MikeDTyke said:
Only Yonah @ 1.6/1.8?? Surely not - have you looked at the Apple store recently? I count solo 1.5, dual 1.66, 1.83, 2.0 & 2.16 - hardly a limited frequency range
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23-inch iMac on September 12th?
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Only Yonah @ 1.6/1.8?? Surely not - have you looked at the Apple store recently? I count solo 1.5, dual 1.66, 1.83, 2.0 & 2.16 - hardly a limited frequency range
MikeDTyke said:
...so, once the transition to Core 2 Duo is complete, the iMac-- 23-inch or not-- will use Merom chips like the rest of the Apple line...except the Mac Pro...and the new tower Apple will release with a single 2.0 Ghz Woodcrest. <see post #631>
All part of the master plan.
-Squire
While of course Apple could release the maxi-tower with a single chip, a smaller mini-tower with a Conroe would have several advantages:Squire said:
- Conroes are cheaper than Woodies
- Conroe chipsets are cheaper than Woody chipsets
- Conroe memory is cheaper than Woody memory
- A smaller case would be cheaper than the maxi-tower
- It would be smaller - the ProMac is simply enormous
- It could be a convertible, or available in two cases - mini-tower or Home-Theatre-PC pizza-box with tuners and PVR ability
I remember when I seemed to be the only voice calling for a mini-tower - now there's lots of company here!
andrew050703 said:Only Yonah @ 1.6/1.8?? Surely not - have you looked at the Apple store recently? I count solo 1.5, dual 1.66, 1.83, 2.0 & 2.16 - hardly a limited frequency range
Doh Doh Doh! That'll teach me for not proofreading. Yeah, there's a few Yonah's, but the point holds true that they are limiting the number of cpu's, and supporting chipsets in order to get the best discounts. They're not doing a Dell and providing any combo you care to mention. Personally this is what pisses me off about Dell, you can no longer be certain you're getting the best deal without 6 or 7 customisation attempts on their blinkin website.
M.
I still think it makes no sense for Apple to leave Conroe entirely out of their product line: It's the best performance/price C2D available to them, so from a business point of view it should also be the most appealing for Apple to use in a product.
baxterbrittle said:
Not begging - demanding. As I explained in a previous post, the 1.6 and 1.8 single proc G5 suffered from the 2WD Durango syndrome. What we're asking for here is a 4WD Subaru. I really don't wan't a 65 pound goliath thats been hamstrung to fit my needs and price point.
Squire said:...so, once the transition to Core 2 Duo is complete, the iMac-- 23-inch or not-- will use Merom chips like the rest of the Apple line...except the Mac Pro...and the new tower Apple will release with a single 2.0 Ghz Woodcrest. <see post #631>
All part of the master plan.
-Squire
I'll not say it won't happen, there's enough flames dancing around this thread on either side of that argument.
It's just that it'll probably make more sense for Apple to limit the variety of boards and chips they use, if they decide to build the inbetweeny mac. I think they'll stick with the consumer platform, ie. Merom and X1600, rather than Woodcrest. The reason is that the great majority of their pros won't flinch too much at buying a pro and the minority of prosumers if they decide to hear you will be satisfied with upgradeable graphics/display.
Before you completely roast me for that comment. This is how Apple thinks, they don't want Pro users trading down to the inbetweeny. If they feel the market is worthwhile for the prosumers, they'll do the minimum necessary to address that market.
M.
Manic Mouse said:
You're thinking like a consumer, yes for you to buy a conroe, motherboard etc etc. You'd get the best bang for buck.
Apple wants to buy the greatest number of any particular chip to get the juciest Intel discount. With Yonahs in everything but Mac Pro and XServe. All Apple volume Macs are coming from the Yonah line/mobile chipsets. If they buy conroe's and certified conroe chipsets, they cripple their purchasing power with Intel.
M.
MikeDTyke said:
Yeah that does make sense. Still though, would Apple tie themselves to Merom to such an extent? All other desktops will leave Macs in the dust both in terms of price and performance. And since they're all using Intel processors it would be easy for a potential customer to see that the Mac doesn't offer good performance compared to a PC. What would be the incentive to buy? The Apple brand, OS and design can only get you so far when you're selling a product that's inferior in the most important respect.
Can you support that claim???
I don't believe you - I think that you're just guessing about something here. Please support your claim that Apple's discounts suffer by splitting their orders across multiple SKUs.
One can suppose that Apple's discount structure could just as easily reflect total purchases - not per part number sales. Or some minimum per part, as well as total purchases.
In any event, there would be enough of the mini-tower sales to guarantee a best price for the Conroe CPUs and chipsets.
Furthermore, there are articles that say Intel is reversing its practice of negotiating special pricing deals for some of its OEM customers.
Please put up, or drop the argument that using Conroe would hurt Apple's discounts.
MikeDTyke said:
I don't believe you - I think that you're just guessing about something here. Please support your claim that Apple's discounts suffer by splitting their orders across multiple SKUs.
One can suppose that Apple's discount structure could just as easily reflect total purchases - not per part number sales. Or some minimum per part, as well as total purchases.
In any event, there would be enough of the mini-tower sales to guarantee a best price for the Conroe CPUs and chipsets.
Furthermore, there are articles that say Intel is reversing its practice of negotiating special pricing deals for some of its OEM customers.
Please put up, or drop the argument that using Conroe would hurt Apple's discounts.
sbarton said:
My goodness there really is no pleasing some people is there? This is why a mid range tower is a bad idea - No one can define in any certain terms what it should be. If they were going to release a mid range tower I'd personally prefer it be in the full sized case. And if case size is your only argument against the single 1.8 then I think that you are simply one of those people who spend all their time complaining about what is not available, then bitch and moan when it finally is released because of minor issues, never buying anything in the end.
Have you tried Dell? They offer a vast range of machines to suit each and every customer. They even offer an iMac type machine with upgradeble GPU pretty pricy though. And they can run windows too!
baxterbrittle said:
A single processor (Conroe), standard 4 slots of RAM, 2HDD slots, one superdrive (potentially upgradable to Blu-Ray) and of course PCIe is pretty much all that would be needed. It would be a smaller case than the Mac Pro, and plastic not aluminium because it's not a "Pro" machine. That config would suitably differentiate the mid-tower from the Mini and the Pro by placing it nicely in the middle.
A lot of people are talking about their ideal machines, which will be different for each individual. Just like people talked about their ideal Mac Mini's, Macbooks, iMacs and Mac Pros before they were released. Didn't mean that any of them were a bad idea! The "Mac" (hypothetical name for the tower) slots nicely into the hole in Apple's product lineup and would mean they have a machine for everybody. People wouldn't be forced to compromise to get a Mac, and it would mean more Mac sales overall.
Surely that can't be a bad thing?
Two cases, one motherboard.
My suggestion is that Apple should make a Conroe motherboard, and ship the identical board in two cases.
A. Home-Theatre Pizza-box
B. Small Mini-Tower
Both would have 4 DIMM slots, up to 8 GiB of RAM.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/optix?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz
The "large" tower here is 2/3 the size of the ProMac. The medium one is 1/3 the size of the ProMac. The small one is 1/5 the size of the ProMac.
Previous generations of these Dells have had an innovative approach for the smaller chassis. The same motherboard is used in all of them - but the PCI expansion slots are on a separate board that mates with the main motherboard. This makes it easy to support different levels of expansion, without needing to support more than one motherboard.
It's pretty clear, however, that there's a huge gap between the horribly constrained MiniMacIntel and the enormous ProMacIntel.baxterbrittle said:
My suggestion is that Apple should make a Conroe motherboard, and ship the identical board in two cases.
A. Home-Theatre Pizza-box
- Size of a DVD player or small AV receiver
- Two 3.5" disk drives (1.5 TB today)
- Blu-ray
- (perhaps) second optical slot
- TV tuners
- Digital and 7.1 sound out, with 2-channel to 7.1 conversion (able to drive 7.1 system directly, or feed a bigger AV amp with digital decode) [something like the Turtle Beach Montego DDL or better]
- HDMI/HDCP + DVI-I graphics card (PCIe x16)
B. Small Mini-Tower
- Much smaller than ProMac maxi-tower
- One optical bay
- One 3.5" HD bay
- One spare bay for either 2nd HD or 2nd optical
- PCIe x16 graphics (sized and powered for any card)
- One or two spare PCIe x8 or x4 slots
- Upgradeable to Core 2 Extreme
Both would have 4 DIMM slots, up to 8 GiB of RAM.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/optix?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz
The "large" tower here is 2/3 the size of the ProMac. The medium one is 1/3 the size of the ProMac. The small one is 1/5 the size of the ProMac.
Previous generations of these Dells have had an innovative approach for the smaller chassis. The same motherboard is used in all of them - but the PCI expansion slots are on a separate board that mates with the main motherboard. This makes it easy to support different levels of expansion, without needing to support more than one motherboard.
Manic Mouse said:
While I personally think a Mid level tower would be nice to have and would most definatly consider getting one if it were released as I am looking to replace my sold Quad, I however know from experience that the mid range towers have never sold well and have been prematurly dropped. The iMac has been a consistently good sales performer but cubes and cut down powermacs have done very poorly. So poorly in fact that I don't think Apple would spend the R+D money on a completely new Casing/Logic Board/Cooling system for such a potential sales disaster. Remember that Apple spend more on R+D per machine than just about anybody else and they have to recoup that through NEW sales not canibalised sales of Mini/iMac/MP. I know there are a lot of people on this forum whom would like to see this kind of machine (myself included) it's just simply not the reality in the real world. I just cannot find any good arguments why Apple should do it.
Oh and from memory in the world market Laptops outsell desktops 2:1 regardless of brand. AIO's not popular? Most people are replacing their desktop with an AIO laptop - That is the real state of the market and I have seen many people replace they're laptop with an iMac but would never consider a modular system (tower,monitor,speakers etc).*
baxterbrittle said:
That was the old PowerPC Apple.
The new Intel Apple just buys parts from Intel and others, and assembles them.
There's still R&D, but now Apple is much more like Dell than it used to be.
AidenShaw said:
Wow someones peeved.
2 points i'll make as i don't have the time for a big explanation.
Chip pricing is always quoted per part in the thousands. Intel's done this from day one. They don't negotiate discounts across batches of orders as pretty much every manufacturer is a JIT (Just in time operation) & can't guarantee from month to month what they'll order. Intel estimates yearly supply of each chip and prices accordingly. If Apple tells them its all Yonahs and Woodcrest that estimate goes up per chip.
Point 2, that article at this point, is rumor (ie. not confirmed by intel) and its been edited to show that it only applies to tier 2 oems. Apple is tier 1, said from the start, probably by SJ himself. They're not raising the price for the best customers, what the article says is that they're leveling the playing field, ie reducing the preferential treatment. Says nothing about price versus quantity.
Conroe is unlikely as every desktop design except the pro is built on mobile chipsets with a thermal profile of a (hot) laptop. Apple ain't gonna satisfy the readers of Macrumors by building out a whole new platform for what realistically would be less than a percent of the userbase. I mean current and potential switchers.
PC gaming/homebuilt/upgradeable = niche (sad but true).
M.
baxterbrittle said:
You are right that there would have to be a market for the "Mac" and that it would have to sell without cannibalising other Mac sales too much. The big question is whether or not it would sell well.
The problem with Apple's current Mac lineup is that there is a hole where the "Mac" would sit nicely. It would be slightly more powerful than the iMac, but lack the integration so I don't think it would eat up too many iMac sales. It would be more powerful than the mini and in a different price-bracket so it should hurt there too much. The Pro is a professional machine, and has quad processors so no problem there. So I don't buy that a "Mac" as I envisioned it in the post above would dramatically affect other Mac sales.
So is there a market for this "Mac"? Well, since most of us here would be interested in one I would say there would be at least enough of a market for it to be profitable. Apple can't competitively compete and gain market share unless they go after every possible Mac sale they can get. With a huge gap in their product line they are going to be turning away a fair few customers who fall into that bracket.
Even my non-gamer friends remark that sometimes the Mac Mini can get slow, and my minister's daughter wasn't best pleased when she found out it couldn't play the Sim 2 all that well or hold all her music/videos/movies on it's small HDD. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer, but even for most people the Mini is a bare-bones machine. And as the technophobes die out to be replaced with the tech-savy newer generations this will become all the more apparent.
Manic Mouse said:
I'm not sure Apple is too concerned with direct performance comparison in the consumer space. They've not made a big deal of it the past. Pro desktops always got the benchmark lovin.
I think, and this is only an opinion, Apple is more concerned with the overall user experience of its consumer boxes and that includes the flat low profile wow designs rather than bare metal grunt. You only have to look at their graphics card choices to see that.
M.
baxterbrittle said:
You're right, laptops by far outsell desktops in the consumer market. And there are more consumers than professionals out there. Imagine what it would be like if it was the other way around
My Macbook is the only computer I have right now and it's just perfect. I have some external Hard drives to compensate for the small on in the Macbook and to back it up (disk utility -> create image) in case the internal one gives up. Having 2 computers is annoying since you always go "that's on the other computer".
I might consider a Mac Mini to act as a server at home. A windows box would be cheaper but I never had an uptime greater than 3 days on windows.
Not peeved (as inMikeDTyke said:
), but your statements remind me of the adage attributed to Hitler:"repeat a lie often enough and people come to believe it as fact"
You've repeated your assertion as fact several times, and I felt the need to ask for proof.
I don't believe any of us here (at least, no one who is posting
) know much about the actual terms and conditions of the agreements between Apple and Intel - and definitely not enough to make a knowledgeable comment as to whether the discount structure would affect any decision to use a Conroe in the upcoming mini-tower.
AidenShaw said:Not peeved (as in
"repeat a lie often enough and people come to believe it as fact"
You've repeated your assertion as fact several times, and I felt the need to ask for proof.
I don't believe any of us here (at least, no one who is posting
So Aiden.Is your sig (the one above liberty
) about a new mini-tower fact or wishful thinking ? baxterbrittle said:
You know it's one thing to have a passionate discussion about Apple's product matrix, but you and some others here really show your backside when you drag out the whole "like it or lump it" - "your either with us or against us" stupidity.
I'm repeating it often enough - soon it will be fact !Peace said:So Aiden.Is your sig (the one above liberty
MikeDTyke said:I'm not sure Apple is too concerned with direct performance comparison in the consumer space. They've not made a big deal of it the past. Pro desktops always got the benchmark lovin.
I think, and this is only an opinion, Apple is more concerned with the overall user experience of its consumer boxes and that includes the flat low profile wow designs rather than bare metal grunt. You only have to look at their graphics card choices to see that.
M.
Very good thinking my man! And I would agree with you if it wasn't for Apple's recent products and what they were saying at WWDC:
The Macbook and Mac Pro are both competitively priced in terms of specs. Now you did say that this was important for Pros, but the Macbook is a deffinitive consumer laptop and it's strong sales have no doubt been down to it's competitive price.
Also at WWDC different Apple execs said at many points "We want to bust the myth that Macs are more expensive". Which means that they need to worry about offering competitive specs as they do with the Macbook and Mac Pros.
You are right that in the past they haven't made a big deal about direct performance comparison, however that has all changed now we're in the big brave world of Intel. To the point where Apple themselves (let alone consumers) are comparing their new products to DELLs in keynotes.