The Paris Mac Revolution: off with it's head

[brianus]

When the resolution and size of the monitors differ, you'll have a hard time getting consistency across the workspace.

Agreed, but it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me (I am a dual monitor user m'self), and if you do need consistency, a second 20" display still gives you a lot of room.

So, what about the mini?
Low margins, small market?

I think the point of the Mini was/is to get Switchers -- in other words, to gain new adherents to OS X who may eventually decide to get a better model when they inevitably upgrade. See for reference my sorry, Kool-Aid-drunken ass.

I'm saying it can be done, and probably should be.
If you don't agree; fine - I'll let you have your opinion, but I'm guessing that you'll probably agree that when Dell is slipping, it's time for Apple to do something.
That time is now.

Well I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Macs in every office, and hey, I'd LOVE a headless, expandable affordable Mac! I'm just calling it as I see it though -- and just from looking at how they've modified their product line in recent years, their ads, their focus.. it just isn't there. If such a push were in the offing, I think you'd be seeing a lot more than just a headless Mac added to their line; what you want would require scrapping their entire philosophy to date. And if they did add find a way to add a headless to the line without changing their overall focus, they'd probably have to restrict it to corporate customers the way they restricted the eMac to the education market. Can you imagine Apple ever NOT tightly controlling this stuff?

 

[rylin]

Could you describe what you mean by that? Is it just that the menubar gets in the way? I have a dual-monitor setup on my G4 and I have occasionally extended a document to cover both screens, excepting the space taken up by the menubar (rarely necessary but certainly doable in my setup). Is there something specific to the iMac that prevents this from working?

Nothing specific to the Mac at all, just a general inconsistency between monitors of varying size and resolution (positioning a window between both monitors would cause the window to not line up properly.

Yeah, but if you're only going to be buying once every five years, they want to make as much money from you as possible. And they want you coming back, not just to whichever PC maker offers the best price and expandability at that particular time that you must get a new PC, but to the *one* PC maker who offers OS X -- if they can make you dependent on it, they've got you by the balls, pretty much. Hence easy, flexible upgradeability is left to the Mac Pro.

Our average life-expentancy for the computers we buy currently is between 3 and 5 years.
That said, companies grow (hopefully!), so there is a need to constantly purchase new equipment.
We've grown by about four or five new employees per month since last year, and we're still a fairly small company; this means that currently, dell get to sell a few machines and a couple of servers every quarter - to one company.

Apart from the inevitable ramping up of processor speeds, I see no reason why an iMac can't last four or five years if you want it to.

For most of our marketing department, I agree.
For the other thirty percent (who actually have special computing needs), the iMac is either (currently) underpowered or not flexible enough.

Thanks for not going Dvorak, as I suspect the result would be unintelligible on an MS 4000

Actually, John Dvorak[/quote] is unintelligible most of the time - it's not dependent on which keyboard he uses ;-)

I was unaware 3rd party keyboards didn't work that well with Macs.
...
Are you sure the keyboard issue's not just an oversight on Apple's part rather than a deliberate policy to give the short shrift to non-Apple peripherals? I always figured most of that stuff worked just fine, you just had to buy it yourself and ignore the BTO options Apple offers.

Not so much "don't work" as "don't work the way they should".
The following pictures demonstrate what any non-apple swedish keyboards have looked like (key layout wise) for the past 15 or so years:
http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_all.png
http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_left.png
http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_right.png

Note that this problem actually applies to at least German as well
http://www.innoq.com/blog/st/2003/12/23/backslash_on_mac_os_x.html

While I understand Apple's reasoning for it (character proximity), I do not understand how they can claim "it just works".
Even the brits have issues with their keylayouts!
http://osx.iusethis.com/app/ukkeylayout

 

[cube]

The imac supports an external display. He can have a 20" imac with 24" display attached. I fail to see how apple doesn't have him covered.

He wants to connect the two 24" displays of his choice.

 

[Erasmus]

"obviously he wants more than 2GB of RAM"? As I mentioned in my last post, if that's what you want, you basically want a Mac Pro, as-is, with a lesser processor and reduced cost. And the benefit for Apple is--?? Either they cannibalize their existing desktop line, with no benefit to them, or they cannibalize the Mac Pro, causing them to lose money on all those professionals who need OS X and can't settle for an iMac or mini. Or, more likely, g4murz run screaming when they realize that even if Apple did offer a headless Conroe, they will always be able to configure a generic PC for less than what Apple charges, particularly where they really gouge the customer (ie, RAM). And again, I simply cannot emphasize enough that anyone who can spend $3K on a computer, much less *ever* buy a 30" screen for any reason, is not representative of some huge demographic Apple's missing out on -- unless they're a pro or a company.



Actually, your original estimate was "50% more" than the AU $4G your friend spent, so the Mac you specced out was nearly $2,000 less than you expected. Since I cannot compare the specs of his computer in detail (no, you never mentioned the RAM, "Raptor", display size/brand, or much else for that matter), it is impossible for me to say how each individual component stacks up between the PC and the Mac, but it is certainly safe to say that it's more than just the Quad Xeons that are the issue -- the RAM and the Apple (as opposed to third party) display have a lot to do with it too.

I do hope future versions of the Xeon don't have such ridiculous and expensive RAM requirements. That's not really Apple's fault though; you could get PowerMac G5 memory fairly cheaply from third parties..

Whatever man, I believe I was accurate in everything I have said, and put some excellent points across. I cannot understand why you cannot see that Apple does not, but definitely should, allow more flexibility in their products. If the Mac Pro is any indication, they just might. I do not understand your issue with my pricing either, as it is my belief it is also extremely accurate. It was my purpose to point out that unless the Mac Pro, the only customisable Mac, is extremely expensive, even at its minimum specs.

On a more humorous side, I was going for the longst average posts. But after seeing some of these doozies, I really don't think I have much chance...