TyleRomeo
Then the iMacs and iBooks will use the left over G4 chips, like the 7457 and whatever Motorola has left in the bank. Just like the current iBook is using the left over G3 chips by IBM. I'll predict right now that after the iBook goes 1GHZ G3 then we will have a major apple chip revelation. Only time will tell.

I don't think motorola has much more in the bank on the g4.
So if in 6months we get word of the ppc970 coming to the PowerMac line, does then the imac/ibook step up to hardcore g4 action, and how much further can it go? Will we one day see a 2GHz G4 in an ibook? (Who would have thought that when the g3 started at 233mhz we'd have gotten to a gig?) I don't know, but I have very little faith in Motorola's ability to push the g4 any further, and even then.. does the consumer line need altivec? Who would buy a g4 ibook, when the old g4powerbook has far better features? Does apple really enjoy the continued success and competition presented even today by the Pismo line? I don't see a g4 ever making it into a ibook, unless its a very limited special edition run before winter.

My guess is we'll see a ppc970 with AND without altivec. After all, how many consumers understand the velocity engine? Wouldn't it be a better marketing strategy? And wouldn't many people argue that Mototrola is already using this method? What after all is the difference in the g3 and g4? I expect we'll get a 1gig g3 ibook by may, and maybe another power series update... but come fall news of the 970s (plural) will hit. :D

</speculation>

praetorian_x

Feb 5, 2003, 01:19 AM

Originally posted by drastik
Very few of the people on these boards are true Pro Graphics professionals or video editors.

Hrm. I'm a developer. All I want is for Terminal.app to launch in under one bounce. Is that so much to ask?

(Oh, and could resizing my browser/iPhoto/iTunes/etc window also not grind my system to a halt?)

(Oh, and could emacs possibly launch anywhere near as fast as in X-windows (!!!))

Just checkin'
prat

P.S. I know, to some extent, I'm being flippant. A lot of the problems I site above are due to apples NIB format, which gains in abstraction and general coolness what it loses in speed. But really, if you want to pull off cool stuff like that, you need the hardware to back itup. A windows user will likely *not* notice the difference between a 500 mhz and 2 ghz machine unless they are doing serious work/development. But with OSX as resource hungry as it is, a mac user *will*. Trust me, when the 970's hit the street, we will all wonder how we lived without them. Hrm, howcome my P.S. has more content than my post? *shrugs*

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 01:29 AM

cr2sh

Feb 5, 2003, 01:34 AM

I'm probably wrong, Arn will say so if I am... but I thought that Ibm had said that the ppc970 was altivec compatible, meaning it could be added but wasn't built with it.

praetorian_x

Feb 5, 2003, 01:35 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax
i was pretty consistently beating a 1.9 GHz p4 with my 1 GHz TiBook in photoshop....

Well, I develop in Java, Python, lisp and, occasionally, when I'm feeling wacky, Objective-C. Dual Xeons are insanely fast. Check-and-make-sure-it-really-compiled fast. OMFG-I-can't-believe-emacs-compiled-already fast. Java-swing-actually-is-usable fast.

Can't speak much about Photoshop. Suppose if I was big into it, I'd be less annoyed at the current state of the mac hardware. But I'd still avoid resizing my browser window... <wink/>

Hell, I'm posting too much,
prat

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 01:38 AM

Originally posted by praetorian_x

Well, I develop in Java, Python, lisp and, occasionally, when I'm feeling wacky, Objective-C. Dual Xeons are insanely fast. Check-and-make-sure-it-really-compiled fast. OMFG-I-can't-believe-emacs-compiled-already fast. Java-swing-actually-is-usable fast.

Can't speak much about Photoshop. Suppose if I was big into it, I'd be less annoyed at the current state of the mac hardware. But I'd still avoid resizing my browser window... <wink/>

Hell, I'm posting too much,
prat

darn, i forgot about compiling.

i compiled all of KDE in 12 hours on my G4 powerbook. do you think that's impressive for a portable?

sorry for being off topic.

MacBandit

Feb 5, 2003, 01:42 AM

Originally posted by cr2sh
I'm probably wrong, Arn will say so if I am... but I thought that Ibm had said that the ppc970 was altivec compatible, meaning it could be added but wasn't built with it.

Sorry, the integer unit (Altivec Compatible) is designed into the unit. You aren't just going to make one with and without it.

MacBandit

Feb 5, 2003, 01:44 AM

Originally posted by praetorian_x

Hrm. I'm a developer. All I want is for Terminal.app to launch in under one bounce. Is that so much to ask?

(Oh, and could resizing my browser/iPhoto/iTunes/etc window also not grind my system to a halt?)

What machine are you running? My Dual/GHz/DDR PowerMac start terminal in less then one bounce and though window resizing isn't absolutely fluid it doesn't affect system speed.

praetorian_x

Feb 5, 2003, 01:46 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

darn, i forgot about compiling.

i compiled all of KDE in 12 hours on my G4 powerbook. do you think that's impressive for a portable?

sorry for being off topic.

OK, *last post* and I'm going to friggen bed:

No, that's insanely slow. (I'm getting a complex: do I use the word insanely too much? Maybe I've been listening to apple marketing too long...) In fact, I'm very, very suprised. But with a big compile like KDE you are often disk and FSB limited. The FSB issue with g4's has been beaten to death, and laptops in general have very slow hard-drives.

It would be a lot faster on a p4 with true DDR and a fast disk. Of course, you'd have to have it plugged in.

Cheers,
prat

cr2sh

Feb 5, 2003, 01:51 AM

Originally posted by MacBandit
Sorry, the integer unit (Altivec Compatible) is designed into the unit. You aren't just going to make one with and without it.

Bandit knows the ****, but offers no speculation...

Back to the topic at hand, but I'm done with this thread. :)
Carry on...

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 01:51 AM

Originally posted by MacBandit

What machine are you running? My Dual/GHz/DDR PowerMac start terminal in less then one bounce and though window resizing isn't absolutely fluid it doesn't affect system speed.

i have a single GHz G4 Tibook; terminal resizes with great "fluidity." so do most apps, barring Chimera, iMovie, and iPhoto, and a few others. but then, resizing has never really been a very impressive thing on any OS... unless you make it not show the contents. in a browser, i think it's because of all the realigning that has to be done on pages. can't speak for iMovie and iPhoto. i never use them anyway. Photoshop, especially with the G4 update a few weeks ago, runs way better than i ever saw on a PC, resizes and all.

by the way, praetorian, i dunno how your computer slows to nothing during a resize, i have never seen anything THAT bad on mine, except when i try to resize iMovie as it is loading, lol.

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 01:54 AM

Originally posted by praetorian_x

OK, *last post* and I'm going to friggen bed:

No, that's insanely slow. (I'm getting a complex: do I use the word insanely too much? Maybe I've been listening to apple marketing too long...) In fact, I'm very, very suprised. But with a big compile like KDE you are often disk and FSB limited. The FSB issue with g4's has been beaten to death, and laptops in general have very slow hard-drives.

It would be a lot faster on a p4 with true DDR and a fast disk. Of course, you'd have to have it plugged in.

Cheers,
prat

really? you are talking about every little think, KOffice, all the games, the whole 150 MB or whatever it is of source code for the base and all the addons?

MacBandit

Feb 5, 2003, 02:07 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

i have a single GHz G4 Tibook; terminal resizes with great "fluidity." so do most apps, barring Chimera, iMovie, and iPhoto, and a few others. but then, resizing has never really been a very impressive thing on any OS... unless you make it not show the contents. in a browser, i think it's because of all the realigning that has to be done on pages. can't speak for iMovie and iPhoto. i never use them anyway. Photoshop, especially with the G4 update a few weeks ago, runs way better than i ever saw on a PC, resizes and all.

by the way, praetorian, i dunno how your computer slows to nothing during a resize, i have never seen anything THAT bad on mine, except when i try to resize iMovie as it is loading, lol.

I agree completely that any empty window will resize very fluidly but where's the fun in that?:)

The real power is resizing dynamic text like on a web page and in that I haven't seen any systeem that could do it extemely fluidly. My Dual does it very very well but it still makes small jumps nothing that cuts the system down where it stands though.

praetorian_x

Feb 5, 2003, 02:09 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

really? you are talking about every little think, KOffice, all the games, the whole 150 MB or whatever it is of source code for the base and all the addons?

Depends. Are you compiling QT as well? Even if you were doing a whole gentoo linux system, 12 hours is a loooooong wait. Could I recommend fink?

Damn, I posted again.
prat

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 02:10 AM

Originally posted by MacBandit

I agree completely that any empty window will resize very fluidly but where's the fun in that?:)

The real power is resizing dynamic text like on a web page and in that I haven't seen any systeem that could do it extemely fluidly. My Dual does it very very well but it still makes small jumps nothing that cuts the system down where it stands though.

yeah, that's what i am saying. the "live" resize is the hard one, and it is rough on a browser. mine does it ok, but not perfect like when i move a window. THAT is fluid.

i doubt there is much difference in our systems' window serving, considering we have QE and probably similar video cards, but i don't know :)

Dave Marsh

Feb 5, 2003, 02:22 AM

I believe he meant ElectroStatic Discharge. Zapping a memory chip with static electricity is BAD.;)

bigizzy

Feb 5, 2003, 02:55 AM

Originally posted by cr2sh
I'm probably wrong, Arn will say so if I am... but I thought that Ibm had said that the ppc970 was altivec compatible, meaning it could be added but wasn't built with it.

The IBM PPC 970 is Altiviec compatible as can be seen by reading the info in this page
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/newsletter/dec2002/newproductfocus2.html

Nermal

Feb 5, 2003, 03:17 AM

Originally posted by jettredmont

I looked up PC2700 DDR memory at crucial.com and found that a do-it-yourself memory upgrade (assuming 2 DIMM slots available) from 256MB to 1GB would run about $180 ($120 for a 512MB DIMM and $60 for a 256MB DIMM, both guaranteed to work on the MDD PowerMacs, although I suspect the slot in the iMac is identical ...)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to go to 1 GB, wouldn't you need two 512s, one for each slot?

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 03:30 AM

Originally posted by Nermal

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to go to 1 GB, wouldn't you need two 512s, one for each slot?

he means 2 available with the 256 already there... in other words, 2 DIMM slots total.

MacQuest

Feb 5, 2003, 05:45 AM

Originally posted by iAndy
In a word - BUMMER !

I was in the market for a new iMac - but the new limited range and pricing structure seems a joke !

How the h#ll is Apple going to win over more switchers with a price performance range like this !?!

Bad move Apple - you could (and should IMHO) have made this a much more attractive upgrade.

Although I will still be holding onto my shares, I now don't expect next quarters sales figures to be too hot again....

It's wise not to expect next quarter's sales figures to be "hot" considering that Apple itself has openly forecasted steady [at best] earnings through at least 3rd quarter of this year.

However, I don't see how people, especially Switchers, who have been eating these 17" iMacs up since fall of last year are NOT going to be inclined to save $200.

IMO, Apple could have added all of these features and kept the price the same [at $1,999] and consumers, Switchers in particular, would still continue to buy them.

MacQuest

Feb 5, 2003, 06:06 AM

Originally posted by bbarnhart
I'm disappointed that there is not a 17" version for $1499.

I agree whole heartedly. Or at least a 15" SuperDrive at that price. The line-up seems awkward without a mid-level contender.

Originally posted by bbarnhart
And, only a 200 Mhz upgrade?

I think 1 Ghz is reasonable for a consumer model. If Apple introduced a 1.25 Ghz iMac, it would cannibalize it's entry level [1Ghz single processor] PowerMac sales.

Originally posted by bbarnhart
I don't know what else to say except that Apple is extracting a lot of profit from the 17" model.

And that's a bad thing? How else will Apple remain 1 of the only 2 profitable computer manufacturers [the other being Taco-Dell] in this economy.

At least their doing what they said, which was to continue to invest into product innovation rather than sit on their a$$es. That way, when the economy turns around, Apple will be far ahead.

MacQuest

Feb 5, 2003, 06:08 AM

MacQuest

Feb 5, 2003, 06:21 AM

Originally posted by jgp
I am surprised and disappointed. Why they did not put the buss at 133 for both I do not know.

The 15" combo is the same machine with a $200 price drop.

Originally posted by jgp
Why they did not allow the monitors to twist from landscape to portrait, I do not know.

Maybe because when monitor manufacturers [like Radius] manufactured these in the early-mid 90's they failed miserably?

Originally posted by jgp
Why they did not give better graphics on these consumer machines to support gaming, I do not know.

On the 17", 64vram vs. 32vram is not better? PLUS, composite & s-video out...

NicoMan

Feb 5, 2003, 06:30 AM

Originally posted by MacBoyX

Let's all say it...eMac eMac eMac.

It's obvious that Apple is integrating the eMac (read CHEAP iMac) into it's consumer desktop line. I kind of expected this. You can get a good cheap Mac. 999 for a G4 700 MHz G4? Add a little ram and you got a work horse and a half. The screen bugs have been worked out as Apple has admitted and offered to fix the screen! If you want cheap then you aren't going to get a FP. I don't think it matters. I am still using my G4 TiBook 667 with 512 MB or RAM and truthfully I am hardly maxing it out. One thing I learned when I switched a year ago was that like V8's and old American Muscle bigger isnt always better. My G4 667 SMOKES my P4 1.8GHz Thinkpad...they even have the same amt of memory. The truth is no one really needs a 1Ghz G4 to run OS X and it think it's damn nice that Apple gave us one. I wont be upgrading my TiBook ever because of speed, it will be because something cooler and more envious comes out. Isn't that the way it is with Apple users? I think too many POWER HOGS are making to much noise. It is further more obvious that the 15' iMac is going the way of the dinosaur. In 6 months we'll see 17" only iMacs.

AND why is it that everyone keeps forgetting the awesome thing Apple did today with the eMac? A 17" G4 Mac for 999? Weren't we all asking a year ago for just that? Maybe if Apple would have called the eMac the the iMac II you'd all stop complaining.

And if i hear one more person complain about how apple is floundering especially APPLE PEOPLE i am going to go postal. Apple is doing the best it can while waiting for the 970 or G5 or what ever else will come out.

Again we caused this ourselves. We all wanted more power G4's in every model line MORE POWER! and now we got what we asked for. 4 model lines basically identical in every way.

Ask you self are you really using this much power or do you want bragging rights? Who cares if the PC idiot next to you has a 2.2 GHz P4? Why isn't it enuff to have a more efficent, more elegant, more unique computer?

Ok...now off my soap box...I got splinters from standing on it so long!

True, oh so true.
I think that's one of the best post in a long time...

Way to go my man, go back on your soap box, some people really need a reality check.

NicoMan

MacQuest

Feb 5, 2003, 06:35 AM

Originally posted by yosoyjay
Also, the upgrade to 7200 harddrives in any computer results in little or no gain in system responsivity...

responsivity:D

NicoMan

Feb 5, 2003, 06:48 AM

Originally posted by yosoyjay
I don't even think a 7200rpm hard drive with a 8MB cache can saturate ATA-100 during bursts so ATA-133 is not a problem.
That's exeactly what I said.

To go back to the hard drive speed. It doesn't ALWAYS make a difference. But it CAN (depending on your system). And if there is a difference, it will be even more noticeable if you have low memory, because your system uses the hard drive for virtual memory so OSX pages constantly from RAM to HD and back. So the overall performance and responsiveness is impacted.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 5, 2003, 06:55 AM

Originally posted by yosoyjay

It can have 1GB. It ships with 256MB.

I think we are looking at different stores that's why. The UK store high end comes with 1GB (pricey though!).

NicoMan

TheCat

Feb 5, 2003, 06:55 AM

Originally posted by Bear

Actually, the 15" is not DDR ram, it looks like the old 15". It's bluetooth is the USB adapter. (Bluetooth optional) Also, it only has the Airport and not Airport Extreme.

The 17" is DDR and has airport extreme as well as internal bluetooth. (Bluetooth ready)

hi, i seem to remember that when the last Power Mac's were released last August that everyone was complaining that they wern't "real" ddr..
How is the new 17"iMac and the 2003-Power Mac's? DDR full or (err) not full? :-)

Don't fully understand it, but just curious..
TIA
Steve

MacQuest

Feb 5, 2003, 06:57 AM

Originally posted by brian0526
Would you suggest I pay the people at the Apple store to switch the 256 MB chip for a 512

YES!! If you purchase AppleCare [$169] they'll waive the $60 installation fee PLUS you'll get your iMac covered for 3 full years for BOTH parts/labor & phone support!

Originally posted by brian0526
...buy a 512 from a third party?

Up to you, but I would feel more comfortable putting another Apple Certified 512, even if I had to wait.

365

Feb 5, 2003, 07:33 AM

Originally posted by Le Big Mac

In this economy, the "market" wants lower prices, not higher performance, evidently. It's disappointing for anyone wanting higher performance, but that's not what's been selling units.

Yeah right, you don't work in the PR department at Apple do you, this exactly the angle they'd come at. These machines aren't just underpowered, they're overpriced for for the spec. What's the spin on this?

ibjoshua

Feb 5, 2003, 07:41 AM

Anyone fancy doing a summary of this thread.
I can't be arsed reading 352 posts.

i_b_joshua

yzedf

Feb 5, 2003, 08:23 AM

Originally posted by flyfish29

I beg to differ...not everyone wants newer, better, and faster!

Competition is not at all just about price. Walmart may have us thinking that is the basis for competition. Uggg.

So do you think that a shirt from Walmart will perform the same as the shirt from LL Bean? I hope not!

Competition is not just about price or even quality componets. It is also about service, reliability, quality construction, durablility, etc. Apple computer controls everything about their computers (hardware,software, construction, distribution)! That is why their reliability is second to none, their performance is outstanding, and why Windows will never run like the well oiled machine.

When you factor in the lost revunue, time on hold, replacement of hardware and software, you end up paying much more for a PC than a Mac. Countless studies have been done to prove this fact! However, I think it is difficult to prove this fact to people.

I have only owned Mac's for over 15 years. I have only purchased three Macs in that time period (about to get my fourth) and have NEVER had a hardware problem that I had to pay for. There was one problem on my All In One PowerPC, but Apple recalled them and paid for the repair. In this same time period my two sisters have purchased 4-5 PC's each and collectively bought three extra hard drives, a mother board, and three video cards, and two modems all to replace the "factory supplied components" that were supposed to last the life of the computer.

If Apple continues with software development like it is, keeps on the cutting edge on technology (they have made some mistakes in this area, but who doesn't) then they will keep getting return business as well as new customers who most likely will return to purchase another Mac down the road.

This is what real Competition is about. Giving the customer the best value...cost vs quality are on opposite sides of the scale when weighing a purchase decision. If you want a higher quality product then the cost will most likely go up.

Remember....we vote with our dollars. If you believe in what a company makes, sells, services,etc. then vote with your damn dollar. If you don't, then don't. Be willing to pay a little extra for a company's extra effort!

Slipping off soapbox now!

Correction - most everyone.

Competition - price is #1 factor in this eceonomy.

shirt - covers my skin. a $5 shirt does same thing as $200 shirt...

hardware reliability - why does it cost $600 from apple, to get the latch on a new ibook replaced (out of warranty - yes)? and that is when you ship it to them! happened to my old roommate about 1 month ago (new ice book style 500MHz).

software - iMovie 3... real quality that is.

yzedf

Feb 5, 2003, 08:24 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

you think it will take them until the fall to get to 1 GHz? that seems really slow to me. not that i know much, but still.... 200 MHz in 9-11 months seems too little for this time when they really need to get it up. i think they should be mounting G4 1 GHs/933 MHz in them within 2 months of the PPc 970's advent, personally. by then, they should have the 970s in powerbooks at at least 1.25, don't you think? maybe not, though.

i wonder if they will keep the 970s to JUST the Pmacs for a few months? i dunno at all, lol. all speculation.

970 is rumored to start at 1.8GHz.

PretendPCuser

Feb 5, 2003, 08:46 AM

Now at least i'll be able to suggest it with this caveat. (sp?)
Thanks for that.
ALso thanks to others who posted info about their experiences with this phenom.

Originally posted by davy the bunny

There are indeed problems with the displays of some eMacs. After some time with some eMacs the screen will start to get waves in it, or it may flicker, or it may skew the color horribly, or if you're really unlucky you will turn your computer on one day and hear a loud pop and have no more video.

Information from AppleCare verifies that all of these issues are related to Apple Care Document #95169 (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=95169). And despite what any veteran user or AppleStore Technician tells you, it is not normal degradation of a CRT or because you have your eMac too close to some magnetic object or the result of bad color settings. :)

NicoMan

Feb 5, 2003, 08:50 AM

Originally posted by i_b_joshua
Anyone fancy doing a summary of this thread.
I can't be arsed reading 352 posts.

i_b_joshua

I started on the first page when the new iMacs came out then got afk for a few minutes came back 3 pages. Tried then to read those first 3 pages and respond to the posts to which I could add something, and by the time I got finished we were at page 8 or 9. Went to bed and this morning we are at page 15. Man this goes way too fast for me. I need another thread (slower paced, please) to which not everyone has something to say.

As for the summary, I don't think it is really needed. Read the first 4 or 5 pages and you got it all...

NicoMan

flyfish29

Feb 5, 2003, 09:06 AM

Originally posted by yzedf

Correction - most everyone.

Competition - price is #1 factor in this eceonomy.

shirt - covers my skin. a $5 shirt does same thing as $200 shirt...

hardware reliability - why does it cost $600 from apple, to get the latch on a new ibook replaced (out of warranty - yes)? and that is when you ship it to them! happened to my old roommate about 1 month ago (new ice book style 500MHz).

software - iMovie 3... real quality that is.

Well, I was not talking about a $200 shirt and there are few shirts that are even $5 at Walmart. But, in the long run there is a difference between the quality of craftsmanship of the shirts between the two and the big difference is that if you feel that the shirt doesn't live up to your expectations LL Bean will replace it no questions asked if it falls apart early on you. Unfortunately in today's society people take advantage of this, but the guarantee is there if you need it.

The other thing is that competition when it is just based on price sucks! The reason why is we all lose when it is only based on price. Remember, that when Walmart chokes their suppliers/truckers/manufacturers/employee salaries and benefits so they can reduce their prices even more, they are in a sense making every employee that works for that supplier, trucking company, store, and manufacturer make even less money than they were before. If they are making less money, then the employees of these companies are spending less therefore destroying the basis of a healthy economy...CONSUMPTION! It is a vicious cycle this price competition and we need to change it if we hope to have a healthy economy.

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 09:23 AM

$5 shirt compared to a $200 dollar shirt is NOT a fair comparison.

A $5 shirt compared to a $20 shirt is. And here is the thing with that anology. 90% of the time, that $5 shirt is not going to last as long as that $20 shirt with the average consumer using average detergants and cleaning methods on it. The threading in the seems isn't as tight or consistant, and the fabric could be jusst of a higher quality.

Just because it covers your skin is a silly statement. Sure, that's the purpose, but you really do get what you pay for.

We ordered 20 of those dells for 799 that come with that LCD, and everyone besides our Dell Fanboys/MS fanboy IT department that knows diddly about tech hates them. They are flemsy, they use low grade parts, and they are cheaply assembled. Even wobbly where they should have used 4 to 5 screws and instead they used 2 or 3. ETC. ETC.

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 09:26 AM

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 09:29 AM

Originally posted by praetorian_x

<laugh/> Nice. And, for the most part, correct.

Tragically, even an idiot can see these updates are max lamer.

Cheers,
prat

Why do you fall for such marketting gimmicks and sales pitches?

Sheesh, again, take your 300 horsepower camero and I will take my 200 horsepower BMW. Both are nice cars etc. etc.

It all depends on the application. If you want a cheap posix server, I say linux on intel, if you want a friendly and good experience I say MOSX, if you want a clunky os with good office software I say Windows on x86...

O:-)

sedarby

Feb 5, 2003, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by DrGruv1
I've saved up $2000 for my next computer and still waitting...

I desperately need the power for virtual software synths and samplers for music.

HOW MANY ARE GOING TO BUY 1ST GEN. of the 970?

From my experience, it is better to wait for the the 2nd gen. at get the bugs worked out.. especially on a $2000+ purchase.

So... WHEN ARE YOU BUYING?

$2000 for a new processor based Macintosh?:D

I expect those machines to carry a very hefty price tag for a while!
Apple knows if they produce a machine that outperforms any PC they can name their price and people will line up to buy it.

Anyone want to speculate on the price of the new machines?

yzedf

Feb 5, 2003, 10:17 AM

Originally posted by sedarby

$2000 for a new processor based Macintosh?:D

I expect those machines to carry a very hefty price tag for a while!
Apple knows if they produce a machine that outperforms any PC they can name their price and people will line up to buy it.

Anyone want to speculate on the price of the new machines?

Problem is... that is exactly what Apple is doing now. :(

In order for them to offer cheaper prices, they have to sell out of date hardware. They can not sell more, ala Dell, to fluidize production and keep all other overhead costs at a minimum.

Just think... at the Dell assembly plants, they never, ever, have mroe than 2 hours of inventory! None of this slipshod not having 5GB iPods available for weeks on end before anouncing a replacement. They just stop production, and start with the new. There are no extras, there is no short fall. It's just done right (from a maunufacturing standpoint). Lets see Apple do that for a change.

~~~~~~~~

Question: will the rumored new iBook have a new case design? should it?

macdiehard

Feb 5, 2003, 10:52 AM

Someone made a good point about the imac being priced fairly close to the PB 12 ". It does seem Apples strategy is to push people towards notebooks.

In my business I have to have portability but also I need to work on a larger screen and a decent key board.

The choice is always whether to own a desk top and notebook or get a notebook with an external monitor.

A 12 " PB with a third part monitor - about $600 for a decent 17 inch screen, is almost a better way for me to go.

Though I think the imac is good for most small business use, most of us will get a lap top because we have to have one anyone.

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 01:40 PM

I mean, on the imacs, they have those high quality LCDs which cost a good bit. So just spending 400 dollars on the 15 inch and 600 dollars on the 17 makes a great deal of sense. And I hate to say it, if you are doing print you want an apple or another high end lcd with excellent color, like the more expensive Sony's, Sharps and NEC's.

Dave Marsh

Feb 5, 2003, 02:14 PM

Apple found they were repairing the same Macs multiple times, even when they'd swapped out all the electronics. This led them to check out the components they hadn't replaced, and they discovered a problem with the video cable. I got this from a Mac rep. :o

yosoyjay

Feb 5, 2003, 02:26 PM

Originally posted by MacQuest

responsivity:D

Whooops! I sure as hell wasn't talking about photodetectors.

Sorry.

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 02:29 PM

Originally posted by brian0526

Whoa. Is this true? What do I look for on macintouch.com to find documentation on this? I don't want to pay a premium for this machine and then find the RAM I slapped in it from a third party is causing kernel panics. Or worse yet, have kernel panics and not know the cause. I'll pay the premium for Apple's memory if it is indeed more stable than what I can buy at a reputable third party. I've had good luck with Crucial's RAM. Is there any reason to believe Apple's is better?

Brian

First: Crucial guarantees their memory, so if there is a problem (see below for proving it), you can get your money back (then add in the Apple Premium and a trip to the Apple Store to get Genuine Apple memory).

Second, yes, some memory suppliers make really bad memory. This has a lot to do with the legendary instability of the Intel PC. Do yourself a favor and look up "Signal 11 GCC" in Google. "Signal 11" (other signals get tripped too, but '11' is the most common) is tripped by inconsistent memory reads/writes. ECC memory helps on the reads but not on the writes. The recommended best test for bad memory, since GCC uncovers so many peoples' bad hardware, is to rebuild the Linux kernel on your computer. It is absolutely amazing how many computers (with the occaisional "expected" crash during day-to-day use, but nothing dramatic) throw up during a Linux kernel build because GCC gets a bad read. Nearly every time, replacing the memory in the computer fixes the problem.

So, if you are a fairly techy person, you can download the Linux kernel source, run "make" (which will make the executables, but won't install Linux on your Mac ...), and be fairly certain, if it all works, that the memory that you have in your machine is good.

Note that there are a good many commercial memory testers out there. They do a good job of testing memory, but the problem is that their tests are mostly redundant with those performed in the factory (linear, predictable access patterns), and so rarely uncover real memory issues after the memory has left the factory. Most factories don't do a kernel build on their memory before shipping it, so doing so (using gcc) finds a lot of bad memory that the factory tests missed.

Now, given that, you at least have a way (techy, but still a way) to verify and provide conclusive proof of bad memory. In my experience (not direct, but via others who've dealt with them) Crucial is really good about refunding/replacing memory even without anything like conclusive proof, but as always quality standards shift in this industry daily, so your mileage may vary.

But, yes, if you just don't want to take the risk, buying all memory from Apple (at 2x cost) is a sure antidote. Then, if any instability occurs, you've got one vendor to talk to instead of two or more ... which of course is the beauty and the curse of the Apple platform ...

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 03:04 PM

Originally posted by cr2sh
My guess is we'll see a ppc970 with AND without altivec. After all, how many consumers understand the velocity engine? Wouldn't it be a better marketing strategy? And wouldn't many people argue that Mototrola is already using this method? What after all is the difference in the g3 and g4? I expect we'll get a 1gig g3 ibook by may, and maybe another power series update... but come fall news of the 970s (plural) will hit. :D

</speculation>

Doubt it. The 970 was designed with Altivec. The reason the G3's don't have Altivec is (now) because they are produced by IBM, who didn't think the G3+Altivec (ie, G4) design scaled well enough (originally, of course, Motorola sold G3s and G4s because G3s were cheaper to produce and they couldn't keep up with the G4 demand as it was). Their new Altivec implementation in the 970, I would think, answers that problem (ie, IBM appears to have faith that the 970 will scale quite well).

Taking Altivec off the 970 would reduce cost, yes, and allow other things on the chip (more cache instead of Altivec registers and code?), but the lack of Altivec in half of Apple's machines is a thorn in Apple's side. Apple would love to fully optimize OS X for Altivec, and would love for its third-party developers to make more universal use of Altivec instructions. The chip landscape will already be fractured 32-bi vs 64-bit; no need to add altivec-non-altivec into the mix on both sides of that fracture too!

Although Intel and AMD are obviously not the wisest decision-makers around, they also cme to the same conclusion: while MMX, SSE, and SSE-2 take up chip space, from the moment they were introduced they were supported universally in their line (MMX in the higher-freqency Pentiums, plus SSE in the P-2s, plus SSE-2 in the P-4s). Same with 3D-Now and 3D-Now Plus (or whatever it's called) on the K6 and Athlons. While the Celeron has been a step behind in the MMX/SSE/SSE2 lineup, that has been because of the architecture on which it is based (P3 until recently). Still, until Intel stopped manufacturing MMX-only chips, SSE didn't really take off, and you still don't see widespread usage of SSE-2 except in specialized apps because there is a vast user-base out there that would never see an improvement.

I don't believe Apple has enough market to support a "Celeron"-style "value" line as well as a "P3"-style "consumer" line (G4) as well as a "P4/Itanium"-style "professional/server" line (970) of CPUs. The existing lines share a lot of common bits (controller chips, design work, etc); fracturing that into four roughly incompatible lines would dramatically reduce cost-effectiveness.

All this is of course IMHO, and someone with real inside knowledge would probably disagree with just about every point. But that's the way I see it. I'd be very surprised if Altivec was taken out to make a "970-lite" (which would be, what ... Power4-lite-lite?)

Le Big Mac

Feb 5, 2003, 03:17 PM

Originally posted by 365

Yeah right, you don't work in the PR department at Apple do you, this exactly the angle they'd come at. These machines aren't just underpowered, they're overpriced for for the spec. What's the spin on this?

Nah, but I recognize that Apple is a business not a charity. They can't just give their computers away, much as I'd like them to.

I'm looking to buy a new mac in very short order. Do you think I wasn't disappointed that they didn't have more impressive upgrades? Of course, I want faster for less money. Everyone does. But if Apple can't sell faster for more money in this economy, they can at least try to sell something for less money.

brian0526

Feb 5, 2003, 03:22 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont

But, yes, if you just don't want to take the risk, buying all memory from Apple (at 2x cost) is a sure antidote. Then, if any instability occurs, you've got one vendor to talk to instead of two or more ... which of course is the beauty and the curse of the Apple platform ...

OK, just got off the line with Crucial and took a little trip to the Apple store. I need some advice from you experts here.

Crucial's 512 MB DDR PC2100 • CL=2.5 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • 7.5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 64 is $99.00

Apple wants $200.00 to put a 512 MB module in the first slot (seems like robbery to me since they get to keep the 256 MB DIMM). They also want $200 for a 512 MB module in the second slot.

I know in the previous iMacs there was this little caveat that only authorized Apple servicers could replace that first module. I also believe it took a different module. The guy at Crucial told me this module should work for both slots in the new iMacs. Is there any way to confirm this?

I'd like to start out with at least 512 MB of RAM and I'd like to have that first slot have a 512 MB module so that if I want to add more RAM, I can do it easily. Should I just pay the Apple store to put a 512 MB module in the first slot even though I hate to pay $200 for a module that should only cost about 1/2 that plus they keep the 256 module?

Thanks,
Brian

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 03:31 PM

Originally posted by MacBandit

What machine are you running? My Dual/GHz/DDR PowerMac start terminal in less then one bounce and though window resizing isn't absolutely fluid it doesn't affect system speed.

Hmm. A lowly single 733MHz G4 here. 1.5 bounces (bounces up/down/up, then the window is there) on initial (just booted) launch of Terminal.app. .75 bounces (gets halfway back down before the window pops up) on second launch.

As for Emacs, I don't use it much on OSX, but I find that on my Linux bosen X-Emacs takes an excruciatingly long time to start up, so much so that oftentimes I just open it straight in a terminal and forego mouse niceties ... Opening emacs in a Terminal window on OSX is pretty well near instantaneous for me too. I haven't tried the X-Windows X-Emacs though ... Just not sure where the launch-time complaint is coming from here.

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 03:34 PM

Originally posted by praetorian_x

OK, *last post* and I'm going to friggen bed:

[KDE compile took "only" 12 hours on a Mac laptop]

No, that's insanely slow. (I'm getting a complex: do I use the word insanely too much? Maybe I've been listening to apple marketing too long...) In fact, I'm very, very suprised. But with a big compile like KDE you are often disk and FSB limited. The FSB issue with g4's has been beaten to death, and laptops in general have very slow hard-drives.

It would be a lot faster on a p4 with true DDR and a fast disk. Of course, you'd have to have it plugged in.

Cheers,
prat

Aw, hell. It's faster on my 800MHz P3 laptop (<3 hours to fully compile KDE 3.0 when it came out)! And that's using gcc (of course), which is insanely slow compared to MS's C compiler, and a highly un-optimized Linux installation ...

yosoyjay

Feb 5, 2003, 03:37 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont

I don't believe Apple has enough market to support a "Celeron"-style "value" line as well as a "P3"-style "consumer" line (G4) as well as a "P4/Itanium"-style "professional/server" line (970) of CPUs. The existing lines share a lot of common bits (controller chips, design work, etc); fracturing that into four roughly incompatible lines would dramatically reduce cost-effectiveness.

Your interpretation of Intel chips is mostly correct, but...
Celeron, P4, P4M, & Banias (or whatever it is called now) are the consumer chips. Xeon is the professional/server chip. Itanium/Itanium2 are the server chips.

Intel is the only semiconductor company that can afford to build such a range of chips.

yosoyjay

Feb 5, 2003, 03:41 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont

Aw, hell. It's faster on my 800MHz P3 laptop (<3 hours to fully compile KDE 3.0 when it came out)! And that's using gcc (of course), which is insanely slow compared to MS's C compiler, and a highly un-optimized Linux installation ...

I compiled KDE on my 500 iBook and it took 3 days. :( It took my 366 Celeron about 10 hours.

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 03:41 PM

Originally posted by Nermal

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to go to 1 GB, wouldn't you need two 512s, one for each slot?

That was assuming that you have three slots, two open, so that you can just add 768 MB to go from 256MB to 1GB ... Not sure how many slots are open on the iMacs. If you had to throw out your original 256MB DIMM(s) then the cost to post-purchase upgrade to 1GB memory goes up to $240.

On the other hand, if you're talking about Apple's markup on the memory, then you have to remember that they won't be "throwing out" 256MB of memory; they'll just purchase 1GB instead, which means their net cost will be less than $180 for the upgrade (less because $180 already includes a markup from Crucial.com), and since they're chargine $400 for this upgrade, they have over 100% markup.

possible switch

Feb 5, 2003, 04:12 PM

Okay, I'm probably going to purchase the low end iMac tonight with 512 MB RAM and Office X. I think that would be sufficient for my final two years of college and probably law school as well. A few questions though that I need to consider:

1) What are the chances of the screen tilting? I know there are thousands of iMac users out there, so the complaints on Apple's support message board are probably a very small sample. Does anyone else have this problem? Do they fix it?

2) Are the fonts fuzzy? I've heard they're not as crisp as on PCs, and there's nothing you can do about it. Am I going to get headaches when I'm writing papers and doing research?

3) Are dead pixels common on these machines? I've heard some complaints about having pixels die in the middle of the screen, and unless there are a lot of them, they won't replace them.

Is there anything else I should know before making perhaps one of the biggest changes in my life and rendering my years of software basically useless for a $1600 iMac package? I want to be extremely happy for that much money!!!

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 04:30 PM

Originally posted by TheCat

hi, i seem to remember that when the last Power Mac's were released last August that everyone was complaining that they wern't "real" ddr..
How is the new 17"iMac and the 2003-Power Mac's? DDR full or (err) not full? :-)

Don't fully understand it, but just curious..
TIA
Steve

Like the PowerMacs, the iMac has "real" DDR memory. The path from the System Controller (heretofore refered to as the "chipset" even though it is only a single chip) to the memory operates at a double-pumped 133MHz (for an effective rate of 266MHz).

However, the complaint with the PowerMacs and by extension the DDR iMacs is that the System Controller - to - CPU bus is not double-pumped, and hence runs at precisely 133MHz. This means that the CPU-to-memory data rate is the same as it was for non-DDR SDRAM. To make matters worse, on a dual-processor system, both CPUs share that 133MHz front-side bus, which means that each processor (assuming both are contending for the bus at the same time) might only see effectively 1/4 of the overall memory bus bandwidth at any one time.

HOWEVER, the device-to-memory data rate is ALSO 133MHz, and so having DDR memory in there means that devices (like the AGP video card for instance) can access all the memory they want to without contending for memory bus bandwidth with the CPU (at least in theory).

This is important, and is lost on far too many on these boards. The DDR memory bus can still be used to its full potential because the CPU and peripheral devices can, altogether, saturate the memory bus.

On the Intel side, the CPU-chipset bus is oversized, meaning that the CPU cn be taking up the entire memory bandwidth and still take in data from peripherals. This is good, as most peripherals can only talk to system memory via the CPU on the Intel platform. On the Mac platform, the chipset-memory bus is oversized, which allows a unique feature of the architecture (peripherals having more or less direct access to memory) to be further enhanced by faster memory.

Honestly the Intel approach is not technically any better than the mac approach. It is just different. On the Intel system you HAVE to have a super-fast and super-connected CPU because everything goes through the CPU. Each iteration of the Intel architecture since the Pentium has made this more and more the case (and this has allowed Intel to justify the "need" for faster CPUs - because now CPUs are expected to do some part of the jobs of everything from the modem to the sound card to the netwrk card to the video card). The Mac/PPC architecture allows devices to talk to each other without necessarily using the CPU, and so the CPU doesn't necessarily have to be super-connected.

On the other hand, if you run Wintel-style benchmarks, and even most consumer apps, you will see that the CPU-to-memory pipe is clogged and a definite bottleneck on the Mac. The platform is simply not optimized for churn-and-burn CPU-intensive apps. It is, however, great for "intelligent" peripherals, which is why you see so much better performance in audio/video capture and control applications than you would expect given the relative CPU benchmarks. This is, of course, assuming "intelligent" peripherals, of which every day there are fewer (more peripherals assume the CPU will be doing half their job now, because if the CPU is from Intel it will be ... Win/Mac hardware will not be optimized to take advantage of the Mac platform's characteristics!)

Calling PM DDR "fake" is incredibly oversimplifying the issue, and leads to a lot of people having no idea what exactly is "wrong" with the platform. The DDR is 100% real. It really operates at 266MHz effective. The difference relative to an Intel/AMD architecture, however, is that the CPU can't talk to the rest of the system at 266MHz; it talks at 133MHz.

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by yosoyjay

I compiled KDE on my 500 iBook and it took 3 days. :( It took my 366 Celeron about 10 hours.

Did you boot into console or did you actually have Aqua running at that time? It took 9 hours to compile on my powerbook g3 400 with 640 ram with aqua going and took 6 in console mode...

hmmm

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

970 is rumored to start at 1.8GHz.

Correction: The PPC is stated (as in, by IBM) to debut at 1.2GHz-1.8GHz.

1.8GHz is the high-end of the stated potential debut range. The really nice power-consumption figures you see for the 970 are based on a 1.2GHz frequency, and I'd expect that Apple might use such an underclocked processor for an ultra-long-life, ultra-quiet, ultra-portable. But that's speculation, not rumor.

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 04:40 PM

Originally posted by yosoyjay

Your interpretation of Intel chips is mostly correct, but...
Celeron, P4, P4M, & Banias (or whatever it is called now) are the consumer chips. Xeon is the professional/server chip. Itanium/Itanium2 are the server chips.

Intel is the only semiconductor company that can afford to build such a range of chips.

Wrong, IBM can. They build a large range of High High end processors, and the G3s. Intel just has a corner squared away in the market.

Xeons are low range - mid range server chips. Itaniums are trash. And Intel, Motorola, AMD and IBM all make hundreds of other semiconductors (and very specialized for that matter) for hundreds of other applications that are for things (smart toasters ho ho ho) rather than standard computing.

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 04:53 PM

Originally posted by yzedf

Problem is... that is exactly what Apple is doing now. :(

In order for them to offer cheaper prices, they have to sell out of date hardware. They can not sell more, ala Dell, to fluidize production and keep all other overhead costs at a minimum.

Just think... at the Dell assembly plants, they never, ever, have mroe than 2 hours of inventory! None of this slipshod not having 5GB iPods available for weeks on end before anouncing a replacement. They just stop production, and start with the new. There are no extras, there is no short fall. It's just done right (from a maunufacturing standpoint). Lets see Apple do that for a change.

Dell does not have a "2-hour inventory"! Maybe at a particular assembly site, but that's not saying much! Their motherboard inventory is about the same as Apple's, as is their enclosure and add-in card supply. You think Dell gets an order in, fires up the plastic extrusion machine to pop out one case, fires up the lithographs to produce a single motherboard, and runs to CompUSA to pick u a SoundBlaster and video card? BS!

Dell has an inventory (5-6 days on parts), and, yes, they also have an obsolete-inventory problem. You can get some decent deals on last-iteration models from Dell (go to Dell.com regularly and you'll see quite a few "closeout" bargains). Unfortunately for Dell, unlike Apple, their "next generation" of hardware is always announced for them by their suppliers before they have it ready, which costs them millions in obsolete hardware that no one wants to buy because the next new thing is due to come out any day now.

Reference:

http://www.itworld.com/App/741/IWD010312hndellchain/pfindex.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.06/wired_index.html?pg=13

SwitchHitter

Feb 5, 2003, 04:55 PM

HEY FOLKS, I HOPE SOMEONE HAS SOME GOOD INSIGHT HERE..

I just purchased the new Imac (the top end one) with 768mg ram, since they didn't have 1gig.

Anyway, a few observations from someone WHO HAS NEVER USED/OWNED a mac:

1. I personally think it's slow to download pages of the internet, even with DSL.. my laptop (right next to it) is faster.. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Seems to happen with both Explorer and Safari..... (this makes me sick).

2. I swear (and my partner) agrees, that the screen resolution is blurry compared to my laptop pc (a 3 year old Toshiba Portege). I called up Apple and we worked on the screen resolution, but it all is set correctly. Am I going to have to accept a lower resolution? It seems that smaller letters, etc. are a tad blurry (this makes me sick as well).

Did I make a mistake in buying an Apple???

Greenlightboi

Feb 5, 2003, 04:57 PM

Originally posted by iJon

yeah yeah, we hear this all the time. i have a bling bling pc i built which is very very nice. I also have a dual 1.25 mac and a 12 inch powerbook. but i HATE working on my pc, i have it for games. i know a lot about windows and macs, but its just when i sit down at my pc it just plain isnt fun. yeah im sure my 2ghz pc is faster than my dual 1.25, but i dont care. It's just they gui is so friendly and nice to be around, i love just browsing the web and pulling up itunes and listening to somthing. windows media player just plain sucks and i hate it. i love the interface of mail, i refuse to check my mail in outlook any more on my pc because outlook is way to messy and bloated. i could go on and on. i work with computer customers every week, and if you were in my shoes you would learn that about 70% percent of the people i talk to dont give a rats ass about the speed. These people get so caught up in me showing them iPhoto, iMovie, Mac OS X that they dont even look at the spec sheet, they just tell me i want one and i want one know. I recently had an old lady, between 60-70 years old who was dying to breast cancer. She came in and told me she wanted to make the most of her final years and really wanted to have some cool stuff and have soem fun. We spend quality time together on the computers and I showed her the things she, a normal person could do. This is what she purchased from me that following week. She purchased a high end 17 inch imac, best canon powershot money can buy, a very nice canon camcorder, and a 20gb ipod and much much more. I talk to her all the time when she comes in and she can never thank me enough. She is living life to the fullest now and filming vacations, saving those precious moments listening to music all on her mac and doing things she never though possible, and none of it on a 2ghz windows machine. these are a majority of customers and this is what peopl want to do, apple cant switch everyone. but like i said, i got the pimp mac and the pimp pc, and i am always at my mac unless im playing a game. if apple cant do it for you, go to pc, its ok, itjust a computer. but just to let you know your telling us an old arguement and nobody can ever win.

iJon

iJon, I you didn't quite understand me. I am a die-hard Apple fan... but every year, Apple's market share gets smaller and smaller.... the newest reports being that we have 3.15%, and Apple's last financial report being that they have lost money. Yeah, my Macs are alot more fun, but they are in no means as capable as the PCs are on their way to be. I can't every imagine myself being a new windows machine... I shudder at the thought of it iJon. I try to flaunt every Apple strength, but she can't do it anymore. Apple simply cannot supply all the computers need to compete. Yes, Apple has done well since Jobs has arrived, but its back in a slump and that may very well be because of the fact Apple can't do it alone.

I guess I'm getting at clones, but that fight should prbably be in a new thread lol.

Greenlightboi

Feb 5, 2003, 05:03 PM

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 05:10 PM

Apple isn't going anywhere. They mainly lost money because of the Tax Bills they had to pay and the bad economy. EVERYONE is doing bad in the market.

Also, who cares how much market apple has, as long as they sell well and they make decent money they will stay alive. Also with Mac versions of Adobe and Macromedia software being 30 - 45% of their sales, they will always support them.

As long as apple people whine about processor speeds, people who don't know jack about computing are going to see that and think that the intelmongers are right.

Also, apples market share is shrinking because so many people are able to run older machines for such a long time, not compared to the windows market where you have to upgrade every three years. We are using 5 year old macs at my work, including Beige G3's running Jaguar. Lets see someone put XP Pro on a 5 year old machine and it be usable.

So when those numbers appear, think about all those business computers that are bought yearly and are replaced and are constantly counted as "MARKET SHARE" even though they are outdated and unusable.

Linux is going to probably (hopefully) change all of that.

O:-)

Greenlightboi

Feb 5, 2003, 05:12 PM

jettredmont

Feb 5, 2003, 05:36 PM

Originally posted by SwitchHitter
HEY FOLKS, I HOPE SOMEONE HAS SOME GOOD INSIGHT HERE..

I just purchased the new Imac (the top end one) with 768mg ram, since they didn't have 1gig.

Anyway, a few observations from someone WHO HAS NEVER USED/OWNED a mac:

1. I personally think it's slow to download pages of the internet, even with DSL.. my laptop (right next to it) is faster.. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Seems to happen with both Explorer and Safari..... (this makes me sick).

Hmm. Well, first thing I'd check was network latencies: open Terminal and type "ping www.yahoo.com" (I'm sure yahoo wonders why I'm always pinging them, but they're an easy-to-remember site to ping). Look at the response times (you'll have to hit Control-C after a few pings come back or ping will go forever).

Then, on your Portege, run the same command in a command prompt window. Compare the results.

NOTE: the Windows box will not give you accuracy below 10 ms (in fact, the accuracy of the Wintel system clock is ~10ms, so you will get something like 10 ms or 20ms or 30ms, etc). The mac's clock will give you down to micro-seconds ("10.78ms" is a vlid elapsed-time measurement on PPC hardware, impossible to get on a PC). So, keep in mind that you might well see "0ms" as a response time in Windows, which just means that the response took less than 10ms, not anywhere near 10ms. If you are getting 10-20ms range on the Mac, network latency is likely not your problem. If you are getting higher numbers on the Mac, and relatively low numbers on the PC, then you have evidence that the latency is too high.

Personally, here at work I see ~10ms latency on ping on my Mac and on my PC.

Next, try timing a longer download. Find the URL to something fairly big (maybe www.digidesign.com/news/hotnews/PTv6/images/surround_large.jpg ... 148kb of a snappy server?) and go to the Terminal prompt again to download it using:

time curl www.digidesign.com/news/hotnews/PTv6/images/surround_large.jpg > blah

You should see something like:

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr.
Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed
100 146k 100 146k 0 0 790k 0 0:00:00 0:00:00 0:00:00 75184
0.020u 0.040s 0:00.34 17.6% 0+0k 0+6io 0pf+0w

Look at the "0:00.34" area to see how long the download actually took in seconds (the last line there, bolded, is output by "time" ... "man time" to see the technical gibberish regarding what the various numbers actually mean ... the other lines are output by curl, and the "Total" column should pretty well match the "time" value, although only to the second, not to the 1/100th of a second ...)

You'll need to download cURL for Windows to do the precise same test on your Portege, but assuming you can get a download that takes minutes instead of seconds, a stopwatch with IE should give you a good idea of the Portege's network throughput.

Personally, here on a fast work net connection, I see identical download times on my Mac and PC. That doesn't mean your DSL will react the same to them though.

Now, I'm not going to tell you how to fix latency and throughput problems (that's a bigger topic than I have time for), but that will at least give you some concrete experimental numbers to take with you when you call up Apple support.

2. I swear (and my partner) agrees, that the screen resolution is blurry compared to my laptop pc (a 3 year old Toshiba Portege). I called up Apple and we worked on the screen resolution, but it all is set correctly. Am I going to have to accept a lower resolution? It seems that smaller letters, etc. are a tad blurry (this makes me sick as well).

Go into System Preferences (looks like a light switch with an Apple logo in the dock). Click on "General". Towards the bottom you should see "Font Smoothing". Change it to something lighter. Also, you can turn off font smoothing for larger fonts by changing the "Turn off text smoothing for font sizes ... and smaller" selection to something larger than the (default) 9.

Font anti-aliasing is a very personal thing. Some people love a lot of anti-aliasing; others hate having any whatsoever. Your "crisp" Portege most likely has font smoothing turned way down or even off entirely. Change your Mac settings until you are comfortable with the results.

possible switch

Feb 5, 2003, 06:20 PM

Originally posted by possible switch
Okay, I'm probably going to purchase the low end iMac tonight with 512 MB RAM and Office X. I think that would be sufficient for my final two years of college and probably law school as well. A few questions though that I need to consider:

1) What are the chances of the screen tilting? I know there are thousands of iMac users out there, so the complaints on Apple's support message board are probably a very small sample. Does anyone else have this problem? Do they fix it?

2) Are the fonts fuzzy? I've heard they're not as crisp as on PCs, and there's nothing you can do about it. Am I going to get headaches when I'm writing papers and doing research?

3) Are dead pixels common on these machines? I've heard some complaints about having pixels die in the middle of the screen, and unless there are a lot of them, they won't replace them.

Is there anything else I should know before making perhaps one of the biggest changes in my life and rendering my years of software basically useless for a $1600 iMac package? I want to be extremely happy for that much money!!!

*waits patiently to have all of his questions answered...* :D

kangaroo

Feb 5, 2003, 06:28 PM

Originally posted by possible switch
Okay, I'm probably going to purchase the low end iMac tonight with 512 MB RAM and Office X. ...

2) Are the fonts fuzzy? I've heard they're not as crisp as on PCs, and there's nothing you can do about it. Am I going to get headaches when I'm writing papers and doing research?
...

Goto apple.com,
select 'Support',
select 'Join Discussions',
select 'iMac',
scroll down to 'iMac (Flat Panel)' & select 'Displays'.
You'll find several threads including "iMac 17": A disgusted switcher" and "Does Apple Care - Fuzzy Fonts on Flat Panel" that highlight the problem you refer to.

Although OSX provides a way to adjust 'font smoothing' it's limited and may not provide the solution you're hoping for--it didn't for me. :mad:

possible switch

Feb 5, 2003, 06:41 PM

That's where I got all my information. If these problems are widespread, I'll just spend my money elsewhere. Ugh. Switching is harder than they make it out to be. I haven't even made it to the ordering phase yet. lol

yosoyjay

Feb 5, 2003, 06:45 PM

Originally posted by GPTurismo

Did you boot into console or did you actually have Aqua running at that time? It took 9 hours to compile on my powerbook g3 400 with 640 ram with aqua going and took 6 in console mode...

hmmm

I was running Aqua, but I was also doing all my usual stuff like browsing, email, writing, etc. as well.

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 09:34 PM

Originally posted by yosoyjay

I was running Aqua, but I was also doing all my usual stuff like browsing, email, writing, etc. as well.

that's what did it. LOL. KDE is a huge install. ;)

try doing it in console mode doing nothing else

GPT

shadowfax

Feb 5, 2003, 09:43 PM

Originally posted by GPTurismo

that's what did it. LOL. KDE is a huge install. ;)

try doing it in console mode doing nothing else

GPT

When you compiled KDE, did you compile all 150 MB of the stuff? and, was it KDE 3 (beta or otherwise)?

GPTurismo

Feb 5, 2003, 09:47 PM

Originally posted by kangaroo

Goto apple.com,
select 'Support',
select 'Join Discussions',
select 'iMac',
scroll down to 'iMac (Flat Panel)' & select 'Displays'.
You'll find several threads including "iMac 17": A disgusted switcher" and "Does Apple Care - Fuzzy Fonts on Flat Panel" that highlight the problem you refer to.

Although OSX provides a way to adjust 'font smoothing' it's limited and may not provide the solution you're hoping for--it didn't for me. :mad:

Well one of those was due to shipping damage. I didn't even notice to see if he got it from apple or a reseller... and he blames apple. Hee :)

As for the fonts, I have unpacked almost 10 17 inch flat panels, and right out of the box the fonts aren't so nice. I don't know why apple did that. I simply went into system preferences: general and changed the font smoothing to medium: best for flat panel and it fixed the problem. It wasn't grossly bad, but noticeable. If anything, and you don't like the antialiasing turn the font size for it to start doing it to a real high font, not 9 point.

Also, people have a tendency in general to complain about LCDs when they run them in non native resolution.

Finally, if I were to hate dells for how they were shipped my comp just had 26 delivered where a majority were rained on before UPS picked them up.

A) Dell shouldn't have released them
B) UPS shouldn't have picked them up soaking wet.

The only reason we know this is because the boxes were soaked but UPS acceptence labels were perfectly water damage free...

Luckily dell is replacing them but it's going to take a week to get them since they were all BTO.

I hate people :D ;)

yzedf

Feb 5, 2003, 10:09 PM

Originally posted by jettredmont

Dell does not have a "2-hour inventory"! Maybe at a particular assembly site, but that's not saying much! Their motherboard inventory is about the same as Apple's, as is their enclosure and add-in card supply. You think Dell gets an order in, fires up the plastic extrusion machine to pop out one case, fires up the lithographs to produce a single motherboard, and runs to CompUSA to pick u a SoundBlaster and video card? BS!

Dell has an inventory (5-6 days on parts), and, yes, they also have an obsolete-inventory problem. You can get some decent deals on last-iteration models from Dell (go to Dell.com regularly and you'll see quite a few "closeout" bargains). Unfortunately for Dell, unlike Apple, their "next generation" of hardware is always announced for them by their suppliers before they have it ready, which costs them millions in obsolete hardware that no one wants to buy because the next new thing is due to come out any day now.

Reference:

http://www.itworld.com/App/741/IWD010312hndellchain/pfindex.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.06/wired_index.html?pg=13

Care to reference something other than articles from 2001 and 1999 please?

Your argument is ludicrous.

http://specials.ft.com/ftit/FT352151L0D.html

Although its 5 hours inventory based on 2 hour old orders. My bad.

scorpion

Feb 6, 2003, 12:32 AM

Let me know what the experts think.

1) Why buy an iMac? I just got a digital camcorder after Christmas (despite the ludicrous argument heard often here by people who own $4,000 computers that DV camcorders are owned only by a few people, they are now competing with analog camcorders in terms of price and beating the pants off them in terms of quality) and find my beloved iBook 500 isn't cutting the mustard in terms of processor or hard drive space (even maxed out at 640MB RAM). So, I called the Apple store, picked up the bottom of the line G4, and asked for a DVD-R drive (didn't think I'd ever want one, but how else will I share movies?) Paid $200 more and without discounts end up at $1,699. (Yes, I got discounts.) And yes, I now have to buy a reasonable display. OK, so I pay more for the total package but at least I can upgrade it.

2) Why all the whining about numbers and processors? If your computer is good enough for you, it's good enough. Apple sells really nice machines that work well and are user friendly. If all you do on your computer is play games you may be better off with a PC. But as someone who has owned Macs for 17 years and used mainly PCs at work for the last 13, I find Macs (particularly with Office) are better business machines. I consider myself fairly computer literate and an Excel power user. I know Windows machines have their place; but that place is getting smaller and smaller. And for those who say the computing experience doesn't matter -- you're a little addicted to a number which has no real value to the home user (the overwhelming majority of purchasers). People buy computers based on perception -- the perception now is that the Mac is an expensive artist's machine. The truth is it has a lower TCO and can do everything the average PC user wants it to -- better. And you can thank Bill Gates for that.

3) Life is about choices. Apple's given us a lot. The fact is Apples (or any computers) are essentially overpriced because (short of cars) they are the most rapidly-depreciating purchase you can make. So if you're going to burn your money, you may as well do it in a way that keeps you warm, not just pays the match salesman.

OK, waiting for the flames.

shadowfax

Feb 6, 2003, 12:51 AM

Originally posted by scorpion
Let me know what the experts think.

1) Why buy an iMac? I just got a digital camcorder after Christmas (despite the ludicrous argument heard often here by people who own $4,000 computers that DV camcorders are owned only by a few people, they are now competing with analog camcorders in terms of price and beating the pants off them in terms of quality) and find my beloved iBook 500 isn't cutting the mustard in terms of processor or hard drive space (even maxed out at 640MB RAM). So, I called the Apple store, picked up the bottom of the line G4, and asked for a DVD-R drive (didn't think I'd ever want one, but how else will I share movies?) Paid $200 more and without discounts end up at $1,699. (Yes, I got discounts.) And yes, I now have to buy a reasonable display. OK, so I pay more for the total package but at least I can upgrade it.

2) Why all the whining about numbers and processors? If your computer is good enough for you, it's good enough. Apple sells really nice machines that work well and are user friendly. If all you do on your computer is play games you may be better off with a PC. But as someone who has owned Macs for 17 years and used mainly PCs at work for the last 13, I find Macs (particularly with Office) are better business machines. I consider myself fairly computer literate and an Excel power user. I know Windows machines have their place; but that place is getting smaller and smaller. And for those who say the computing experience doesn't matter -- you're a little addicted to a number which has no real value to the home user (the overwhelming majority of purchasers). People buy computers based on perception -- the perception now is that the Mac is an expensive artist's machine. The truth is it has a lower TCO and can do everything the average PC user wants it to -- better. And you can thank Bill Gates for that.

3) Life is about choices. Apple's given us a lot. The fact is Apples (or any computers) are essentially overpriced because (short of cars) they are the most rapidly-depreciating purchase you can make. So if you're going to burn your money, you may as well do it in a way that keeps you warm, not just pays the match salesman.

OK, waiting for the flames.

no flames here. can you clarify your third point? i am not sure i understand it properly.

LethalWolfe

Feb 6, 2003, 01:38 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

no flames here. can you clarify your third point? i am not sure i understand it properly.

I think his third point was if yer gonna go, go big. You're going to end up spending $$ on a computer that won't be worth $ in a year or two so you might as well spend $$$ and get something you really like.

Lethal

shadowfax

Feb 6, 2003, 01:48 AM

Originally posted by LethalWolfe

I think his third point was if yer gonna go, go big. You're going to end up spending $$ on a computer that won't be worth $ in a year or two so you might as well spend $$$ and get something you really like.

Lethal

that makes sense. thanks. i agree with that too.

Dave Marsh

Feb 6, 2003, 01:52 AM

Quoted from SwitchHitter - 2. I swear (and my partner) agrees, that the screen resolution is blurry compared to my laptop pc (a 3 year old Toshiba Portege). I called up Apple and we worked on the screen resolution, but it all is set correctly. Am I going to have to accept a lower resolution? It seems that smaller letters, etc. are a tad blurry (this makes me sick as well).
------------------------------
SwitchHitter -

MacOS X anti-aliases its on-screen text. This is a feature of Quartz screen rendering. Check that you've selected the text smoothing you like best in the System Preferences/General panel. Go to the bottom of the window and try out the options. You can basically turn off font smoothing below a certain font size (12 pt or less), to get sharp, albeit jagged text.

Also assure you've selected the proper resolution for your monitor. If it's the 17" LCD, I believe that's 1440x900 (usually the highest listed). The default resolution for the LCD should be sharp and clear. Selecting any other resolution will generate a fuzzy, lower rez image.

Dave Marsh

Feb 6, 2003, 02:16 AM

Quoted from SwitchHitter - 1. I personally think it's slow to download pages of the internet, even with DSL.. my laptop (right next to it) is faster.. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Seems to happen with both Explorer and Safari..... (this makes me sick).
-------------------

SwitchHitter -

Internet Explorer 5.2.2 in MacOS X does render pages slowly, even via DSL (which I have). Sadly, Microsoft has let IE stagnate on the Mac, even as they've kept IE in Windows moving along nicely. That's why I'm using the Safari beta Apple just released. I can't imagine why your Safari experience would be slow. Perhaps it's one of perception...I've been so used to IE on the Mac that it's a wonder to have Apple now building its own browser, knowing that it'll actually get ongoing enhancements, speed and otherwise. It's MUCH faster to me, as are a couple of other alternatives (e.g., Chimera). Concerning straight downloading of files, I hit 140KBps bursts downloading over my DSL in Safari, depending on the source server, so I don't think there's anything wrong there.
:)

shadowfax

Feb 6, 2003, 02:26 AM

Originally posted by SwitchHitter
HEY FOLKS, I HOPE SOMEONE HAS SOME GOOD INSIGHT HERE..

1. I personally think it's slow to download pages of the internet, even with DSL.. my laptop (right next to it) is faster.. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Seems to happen with both Explorer and Safari..... (this makes me sick).

Did I make a mistake in buying an Apple???

i think you should wait for safari to go final, and i also think you should understand something about windows internet explorer. it's integrated into the OS. this is great for speed and all, but it also makes your computer an order of magnitude more vulnerable to viruses. on a mac, you can just delete the internet explorer.app, and it's gone, you never have to think about it again. try deleting the IE folder on your PC? ha! it will literally ruin your computer. you can fix it sort of, but it will mess your computer up in weird ways till you clean install.

i think you must also be really picky. i will admit that on my powerbook, pages load a little slower than some PCs i have seen. but in the same sentence, they load really fast still; i have no complaints. but perhaps there really is a problem with the computer. have you tried using another iMac like it? is it just as slow? have you tried a clean jaguar install?

NicoMan

Feb 6, 2003, 02:30 AM

Originally posted by brian0526

OK, just got off the line with Crucial and took a little trip to the Apple store. I need some advice from you experts here.

Crucial's 512 MB DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Unbuffered ? Non-parity ? 7.5ns ? 2.5V ? 64Meg x 64 is $99.00

Apple wants $200.00 to put a 512 MB module in the first slot (seems like robbery to me since they get to keep the 256 MB DIMM). They also want $200 for a 512 MB module in the second slot.

I know in the previous iMacs there was this little caveat that only authorized Apple servicers could replace that first module. I also believe it took a different module. The guy at Crucial told me this module should work for both slots in the new iMacs. Is there any way to confirm this?

I'd like to start out with at least 512 MB of RAM and I'd like to have that first slot have a 512 MB module so that if I want to add more RAM, I can do it easily. Should I just pay the Apple store to put a 512 MB module in the first slot even though I hate to pay $200 for a module that should only cost about 1/2 that plus they keep the 256 module?

Thanks,
Brian

Well the 2 modules in the iMac are very different. Not that it makes a big difference in price, but the 'internal' slot is VERY difficult to access, and that's why it is preferable to upgrade your memory on the Apple store while precising 1 DIMM (unless you feel confident enough open up your iMac... all the way). The second one you can probably do it yourself.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 6, 2003, 04:43 AM

NicoMan

Feb 6, 2003, 05:29 AM

Originally posted by possible switch

*waits patiently to have all of his questions answered...* :D
As for the screen arm and dead pixels, from the people around those forums, they do not appear to be a common occurence. I am not saying it NEVER happens, but it doesn't happen often. From my own experience with LCDs, Apple LCDs are not better nor worse than any others in terms of dead pixels, so you should be ok with that. The tolerance levels (I don't have numbers in mind) depend on each manufacturer, I believe.

NicoMan

scorpion

Feb 6, 2003, 07:39 AM

Originally posted by Shadowfax

that makes sense. thanks. i agree with that too.

Yes, that's right. Let me explain a little more. I am looking to start doing some semi-serious video editing. So given my iBook 500, I can either:
a) struggle along and scream, because even the most loyal Macophile will agree the iBook (or probably any G3) is not enough for this purpoose and wait until I feel that I'm "outsmarting" Apple or some other company by finally buying below the market (not gonna happen) or

b) worry a little less about the price tag and more about the actual "cost"(i.e., wishing I always had something better and not doing editing because of what I said in (a)) and therefore proceeding with the purchase

Two other quick points:

a) I don't want to rehash "the argument" but my boss paid a very large sum of money for his Dell laptop. He travels frequently, but never takes it with him because it's "not set up" and he frankly doesn't see the value in proceeding. I am quite sure if he had a Mac laptop he'd be using it more. He's a smart guy and this literally could be an income producer for him and the Company he owns and I work for. So he (in theory) saved money on his laptop but it's now been nearly a year since he bought it. Guess what: it will be a bigger loser for him than my much-less priced iBook which I use at home and at work and take to business meetings.

b) When I said Apple's given us choices, I meant they have allowed people to choose from a broad range ($799 for the low end iMac to $2700 for the top-of-the line G4) of machines. We can argue they're not differentiated enough, but what Apple has done, I think, is include enough features at every level to allow a variety of purchasers to get what they want. Some people absolutely need a top-of-the-line G4. But some just need a reliable email and internet machine -- go for the eMac or yes, the old iMac. And let's not underestimate the consumer's sophistication. Most people (although blinded by numbers) will buy based on personal experience and recommendations. Apple's created a winning suite of software. I am confident within 6 months we'll see many, many new sales based on the iLife suite and people who want to enjoy their computers.

By the way, seems there are a lot of new people on the board who are here just to tell us how great Windows machines are. But their argument would be more effective if they could just tell me what they can do on their Windows machine that I can't do on my Mac (better). Let's exclude gaming because I frankly would probably buy a standalone game system. And remember, I'm a hardcore numbers guy at work. So please, the whole "it's only good for graphics" argument and the specious "processor speed" argument won't work on me.

Thanks.

Centris 650

Feb 6, 2003, 08:55 AM

Originally posted by scorpion

Yes, that's right. Let me explain a little more. I am looking to start doing some semi-serious video editing. So given my iBook 500, I can either:
a) struggle along and scream, because even the most loyal Macophile will agree the iBook (or probably any G3) is not enough for this purpoose and wait until I feel that I'm "outsmarting" Apple or some other company by finally buying below the market (not gonna happen) or

b) worry a little less about the price tag and more about the actual "cost"(i.e., wishing I always had something better and not doing editing because of what I said in (a)) and therefore proceeding with the purchase

Scorpion, you and I are in the same boat. I've got an iBook SE (FW) the last clamshell and the ibook right before yours. I work with teenagers and when we go on retreats or outings I usually carry my digital camcorder along to catch everything and then make a movie to show the parents. The parents and kids love this! However, iMovie 3 isn't supported on the clamshell!!!:mad: :mad: (Crazy that Apple wouldn't support it's computers that are 2 years old....) Well, I'm in the market for a new mac. I had been thinking about the iMac but what you say rings true. You've given me something to think about....I do have a question.

BTW which powermac did you get?

scorpion

Feb 6, 2003, 10:20 AM

I bought the "low-end" G4 1 Ghz single processor but added a SuperDrive for $200 more (I never realized they could essentially custom-build this.). I will probably buy the 17" flat panel next week. (The 20 looks nice though). So yes, I am into Apple for $2,300 before discounts but I will have two pieces of equipment which should serve me for at least 2-3 years. I'm quite sure it will be fine for my needs and the big plus is, it's expandable! worst case scenario is I use the G4 for Excel and Word in two years.

Let me know what you decide. Hope this helps.

GPTurismo

Feb 6, 2003, 11:00 AM

It was the full install of KDE 3. But I did do it in FINK and in Console Mode.

Macs are some of the slowest depreciative machines out there. I still can't find a good Powerbook 500 G4 for under 1200$. :(

And yes, numbers don't matter. It's all penal envy and bragging, nothing more. If the machine works well, use it. Remember, it's not about speed but how you use it! </lame>

LOL.

Finally, IE for mac is slow. The last I remember, they were working on IE 6 for mac to make it A) render exactly like IE 6 for PC and it was suppose to be their first full cocoa api app...

Which might shake up the mac browser market even more if they did that.

It's like the late 90s all over again except better macs and worse government ;)

GPT

MacBandit

Feb 6, 2003, 11:04 AM

Originally posted by Centris 650
However, iMovie 3 isn't supported on the clamshell!!!

Will the installer not let you install? In what way do they prevent you from using it?

iTry

Feb 6, 2003, 01:33 PM

I'm finally gonna buy one! Woo Hoo! If I get the top end with only 512 in slot 1, then I can buy another 512MB from Crucial. Still haven't priced this one up but I'm sure I'll save money!

And I'm sure somebody's answered this already, but...

Do the new iMacs boot OS9, or just X?

vniow

Feb 6, 2003, 01:51 PM

Originally posted by MacBandit

Will the installer not let you install? In what way do they prevent you from using it?

Clamshalls only have 800x600 screen rez, iMovie 3 requires at least 1024x768.

It's a silly artificial limit, people says it runs fine in 800x600 (by starting it up in 1024x768 and then switching to a lower rez) but it just won't start up in it.

russoesq

Feb 6, 2003, 03:04 PM

I've been an Apple user for almost 20 years and my biggest disappointment is that the Mac hasn't caught up as a gaming machine. Frankly, I can't understand why Apple doen't put in the necessary hardware to make their iMacs competitive with PCs for gaming. I think an awful lot of college age people go PC for gaming. And once lost to the "Dark Side", they don't come back. For that reason, I'm disappointed in the latest iMac revision.

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 6, 2003, 03:19 PM

Originally posted by russoesq
I've been an Apple user for almost 20 years and my biggest disappointment is that the Mac hasn't caught up as a gaming machine. Frankly, I can't understand why Apple doen't put in the necessary hardware to make their iMacs competitive with PCs for gaming. I think an awful lot of college age people go PC for gaming. And once lost to the "Dark Side", they don't come back. For that reason, I'm disappointed in the latest iMac revision. And i thought i was the only one. actually this is getting better everyday and with all the 1 gigers out there i would say from the gigers on up are going to be true gaming machines!the future of mac is getting brighter and brighter for the gamers:)

Centris 650

Feb 6, 2003, 03:30 PM

Originally posted by scorpion
I bought the "low-end" G4 1 Ghz single processor but added a SuperDrive for $200 more (I never realized they could essentially custom-build this.). I will probably buy the 17" flat panel next week. (The 20 looks nice though). So yes, I am into Apple for $2,300 before discounts but I will have two pieces of equipment which should serve me for at least 2-3 years. I'm quite sure it will be fine for my needs and the big plus is, it's expandable! worst case scenario is I use the G4 for Excel and Word in two years.

Let me know what you decide. Hope this helps.

Great. Let us know how you like it! I'm looking at buying the DP 1Ghz. The price has been reduced to $1994.00 and it already has a superdrive (just not 4x) It does lack APEx and Bluetooth but I've no real need for wireless networking. I'm looking at getting a CRT instead of an apple LCD just for $$$ purposes. I can't justify a $700 monitor. (At least right now)

And yeah iMovie 3 doesn't suport the monitor resolution on my iBook. :rolleyes: :confused:

I'm hoping that Macworld will do some benchmarks on the 1Ghz pbooks, imac and pmac (both SP & DP).

MacsRgr8

Feb 6, 2003, 03:59 PM

Originally posted by russoesq
I've been an Apple user for almost 20 years and my biggest disappointment is that the Mac hasn't caught up as a gaming machine. Frankly, I can't understand why Apple doen't put in the necessary hardware to make their iMacs competitive with PCs for gaming. I think an awful lot of college age people go PC for gaming. And once lost to the "Dark Side", they don't come back. For that reason, I'm disappointed in the latest iMac revision.

I also responded to the thread over at Mac Gaming discussion, but I'll ask the same question here:
I do hope you are not referring to the 1 GHz iMac, 'cause I believed this one would be a good gaming Mac. 1 GHz G4, DDR RAM (512 MB?), GeForce 4 MX, 133 MHz bus....
I agree with you that the low end (800 MHz) is way behind....

MacsRgr8

Feb 6, 2003, 04:37 PM

First and last post of this thread at this point :D

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 6, 2003, 04:39 PM

I agree with macsrgr8 the 1 giger will handle everything you throw at it that is currently available. The only game and engine that iam looking at is DOOM3 and that thing i think is going to make a lot of people cry like me. My current 8oo no l3 will make it look like a slide show! only want slide shows coming out of my iphoto.So I know the next mac i Buy will have to run that game like my current one runs UT. Steve please build the 970 into a mac and release it this year.But for anyone outhere looking at the new imac it will burn through anygame you can currently buy.

brian0526

Feb 6, 2003, 04:49 PM

Originally posted by iTry
I'm finally gonna buy one! Woo Hoo! If I get the top end with only 512 in slot 1, then I can buy another 512MB from Crucial. Still haven't priced this one up but I'm sure I'll save money!

And I'm sure somebody's answered this already, but...

Do the new iMacs boot OS9, or just X?

I think they only boot X.

The memory question I can answer. I just bought my iMac and had them install the 512 in the first slot. They charge you $200 (no installation fee if you buy AppleCare). They would also charge $200 for the second one.

Crucial charges $99 for the module for the second slot. So, I'm going to try running mine with the 512 and, if I need more, buy a 512 from Crucial. I figured it was worth the extra money to buy the first one from Apple, especially you need to have an authorized Apple servicer install the module in order not to void your warranty (I'm pretty sure that's true). So, even if you did buy the module from Crucial you'd have to spend some of the savings having someone else install it. All-in-all, I figured it worth it to pay Apple for the first 512. By the way, I do get the useless (to me anyway) 256 MB module back. Maybe I'll try to sell it on eBay.

Brian

MacsRgr8

Feb 6, 2003, 05:04 PM

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
I agree with macsrgr8 the 1 giger will handle everything you throw at it that is currently available. The only game and engine that iam looking at is DOOM3 and that thing i think is going to make a lot of people cry like me. My current 8oo no l3 will make it look like a slide show! only want slide shows coming out of my iphoto.So I know the next mac i Buy will have to run that game like my current one runs UT. Steve please build the 970 into a mac and release it this year.But for anyone outhere looking at the new imac it will burn through anygame you can currently buy.

If they make Doom 3 dual proc aware, I'll bet you a dual 1 GHz with Radeon 9700 should be sufficient to make it look like a fast forwarded movie :D .
Mr. Carmack is an OS X freak isn't he? ID Software even demo-ed Doom 3 on a 800 MHz G4 with GeForce 3 Ti, didn't they at MWTokyo 2001?

Abstract

Feb 6, 2003, 05:32 PM

Is Crucial's Ram better than cheaper alternatives? I would never buy Ram from Apple, but Crucial is much more expensive than many of the alternative sources for Ram.

FyreFrog

Feb 6, 2003, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by brian0526

I think they only boot X.

The memory question I can answer. I just bought my iMac and had them install the 512 in the first slot. They charge you $200 (no installation fee if you buy AppleCare). They would also charge $200 for the second one.

Crucial charges $99 for the module for the second slot. So, I'm going to try running mine with the 512 and, if I need more, buy a 512 from Crucial. I figured it was worth the extra money to buy the first one from Apple, especially you need to have an authorized Apple servicer install the module in order not to void your warranty (I'm pretty sure that's true). So, even if you did buy the module from Crucial you'd have to spend some of the savings having someone else install it. All-in-all, I figured it worth it to pay Apple for the first 512. By the way, I do get the useless (to me anyway) 256 MB module back. Maybe I'll try to sell it on eBay.

Brian

Ok i Just have a question on this Ram ordeal... ok i'm soon to be swithcher tomorrow when i get my new imac at the apple store.. now i want to upgrade to 512 DDR226 1DIMM from the 265.. is it really $200 for them to upgrade it when its $95 dollars on the apple website? can u help me understand and when i called the apple store the apple guy said they may not be able to do a complete 512 he said may be only a 300 something i forget the numbers... i dunno.. i'm still a newbie:) thxs... plz help me

FyreFrog

Feb 6, 2003, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by FyreFrog

Ok i Just have a question on this Ram ordeal... ok i'm soon to be swithcher tomorrow when i get my new imac at the apple store.. now i want to upgrade to 512 DDR226 1DIMM from the 265.. is it really $200 for them to upgrade it when its $95 dollars on the apple website? can u help me understand and when i called the apple store the apple guy said they may not be able to do a complete 512 he said may be only a 300 something i forget the numbers... i dunno.. i'm still a newbie:) thxs... plz help me

err.. i ment 100 on the apple site:)

Dont Hurt Me

Feb 6, 2003, 06:06 PM

Originally posted by MacsRgr8

If they make Doom 3 dual proc aware, I'll bet you a dual 1 GHz with Radeon 9700 should be sufficient to make it look like a fast forwarded movie :D .
Mr. Carmack is an OS X freak isn't he? ID Software even demo-ed Doom 3 on a 800 MHz G4 with GeForce 3 Ti, didn't they at MWTokyo 2001? Maybe so, they do have a history of using what the mac offers but what iam looking at is if they then license this engine for other games so my next system i want to smoke DOOM3 I mean everything turned on at high resolution! yeah I have started to save!Still think that 1 giger imac is a heck of a machine!

GPTurismo

Feb 6, 2003, 08:03 PM

for ram I usually go to transintl.com

possible switch

Feb 6, 2003, 08:47 PM

*gasp* I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to switch! I talked to a sales rep. today on the phone, and I'm going to call her back shortly. Parting from $$ is hard for me though. What a big change this is going to be!! Part of me just wants to stick it out on this for a year or two more, but then a bigger part wants to throw it against the wall and get an iMac! If I build up the courage, I'll be sure to post. LOL I feel like I'm switching religions or something or abandoning my family!

SwitchHitter

Feb 6, 2003, 10:16 PM

Thanks folks for all the suggestions and comments on how to fix the blurry fonts, etc.

When I get back to Chicago tomorrow, I'm going to address the issues and see what happens (keeping my fingers crossed).

NOW, here's another question...

1) I have the new iMac w/airport
2) I just (today) got the airport extreme
3) I have an older HP 4M laserjet that is parallel printer and installed/hooked up to my Toshiba laptop PC.
....
So, my question is.... how can I network it to the Apple for B&W printing? The Apple store told me to go ahead and keep it plugged into the Toshiba and that with my Toshiba networked (hooked up?) to the Airport extreme .. that the iMac will find it.

Is this true?
Also, since I have DSL, do I just plug the airport extreme to the DSL box and plug the toshiba into the Airport extreme? Or should I buy a wireless card for the Toshiba?

Also, what about buying a parallel to USB cord for the printer? Would that work?

Any help is appreciated...

shadowfax

Feb 6, 2003, 10:39 PM

Originally posted by SwitchHitter
Thanks folks for all the suggestions and comments on how to fix the blurry fonts, etc.

When I get back to Chicago tomorrow, I'm going to address the issues and see what happens (keeping my fingers crossed).

NOW, here's another question...

1) I have the new iMac w/airport
2) I just (today) got the airport extreme
3) I have an older HP 4M laserjet that is parallel printer and installed/hooked up to my Toshiba laptop PC.
....
So, my question is.... how can I network it to the Apple for B&W printing? The Apple store told me to go ahead and keep it plugged into the Toshiba and that with my Toshiba networked (hooked up?) to the Airport extreme .. that the iMac will find it.

Is this true?
Also, since I have DSL, do I just plug the airport extreme to the DSL box and plug the toshiba into the Airport extreme? Or should I buy a wireless card for the Toshiba?

Also, what about buying a parallel to USB cord for the printer? Would that work?

Any help is appreciated...

go buy the february issue of macworld, i strongly recommend. you need gimp-print to print to a windows machine over the network.
it's a special article in there, about the great power of the unix printing engine and how to fully utilize it. it was great, i got my powerbook printing to a windows 98 box with an HP laserjet6L.

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 05:30 AM

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 06:13 AM

Originally posted by SwitchHitter
Thanks folks for all the suggestions and comments on how to fix the blurry fonts, etc.

When I get back to Chicago tomorrow, I'm going to address the issues and see what happens (keeping my fingers crossed).

NOW, here's another question...

1) I have the new iMac w/airport
2) I just (today) got the airport extreme
3) I have an older HP 4M laserjet that is parallel printer and installed/hooked up to my Toshiba laptop PC.
....
So, my question is.... how can I network it to the Apple for B&W printing? The Apple store told me to go ahead and keep it plugged into the Toshiba and that with my Toshiba networked (hooked up?) to the Airport extreme .. that the iMac will find it.

Is this true?
Also, since I have DSL, do I just plug the airport extreme to the DSL box and plug the toshiba into the Airport extreme? Or should I buy a wireless card for the Toshiba?

Also, what about buying a parallel to USB cord for the printer? Would that work?

Any help is appreciated...

Basically you don't need to buy a wireless card for your toshiba. Do what you said and plug your AirportX base station (WAN PORT) into the DSL box and then the toshiba in the base station (LAN PORT). Your toshiba will act as a print server. Follow Shadowfax's advice 2 posts above from there on. Buying a USB cable will allow you to plug the printer direct into your base station (but I am not sure that this printer is among one of the supported printers) or to plug it into your iMac direct (but my guess is that you want to use it on the toshiba too, so the best is to leave it plugged into the toshiba via the parallel cable).

NicoMan

brian0526

Feb 7, 2003, 08:00 AM

Originally posted by FyreFrog

err.. i ment 100 on the apple site:)

FyreFrog,

Here's the deal. To go to 512 MB on the 17" iMac, you actually have two choices:

1.) Upgrade the existing module from 256 to 512 MB. This way you still have a free slot. Apple will charge you $200 for this module. Installation is free, if you buy AppleCare (3 year extended warranty). You end up with a free slot you can buy more memory later from a third party and a useless 256 MB module that they will give back to you. Useless to you because it only fits in the slot you just filled with the 512.

2.) Add a 256 MB module for $100. This goes in the second slot (the user accessible slot). This gets you to the same 512 MB total memory. But, you cannot add any more memory without removing one of the two modules. You get to use the memory you've already paid for. But, if you want to upgrade, one of the two will have to go. Plus, if you ever want to change the memory in the first slot, you have to return your machine to Apple (or an Authorized Reseller or take the risk of voiding your warranty). That first slot is difficult to access and takes special care to replace the memory.

They told me at the Apple store that the average home user won't need more than 512 MB of RAM. So, if you want to save some money, you may want to opt for just adding the 256 MB module. I opted to go with the 512 MB module and I'm probably going to buy another 512 from Crucial for $99 and plug that in myself.

BTW, the pricing is exactly the same if you buy from the Apple website. At the store, the woman who helped me told me Apple used to give a credit for the memory module they get to keep. However, if that was the case, it isn't any more.

Hope this helps.

Peace,
Brian

brian0526

Feb 7, 2003, 08:14 AM

Just got my iMac last night. Haven't had too much time to play with it. But, one of the first things I noticed was a "fuzziness" in Internet Explorer. In reading through the posts on the Apple support discussion board, I came across this:

It's definitely down to "font smoothing" in Quartz Extreme.
If you use Internet Explorer, under Preferences->Web Browser->Interface Extras, you can untick Quartz Extreme.
Suddenly, all my text appears crisp & clear! Magic!
OK, so the characters aren't smoothed, but they're not blurry.
At least I think this shows it's a software issue - thank God - and not a hardware one! Unfortunately, other applications (including Safari) don't give this option. I've also set System Prefs->General->font smoothing to "Light" and 12, which helps om Finder windows.

Just thought I'd post it here for anyone else who may have noticed their "beautiful, crisp clear display" seems a little less than that.

Brian

danman

Feb 7, 2003, 08:23 AM

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 08:28 AM

Originally posted by brian0526
Just got my iMac last night. Haven't had too much time to play with it. But, one of the first things I noticed was a "fuzziness" in Internet Explorer. In reading through the posts on the Apple support discussion board, I came across this:

It's definitely down to "font smoothing" in Quartz Extreme.
If you use Internet Explorer, under Preferences->Web Browser->Interface Extras, you can untick Quartz Extreme.
Suddenly, all my text appears crisp & clear! Magic!
OK, so the characters aren't smoothed, but they're not blurry.
At least I think this shows it's a software issue - thank God - and not a hardware one! Unfortunately, other applications (including Safari) don't give this option. I've also set System Prefs->General->font smoothing to "Light" and 12, which helps om Finder windows.

Just thought I'd post it here for anyone else who may have noticed their "beautiful, crisp clear display" seems a little less than that.

Brian

Well I promise you this 'fuzziness' you don't like today will be difficult to do without in a while. You will get used to it. I promise you that you will think that non smoothed font will feel like a strain to read once you get used to it. I personally now get headaches looking at my work PC (I have a powermac and a dell on my desk, both with reasonable LCDs, though I admit that my Formac monitors on the Mac are better) non smoothed fonts, because smoothed fonts don't require you to focus intently (I keep jumping from one screen to the other): it's more like reading a magazine or something.

Also, you can try using bigger default fonts (and you will see the real benefits of font smoothing).

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 08:35 AM

Originally posted by danman

Actually, the best way to sort out IE text rendering is to Quit, drag to trashcan, Empty trash. Launch Safari..

ahhh, that's better.

Yeah I forgot to add that in my previous post (even though I keep IE just in case a page doesn't work... which is almost never).

NicoMan

brian0526

Feb 7, 2003, 08:59 AM

Originally posted by NicoMan

Well I promise you this 'fuzziness' you don't like today will be difficult to do without in a while. You will get used to it. I promise you that you will think that non smoothed font will feel like a strain to read once you get used to it. I personally now get headaches looking at my work PC (I have a powermac and a dell on my desk, both with reasonable LCDs, though I admit that my Formac monitors on the Mac are better) non smoothed fonts, because smoothed fonts don't require you to focus intently (I keep jumping from one screen to the other): it's more like reading a magazine or something.

Also, you can try using bigger default fonts (and you will see the real benefits of font smoothing).

NicoMan

Thanks for the encouragement. I just made the switch and knew I'd have some buyer's remorse. But, after just slogging through all the posts I just read about this "problem", I was getting a little discouraged.

Maybe I will get used to it. Right now though it seems my 4 year old cheapo Dell display is "sharper" than my new 17" state-of-the art iMac. Everything except text on the iMac looks absolutely beautiful. But, I spend a lot of time looking at text.

I'm going to play with some settings and then try to get used to it.

Peace,
Brian

kangaroo

Feb 7, 2003, 10:11 AM

This was also taken from the Apple discussions board regarding the smoothing (blurring) issue:

Interesting article on Mac OS X font rendering:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0100148/stories/2002/02/04/macOsX1012FontRendering.html

FyreFrog

Feb 7, 2003, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by brian0526

FyreFrog,

Here's the deal. To go to 512 MB on the 17" iMac, you actually have two choices:

1.) Upgrade the existing module from 256 to 512 MB. This way you still have a free slot. Apple will charge you $200 for this module. Installation is free, if you buy AppleCare (3 year extended warranty). You end up with a free slot you can buy more memory later from a third party and a useless 256 MB module that they will give back to you. Useless to you because it only fits in the slot you just filled with the 512.

2.) Add a 256 MB module for $100. This goes in the second slot (the user accessible slot). This gets you to the same 512 MB total memory. But, you cannot add any more memory without removing one of the two modules. You get to use the memory you've already paid for. But, if you want to upgrade, one of the two will have to go. Plus, if you ever want to change the memory in the first slot, you have to return your machine to Apple (or an Authorized Reseller or take the risk of voiding your warranty). That first slot is difficult to access and takes special care to replace the memory.

They told me at the Apple store that the average home user won't need more than 512 MB of RAM. So, if you want to save some money, you may want to opt for just adding the 256 MB module. I opted to go with the 512 MB module and I'm probably going to buy another 512 from Crucial for $99 and plug that in myself.

BTW, the pricing is exactly the same if you buy from the Apple website. At the store, the woman who helped me told me Apple used to give a credit for the memory module they get to keep. However, if that was the case, it isn't any more.

Hope this helps.

Peace,
Brian
Thanks your clearing that up for me Brian... now its more clearer..
so u think i should only do the 256 module upgrade... now i'm a college design student am i goin to need alot of ram ya think?

Thanks,

Fyrefrog

brian0526

Feb 7, 2003, 12:38 PM

Originally posted by FyreFrog

Thanks your clearing that up for me Brian... now its more clearer..
so u think i should only do the 256 module upgrade... now i'm a college design student am i goin to need alot of ram ya think?

Thanks,

Fyrefrog

Hey, I'm a total Mac newbie. You're asking the wrong guy about how my RAM you'll need. My experience with OS X is about 10 minutes long.

I can only tell you this. If you go the cheaper route, you end up with 512 MB of RAM, just like if you pay the extra $100. If you go that way, you can always replace the 256 MB DIMM in the user accessible slot with a 512 and end up with 784. Then, if you REALLY need the add'l 256 you can haul your iMac back to the Apple store and pay them to upgrade the first module. But, you'll have to pay them installation at that point. So, the only real drawback to taking this more conservative approach is you have to hault your machine back in and you'll pay a little more. But, you may never need that extra RAM and by then memory prices may have fallen enough to offset the install cost.

For me, I just wanted the thing ready to accept another 512 if I find I need it. And, I'm lazy, I didn't want to have to haul it back in. I paid a $100 premium for that luxury.

Peace,
Brian

Qball

Feb 7, 2003, 01:59 PM

On retail sites like MacMall, they offer free 512Mb of memory for that 2nd slot. They charge $40 to install it, but then your new 1 Ghz iMac has 768Mb of memory. That sounds great to me.

Two questions:
1. Is this crappy memory or something? Several posts in this thread have mentioned getting inferior memory from no-name producers. Is that was these retail sites are offering? Does anyone have any experience with a purchase from MacMall or ClubMac?

2. I definitely want more than 256Mb memory. How much memory would adequately run Photoshop 7.0?

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 03:50 PM

Originally posted by Qball
On retail sites like MacMall, they offer free 512Mb of memory for that 2nd slot. They charge $40 to install it, but then your new 1 Ghz iMac has 768Mb of memory. That sounds great to me.

Two questions:
1. Is this crappy memory or something? Several posts in this thread have mentioned getting inferior memory from no-name producers. Is that was these retail sites are offering? Does anyone have any experience with a purchase from MacMall or ClubMac?

2. I definitely want more than 256Mb memory. How much memory would adequately run Photoshop 7.0?

1. I don't think it is a crappy memory. Anyway, the retailer is responsible for it, so I doubt they would put memory in your iMac that they know is almost sure to come back to them. But I can't be sure.

2. More memory than 256MB is needed. You need at least 512MB to run OSX comfortably, IMHO. Now if you spend your time in Photoshop, I'd say 768MB or 1GB is needed. Now you have 2 ways of getting there. Either you go for the MacMall machine with 768MB (and it that case it will be a pain to upgrade to 1MB and if you do you will 'lose' 256MB), or you go for a 512MB (1 DIMM) machine from the Apple Store (or another retailer) and get the second 512MB yourself from Crucial or wherever. Installing that 2nd memory is not too difficult, from what I understand.

NicoMan

FlamDrag

Feb 7, 2003, 04:21 PM

I've never run into anyone who has said "I just have too much RAM in this computer."

Buy as much RAM as you can afford. Take a hit on the processor if you have to. That's my theory anyway.

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 04:42 PM

Originally posted by FlamDrag
I've never run into anyone who has said "I just have too much RAM in this computer."

Buy as much RAM as you can afford. Take a hit on the processor if you have to. That's my theory anyway.

True. I would say that the appropriate amount of RAM in all the machines (except the PowerMacs maybe, and even then...) is the maximum amount possible.

NicoMan

Bear

Feb 7, 2003, 04:51 PM

Originally posted by Qball
...

2. I definitely want more than 256Mb memory. How much memory would adequately run Photoshop 7.0?
How big are your images? What are you going to be doing to them? How many are you going to be editing at once?

Are you going to be running anything else at the same time? Instant Messenger Clients? iTunes? Mail client?

Having said all that go for at least a single stick 512MB if you can't afford more, and add the second stick later.

If you're really heavy into photoshop, you'll probably need the full 1 GB, especially if you have other things running.

[This thread is getting really long. I wonder what the longest thread on the discussion board is.]

NicoMan

Feb 7, 2003, 05:35 PM

Originally posted by Bear
[This thread is getting really long. I wonder what the longest thread on the discussion board is.]
What's even more amazing is the speed at which we got to this point. Within hours of the new iMac annoucement, we were already at 6-7 pages... I guess a lot of people had something to say about those machines.

NicoMan

vniow

Feb 7, 2003, 05:44 PM

Originally posted by Bear

[This thread is getting really long. I wonder what the longest thread on the discussion board is.]

Short Films (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5645)

Qball

Feb 7, 2003, 05:47 PM

I'll be using Photoshop, burning CD's with iTunes, Chimera, etc., all at once. I seem to always have multiple programs open, which tends to confuse my PC! I'm leaning towards 768Mb of memory.

The memory from MacMall appears to be Viking. Any Viking horror stories? Thanks for all the advice

Centris 650

Feb 7, 2003, 06:47 PM

Originally posted by Qball
I'll be using Photoshop, burning CD's with iTunes, Chimera, etc., all at once. I seem to always have multiple programs open, which tends to confuse my PC! I'm leaning towards 768Mb of memory.

The memory from MacMall appears to be Viking. Any Viking horror stories? Thanks for all the advice

I bought my iMac Rev A & my iBook SE both from MacMall with the extra ram they give. I've NEVER had a problem. I just maxed out my ram in my iBook. Now I've got an extra 128 mb chip sitting around the house waiting to be sold on ebay. My advice is just to max out the ram at the beginning.

possible switch

Feb 7, 2003, 07:58 PM

Does anyone know what timezone sales reps are in? I called yesterday and talked to a woman who gave me a little discount as an incentive for switching, but I had to tie up some loose ends and told her I'd call back that night or today. I've left a voice mail and called two or three times, but no luck. She's in until 6:00, whichever timezone that is. I'm assuming Pacific, but I could be wrong. Should I just call someone else?

possible switch

Feb 7, 2003, 09:15 PM

Nevermind! I bought it! I'm a switcher!! AGH!!!! :D

anubis

Feb 7, 2003, 10:04 PM

Well, I finally got a new mac. For the last 6 years or so, I've been plugging around with a beige G3 - a good computer, but way too slow for OS X. I was going to get a new iMac, but was VERY disappointed in the revisions. I was looking forward to a low end model with 17-inch screen, 133mhz bus, geforce 4, for $1300 or less. No such luck, so I just bought a new Powermac G4 867 Dual Processor, brand new from my university's bookstore for only $1399, no tax, no shipping, full warranty. I decided this was a MUCH better value than the new iMac. I'll just have to live with a 17-inch CRT monitor for a while until I can afford to replace it with a 17-inch flat panel.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think the low end iMac kinda sucks. Just get a powermac G4.

Centris 650

Feb 7, 2003, 10:24 PM

Originally posted by possible switch
Does anyone know what timezone sales reps are in? I called yesterday and talked to a woman who gave me a little discount....

I know this is a personal question but how much of a discount? I've got a relative who is a penny pincher but wants to switch and this info might just push her over. (She LOVES deals.)

EDIT:Oh and congratulations! Enjoy your mac!

possible switch

Feb 7, 2003, 10:55 PM

I'm a penny pincher too. It was only like $25 I think, but every little bit helps!

NicoMan

Feb 8, 2003, 03:48 AM

Originally posted by anubis
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think the low end iMac kinda sucks. Just get a powermac G4. I agree with you that the low-end iMac kind of suck. But it's for people who want the iMac's form factor at a reasonable price, and do not really need a leading-edge machine.
Now about the PowerMac. It is definitely a really good machine (don't listen to those bitter people on the forums), but the thing is, for a home user it CAN be way too noisy. I know that I could afford a dual 1.25 with the 20" screen, but (1) I won't necessarily make use of the extra power, and (2) I don't want to hear the comp's fan all the time. So in my case a nice iMac is good enough for me (but I might buy the high-end one). But at work, no question about it, the PowerMac is the real deal.

NicoMan

NicoMan

Feb 8, 2003, 03:51 AM

Originally posted by possible switch
I'm a penny pincher too. It was only like $25 I think, but every little bit helps!

Agreed. I delayed my ibook's purchase for a couple of weeks after the last update to be able to buy it from the Apple store at the Apple Expo (in London) and get something like a £30 rebate and a T-shirt with the Jaguar logo. Muahahaha.

And congrats with your new iMac. Let us know how it goes. Which one did you get and how much memory did you buy?

NicoMan

paulie

Feb 8, 2003, 07:48 AM

Well, I broke down and headed down to Bic Camera this afternoon to pick up a new 1GHz iMac..

This baby is quick.. I think I'll be heading out tomorrow to up the ram to 768 MB, but other than that, it goes in a hurry. I Xbench'd it already, and came out with the top score for any flat-panel iMac yet to be tested.

Only difficulty in setup was the Airport Extreme - it didn't like the way my old Airport base station was set up. I changed my base station's setting to use another channel, and upped the bandwidth to the full 11 Mbps, and everything works fine.

17 inches looks a lot bigger in my house than it ever did at the store.. this screen is enormous!

Now, what to do with the iBook?

rebscb

Feb 8, 2003, 10:55 AM

Hey man, don't just talk about Xbench on your new imac... give us the damn numbers, ha!!!

possible switch

Feb 8, 2003, 11:54 AM

15" 800Mhz
512 MB RAM
all that other stuff...

Office v.X for Academic

I wanted a 17", but then I distinguished my wants from my needs and got realistic. This computer should be more than I need and hopefully will get me through law school. :-) From everything I've heard about Apple, I shouldn't have half the problems that I do with my laptop. Not a gamer, not a photoeditor, so I think I'm set.

My laptop mysteriously loses its display drivers sometimes, so that's fun to fix. The power button likes to be held down for a minute or so before it'll boot up. If you take the harddrive over 5 GB of used space, the computer clicks and runs hot all the time. Blue screens of death at least 4 times a day. And it's only two years old!!! I think I made the right decision.

It should be here on or before Valentine's Day. What a wonderful gift to myself! :D

concretecurb

Feb 8, 2003, 02:38 PM

I just got a new iMac, the low end. I did bump up the memory to 768mb. I have no problems playing Medal of Honor, or using Photoshop 7, and using Peak 3.0. I had an old G3 desktop, that did alot for me. I would have bought a powermac, but I liked the idea of a compact all in one unit. I have yet to have an blurry problems with the LCS either. Medal of Honor is sweet on this.

shadowfax

Feb 8, 2003, 04:42 PM

Originally posted by concretecurb
I just got a new iMac, the low end. I did bump up the memory to 768mb. I have no problems playing Medal of Honor, or using Photoshop 7, and using Peak 3.0. I had an old G3 desktop, that did alot for me. I would have bought a powermac, but I liked the idea of a compact all in one unit. I have yet to have an blurry problems with the LCS either. Medal of Honor is sweet on this.

yes, but try manipulating a 200 MB image in photoshop 7 :)

paulie

Feb 8, 2003, 08:48 PM

Originally posted by rebscb
Hey man, don't just talk about Xbench on your new imac... give us the damn numbers, ha!!!

Okey dokey! The formatting is pretty ugly, so please forgive me. I'm looking to upgrade to 768MB RAM, but the cheapest I've seen a 512 MB PC2100 SO-DIMM for was 19,200 yen (about 160 bucks).. Anyone found cheaper?

Results 87.58
System Info
Xbench Version 1.0
System Version 10.2.3
Physical RAM 256 MB
Model PowerMac6,1
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v3.3
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 256K @ 1000 MHz
Bus Frequency 134 MHz
Video Card GeForce4 MX
Drive Type ST380023A
CPU Test 111.94
GCD Recursion 114.17 4.46 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 104.96 353.82 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 114.31 6.20 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 114.96 5.16 Mops/sec
Thread Test 63.07
Computation 61.95 499.07 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 64.23 806.21 Klocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 87.75
System 79.18
Allocate 117.78 39.71 Kalloc/sec
Fill 88.38 506.82 MB/sec
Copy 55.30 276.49 MB/sec
Stream 98.40
Copy 99.20 433.80 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 101.83 444.27 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 96.66 439.79 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 96.13 422.38 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 98.47
Line 103.00 2.62 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 112.35 7.90 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 117.33 2.70 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 94.76 1.03 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 76.38 1.25 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 117.85
Spinning Squares 117.85 82.47 frames/sec
User Interface Test 71.42
Elements 71.42 24.30 refresh/sec
Disk Test 90.07
Sequential 102.00
Uncached Write 97.13 42.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 101.19 41.17 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 115.02 18.12 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 96.68 41.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 80.64
Uncached Write 55.09 0.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 87.35 20.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 96.18 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 104.12 20.41 MB/sec [256K blocks]

applebobbing

Feb 9, 2003, 11:50 AM

As a PC switcher I have just ordered a 17" Imac Superdrive as it's called in the UK. Supporting PCs for a living for more years than I care to remember I can't wait to start using OS X. Over here we are used to paying high prices for computers so I feel that £1609 (upped the memory to 512) for the kind of spec that Apple is providing is fine by me, especially as it has dropped £200 from last week with a better processor, DDR memory, better graphics card and faster DVD writing. Maybe some people think that Apple are making too much profit but their last quarter figures tell a different story. Just remember that if Apple ever went belly up, we would all be at the mercy of the friendly people at Microsoft.

brian0526

Feb 9, 2003, 01:23 PM

Originally posted by applebobbing
As a PC switcher I have just ordered a 17" Imac Superdrive as it's called in the UK. Supporting PCs for a living for more years than I care to remember I can't wait to start using OS X. Over here we are used to paying high prices for computers so I feel that £1609 (upped the memory to 512) for the kind of spec that Apple is providing is fine by me, especially as it has dropped £200 from last week with a better processor, DDR memory, better graphics card and faster DVD writing. Maybe some people think that Apple are making too much profit but their last quarter figures tell a different story. Just remember that if Apple ever went belly up, we would all be at the mercy of the friendly people at Microsoft.

Well said. As a recent switcher (Thursday), I wholeheartedly agree. I think Apple's providing a fair product for a fair price. I went to a beginning OS X class yestereay and have only just begun to realize how much stuff Apple has packed into OS X, .Mac and iLife that I would have had to pay for in the PC world. For the last 10 years I've constantly been adding things to Windows to try to make it more user friendly and stable. While the add ones I bought did make it more user friendly, they were disjointed and often made the system even less stable. BTW, yes, I know I paid for .Mac. But, personally, I think it's a great deal- at least for the first year.

I'm glad Apple is providing an alternative to Microsoft and I'm proud to say that I contributed my share to allow that to continue. I hope that things go as well as I anticipate and I can be an evangelist to bring more PC users into the light. :D

Peace,
Brian

RichardCarletta

Feb 9, 2003, 11:54 PM

I suspect that with Apple possibbly releasing 970 PowerMacs( 64 bit ) in September and with the School buying season starting in May ( the same time that production of 970 PowerMacs should start and leftover G4 Powermacs inventories starting to shrink ) that Apple could conceiveably update the eMac and iMac to a 1.25 GHZ G4 processor and 133 MHZ bus and not critically hurt sales of the G4 Powermacs that badly . Afterall at that time the G4 Powermac will be the last of it's kind and will be dead by the fall anyway. Apple could try to makeup the profits with larger volume of iMac and eMacs sales during that time while selling off its remaining Powermac inventory.

NicoMan

Feb 10, 2003, 03:47 AM

Originally posted by brian0526

Well said. As a recent switcher (Thursday), I wholeheartedly agree. I think Apple's providing a fair product for a fair price. I went to a beginning OS X class yestereay and have only just begun to realize how much stuff Apple has packed into OS X, .Mac and iLife that I would have had to pay for in the PC world. For the last 10 years I've constantly been adding things to Windows to try to make it more user friendly and stable. While the add ones I bought did make it more user friently, they were disjointed and often made the system even less stable. BTW, yes, I know I paid for .Mac. But, personally, I think it's a great deal- at least for the first year.

I'm glad Apple is providing an alternative to Microsoft and I'm proud to say that I contributed my share to allow that to continue. I hope that things go as well as I anticipate and I can be an evangelist to bring more PC users into the light. :D

Peace,
Brian

I am quite impressed by the level of 'commitment' you guys are showing to the Mac cause. Of course that's the way it should be (I myself instantly became a Mac-nut when I switched a little more than a year ago, but I really thought nobody else was like that) and if you give it a chance, OSX will prove wonderful.
Congrats, guys. Welcome to the Mac community.

NicoMan