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Education iMac: For Institutions Only
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LBmacman said:Crap I planned on buying one of these...
Yeah, I recommended them to a few people as well as my g/f. Sucks.
eMac/Mac Mini/MacBook
I think Apple would be smart to look at the new generation of Celerons for low-end systems.
The Celeron M 4XX series are basically a rebranded Core Solo with a 1 Megabyle L2 Cache. They're actually not bad performers. Certianly superior to the G4 chips they've been using in the iBooks, eMacs, and Mac Minis up until quite recently.
I've got a Toshiba Notebook with a Celeron M 420 and, with 1.5 Gigs of Ram, it runs the Beta of Windows Vista quite smoothly (ndeed, almost better than my Pentium D Desktop does - and far better than my Dual USB iBook 800 with 640 Megs of Ram has ever run Tiger).
Basically, something like:
Celeron M 420 (1.7 Ghz)
512 Megs of Ram (Single Chip, Please)
Radeon x200
60 Gig Hard Drive
Combo Drive
Could probably ship for $599-$699. No Front Row, no iSight.
Throw in another Gig of Ram off-the-shelf and you've got a system which will run quite nicely - and dual boot, of course. I'd buy one.
The same basic configuration could be put into a Mini for $450ish, I'd guess.
I think Apple would be smart to look at the new generation of Celerons for low-end systems.
The Celeron M 4XX series are basically a rebranded Core Solo with a 1 Megabyle L2 Cache. They're actually not bad performers. Certianly superior to the G4 chips they've been using in the iBooks, eMacs, and Mac Minis up until quite recently.
I've got a Toshiba Notebook with a Celeron M 420 and, with 1.5 Gigs of Ram, it runs the Beta of Windows Vista quite smoothly (ndeed, almost better than my Pentium D Desktop does - and far better than my Dual USB iBook 800 with 640 Megs of Ram has ever run Tiger).
Basically, something like:
Celeron M 420 (1.7 Ghz)
512 Megs of Ram (Single Chip, Please)
Radeon x200
60 Gig Hard Drive
Combo Drive
Could probably ship for $599-$699. No Front Row, no iSight.
Throw in another Gig of Ram off-the-shelf and you've got a system which will run quite nicely - and dual boot, of course. I'd buy one.
The same basic configuration could be put into a Mini for $450ish, I'd guess.
I'd add that the Desktop Celerons are junk (especially when you can get the budget-priced Pentium D for something like $130).
But the Mobile ones are actually a fairly good chip at a fairly good price. So long as the rest of the configuration is acceptable.
But the Mobile ones are actually a fairly good chip at a fairly good price. So long as the rest of the configuration is acceptable.
A 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo costs roughly the same as a Core Solo per 1,000 sold ($209 + Apple's discount). With the graphics chip costing Apple pennies, they can go quite aggressive on the processor.
Waiting for Merom?
Yes, that's why. The Edu-iMac was good (too good) value compared to the regular iMac. However, when the Merom based iMacs come out (WWDC), and the Edu-iMac is left behind with Yonah, then they will probably go back to the previous policy.
Roll on WWDC
Hector said:
Yes, that's why. The Edu-iMac was good (too good) value compared to the regular iMac. However, when the Merom based iMacs come out (WWDC), and the Edu-iMac is left behind with Yonah, then they will probably go back to the previous policy.
Roll on WWDC
Volumes.
...unless you can turn over a much higher volume. It's unlikely that Apple is in a position to do that at the moment.
ham_man said:
...unless you can turn over a much higher volume. It's unlikely that Apple is in a position to do that at the moment.
Greed or good sense?
Your assertion doesn't make any sense.
Apple has to make a profit otherwise it would go under. Apple saw that the edu-iMac was taking sales from the normal iMac. Presumably Apple was making a smaller margin on the Edu-iMac. It made a commercial decision on whether stopping non-institutions buying the Edu-iMac would have a negative impact on total sales and obviously decided it wouldn't. That's standard business practice.
As things stood, the edu-iMac was "too" good value, when compared to the regular iMac. However I expect Apple to re-release the iMac with a Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor at the WWDC, but leave the Edu-iMac with the Core Duo (Yonah) cpu. When that happens (!!), I should think Apple will go back to the previous policy for educational sales on the edu-iMac.
generik said:
Your assertion doesn't make any sense.
Apple has to make a profit otherwise it would go under. Apple saw that the edu-iMac was taking sales from the normal iMac. Presumably Apple was making a smaller margin on the Edu-iMac. It made a commercial decision on whether stopping non-institutions buying the Edu-iMac would have a negative impact on total sales and obviously decided it wouldn't. That's standard business practice.
As things stood, the edu-iMac was "too" good value, when compared to the regular iMac. However I expect Apple to re-release the iMac with a Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor at the WWDC, but leave the Edu-iMac with the Core Duo (Yonah) cpu. When that happens (!!), I should think Apple will go back to the previous policy for educational sales on the edu-iMac.
how are education and institution different? why would anyone in college buy an emac? macbook pro is where the party @.... oh well... sill love my g4....
Switch everything to Merom on day 1
Imagine The Steve saying "Mac - all Intel, all 64-bit" in Paris.
It would be to Apple's (and third parties') advantage to get rid of all 32-bit MacIntel's as soon as possible, so that "even fatter binaries" won't be needed to support the small number of 32-bit MacIntel's sold.
It will cost Apple and others a lot of money to support both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
Apple should drop all Yonah products as soon as sufficient Merom chips are available to do it.TangoCharlie said:
Imagine The Steve saying "Mac - all Intel, all 64-bit" in Paris.
It would be to Apple's (and third parties') advantage to get rid of all 32-bit MacIntel's as soon as possible, so that "even fatter binaries" won't be needed to support the small number of 32-bit MacIntel's sold.
It will cost Apple and others a lot of money to support both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
codo said:
Well, yeah, you kind of made my point for me.
It combines the awesome power of a laptop with the portability, ease of installation, and desktop requirements of a desktop. The MacBook, in hardware terms, is a compromise. The key feature of it is portability. It's not a great computer, but it's "good enough" and, when combined with portability, is a great system.
A personal user is either going to want to spend $900-1,000 on a moderately powerful desktop optimised for personal use (which the $900 iMac isn't, with its choice of optical drive, low hard disk capacity, and lack of modern graphics), or a good laptop (which, again, the iMac isn't.) From an institutional point of view, however, the portability is a liability, but the fact the machine comes with everything all pre-installed with minimum set up other than the "locating a spot for it" (which is inherently done in offices anyway) means it's ideally suited to that.
That's what makes it great for institutions. It's not that a personal user can't use it, it's that, at the price point, there are machines far better suited to personal users than the $900 iMac.
My real concern at the moment is the lack of a desktop in that space from Apple. A "high end" Mac mini really is needed.
balamw said:
Most likely only because they had too...could you imagine a G5 in a mini or a powerbook?
AidenShaw said:
While this is true, developers and apple are going to have to have "even fatter binaries" to support the 32-bit machines ALREADY sold. I realize that the sooner they move to all 64-bit the sooner all software can be written for it, but lets be honest...apple is still supporting PPC...they are not ditching 32-bit processors anytime soon (as far as support goes)
diablojota said:
I think what Eidorian meant was that Apple should lower the price of the Mac mini once Intel lowers its prices on processors. Maybe Apple will even be able to increase the speed a bit while lowering the price (we all know how CPU speeds and prices fluctuate).
Intel already lowered the prices back in late May. I don't really see a need for the Core Solo Mini anymore. I'd like to see a $599 Mini with Super Drive...Yvan256 said:
adamyoshida said:
And when the budget priced Pentium D can be turned, with fairly little investment into an Athalon Smiting, Fire-Breathing beast. Give it a bit, if the Apple MBs have to conform to intel standards, then they're going to have standard fan mounts on them. With standard fan mounts, that means that if Apple doesn't include Phase-Change cooling systems from the factory, that aftermarket units will work. And that means, that when the MacPros come out, someone will be figuring out how to OC them to death.
balamw said:
1) Eh.. $p by definition would be the pure gravy.. stuff like advertising and administration would fall under $c.
2) Since you brought that up, I see a lot more Dell adverts on TV.. make what you want of it.
kevin.rivers said:
Bigger hard drives? Sure... look at Apple's upgrade prices. For the price of the upgrade itself you could have gotten the original drive as well as the upgraded drive. Oh yeah, and please tell me how a Dell's integrated graphics solution is slower than one that is used by a Mac (hint: it isn't).
What I find amusing is how people all beat on the Celeron line like it is some kind of cheap crap, well it certainly is cheap, but performance on a Celeron is pretty decent as well. People who think otherwise are simply ill adviced (think: brainwashed by Apple's propaganda) and these bunch are pretty much the same folk whose worlds collapsed around them when Apple launched products containing integrated graphics.
So it was bad in the past because Apple has a small snippet of info saying so, and now that they jumped on the cost cutting bandwagon themselves it is suddenly good? Puh-leez.
TangoCharlie said:
Apple has to make a profit. True. Are they making a loss on the educational iMac?
What I hate about Apple really is how Apple actually capitalises on "MacOS" and charges *us* arbitrary prices for compatible hardware. Tell me, is Apple in the computer business or the <discrete graphics/bluetooth adapter> resale business?
Why impose this artificial "packaging" on buyers?
It is not like the offering doesn't exist, but it is explicitly denied, why?
Switchers buy macs out of their own choosing, but after making that choice it seems like a lot of choices are denied from them. Really funny isn't it?
"Oh, you can't buy this computer, it is too cheap"
"Oh, you can't buy this configuration, we don't build it because it is too cheap"
"Oh, you can't upgrade this computer? Wanna have a go why? (Hint: it is too cheap)"
I managed to win over a recent convert lately but even then her first question is "Why is this so expensive? For the same price I can get a 2.8Ghz computer at <supermart> and get a free monitor on top of it."
Person who bought was a friend's granny, the ideal market segment for a Mac (ie: a computer for mommys and daddys), I don't see Apple winning hearts in this area.
As for the others.. namely people who use their computer to do actual work, or teenagers who play games, I don't see Apple having any advantage at all.
nope. you'd need to own/be the IT guy of an educational institutionITR 81 said:
no, you can not.JosiahPB said:
you go to college or grad school, or become a teacher.cswarthout said:
Dishonest but NOT stealing either....
Let's call things what they are....
Sure, lots of people out there realized they could magically "become a student" at some area school in order to receive an Apple discount on some hardware. It's deceitful - but if the practice was actually costing Apple money, you'd have seen them auditing all edu. purchases long ago.
The fact is, the edu. discount has generated quite a few new Apple customers who probably wouldn't have purchased one otherwise. And even at the discounted prices, they're high enough that Apple's still making a profit on those sales. Just not as large of one as they think they can usually get from the general public for the products otherwise.
I personally know a guy, for example, who bought a quad G5 tower using an educational discount, even though he's been done with school for quite some time. He had to scrape and beg to get the cash together for that system, even at the edu. price - and it involved selling his other Windows PCs too. He was convinced by the "Mac faithful" that it was a "better way" to do things, and at the edu. price, it was just *barely* possible for him to get it.
What good would it do Apple to punish him and lose a new customer forever, vs. give him a couple hundred bucks discount on a $3000+ machine?
Let's call things what they are....
Sure, lots of people out there realized they could magically "become a student" at some area school in order to receive an Apple discount on some hardware. It's deceitful - but if the practice was actually costing Apple money, you'd have seen them auditing all edu. purchases long ago.
The fact is, the edu. discount has generated quite a few new Apple customers who probably wouldn't have purchased one otherwise. And even at the discounted prices, they're high enough that Apple's still making a profit on those sales. Just not as large of one as they think they can usually get from the general public for the products otherwise.
I personally know a guy, for example, who bought a quad G5 tower using an educational discount, even though he's been done with school for quite some time. He had to scrape and beg to get the cash together for that system, even at the edu. price - and it involved selling his other Windows PCs too. He was convinced by the "Mac faithful" that it was a "better way" to do things, and at the edu. price, it was just *barely* possible for him to get it.
What good would it do Apple to punish him and lose a new customer forever, vs. give him a couple hundred bucks discount on a $3000+ machine?
OldSkoolNJ said: