$499 Headless iMac?

[LuckyJack]

Two in the bush...

I'm one of those design-conscious folks who bought a Cube (with noisy Radeon graphics card). I've been using it with an Apple 17" Studio Display happily ever since, although the first thing I did was max out the RAM (1.5 gig).

I earn my living doing web design/development, and graphics. The spec on the CPU would essentially DOUBLE my current speed (500 mhz). I don't currently have even a CD writer in the Cube, and although I'd really like a Superdrive, it's not essential.

Brief lesson in economics: a faster machine means that you'll get more work done in less time. Which means you'll make more money (or the same money with more personal time). Upgrading to a newer machine would be a good idea in any scenario.

I'm wondering if I should eBay my Cube right now (high end ones like mine are currently bringing in approximately $600), and then just plunk for the the new headless Mac.

It's not that you're being conservative by not selling your existing, livelihood-supporting machine for a rumor: you're being reasonable. It would be beyond stupid to sell the proverbial bird-in-the-hand for this unconfirmed rumor of a headless iMac. Even if it were announced in two weeks, it might not ship for another twelve. *If* it's announced at all.

Back away from eBay and put the mouse down slowly. We're only trying to help. We're your friends. Slowly. Slowly. That's a good boy.

 

[mhouse]

Sure, for driving it would be nice to all have the same car experience (not nessisarly the same car though)... but I also feel as though with computers, if to many people are to use Apple systems you start to get problems like pc's have. You'll get viruses being made, you'll get the people that try to start destroying it and you'll get the whole thing where theres 100 programs from different people that do the exact same thing.

I just like Apple the way it is right now, maybe they don't have a super huge market share or the most users, but I think thats nice... personaly I don't want the device that everyone uses. Apple says "Think different"... well I want to be different; So I choose a mac.

If everyone started using a mac, id try to find something else even though the software would probibly end up keeping me since final cut pro doesn't run on anything else.

I understand the sentiment that you and other users are voicing in regard to the Mac being a minority group. It certainly has its benefits.

However, I do think you and others are missing something. *Even* if this machine comes to pass, and *even* if its the most wildly popular computer of all time (and I do think it could be if true), and *even* if it helped Apple to quadruple its market share...

You're still talking about a 10% market share at most. So Mac users aren't going to lose any of the benefits of a small user base anytime soon. Even if the 499 Mac is true *and* sells like crack.

 

[Rod Rod]

Pardon my faux pas, RodRod, I missed the single post where it was mentioned before I said it in humor. I apologize. I sure am glad that there are thread tzars such as yourself to come along and adjust everyone's behavior. I feel that most of are intelligent enough to disregard a repeated idea, especially about an object that doesn't even exist yet. Oh and I suppose I should throw in 'czars' or 'tsars' to cover my bases.
Just to annoy, would you like to be mini Tzar, Tzar mini, or Tzar Express?

The problem is that it was not a single post, it was multiple posts. I don't mean to "adjust everyone's behavior." I mean, I could suggest that people chew without opening their mouths (this is an example / don't take it literally). I won't expect everybody to follow that suggestion, but even still that won't stop me from making mention of it.

The problem is that this 500+ post thread could easily be cut by 20-25% if there wasn't so much repetition.

Virtually all the rest of us do not consider it to be worth our time to read every page of a 20+ page topic, especially when they're littered with posts, such as your own, which serve no purpose except to prove that you've wasted your time reading the whole thing. [snip]

If it's not worth your time to read before you post, then it should not be worth your time to post.

I may, if I so choose, still reply to the first-page-post about Apple not mentioning Florida, even though others have already said essentially the same thing as what I plan to say. I may whine about graphics cards. I may gnash my teeth about George W. Bush winning the election. I may make a dopey joke about the Dell elf. That is the nature, and the beauty, of public forums.

Ah, democracy. Sucks, don't it?

No, democracy is wonderful. What sucks is anarchy, and that's what you're advocating, which only adds to the noise and obfuscates the signal. I'm sorry you have such a poor opinion of democracy, but I happen to like both democracy and capitalism a whole lot. Thanks.

 

[Sir_Giggles]

Can we keep the subject matter on-topic?

Gawd, I hate having to filter through these sort of postings.

Mod, please delete all irrelevant posts. TY.

 

[anonymous161]

Rod Rod, I used the search tool and found only 1 instance of "iMac Express" before my post, so it was not half a dozen times and even if it was, so what? How much new can actually be said about a product that does not officially exist? If no one on this forum spoke (or typed) but you then we could easily cut the posts by upwards of 90%, while only cutting the ego by about 5%. I shall tread more lightly through your little principality from now on.

 

[Hemingray]

Holy sh*t, RodRod, that's the longest combined reply/quote/post combo I think I've ever seen.

DDR Announcer: It's a new REHkud!

 

[imgmkr]

if these babies got gigabit network interface i'd buy 10 of 'em and build my
own render-farm but then it's not the intended target market
well, this is second-coming of Mac: Real Personal Computer for the masses.
i wish one for my sister and one for myself in the living room.
i wish a integrated answering/intercomm phone system with it,
also hook it up to HD TV set and use the display with improoved speech
recognition and hand-writing interface.
"MiniMe, switch to chaneel 42~"

 

[-hh]

"You are thinking too hard here.

The majority of people this would be catering to are those with monitors."

I remain skeptical, but don't get me wrong I do hope whatever is released sells well...

Skeptical?

I guess I should take a photo of my G5 that's running with my IIcx-vintage Apple 1705 monitor and post it fors ya


-hh

 

[ChrisH3677]

Y'all got the wrong end of the stick - these are for the corporate world

Man this topic has got long!
I'm telling ya, these things are for the corporate world - who don't need graphics grunt. Home folks will buy them, but the big market is the corporate one.


These will be used for:
1) Desktop replacement in all business sectors

2) As Windows Terminal Server clients (A decent Wyse terminal costs almost this much)

3) In the home market

 

[G5guy]

I don't know why so many are saying a 5200 GPU would be fine - make it a current generation 6200. That way fewer people will whine that it is old and it can display all the latest affects even if not at the highest resolutions.

It would be better if it were upgradable, but I am not holding my breath. That way everyone could be satisfied - gamers and casual users.

 

[Damek]

If it's not worth your time to read before you post, then it should not be worth your time to post.

That's just asinine. Who are you to say what "should" be or not be worth someone else's time?

That aside, I fully support your right to complain about what you feel is wrong in any situation, and attempt to educate people towards what you feel would be better.

But I disagree with pretty much all of your complaints above. Well, it would be nicer if people did a quick search to see if they were repeating anything, but is that really worth their time? Do people really look foolish repeating something someone else said in a forum like this (as opposed to live conversation)? They don't look so to me.

Oh, and that elitist satire? It was good. It was written in just the style someone who would write such a thing would use, and then taken to the next level. Priceless. Complete sentences? Overrated.

No, democracy is wonderful. What sucks is anarchy, and that's what you're advocating, which only adds to the noise and obfuscates the signal.

No, that's chaos, not anarchy. Democracy is just anarchy where people have decided to talk about their problems together and try to come up with mutually acceptible/beneficial solutions.

This board cannot be democratic, and is not anarchic, unless you want to start having separate thread "meetings" to discuss rules and policies for posting, and consequences for people who don't follow them. As it is, the owners of the site make those decisions; it's a benevolent dictatorship with very loose rules.

I'm sorry you have such a poor opinion of democracy, but I happen to like both democracy and capitalism a whole lot. Thanks.

What the hell does capitalism have to do with it? Nobody but you mentioned it.

 

[pigwin32]

iCabod

I love it!

There may be a copyright issue with that one (iCab), no wait, could this mean a new and previously unsuspected collaboration? Safari shelved in favour of iCab? Perhaps the machine will have a car-shaped enclosure with a "vacant" sign on top until the G5 version is released? This would certainly mesh with Pixar's new movie, plus the first production machines may be timed for release at the same time as the movie, summer 2006.

 

[Rod Rod]

Rod Rod, I used the search tool and found only 1 instance of "iMac Express" before my post, so it was not half a dozen times and even if it was, so what? How much new can actually be said about a product that does not officially exist? If no one on this forum spoke (or typed) but you then we could easily cut the posts by upwards of 90%, while only cutting the ego by about 5%. I shall tread more lightly through your little principality from now on.

Okay anonymous161 I'll grant you the single instance of "iMac Express." But please do me a favor and drop all this straw-man business. Thank you.

Holy sh*t, RodRod, that's the longest combined reply/quote/post combo I think I've ever seen.

DDR Announcer: It's a new REHkud!

Yeah.. I guess I'm not one of those post-count-is-everything people. I deleted a lot of that along the way because other people had already addressed certain points, such as Mackey and Dont Hurt Me's discussion about upgrading old Power Mac G4s.

edit: Kudos to Damek, who did a great job of disagreeing with me without resorting to cheap straw-man tactics and sarcasm. I appreciate that. Thank you.

 

[wwooden]

I would probably buy one

If it were priced at $500, I would most likely buy one. If would sure be nice to not have to disconnect all the cables and such from my laptop each time I take it somewhere. I already have an external LCD monitor and the processing power is not that important to me, all I run are the basic iLife apps and a few others. It would make my life a lot easier.

 

[areyouwishing]

This is going to coincide with the announcement that FedEx is switching.

It all comes down to implementation. It will work, and it will succeed.

For my own purposes it will be sad if it doesn't have serial ATA because you are killing upgrades. I hope it has a 64mb video card, which SHOULD be standard. I also hope it has a 200mhz bus also. Those are the only 3 concerns I have.

The nice thing is that Apple will probably be using a standard 5.25 size optical drive instead of the slim ones they put in the new iMac, because of price.

The only thing that will hold me back from getting this is if it has a 32mb video card, otherwise im all aboard.

edit: going to dell.com and configuring a headless dell at the very least gets you a $450 celeron 2.5ghz 256mb Ram and a CD-RW (no combo) and no firewire.

Apple could really start gunning for the lowend and go head to head with Dell on a price basis now... that is astonishing. Apple could single handedly start a performance/price revolution. Just imagine going to apple.com and seeing the low-end titans squaring off on consumer video rendering, mp3 encoding, photo saving, and other consumer oriented benchmarks... THIS IS AMAZING to think about. THIS IS THINKING DIFFERENTLY.

 

[Thanatoast]

You're still talking about a 10% market share at most. So Mac users aren't going to lose any of the benefits of a small user base anytime soon. Even if the 499 Mac is true *and* sells like crack.

Yeah, but what's the market share of Dell or Gateway? *Windows* market share is obviously between 80-95%, but for the individual manufacturers of hardware it's much lower. I'd be interested to see Dell's numbers as a percentage of the total market. Apple at 10% would be very, very impressive.

The only thing that will hold me back from getting this is if it has a 32mb video card, otherwise im all aboard.

I have a 32 meg video card in my 800 imac, and it runs everything it needs to. The buyers of this box don't need a gaming machine or to do any fancy video work. It's an entry-level box. At that price point, it's supposed to compete with Walmart, not Alienware. And with the great OS/software package people will be getting, they'll think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread anyway.

If anything, all this machine needs to skyrocket is to include a decent version of solitaire.

 

[budugu]

People READ THE UPDATE NOW IT IS 600$!!

Man this topic has got long!
I'm telling ya, these things are for the corporate world - who don't need graphics grunt. Home folks will buy them, but the big market is the corporate one.


These will be used for:
1) Desktop replacement in all business sectors

2) As Windows Terminal Server clients (A decent Wyse terminal costs almost this much)

3) In the home market

this has been said.... they are not for the industry.... no software for such kind of stuff from apple... More than home users industry would want complete solutions ... more over no one is running OSX on servers(or a large part of them)! if a company has to choose between a P4 3.0HT/512/80GBSATA/DVD+-/PCIe/+17"FP+2yr warranty for 630 (that is what i got from Dell SMB) or this barebone for 600 bucks i think it is fairly straight forward what you would want to have (people i am talking of a person who has no prejudice)... most of the windows users who whine are the people who donot understand that they are not going to get an ipod if they click that damn monster or roach on the screen.

<500 (i.e 499 ) is ok and MIGHT pull off some thing but at 600$ i think this going to go down the drain...

PS: some one on the earlier post got it right ! --any more speculations MR...? (oops for got the name! )

 

[pigwin32]

this place is like so funny, u guys criticize this and that about the g4 and other mac products or just say meh to em, then when a rumors comes up ur all "oo my credit cards ready!" its like u all wanted a g5 powerbook, but when they updated the g4 powerbooks with the radeon 9700 u guys were all "my credit cards ready!" gimmim gime gmie! lol so funny

Hmmm, TBird your previous comments kind of depreciate any subsequent post, maybe now just isn't the right time to be sharing? Oops, nearly forgot,

 

[paxtonandrew]

This product has been a long time coming for Apple, as a company. Not since the Quadra has there been the prospect of a 'pizza box' computer, with the ability to target the masses, and have a cheap price. There are a few people I know who will be happy to see this out of Apple, and if there is a <$600 price tag, we have the perfect mix. Just one question, why, if the G5 is a cheaper chip to purchase compared with the G4, aren't Apple using this in the iQuad? This, combined with the 64bit advantage, Apple could be on with a winner here in the home market.

 

[budugu]

Where will the profits come from?

This product has been a long time coming for Apple, as a company. Not since the Quadra has there been the prospect of a 'pizza box' computer, with the ability to target the masses, and have a cheap price. There are a few people I know who will be happy to see this out of Apple, and if there is a <$600 price tag, we have the perfect mix. Just one question, why, if the G5 is a cheaper chip to purchase compared with the G4, aren't Apple using this in the iQuad? This, combined with the 64bit advantage, Apple could be on with a winner here in the home market.

As some one said before in this looooooooonnnnng posts ... where will apple get profits (High end supercomputer line up! ) to sustain the movement to liberate all the poor souls on this planet and make steve jobs as rich as Mr.Gates!! ...

 

[dsma]

Speed and Use

A comment on speed, a 1.25 ghz G4 would be great for $499. I purchased a 2.5 ghz celeron Compaq just run Teamspeak for gaming and it is much slower than my Titanium Powerbook at 400 mhz. I can turn it on and eat dinner before it boots. I know it is sitting next to a dual 2ghz G5 which makes it look horribly slow but PC's selling for $500 bucks ARE useless. I have 12 macs in an architectural firm running at all speeds(g3 to g5 inlcuding an xserve), and a 1.25 ghz G4 is very servicable for an entry level computer. I will buy at least two for word processing and to put in another room of my house. And school systems will eat these things like Pez. One with a built in iPod doc, where every student carries their files from station to station....it going to be a good year!

 

[iRez]

I don't know about 12" screens but 15 17 and 19 inch LCD's might be the lower end apple displays everyone seems to be speculating about.

 

[budugu]

A comment on speed, a 1.25 ghz G4 would be great for $499. I purchased a 2.5 ghz celeron Compaq just run Teamspeak for gaming and it is much slower than my Titanium Powerbook at 400 mhz. I can turn it on and eat dinner before it boots. I know it is sitting next to a dual 2ghz G5 which makes it look horribly slow but PC's selling for $500 bucks ARE useless. I have 12 macs in an architectural firm running at all speeds(g3 to g5 inlcuding an xserve), and a 1.25 ghz G4 is very servicable for an entry level computer. I will buy at least two for word processing and to put in another room of my house. And school systems will eat these things like Pez. One with a built in iPod doc, where every student carries their files from station to station....it going to be a good year!

I can understand your zeal but YOUR TESTING THE LIMITS. A 2.53 Ghz Celeron (325J -533FSB) is fast enough at least boots solaris 10 in less time than my 1.33 Ghz G4 power book can boot. when i am free i will get you the exact timing... when was the last time you have seen benchmarks? spec integer or floating point and any other damn test you please... donot come back with some useless subjective argument (non valid psychophysically) that it is feel that is important! It you who cannot put it to use... My P4 (still waiting the 6600Gt card) with JUST INTEL 915G CHIPSET can play Quake/UT faarrrrrrr better than my powerbook! Some one should wake you up out of your dream!

IT is 600 and DOES NOT have a ipod doc....

 

[Stella]

Really? Apple's xserves are doing rather well, actually!

more over no one is running OSX on servers(or a large part of them)!

 

[maveness]

Brief lesson in economics: a faster machine means that you'll get more work done in less time. Which means you'll make more money (or the same money with more personal time). Upgrading to a newer machine would be a good idea in any scenario.

Well, not in ANY scenario. I have to be able to afford it.
If getting "more work done in less time" means saving 30 seconds off a 3 hour job, it certainly isn't worth much of an investment.

But thanks for the economics lesson, anyway. Imagine, two decades of professional life and I never heard that before!

Back away from eBay and put the mouse down slowly. We're only trying to help. We're your friends. Slowly. Slowly. That's a good boy.

Ahem. "Maveness" = not a boy. But indisputably "good."